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The Campaign Trail

2/28/02: The "United States of America" is a Stupid Thing to Name a Country

As most of you know, I'm running for president of a certain North American country. And if I am elected, one of the first things I'm going to do is give it a better name. The "United States of America" isn't really a name in the first place, but more of a description of what the thing, which -- although possibly a fitting punishment for the nation that gave birth to legalese -- is really really stupid in my book. I mean, have you ever heard of the "Big Chunk of Jungle Once Claimed by Portugal" or "Bunch of Islands off the Eastern Coast of Asia" or "Boot-shaped European Peninsula Nation that Surrounds this Other Little Country where the Pope Lives"?

So what should we call it? Well, I've got some ideas but I'm open to suggestions. Here's what I've come up with so far:

• The Burning Dawn
• Khazar-Ikhmem
• Malaguena
• South Canada
• Ashtaria
• Solstine
• Sverquais
• The Republic of Vengeance

And that took me like a minute to write, but it's still better than anything this country has come up with in 225 years.

But the name isn't all that needs replacing. The flag's gotta go too. Look at it, it's just way too busy, what with them trying to tell the entire history of the nation in abstract pictoral form and all. Plus the colors -- red, white, and blue -- are the most overused colors as far as national flags go. France, Russia, South Korea, Cuba, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Myanmar, Thailand, Panama, Slovenia, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway... and that's just the ones that are red, white, and blue, and nothing else. If I added in the ones that also had just a teensy bit of black or gold or green or any other color, we'd be here all day.

Let's take a look at the American flag and then some flags that I think look cool (note that I'm talking from a pure artistic design standpoint. I'm not talking about symbolism and definitely not about politics):

The American flag. If you're an American, this image is as ingrained into your mind as the Nike Swoosh, but I thought I'd show it one more time so you could scroll back and compare while I talked about other flags.

Now, for the flags I like:

The European Union flag. A good flag, but not a great flag -- I have included it here just because if we want to keep the stars in the US flag, this is the way to go. Drop the stripes already, they just clutter things up.

The Canadian flag. Again, our neighbors to the north best us. Simple but still instantly recognizable, which is really what you want in a flag.

Kenya's flag. A lot of nations put a tiny, difficult-to-read emblem in the center of their flag. Kenya has a big stylized shield instead, which looks a lot better. We could do something like this, if we want.

Antigua & Barbuda flies this flag. I like this one. No special reason, I just like it.

The Brazilian flag. I don't know what it says in the middle, but you really don't need to. For all I know it says "We Will Bury You!" in Portugese.

The flag of South Korea -- I've saved my favorite for last. Now this is a flag. It's got everything you'd ever want in a flag... it's simple, elegant, and completely unmistakable, all done without sacrificing symbolism. Plus it just looks cool. I'm not sure if the people who designed it are still even around, but if they are I'd like to ask them to make up a new flag for us.

So that's my flag rant. But I'm not done. We need a new national anthem. Anything but the Star Spangled Banner. We've got a whole mess of patriotic songs that I like better than that one, like "America the Beautiful" or something. Even "Born in the USA." Anything. Well, anything except "Stars and Stripes Forever", or Rage Against the Machine.

Here's some other national anthems that I like:

• "O Canada" (Canada). They've got a better name, a better flag, and, yes, a better national anthem, too.
• "Advance Australia Fair" (Australia). This one's one of my personal favorites.

That's about all I have to say...

-- Yumiko

PS: American money looks like crap too. But I'll save that discussion for later.

Flags provided by Mooney's MiniFlags and created by members of the Flags of the World Group.