This worldwide economic collapse is ruining us all. Pretty soon we’ll all be eating Hershey’s bars out of shoeboxes to survive and we’ll only go to Papaya Dog for birthdays and anniversary dinners Pagemaster the download. But wait! There is hope. One major corporation has been doing so well during this recession, in fact, that I kind of want to go there right now in the name of patriotism (and being broke.) That’s right, it’s McDonald’s!

Yup, everyone’s favorite that-was-so-good-but-now-my-stomach-lining-is-dissolving chain has made 120 million dollars in the last quarter. But it’s not just that the fast food industry as a whole is doing well. In fact, Burger King was down 4.3 percent, while Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC faced similar losses. While Mickey Dee’s Dollar Menu and other cheap (yet delicious!) offerings have surely attracted penny-pinching consumers, there’s got to be more to it than just “people want fast food.”

I think people really want to help America right now, and there’s nothing more American than a fast food chain that disguises mind-bogglingly unhealthy (yet delicious!) food items with a happy-go-lucky clown and a couple of half-assed salads tossed into the menu. McDonald’s reassures people. If you spend money at McDonald’s, you spend money at America, and America will thank you with Chicken McNuggets. And no matter how bad the economy gets or where the Dow Jones ends up today or who gets elected President, you know that you can go into any McDonald’s in any of the fifty great states of the U. S. of A. and order the same exact meal. And that, my friends, is the true meaning of democracy.

Photo: Flickr courtesy of sarken