Recent headlines and personal ruminations have led me to believe the United States is surely on the brink of social and cultural collapse much like the decline of the Roman Empire.
We have a government that makes little effort to conceal its disdain for the common man and woman. The elitists of Congress and even state legislatures make little effort to hide their prostitution to corporate interests, power mongers and foreign wealth.
Employment by companies expecting loyalty from employees is being shipped off shore faster than new service industry jobs paying less than a living wage are created. Unions are demonized and made villains by the disloyal and corrupted corporations and their governmental stooges.
Perpetual wars continue to consume much of the national budget with corporate interests reaping huge profits. Smedley Butler, the former Marine General turned whistle blower, wrote his War is A Racket essay back during the days of the Great Depression. Butler’s words and his look at major corporations reaping huge profits on the back of dead soldiers rings as true now as it did then.
Benefits for the poor child, the poor elderly and the poor family have been cut at record rates while more and more Americans foreclose on their “great American dream home” in unheard of numbers.
Benefits for the returning soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen from the battlefields of deception are being challenged and denied. Young men and women are enticed by the benefits to risk life and limbs for “patriotic” causes but quickly find the patriotism is a one-way street. They give and their government takes.
Unethical doctors treat the wounded with dangerous blood-clotting agents that keep the troops alive long enough to go to another doctor’s care but the risks of complications are so great the agent is not approved for treatment anywhere else.
Psychiatrists minimize and hypothesize about the mental state of the returned troops with little regard to their symptoms. They have an agenda to “expose” the troops as malingerers and “lay-abouts” to prevent soaring costs of treating the emotional trauma war brings.
The caretakers of humanity have become the whores of big government and big business just as Smedley Butler talked about. If further proof of this is truly needed; one need only glance at the American pharmaceutical companies in their testing new medicines for HIV/AIDS in Africa. They used impoverished and dying Africans to test toxic formulations of drugs to combat the disease but withdrew the medications that proved to have some efficacy in order to reap huge profits in the so-called civilized West.
The hopes of a continent devastated by AIDS were raised by the interest of big business in their plight only to have them dashed by the harsh reality of greed. It was another way of America endearing itself to the “third world”.
This laundry list of American imperialistic narcissism is long and grows worse as this nation grows older. The one-time beacon of freedom and democracy has really now become the beacon of consumerism, neglect of others and disregard of Mother Earth.
Americans can no longer say they are victims of their government when they have given away so many freedoms and human rights out of their own cowardice and self-centeredness. The only true victims in this nation remain the people of color and shameful poverty in the world’s richest country.
The dying middle class and white majority have only themselves to blame as they see their dreams of secure employment and retirement in the “great American dream home” become a nightmare of deceitful lies by the corrupt liars they elected to guard their government. They listened to 30 second sound bites of slick, quick talking, make up puppets of big business interests and failed to look beyond the façade.
If the foolish American proletariat did look beyond the façade, they generally took a helpless position of a coward by convincing themselves they were safe as long as they didn’t rock the boat. Now that boat has sprung more leaks than the Titanic.
In the face of all this the people of this country don’t rise up to demand their freedom back. Instead they stick their heads in the sands of consumerism, ignorance and fear.
Christmas season approaches and an already indebted serfdom continue to feel they must have more and more of the products of a failed society. Their children grow up entranced by 24/7 television and the newest forms of video gaming.
Sports and recreation are no longer allowed to be fun for children. They must win at all costs in all activities. Bludgeoning the opponent is the goal. Sportsmanship and respect of one another is for losers.
You may say this is overly harsh but reading and hearing the news of even mainstream sources confirms the facts.
Last week a new generation of video game went on the market at big retail stores across the world. Here in America the young men and women (and sometimes middle aged) camped out in front of stores to be first in line to buy the limited amounts of the game being sold. They camped out days and some even a week or more.
The day the video game went on sale there were reports of the crowds becoming hostile and violent. At some places gunfire broke out. There were other reports of the games being sold on the black market for huge profits by the people staying in line to buy at the retail stores.
It’s not as if the game won’t be available once the Christmas season is over. The corporate makers of the game deliberately short supply the mostly Western consumer to make even more profit. The young who typically would never turn out in such numbers to help stop a war are so addicted to being first with something mass marketed they can’t wait past Christmas. Instant gratification must be had.
This is the sad epitome of our culture. The young hardly recognize the world’s starving, the genocides, the wars or even their own countrymen dying and being maimed. They know every detail of a new video game, a new DVD or a new song on I-Tunes by a musician making billions from sales to the lemmings.
