What's up with our land of the free?

[90-percent]

Is not the current state of government in America approaching the TYRANNY that led to the AMERICAN REVOLUTION?

Didnt the members of all three branches of government take an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution? Aren’t all those that helped dismantle the Constitution guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors against this country?

Aren’t we all up to our necks in a kinder and gentler version of the notorious Russian Stasi security state?

Did any of us think all the PRINCIPALS that made the U.S.A. a shining beacon of hope for DEMOCRACY now COMPLETELY INOPERATIVE? We have lost the moral high ground because we adopted the tactics of the terrorist enemy.

Isn’t the definition of Fascism the merger of corporation and state? Do corporations control our country to such an extent that America can now be accurately labeled a Fascist state?

Don’t we grossly dishonor all those that gave their lives in all our wars “to defend the American way of life” by allowing the Constitution to go down the drain in front of our eyes. We are squandering all the sacrifices our forefathers made for us to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

IF we are not already there, don’t all indicators of the health of our democracy indicate that our Democracy itself is on it’s death bed and our future will be a totalitarian police state where all us serfs are there merely to serve at the pleasure of our corporate kings?
Have not we as a country totally blown it? Democracy was passed down to us and we blew it! Didn’t we have an obligation to make it even better?

Doesn’t it seem like all the institutions we depend on have been taken over by greedy sociopaths that are taking more for them and less for us, including basic civil rights.

Isn’t George Carlin’s 3 minute you tube “Corporations Own You” the most precise summary of modern America?

To me, the future seems so bleak for all us bottom 99%-ers that I’m glad I’m 59 without children. Hopefully I will die before it gets substantially worse, but if I live to 90, I will be around for the collapse.

Speaking of collapses, do you worry about another bubble or two bursting soon, especially Wall Street is continuing their utterly fraudulent business as usual? Aren’t there plenty of other big bubbles ready to be dispatched soon to wreck everything even more?

-90% Jimmy

PS – that Steve Wozniak vid nails it

[MrSlayer]

1. It's been bought.

Of course it never really existed to begin with but the illusion used to be in place. Now there isn't even that.

[RevStPatrick]

2. My only beef with your OP...

...is that the Stasi was East German, not Russian.
Otherwise - spot on.

I'm watching one of the next bubbles in real time as it gets ready to burst - the student loan bubble.
It's going to pop pretty soon - 25 year-olds with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and no jobs or working in coffee shops, or doing everything freelance for cash. When that bubble bursts, it will cause another housing bubble burst. And I'm starting to think once that happens, the 1% will then have ALL the money, and either one of two things will have to happen - We will have reached Marx's magic moment and Capitalism will collapse in upon itself. OR - The 1% will have no choice but to kill off, oh I don't know, 4 or 5 billion people globally in order to "save" themselves.

Either way, something revolutionary is about to happen, and it will happen during your lifetime, like it or not...

[Nay]

3. Many times a day I am happy I'm 61. I probably won't have to live through (or more likely, die in)

the worst of it. I grieve for my kid and grandkid. There are days when I wish I had no children.

[SoCalDem]

4. It was not "our" land and it sure as hell has never been "free"

Our ancestors invaded the continent, took it by force.

But for a slim section of history (WWII years and about 18 years post-war), times have always been hard for all but the wealthy & super-rich.

The people who benefited most from that era are soon going to no longer exist, and then it will be back to the way it always was before they came along.. Rich v poor.

Read ANY history about the US that encompasses time from the beginning of the US, up to about 1941.. The actual war years kind of don't count, because with the world at war, people embraced sacrifice due to the fact that everything they sacrificed was to help their own sons, fathers, uncles, brothers, Dads so they did not really mind.

Post war, the US was in the catbird seat since most of the rest of the world was in rubble, so we prospered beyond all belief. The mechanisms were not fully in place yet, that would siphon off all the profit for the top 1%, so the middle class was born. It was never going to last, but the people enjoying it ...finally.. could not know that.

The ones old enough to have come back from war got the full benefit of all of it. Their kids (Boomers) were brought up believing in it, but by the time they (we) aged, the concept was already being unwound... It's almost over now. and soon we will be back to the beginning, only with less of a chance of ever changing it again.

[90-percent]

5. Thank you, SoCalDem

As a boomer, my understanding of America was formed in the most shared prosperity era in American history. It just seems to me that most people in that time that ran all our institutions were honorable people. Look at Ike's departing speech about the MIC as one example of a really honorable guy running one of the most important institutions in all of America.

My theory is that all our current institutions we depend on to enjoy a fair and civilized society have been infested with greedy sociopaths. I think this is because the personality type that rises to the top in most of our current hierarchies, including corporations are aggressive shark-like personalities that have no capacity of empathy and literally want more for them by making damn sure there's less for us. The top 1% got something like 127% of the benefits of our current "recovery" and the rest of us got zilch.

-90% Jimmy