Hello. My name is Kristina. Let me tell you a little about myself. I once was a happy-go-lucky gal who thought the world was a wondrous place. I would lay in the Hawaiian sun and play in the crystal blue ocean and think life was just grand. I would read my high school history books and think the United States really was great.

Oh, how foolish youth can be. Those days of innocence are over. I’m a college woman, supposedly grown up, and now, my fellow Americans, I basically think the world sucks.

Yes, hello, my name is Kristina and I am a cynic — nice to meet you.

During my privileged years at Northwestern, I’ve come to see what a crap world we live in and how the United States has contributed to the overall misery of so many people. There are some really excellent things about the home of the brave, (we saved the world from Hitler and it’s super that the First Amendment gives me the freedom to write this column) but the United States is one shady character — just ask the East Timorese.

East Timor declared its independence in May after a 24-year occupation by Indonesia. During the occupation, 200,000 East Timorese — one-third of the population — were massacred by the Indonesian army. Students, teachers, public officials and nurses were murdered. Grenades were thrown into houses, hundreds of innocents were shot in the streets and women were brutally raped. The United States — God bless us — provided Indonesia with economic aid, military training and billions of dollars in weapons during the occupation.

Or you can look at what we did in Guatemala where the CIA supported a military coup in 1954 that ousted Arbenz, the country’s second legally and popularly elected president, because he was a “communist” who tried to carry out a land redistribution program. Declassified documents show the CIA came up with a list of assassination targets and a how-to guide book in the art of political killing. Not only that, but the United States then supported the Guatamalan military, which killed, maimed and tortured hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans. We are one damn fine country.

But wait, our government is also doing a fantabulous job in our own country. I mean, we’re not massacering our own people or overthrowing any of our top politicians, but we are making sure the rich are staying rich and the poor get diddly squat. When President Bush took office, he inherited the strongest economy in U.S. history. The federal budget showed a surplus of $281 billion for the year 2001. Uh, but now all that money is gone. According to the Citizens for Tax Justice, 37.6 percent of Bush’s tax cut was pissed away on giving breaks to the top 1 percent of wage earners. That comes out to an average of $53,123 a year for every rich person out there. The lowest 20 percent of wage earners, those people who make less than $15,000, get .9 percent of the cut.

Now, although the world sucks and all, I think my cynicism toward it really stems from my idealism. Planet Earth could be a better place for so many people and I’m pissed and bitter that it’s not. So may whatever god you believe in bless America so that, in the words of Michael Jackson, we can “heal the world, make it a better place, for you and for me and the entire human race.”

Kristina Francisco is a Medill senior. She can be reached at [email protected].