Some of the countries the Western media claims are horrific repressive dictatorships are way happier than the U.S. So let me ask: Are you happy? Do you spend a lot of time laughing in the sun? Do you feel at peace in your life?
If you live in the U.S., like me, then I’ll bet you a KFC Family Bucket meant for one person; the answer is, “No! What are you? Crazy? Have you looked around? We’ve got a climate crisis, a wage slave society, tainted water, smoggy air, most of our meals have more pesticide than food particles, and the only human interaction we get is when someone clicks thumbs down on the Instagram photo of our pesticide-filled dinner, and we have an addle-brained octogenarian in the White House. How could anyone feel at peace?”
Well, what if I told you there are countries where people do feel at peace? For example, Nicaragua.
As reported by Ben Norton, Gallup the other day found that “Nicaragua is the world’s #1 country where citizens feel at peace.” From the Gallup Blog:
Worldwide, the percentage of people who say they ‘always’ feel at peace with their thoughts and feelings… ranges from a low of 11% in Zimbabwe to a high of 73% in Nicaragua. The list of countries worldwide where the majority of people say they always feel [at peace] is dominated by countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Latin America? Nicaragua? That can’t be right. If you read U.S. media, you know Nicaragua is a repressive totalitarian hellhole.
Norton continues, “The United States and Western media outlets have long demonized Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and its President Daniel Ortega, sponsoring violent coup attempts against him and imposing illegal unilateral sanctions aimed at hurting the Central American nation’s economy.”
So why haven’t we couped Nicaragua recently? Well, we tried.
Norton and Max Blumenthal reported on it for The Grayzone, “In 2018 the US govt funded media designed to fuel a violent coup in Nicaragua, aimed at bringing down President Ortega.”
It didn’t work, though. Apparently, too much of the country felt at peace. And too many Nicaraguans actually like Ortega. According to M&R Consultores – one of the top polling companies in Latin America – over 77 percent of Nicaraguans support him.
Seventy-seven percent! That’s double the percentage of Americans who approve of Joe Biden’s job performance.
U.S. attacks on the happy, at-peace people of Nicaragua haven’t stopped. A year ago, Ortega was sworn in for a fourth term under a U.S. and E.U. imposed economic war.
In fact, NBC News was so eager to push propaganda against President Ortega that they accidentally called him President Noriega multiple times in an article.
Manuel Noriega was, of course, the corrupt dictator of Panama who we actually installed as dictator because much like Saddam Hussein, he was a close friend of the U.S. until it overthrew him in a coup.
Watch the full report above.
Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of Behind The Headlines’ new series: The Most Censored News With Lee Camp. He is a former comedy writer for the Onion and the Huffington Post and has been a touring stand-up comic for 20 years.