We know all about Tom Cruise getting married, OJ attempting to reenter our cultural morass, the upcoming Madonna concert on the tube and the ratings of Gray’s Anatomy. Ask the typical American to find Iraq on the world map and it will startle how many are unable to do so.
The young at least have the excuse of being young and ignorant but their parents don’t. The parents allowing their children to engage in games of graphic violence toward other humans that include rape, armed robbery, murder and war are abusing their children with a failure to set limits and teach them a value system cherishing lives of others as much as themselves.
Parents have taken over the sports and games of their children out of supposed love but in many cases they are living vicariously through their children’s achievements. They push their children often to the point of cursing and belittling them if they fail.
Parents are criminally neglectful of assuring their children don’t become tools of a culture of violence. They rush to schools in states of panic whenever acts of violence occur feigning to care about their children. Not much later in the lives or their children they allow them to pick up rifles for hunting other humans in illegal wars without much of challenge, if any.
Another sign of our country’s decline and collapse is the upside down view of heroism. Those that know me have heard me rail against making heroes of highly suggestible and ignorant men and women who go to war. I've long advocated we provide the necessary treatment and benefits to these troops but taking part in war is not heroic. It's brutality and survivalist insanity.
I’ve continually suggested a hero is someone willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their brothers and sisters without a personal gain other than self respect. I’ve constantly talked about three nuns, Ardeth Platte, Jackie Hudson and Carol Gilbert, as being my personal heroines. I also include Carl Kabat, a former priest, Ken and Mag Seaman, Kathy Kelly and all who have risked themselves for a greater cause.
The sisters and Carl are headed back to prison for entering nuclear sites to bring world attention to the presence of the missiles of total world destruction strewn throughout this country. Missiles that remain on full alert 24 hours of each day. Missiles ten times more powerful than the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This past weekend hundreds were jailed crossing into Fort Benning, GA to voice their opposition to the continued training of death squads at the “School of the Americas”. Most of them will be sentenced to federal prisons for their trespass.
And so it is that I ask what the fuck (wtf) is going on in this country when we honor the people who commit acts of war and we jail those who care enough to oppose genocide and torture? This question came up the other day in something I read and it’s been one in my head for the longest time.
Where are the moral and good people of America to stand beside these heroes? Where is the protest about children being killed for corporate greed and political corruption? Where is the outrage?
Sadly, I think it’s clear far too many of the American people are busy shopping and waiting in line for the new video game to give a damn about such matters. They will still be shopping and ignoring the poor when the last freedom has been stolen or a new revolution occurs.
Sadly, Americans with courage and integrity will be imprisoned or discredited by the masters of the new American Empire. Already new prisons fill with the disenfranchised and rebellious.
The American Gulag has been flourishing under the neglectful eyes of the American people. Blacks, Chicanos, Latin@s, Middle Eastern and indigenous peoples don’t make alarm bells of tyranny ring in deaf ears.
The once cheered and honored troops who fought senseless wars for corrupt reasons are often joining these groups in the gulag. Still the warning signs are not seen by the fearful and submissive proletariat. They seem to think the largest prison population in the world in the largest democracy is democracy rather than fascism.
The plan for a new century by Americans may last a while longer but the erosion of an empire has more than likely gone past the tipping point. The abuse of environment alone has reached a crisis state and the majority of Americans only care about gasoline prices going too high.
They don’t seem to care about the ozone levels going too high, the waste in waterways reaching dangerous levels or the climate changes that have already started us on the way to extinction. They fail to understand there is no inherent right for a nation the size of the U.S. to consume over one quarter of the world’s natural resources.
Peace and justice activists are aware of most of these issues but inexplicably hitch their horses to the Democratic Party as the answer to their concerns. They continue to think the electoral system will eventually save us all from the major payback that is about to come.
The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina in the New Orleans and Gulf coast areas exposed the truth of America. There is another America full of struggling people that have been abandoned and disregarded. They are angry and tired of the Euro-centric rule of racists and imperialists. They’re not fooled by the flag waving appeals to their patriotism when they seem the only ones doing any sacrificing for the "cause".
Time is running out in the life of the American Empire mostly because the people of that Empire didn’t care enough to make it a true world power willing to share and work together with the rest of the world. The empire has been too much about U.S. and not enough about we, the people of the planet, Earth.
The American Empire will unfortunately be known as one of the bloodiest, most ruthless and most decadent in the history of the world.
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