AMERICA'S RAW STORY
13th POST
ICELAND
EXEMPLARY NATION IN A TROUBLED WORLD
A
small land situated between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, Iceland minds
her own business and minds it very well. I was so impressed by what I saw and
learned in a recent and first visit there with my family that I decided to
write this short piece as a tribute to her people and their history and as a
lesson that needs to be learned and practiced by the greatest troublemaking
nation of all time during only 240 years of her existence, namely, America, a
nation forever at odds with herself, constantly preparing for and engaging in
war, and a nation that world opinion tells us is the greatest threat to peace
in the world.
Iceland and
America: Some Stark Differences
The
two nations are mostly at the opposite ends of the important dimensions of
life, Iceland at the positive end, America at the negative end.
In
my book, America’s Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying I coined the term
“sadtistics” as a summary for America’s mostly negative standings on those
dimensions. For this article I am
coining another term, “gladtistics,” as a summary of Iceland’s positive standings.
What follows is a very brief side by side summary of the two nations’
standings.
Socioeconomics. Iceland stands
very positively on income equality, employment, poverty level, and
homelessness. America doesn’t.
Health
and Health Care Services. Iceland has universal single payer health
insurance. America doesn’t and, furthermore, has the most expensive health care
system providing substandard health care. Icelanders live longer than
Americans. Iceland’s infant mortality rate is much lower than America’s.
Environmental.
Iceland, thanks partly to its geothermal energy suppy is the least polluted of
all nations. Not so, America. She caters to the fossil fuel industry and its
captivated politicians.
Crime
and Domestic Violence.
America has the highest and Iceland among the lowest of nations in total crime
rate per capita. America ranks high among nations in intentional homicides.
Iceland ranks almost “dead” last.
Law
Enforcement. Iceland jails it scofflaw bankers. America bails them out. Iceland
abolished capital punishment in 1928 but hasn’t executed anyone since 1830.
America still uses capital punishment. Icelanders grieved after police shot and
killed a suspect for the first time ever in 2014. It’s a common occurrence in
America, where her police kill citizens over 70 times the rate of other first-world
nations.
Military
and Foreign Relations.
Iceland has no standing army and her military budget is miniscule. America’s budget
is larger than the next seven countries combined and has over one million
uniformed personnel in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air force. Other than
the “cod wars” with the UK over fishing rights, Iceland has never been at real
war in modern times. America was born in the womb of war and has been addicted
to that habit ever since.
Happiness. This may just
be the most important dimension of life. Who wants to be unhappy? Iceland is
the second happiest nation in the world. Americans are much less happy.
Reasons Why
Those
differences aren’t happenstance. There are reasons why they exist, and it doesn’t
take a rocket scientist to know what they are.
In
the Beginning.
A good start, which Iceland had, is better than a bad start, which America had.
Archeologists now think, contrary to the mythical Viking warrior landing on
shore that Iceland was first inhabited between 770 and 880 AD as a temporary outpost
from Scandinavia, Northern Europe or the British Isles, and used by the
inhabitants to gather sea life resources. It was a peaceful beginning, in other
words. America’s first inhabitants were peaceful Indians. They were soon
slaughtered and their land confiscated by settlers from countries well accustomed
to slaughtering and land grabbing.
The
Place.
People make the place, but it also makes the people. I’ll give you just three
examples. Iceland is a small, un-crowded nation. America is large and crowded.
Psychologists, like me, have shown that crowded rats in an experiment become
aggressive and vicious. Secondly, malevolent leaders know how to keep a large
crowd divided and conquered. Thirdly, America is a “sociopathic society” claims
Charles Derber, a sociology professor at Boston College, not because of its
people, he says, but because of America’s “values and rules of conduct.” I would add that those rules and values were
created by the corpocracy (see below) for its own benefit.
Form
of Governing.
Iceland is a democracy. America is a corpocracy, which I call the “Devil’s
Marriage” between large corrupting corporations and corruptible politicians. I
wrote a whole book explaining how her corpocracy is turning America into a “ruination.”
Furthermore, the nature of American politics and her rigged elections have
prevented the American people from electing presidents who aren't psychopathological
(a condition confirmed by many experts on the subject).
Guns
and Ammunition. Icelanders aren’t permitted to carry handguns. In America there
are about as many guns as there are Americans thanks to the pressure from the
gun and ammunition industries, their trade hawkers, the National Rifle
Association and the captive US Supreme Court’s biased reading of the 2nd
Amendment.
Accentuating the
Positive, Eliminating the Negative
The
nearly 324 million Americans aren’t all evil, just the 5000 some members of
America’s power elite, made up of corporate, political, and military leaders,
the unelected “shadow” government (e.g., the CIA), and their ideological advisors
who preach America’s ”manifest destiny” as an excuse for ousting democratically
elected leaders of other countries and for bombing countries that don’t yield.
The
urgent question if we are to be good ancestors of the future is how to unite
and mobilize millions upon millions of good Americans to establish a government
for them, not for the power elite. Armed revolution is absolutely not the way
to end malevolent regimes. They have the power to crush armed people. Moreover,
the only good path to peace is peace itself.
In Closing
At
the age of 81 I am doing what I can through my writings to urge America to
change course before it’s too late. After
visiting Iceland, I ask Americans to follow her example. I wish Iceland
continued well being and for America I wish all Americans well being in the
future.
About the Author
Gary Brumback, PhD, is
a retired organizational psychologist and elected Fellow of the American
Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. Since retirement
he has studied and written about American history, current affairs and
politics. His most popular books are The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the
Corocracy or Leave Democracy in thee Lurch; and America’s Oldest Professions:
Warring and Spying. He can be reached at democracypower@bellsouth.net.
His blog post link is http://tinyurl.com/om7rxna.
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