Here’s how the tsunami in Japan went:
1) Water
2) Screaming
3) Rescues
4) Tears
5) Hope
6) Acceptance
7) Cooperation
8) Teamwork
9) Support
10) Honor
11) Kindness
12) Love
Here’s how a tsunami in America would go:
1) Water
2) Screaming
3) Outrage that God would do this to us
4) Looting
5) Fistfights
6) Gunshots
7) Military intervention
8) Curfew
9) Rumors of a Muslim invasion
10) Hoarding
11) Suicides
12) A lot of people waiting for their clothes to fly off in the Rapture
Don’t know if you’ve noticed from the coverage of this disaster, but Japan has pulled together in ways that we never would.
Ways that are clearly anti-American.
And I, for one, think we should sanction them.
In Japan, nobody’s busting windows of Best Buys and carting off flat screens – a clear sign that they’re thumbing their noses at the free market system.
Nobody’s shooting their neighbor in the cardboard box next door because he has a better sleeping bag – an obvious indicator of socialistic impulses.
Nobody’s selling their children into sexual slavery for some clean water and a Big Mac – a transparent bid to elevate themselves as moral arbiters.
Get this: on the news, I saw video of a guy who had lost everything, and still went to work at the restaurant where he was employed (and which was still standing), because other people needed to eat.
I saw men cutting barrels in half, loading the bottoms with wood, boiling water, and passing it out so that others wouldn’t die of dehydration.
I saw an announcement in a shelter that breakfast was ready, and hundreds of people quietly and politely forming a single-file line to eat.
I saw that, in the midst of devastation, one community had set out makeshift containers for recycling (which was sort of ironic since, at that point, the whole city was a giant recycling bin).
The Japanese are clearly some sort of Marxist radicals.
Oh, sure, I suppose that in a sad, weak moment, a disturbingly large number of Americans would behave this way, too…but fortunately, the fat, lazy, and entitled among us would rally and restore America’s role as a leader.
I remember this line from a Jean Kerr book, where she was on a plane, reading the Your Role in a Water Landing (plane crash) laminated card.
“My role in a water landing,” she declared, “is to splash around and cry.”
You said it, Jean. Because we’re America. Our role is to splash around and cry. And take our neighbor’s life vest. And demand that someone else kill the shark.
Because, after all, THAT is the American Way.