How did we get here?
This country was founded by enlightened men, spilling their blood to fight the oppression (through taxation) of a tyrant. The people of this country have long upheld and demanded the right to our personal freedoms since before the founding documents were signed into law. Our unwavering commitment to our freedoms, and championing the cause for freedom around the globe has for centuries been a symbol for what it means to be an American.
Yet, for more than the past decade, our freedoms and our rights have been eroding, bit by bit. We've accepted this in the name of more security, and the promise of prosperity, but we've been given nor earned neither.
Instead, we have the majority of our political leaders, feigning opposition, but in fact, colluding with one another at the behest of their corporate masters to willingly defraud us all of our tax dollars for the primary benefit or making the rich more wealthy, and the poor more poor, and those of us in the middle heading further down the economic ladder than up. We let them do this to us because they promise us everything they cannot–and will not–deliver.
They make backroom deals with fossil fuel companies to determine our energy future, not a future in our healthful interests, but in the interests of profit. They make backroom deals with health insurance companies to determine how much we (not they) will pay for our healthcare, not in our interest, but in the interest of profiting the insurance companies. They make backroom deals with the very bankers who nearly collapsed not just our economy, but the global economy because of unregulated 'gambling' that is otherwise illegal in most cases outside of the banking industry, and they use the money we've made through blood and sweat to "recapitalize" those hucksters (by recapitalize, I mean "award even more extravagant bonuses than ever to those who provide no tangible benefit to anyone besides themselves); then they tell us they have no other choice. They make backroom deals with each other to keep billionaires from paying their fair share in taxes, but make sure your taxes and my taxes help to ensure these corpulent vampires get richer and richer, so they might in turn throw them back chump change to fill their campaign coffers, or give them lucrative lobbying jobs when they retire (voluntarily, or not).
We the people stand idly by and let this happen. (Caveat: Tea Partiers, screw yourselves. You're equally complicit, if not more so. Evidence that corporations were pulling your puppet strings was more obvious and public than anytime in American history, and you ate it up like crack-laced chocolate).
There was a time when America and Americans championed those who would speak truth to power. There was a time when we Americans, once exposed to the lies and treachery of those who claim to be our leaders, would demand accountability and force those so-called leaders to accept responsibility for their transgressions. We would even accept the international shame of putting those failed leaders on trial (in a manner of speaking) for the sake of retaining our credibility and standing on the global stage.
America 2010? This is not the America I grew up in. In this America, we now have public and private figures in this country calling for the censorship of the free press, and for assassination of those willing to expose the lies and the treachery of the so-called leaders who continually sell us people out to the bidding of their corporate masters who finance their campaigns, those whose feet should literally be held to fire.
If this was the America I grew up in, we'd all be marching in the streets, protesting on campuses, risking tear gas and bullets, and demanding that we will not let ourselves be trodden on, nor abused by the privileged and powerful; we would instead show them all where the real power lies. The French had the courage to stand up for themselves over two hundred years ago, and Americans did too.
What are we Americans going to do now? Are we going to stand idly by and allow our leaders to sell us out to the highest bidders? Are we going to continue to allow our *leaders to send our loved ones into battle to die for principles they refuse to honor and uphold? Will we continue to allow our bloated nouveau riche (Palin, Beck, Hannity, Rush, O'Reilly) to pretend to be on our side while they rake in millions and millions of our dollars, all while pushing the agenda of their political and corporate masters?
OR!!!
Will we Americans actually do something about it?
Thursday, December 16, 2010
THIS is not America!
blog comments powered by Disqus