And by “we” I mean “us.” And by “us” I mean “U.S.” That is right, Dear Reader, the United States stinks.

“How does the Happy Pessimist know this?” you may ask. Well, I’ll tell you. I know it because our enlightened government tells me so.

Dear Leader slithers around the world on his belly, announcing to all and sundry, particularly foreign potentates, how arrogant and pushy the WE has been up until his accession to the throne, I mean, the White House. (In 1956, a humorist named Robert Nathan wrote a brilliant comic piece describing the findings of an archeological expedition in the year 7956 which dug up the remains of the US of A. Since so many objects had US on them, the learned archaeologists decided that the extinct population were known as the “Weans,” or the “us” for short. So I stole his idea. Tough.)

Dear Leader’s Lord High Executioner, Eric Holder, has never met anyone who should not be indicted. The minions of the exchequer, the IRS, announce hourly that we are a nation of cheats and swindlers, who deserve nothing but the worst for our inability to remember all one million pages of the tax code. Dear Leader’s Envoy to the larger world, Samantha Powers, likens us to the Nazis and screeches that we will never be absolved until we all wear hair shirts and genuflect in the direction of Moscow. (To give her her due, she does look terrific barefoot in a red dress that goes halfway up her thigh. But back to work.)

The great historian Arnold J. Toynbee, author of the twelve volume magnum opus “A Study of History,” observed that civilizations do not die — they commit suicide. Choosing people who hate us to run our country is about as close to political suicide as you can get. So what should we do?

Well, it seems to me that, if we stink, the good old American approach would be to be the biggest stinkers on the planet. I am not recommending that we join the “throw the baby in the bonfire” school of thought. I suggest, rather, that we adopt a program of international relations that is affirmatively directed to making everyone else really, really hate us.

Some might argue that is ALREADY what we are doing. Au contraire! We continue to contaminate our meddling with the dross of phrases like “we are bringing democracy to people who yearn for it.” We should replace these vacuous phrases with comments like “we’re here to steal your raw materials, and if you don’t like it, we will blow you up.” “We don’t give a damn what happens to you and your ugly progeny. All we care about is keeping you and yours far, far away from our door.” “Collateral damage is fun.”

At the same time, we can stop sending assistance to the victims of natural disasters. Instead, we lecture them on why God hates them. And then we wait for the reaction.

You know what the reaction will be, of course. Suddenly the US will be portrayed by the press of the nations that count (you know, Iran, Saudi Arabia. North Korea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, et al.) as comrades in arms. Our behavior will be just like theirs, and they’ll love us for it. Dear Leader will be elected to the Tyrants’ Hall of Fame. We will be elected to the UN Committee on the Prevention of Torture.

How’s that for a strategy?

So, Dear Reader, you do not want Big Brother reading your e-mails to your mistress in Dubuque. How unpatriotic of you! Anyway, Dear Leader assures you that he and his minions are not reading your e-mail – they are only collecting addresses of the people with whom you correspond. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. It’s cheap. You’ll like it. Just sign here.

They are also not recording your phone calls. They are just looking for evil interconnections. Once again, we enter bridge territory. You may have noticed that you have a digital phone, not an analogue one. Your conversations are chopped up into little bits and bytes that the Fed’s exabyte storage facilities are swooping up. They know everything. (Now, my e-mails and phone calls are world-class boring. But that’s a different issue.)

They are also monitoring everything you do online. Forget about kiddie porn and drugs. They know what you are buying at Victoria’s Secret! They know how many times you visit Republicans websites! They know how much you spent at Sears! MY GOD, they know how often you visit Funwithdoom!

Now, remember that all this data is being sent in real time to the IRS, the EPA, OSHA, the CIA, the NSA, and Guido the Chicago Hitman (a subcontractor for the Democratic Party). So you are in trouble.

But this is great!

