I feel like a lost American...do you? - Democratic Underground

MichiganVote

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Fri Nov-18-05 08:22 PM
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I feel like a lost American...do you?

For those of you who are young and for those of you who are among the baby boomer generation, there are truths to our experience that we share in common. Over and over, some of us feel a sense of deja vu, while you who have youth on your side are aghast at the state of our country. Young or old(er) we all recognize that our country is not just in disrepair, we live in a country OF despair. All our riches, all our smarts, our energy, even our grit and we continue to implode in America.

Everday I watch the news. I listen to the news. I discuss the news and I feel dismayed by the news. The news is this, we are sinking in America and our country's leaders are not only failing to help us bail, they are poking new holes in the boat.

We should be able to count on them, but is is abundantly clear that our government is stubbornly stuck in the era's of Johnson, Nixon and Reagan. We have grown older, our youth have grown up but our government is infantile. Nowhere has our government matched the advances we have been fortunate to invent or prosper from.

If I did not watch the news for a year, this is what I expect I would miss. Every night on CBS or PBS I would miss the stories and faces of the dead. Dead boys, dead girls, fathers, mothers and sisters and friends. Dead. They are dead because our government, our so called superior government, got it wrong--dead wrong.

Corruption. A story a night. Business, politics, churches,...in America the appetite for greed is overwhelming the common sense of most Americans. It's useless to name them all. Better to recognize that the succession of stories is unending. Greed has spread as rapidly as polio once did in the country. Our national character is corrupted and it has corrupted our youth. We are punch drunk with distraction and dimentia.

Today, as American business interests relocate, are allowed tax rebates and whatnot...what benefits do we bestow on our citizens? We slash food for our needy children whose only sin is to have been born poor. We toggle students who work hard to learn with unmanageable student loans or no loans at all. Our leaders legislate the wealthy to legally reduce their obligations to society by forcing an unproven ideal that the wealthy will somehow magically enrich our country with later unspecified investment. You see how silly it all is? We literally demand less of those who have more under the assumption they will then turn around and give the very thing we said they didn't have to give.

If you believe that someday your prince will come, that a rapturous event will elevate you above your station in life, you will believe this is progress. How is this progress?

We have sold our children into generations of debt with obscene deficits. We have sold our young soldiers into a war to prevent a war that we now know could never have taken place. We will sell our cherished public lands because they tell us we don't need them anymore and business needs them more. Do you hear it? They're saying, we're not that kind of country anymore. They're saying, we will tell you what you need and you'll believe it if you know what's good for you. That's freedom?

The simple truth of the lie we share is this: we're being told we are not a country that can afford the luxury of a civilized society. That we don't need it, that we shouldn't want it and that we're unamerican to demand it. We cut an average of $50 a month in food for children in a poor family in this country in order to spend 6 billion dollars a month in another country. Why? What about this equation makes us more secure in America? We allow bigots to rail about dubious welfare fraud whilst this government loses millions upon millions in Iraq and what do we hear? Nothing, not a peep from Congress, the WH or the press.

The people who are infuriated with the kind of reality I see criticize advocates for withdrawl from Iraq by claiming we fail to consider the consequences of that withdrawl. The same people who did not consider the consequences of waging a war of aggression across a country as large as Iraq with a small army now argue the benefit of foresight? Huh? We fight and argue in our country, we kill our youth and let's face it, that's what we're doing, and we are doing all of this for whom? For whose benefit are we waging this war?

It is a falacy to believe that the destruction of our character as a nation is restricted to New Orleans. Or even that one agent is responsible for our redemption. The people of New Orleans want to rely on song to restore a damaged regional identity. The present WH government rewards rigid loyalty to its policies with membership in an exclusive club. Strong sounding churches relegate our national identity to the sidelines favoring sheep like prayer and wishful thinking. Dysfunctional thinking may breed short term hope but it won't put food in a belly or train adults for future occupations.

Our people will be cold this winter, there is no money for heat. We have paid the oil companies instead. Our people need medicine and help understanding new benefits. We have paid the drug companies instead. There is no money to train caseworkers to aid the elderly. Our people are homeless. We have provided no bid contracts to corrupt businesses who do not kick back money toward housing. We will stop subsidizing the housing programs even for the storm ravaged families who have lost everything. Our borders are insecure. We have cut border patrols leading to vigilantism that will likely lead to violence. We are threatened with epidemics. We have cut funds to the Center for Disease Control and our government has allocated vaccine money elsewhere.

I feel like a lost American. I am reminded of my in-laws who survived the Depression and the one advantage they had. At least then, everyone was poor or poorer. Today, the wealthy not only survive, but thrive solely because wealthy politicians buy them comfort on our backs. That's not America. I now inhabit a land where politicians defend bridges for 50 people going essentially nowhere for the price of millions, over the cost of a baloney sandwich for a kid in school. That's not America.

I may live somewhere....but right now, its not in America. No sir, I am certain I no longer live in America.