“Only in America” once brought smiles and laughter. It was about amusing ironies and playful contradictions like:

Only in America...do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke .

Only in America...do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.

Only in America ... do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place.

Only in America... do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.

Only in America... do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.

Only in America...Yogi Berra they say quipped it on hearing that a Jew was once elected mayor of Dublin.

But now the smiles and laughter have turned to tears. “Only in America” is making a grim screetching turn. Other industrialized nations are bewildered. They look at us with painful gaze and lament:

The working poor...Only in America.

Homeless working families ...Only in America.

A minimum wage that is another name for poverty...Only in America.

No health insurance for 48 million citizens...Only in America.

Seniors who can’t afford life supporting medicine...Only in America.

College education out of reach for middle class families...Only in America.

One in ten households experience hunger or the risk of it...Only in America.

And the list goes.

Is this your America?

Will we ever smile again at Only in America?

Only Americans—united and determined— can restore the dream!

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Bernard Starr, Ph.D., formerly professor of developmental and educational psychology at the City University of New York, now teaches “Psychology and Spirituality in Film” at Marymount Manhattan College. In addition to his work in radio (“The Longevity Report”), he is a longtime contributor of commentary and opinion articles to numerous major newspapers and other publications. He is also the President of the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy and is the main United Nations representative for the Institute of Global Education that founded the Mucherla Global School in Mucherla, India.

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NEWS: You can now preview selected passages from chapters of my book ("Escape Your own Prison: Why We Need Spirituality And Psychology To Be Truly Free" published by Rowman and Litelfied) at Google Books
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E-mail: OmniCns@aol.com