What you have been thinking of as a problem is actually a fantastic business opportunity. And the solution was discovered by the great Baron Rothschild. You may recall the Battle of Trafalgar. That’s the naval battle in which the noble Lord Nelson defeated the short slimy little Frenchman, Napoleon, thus saving us from the fate of having to eat frogs on  a steady basis, and of speaking through our noses even when we do not have a cold. The battle took place in 1805, so we did not have instantaneous communication. But everyone in England was concerned, and the stock markets were boiling. Now Rothschild was the greatest stock trader in the world, and folks noticed that he was standing in his usual spot next to a column in the stock exchange, and he was selling, selling , selling. Panic! Rothschild knows something! We too must sell, sell, sell! And then, when prices hit rock bottom, Rothschild and his buddies bought, bought, bought! And then the news came in that Lord Nelson had won the battle. (Unfortunately not his personal battle, since he was killed.  Oh, well,)

How did Rothschild know the outcome of the battle? Because he had superior telecommunications.

He had pigeons!

Yes Dear Reader, the great Baron had a fleet of carrier pigeons spread about the world, and he knew things way ahead of everyone else. And nobody could intercept pigeon mail. His line of communications was secure.

Astute person that you are, you see where this is going. My breakfast companion,  Bob, pointed out the security of this method to me, and suggested that pigeons could replace the e-mail system. That intrigued me, but I pointed out that carrier pigeons are not that fast, and anyway they cannot fly more than about 1800 miles. Undaunted, Bob proposed that the system could incorporate relay stations.

That’s it!  I spit on the Pony Express! I will set up the Pigeon Express! Picture it: a little pigeon winging its way across America. a missive of enormous importance (handwritten in a secluded hut in the deep woods and then photographically reduced to a microdot) tucked securely into a little capsule attached to its leg. At each relay station, one of our men, immunized against psittacosis, removes the capsule, reads the address of the final destination, and consigns the capsule to the appropriate bird for the next leg of the journey.

The Feds can not interfere with this system for fear of violating the Migratory Water Fowl Act, incurring the wrath of both PETA and the Audubon Society, two powerful voting blocks. They will be forced to sit docilely by, fists clenched in rage, while we share our secrets with each other in perfect safety.

Also when the pigeons become too old to work any more, we can eat them. Pigeons are delicious.

Welcome back, Dear Reader! Today our topic changes direction– literally. What is the meaning of this conundrum? It’s alimentary, Watson (or whatever your name is). Today we examine the intake side of the alimentary tract.

We all recall with delight our childhood joys in the Consumables Department. My particular favorite was the Tootsie Pop, a great big sucker on a stick with a Tootsie Roll core. The fictional New York police detective of TV fame, Kojak  (“who loves ya, baby”), was incessantly mouthing one as he subdued the doers of evil. Even  today, shlurping a Tootsie Pop fills me with warm recollections of my youth.

But they can’t leave well enough alone, can they? As part of the infantilization of the body politic, led  by the corrupt politicos who reduce the most complex issues to nine-second sound bites, the teachers who refuse to demand that students actually learn something, the inventors of quiz shows and reality TV, the confectionary industry has now plunged to new lows. The Tootsie Pop? How about the Titsie Pop! Yes, Dear Reader, a Mr. Jason Darling of Austin, Texas (otherwise a wonderful town in which I have spent many happy hours over the years) has introduced into the halls of commerce his new product: a breast-milk-flavored lollipop.

Now, it doesn’t contain any actual breast milk. Mr. Darling is a vegan. (N.B. This does not necessarily mean that he comes from the star Vega, although his ideas do suggest that explanation.) But he claims that using his product brings back fond memories of the part of your life during which you could grab an attractive woman’s left knocker, shove it into your mouth, and not have to worry about a sexual harassment suit or getting knocked upside the head by her, her brother, or her father. Halcyon days, indeed!

But this is great!

Mr. Darling has raised the concept of comfort food to a whole new level. Or has he?

We can already buy chewing gum that tastes like cigarettes (Nicorette). We can buy cakes that taste like marijuana (Alice B. Toklas brownies). We can stimulate our little taste buds with concoctions that recall any sinful experience we want.

There must be something we can do to raise the ante. I know! We need some treats that bring back bad experiences! How about a lollipop with the flavor of Fels Naptha soap, used to wash out our mouths when we used naughty words? How about a carbonated beverage that tastes like beer barf, to remind us of the occasions on which we overindulged during college?

I don’t know about you, but I’d just as soon leave the dead past, well, dead.

