Americans have lost their way
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I know it’s beyond cliché to say things used to be better, that the business of the nation was more honorably transparent way back whenever-the-hell. The grass is always greener, not just on the other side, but back across our nation’s history to our remembered mythologized “summers” of progress. It’s all greener if you look at just the right spots, the places where we got things right, after the wars, after the economic collapses when, for moments in time, the government put the people first.
“In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of power, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties and democratic processes.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Republican
When we’ve gone from a president at mid century warning his people, -not his subjects, or his citizens but his people, his fellows, his brothers and sisters as unflinchingly as Eisenhower did-to a place in our Constitutional and civic evolution where the Supreme Court can defend the overreaching abuse of corporations and classify them as if they were individuals, and 21st century presidents talk about fiscal responsibility without once mentioning the defense industry’s parasitic relationship to our out of control deficit, we are adrift my friends and we are as far away from the intentions and hopes of the framers as the English monarchy they seceded from in the 18th century.
We refuse to face the central problems of inequity and unfairness because the elites in charge have made themselves synonymous with the nation itself. The wealthiest of elites have bought our entire news media; the very thing Americans use to communicate factual reality to themselves is owned by somebody.
The elected officials in government calling themselves Republicans today are not Conservatives nor are they in the strictest sense of the word representative of the Right’s philosophy as it is historically understood. They are not even Republicans in the truest sense of the term. What we have in the persons of Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Dick Cheney and many others are Rich elites who will do anything to protect the Establishment, its money and its power.
It’s not easy to say you oppose the “Establishment.” In some ways it indicates you think there is something wrong with the country at its core. But we all know there is something wrong with our country don’t we? We all know there is something wrong with us.
What is pretending to be a rebel and a dissident (think Tea Baggers) going to accomplish? Selectively getting angry at your political enemies for problems you unarguably know their elected predecessors are responsible for, only ensures that the politicians you mistakenly supported take power again in short order.
There was a time when a lie was called a lie, and there was no confusion about an opinion, or a belief or a fact. Any attempt at intentionally interchanging the terms was to invite something heavier than the weight of any law or regulation-it inspired distrust in the people.
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News was voted the most trusted news source in America not too long ago. We are a nation seeking entertainment at a time when we should still be asking honest questions and not letting the fears, concerns and goals of the Establishment become our own.
Today, too many of us believe what someone else tells us is in our best interests to believe. Americans now disbelieve anything that upsets them or that interferes with the order manufactured by everything we buy into when we let someone else tell us what it takes to be a good American.
Today, Eisenhower’s prescient farewell warning would be first labeled; then ascribed a political motivation, then assigned a political party and roundly dismissed as “biased.”
I ask you my friends, just where the hell are we right now?
Story edited from original.
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For many, many years I have maintained that mine is the final generation to grow up with the notion that we could trust our leaders (I was born on Eisenhower’s second Inauguration Day). Most people I share this observation with agree.
Not only have Americans lost their way, they have taken some of their friends, such as England with them.
I fear that the end result will be the splitting of the USA into several nations; likely mutually-antagonistic nations. The scary part is they will all probably have nuclear weapons and one of those nations will be a totalitarian theocracy. That one will have no reservations about using “God’s holy fire” to impose its will upon others.
James, I hope I never live to see that day.
One never knows for certain what the end result of anything will be. You can break your leg and think of that as a disaster but what if that leg prevented you from taking a flight that crashed?
The USA dividing into smaller nations might seem to be a catastrophe but the end result might be a sort of “West Europe” cooperating on most issues but individually not powerful enough to cause global disruption as happens now.
I have to admit, certain areas of the USA are currently an obstacle to advancement into a more civilized society. Let them go their own way until they learn that it doesn’t work.
Excellent piece and true in every single word. I particularly liked the observation about the grass always being greener if you look in the right place.