------ Satire Alert: Posts in Hydrant are intended to be humorous and sometimes sarcastic. Some parts of this post contain good natured self-deprecatory humor as a literary device and longer story line. It may not be suitable for all audiences and does not necessary reflect the thought of opinions of the blog character named HoundDog, his artificial intelligence programming, or of his creator, Sue Do Nimm, and other programmers. --------
For the last four decades, every time a president of the United States of America concludes the State of the Union speech, with "And may God Bless America," I always gasp when they leave out "and all the rest of the country's and people's of the world."
Can you imagine having a big community Thanksgiving dinner celebration and then with the opening prayer ask God to bless your family, but not all the others present? Guests, strangers and loved ones, equally worthy of God's blessing? It would seem not just to be socially clumsy, but down right unfriendly to all the other folks assembled.
I fully recognize this is my own fault and take full responsibility for it. After every speech, I always declare to myself that I'm going to write into the the President to suggest it for next time. But, then I never do, and then when the next SOTU speech comes up, I remember it too late, like this time. Damn, I hate it when I let down America, God, and the well being of all the peoples of the world, over and over again, as if that's not important enough to float up to the top of my daily to do list after well over more than 40 years of complaining about it frequently to others. As said, I am sorry about this and take full responsibility. In fact, I'm sad about this as well.
Yes, I am sorry and sad, just like Governor Chris Christie. If I had only cultivated a higher caliber of friends and acquaintances they would have taken down notes and gone ahead and done this for me. I'm sorry I do not have more diligent friends, fellow Kossacks. But rest assured that I have fired all of my previous friends and will find much better ones so something like this never happens again.
And, although I never asked any of my previous friends how they could have let this happen, I am so concerned about it that I've started an investigation to get to he bottom of this. Please don't ask me any questions about this investigation. I'll let you know if anything is worth reporting.
In the meantime, could one of you please write to suggest this to President Obama for next year, as it could be a major breakthrough for all of us. President Obama could symbolize a new transformation of America coming out of our shell and taking an interest in the rest of the world. And, when our pundits keep saying that the President of the United States of America is also the leader of the free world, the rest of the people should get a happy feeling, and just one of the reasons being that we care enough about them to ask for their blessing and are even thinking of them when we form our common vision of our plans for our and their futures.
And even if some of you don't actually feel this way, imagine the advantages of appearing to be the kind of people who are so generous that they ask for this common blessing freely and naturally, from the bottom of our hearts. Consider how strategic it would be to give the rest of the world the impression that we cared enough about them to do this, even though it is not legally required?
Maybe it would encourage some of the other people of the world to imagine there still may be hope for us. Perhaps, they might even be so encouraged they might recommend other ways we could more effectively interact with them, improve our foreign policy, and more effectively participate in vital and urgent world discussions about our collective futures with regard to global warming, international peace, security, world health, infectious diseases, science, international rule of law, etc.
In fact, I should probably apologize for the sad state of these affairs as well, as I haven't sent out any previous memos suggesting that everyone around the world improve their behavior in all of these areas.
We should ask for God to bless all of us, whether we like it or not, just on the possibility that it might improve things all around.
Whatever, but, I would like to conclude by asking "May God bless America, and all other countries, or peoples of the world.
P.S. And, for secular humanists I would add that I mean this as a metaphor for general good wishes, without regard to whether any actual deity, or other spiritual energies may, or may not be involved.