Welcome again, Dear Reader, to the fields of excrement. No, I am not fixated at the anal compulsive developmental stage identified by those two great medical philosophers and savants, Dr. Sigmund (“Vy you don’t like your mommy?”) Freud and Dr. Benjamin (“Let the little monsters do anything they want or you will damage their fragile self-esteem”) Spock. No, no, no. I am a mature and sophisticated adult. But the cannonade of insanity inundating us forces me to speak.

A scholarly scientific article was published just last week indicating that recent results indicate that fecal enemas are not as effective as previously claimed. Fair enough. However, my own experience, both on a personal level and in terms of my interaction with my young children, was that enemas were used to cause fecal material to leave the body. I was surprised (an inadequate word) to discover that the enemas they were discussing were reverse enemas, id est, they involved putting alien  poop into the victim, excuse me, patient.

The study indicates that one of the reasons that the efficacy of this treatment  was overstated was that it was based on a small number of cases. How surprising. I would have expected throngs to be hammering on the clinic door begging to have somebody else’s poo squirted up their rear end. BLECCCHH!

Now, in all fairness to the medical profession, this revolting treatment was developed to treat extremely difficult cases of infections by clostridium dificile which, as its name indicates, is dificile to cure. It is amusing to speculate on how anyone came up with this concept. I see two white coated physicians standing around in the hospital, outside the room of a particularly difficult case, when one says to the other “Hey! Why don’t we try shoving somebody else’s poo up her butt!”

But this is great!

The ingenuity of the medical profession knows no bounds! This conceptual breakthrough heralds oodles of new and interesting treatments.

But oh no!! It’s too late! All the really revolting approaches from the Dark Ages have been resurrected already. The Three Weird Sisters from Macbeth have nothing on our contemporary medicos! Eye of newt and wing of bat, hah! We once again use leeches to drain black eyes. We use maggots (sterilized, of course) to eat the dead flesh off of  victims of chemical burns and fires. We use creepy molds to make antibiotics.

Where is a witch doctor when you need him? I’d prefer the old mask and rattle any day.

Ah, Dear Reader, you think you have seen the worst.  You think that the heights of folly have already been scaled by our masters. Think again! To quote Al Jolson, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

We have all become accustomed to having our fannies patted by lascivious TSA personnel. (Some of us even like it, I fear.) Those of us who wish to help our fellow man by marrying in order to reproduce, or to earn a meager pittance to purchase Sterno (drink of the gutter-inhabiting multitude), are accustomed to providing blood to the public health authorities. Those of us who work in industries where there is some reason for the public to demand we be in at least partial control of our senses have become accustomed to providing urine samples to the drug-sniffing guardians of the public weal. But as we follow Greece into the valley of the shadow of insolvency, we can expect to follow them too into the shadow of  regulation of on-line businesses.

Starting a business in the swamp of Greek regulations is almost impossible. But in addition to the usual “fill out these 276 forms in triplicate, using a pink crayon,” the Greeks have added a charming new biological hurdle to jump. In addition to the gigantic pile of papers you must submit, you now must submit a stool sample!

You are tempted, no doubt, to respond to my assertion with a shocked “No shit!”  YES, SHIT! This is not an urban legend! The Greekies are actually doing this! Why, I cannot imagine. The only possible argument your Interlocutor can conceive of is a desire to keep the quality of the stuff circulating on the Web from becoming too high. “You want to disseminate stuff on the Web? Well it better be shit! In fact, we are checking up to make sure it’s shit!”

I suppose I should apologize for interjecting scatology into what has heretofore been a G-rated blog. But I won’t. Some topics demand scatological treatment. (For those of you who are interested, the term “scatological” is derived from the Greek “scat,” meaning poop. So scatology is particularly appropriate when discussing Greek poop collecting.)

But this is great!

Think of the possibilities that this approach opens up! Blood, pee, poop – what’s next? Want to go skiing? Before we will rent you ski boots, we want 17 toenail samples to check for fungus. Want to ride on the roller coaster? First throw up in this bag so we can test the effluvium to ensure that you will not spew pathogens on the folks in front of you after the 720 degree loop the loop the loop!

At the end of the day, we will find ourselves strapped to gurneys with scalpel-wielding bureaucrats hovering over us, each anxious to slice off the most informative morsel.

I just hope it doesn’t happen on a trip to the sperm bank.