Dear Editor,
“We’re developing a new citizenry; one that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.” Rod Serling
“Our government” creates “consumers” incapable of thinking for themselves by training them to be completely dependent on government and its corporate partners to tell them what to eat, to wear, to think, what to believe, who to vote for, to associate with, and so on. These “consumers” believe we can’t be free because we have to be safe.
American democracy is one of our many delusional myths. The only time we experience democracy is when we announce that we don’t have it and say loudly that we intend to get it. We celebrate this on July fourth.
We’ve created a welfare, nanny, police, surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp. In our pursuit of reduced personal responsibility, “safety”, avoiding serious obligations to each other or to future generations, we’ve created a society where freedom is vanishing. Police abuse is here, Surveillance is here, and Imperial government is here. Don’t call the criminals names though because someone might be offended.
America has become a clear demonstration of Orwell’s 1984. We aren’t the book’s carbon copy, but if you investigate, there’s little difference. The theme and execution are the same with different details. “Law enforcement” has absolute power and authority over you, your life, your family, your freedom, and your future.
America isn’t a democracy if the only right “consumers” have is to “vote” every so often, for change that never arrives. It’s time to recognize what clearly doesn’t work for most of us and create something that does. Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting different results. We’re ruled by “royals” and if that’s tolerable then “consumers” really are insane.
America has become a “chicken little” world where we attend to the fears of whoever screeches about some new “enemy” that threatens our supposed calm nirvana. Each “group think” has its fears and pre-conceived notions their emotions have provided, and demand the rest of us treat them seriously.
Americans would do well to investigate reality instead of imagining it’s what their TV sells. “Consumers” boast that they live in a democracy, providing imaginary powerfulness. Public events including elections, public celebrations, advertising, school graduations and religious worship are all used to reinforce the false belief about how much influence you allegedly have in government and how free you allegedly are, as the SWAT teams proliferate.
Dictionaries define democracy as government representing citizens through elected representatives, as majority rule, a society which provides equal rights to all. America hasn’t succeeded in any of those descriptions and in recent years the idea of American democracy is obviously absurd.
Americans don’t get what they want from the political system, and do get what they don’t want. “Consumers” have minor influence over what “our government” does while economic elites and interest groups obviously own “our government”. The disrespect towards popular will is in your face, daily.
If this weren’t true, the minimum wage would be higher, there would be no cuts to earned entitlement programs, and Americans would have a single payer health care system. There would be no NAFTA or TPP “free trade” agreements which destroy local industry, destroy eco-systems and violate national, popular independence. We would have real food labels.
Americans don’t want continual foreign interventions/invasions yet that’s what we get. We don’t want fracking destroying our land, water and property values, the pollution and earthquakes that come with it. We don’t want rich people controlling “our” political process but the Supreme Court has said repeatedly that money is speech and corporations are people, proving that money talks and those without money have no voice.
If America were democratic, Wal-Mart and its low wages, for your low price, wouldn’t be the largest employer. America would produce things, providing economic security from reasonable wages and benefits.
In a functioning democracy, the bankers that created the worldwide economic meltdown would be in jail. Their victims would have been given useful assistance. Corporations wouldn’t get tax breaks and government welfare.
People are broke because the system’s broke. We pay protection to a broken government that’s not working for anyone but the rich and powerful. “Consumers” don’t have permission to think. How do you change it? Refuse to support the lies your TV tells you and speak with others about it. Are your rights and freedom God-granted or are they assigned by government. If you refuse to see a thing does it cease to exist?
You know that it’s a crime to lie to government; 9/11, WMD, Benghazi misdirection for political purposes; Obamacare and its “savings”; Fast and Furious stonewalling; and the IRS political attacks are recent lying by “our government” to you. Your lie doesn’t even have to be directly to a government employee as long as it’s “within the jurisdiction” of the ever expanding federal bureaucracy”
So what happens when they lie to us; nothing; Bold-faced and repeated lies are explained away as something unavoidable, misunderstood. Why do we allow our public servants, to lie, evade, and delay the simple task of presenting reality? The boldest of lies, when revealed, meet just minor outrage. “Patriots” offer clichés like “all politicians lie” or “what do you expect”? If truth be gone, what remains of our system?
“Our” Supreme Court now allows “our government” to detain anyone labeled a troublemaker as a threat to national security, authorizing the military, under presidential authority, to arrest, kidnap, detain without trial and hold indefinitely, Americans suspected of being a threat.
The Court supports government, no matter how illegal its action, ignoring our Constitution. Why should you trust a lying government that kills, tortures, steals, spies, cheats, and treats you like criminals? Why trust a secret government, whose actions give no satisfactory answers, and whose policies come from paranoia? Congress has as 7% approval rating but the re-election rate for incumbents is 80%.
Craig Dudley