Used to be rich psychopaths could ride into a lawless part of this country, pay-off the sheriff, and have their hired guns kill anyone who opposed them. Then rename the frontier community for themselves.
Now people like The Koch Brothers slander anyone who opposes tyranny as a troublemaker or revolutionary; misrepresent liberalism as something bad; and employ paid liars to silence the voice of the people and replace it with their own. When they squeeze their fingers together, those of us who speak of the liberal ideals of democracy, freedom and equality online are silenced.
Right-wing billionaires like Robert Mercer, Donnie Trustfund and Rupert Murdoch are the real revolutionaries and the real agents behind this change. They’re hijacking our representative democracy and replacing representative leaders with themselves and their puppets.
These rich goons are in the process of taking everything we’ve got and everything we ever will have. Sadly, most Americans still don’t see it. They keep looking for that handy dandy “bad guy” label.
As if.
They’re still waiting for that funny feeling in their toes to kick in that tells them when they’re being conned.
As if.
Meanwhile, they’re buying into the knowing lies of the big investors and CEOs who pass for royalty these days. They’d rather be told what to think by the Wall Street cheerleaders who pass for journalists in our neutered news industry than put the time into sussing it out for themselves.
Allow me to summarize.
We are living through no more and no less than the decline and fall of The United States of America, the birth of a global police state, and the resurrection of hereditary rule.
Meaning the America our forebears built after the Gilded Age to stop the rich from making life here a living hell for the rest of us.
This is a country where doctors made house calls in the 1970s; loan interest rates were capped at 11 percent; health care was plentiful and affordable; law enforcement needed a court order to tap a single phone; and the typical worker could afford to raise a family, buy a home, send their children to college, and take a family vacation once a year.
That America is unrecognizable to most people under 40 now because of the predations of the toxic elites who have been knawing away at the underpinnings of the American Way. They’ve been looking to limit the political power of the masses ever since the Antiwar movement stopped them from getting fat by waging a needless but profitable war in Southeast Asia in 1975.
Today, members of America’s faltering middle class struggle for basic survival in a society with no job security and few decent jobs, where unions and pensions have all but disappeared, and medical bills are the No. 1 cause of personal bankruptcy. A world where law enforcement has continuous access to every purchase we make, every phone call, and every word we type. Where Americans are killing themselves in record numbers, spend most of their lives paying off their college debts, and often skip having kids altogether rather than risk being unable to feed and care for them.
The rich sonsabitches who off-shored our jobs to China, turned us into a nation of renters, replaced loansharks with payday lenders, bought our government out from under us, and muzzled our free press aren’t globalists or capitalists anymore. They devolved into frightened idiots after 9/11. Just like the lackeys who worship them.
There’s not enough money on the whole planet to ever make these fragile rich fools feel safe again. That’s why they keep grabbing more and more from the rest of us, even though we passed the point of diminishing returns on global wealth inequality a decade ago.
It’s their unremitting terror which created the political climate where those who oppose democracy and equality are flourishing.
The Trumps, Putins and Xi Jin Pings of the world are not Communists, Socialists, Republicans or Democrats. And they’re not Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Atheist.
They’re a form of Corporate Monarchists. Just like the Saudi Royal Family.
That means they want more for themselves and their worthless spawn, and less for everyone else.
It is with that end in mind that they’re replacing American freedoms with hereditary rule, our level playing field with nepotism, and representative democracy with oligarchy.
Get it?
Or are you still looking for the handy dandy label that reads “Modern Day Royal?”
Our courts, schools, government – every aspect of our lives – are being scaled right now to give investors, CEOs and their spawn a permanent seat in first class while the rest of us ride coach.
Hell. They’re not even paying for the government they’re hijacking. We’re paying for it.
The Benefits Without Burdens Crowd is telling you “no new taxes” while they boost government usage frees for everything from electricity to marriage certificates to fishing licenses to interstate tolls. And create new fees for garbage pickup, cell phone usage and water bills.
Fees that amount to paying for the same government services twice in a nation where we already pay property tax and income tax.
When you add it all up, American workers pay more in fees and taxes to fund our government and get less in return than any other nation on Planet Earth.
We’re the Has-Beens of the Western world because we put up with it.
Patriotic Americans?
What’s that?
(Looking around)
Cause I haven’t seen one in a long time.
Home of the Free?
Where?
(Looking around)
What freedoms are those?
Our kids are being monitored, indexed and surveilled online as you read this. Hell, you too.
You are being tracked every moment of the day. The voiceless debt slave that passes for an America now is recorded from their first breath to their last.
Land of the Brave?
Where?
(looking around)
We stopped being American the moment we stopped fighting for social justice and civil rights. And we stopped being brave when we thought we could sit on our hands and wait for someone else to take to the streets and protest tyranny like a proper American in our place.
The painful truth is, we’re the collective fail. Every single one of us.
It is our collective apathy and intellectual laziness which has single-handedly wasted the sacrifices of all the U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and sailors who fought and died in World War II, Korea and Vietnam and the Middle East. They died for nothing because of us.
Because we wasted their sacrifices and turned a blind eye to the erosion of our freedoms. Instead of treating them like the precious treasure they are.
Greatest Generation?
Where?
(Looking around)
I’m pretty sure they’re dead and gone, and we’re the worthless garbage they left behind.
Americans?
We don’t deserve the name.
Why?
Because Americans used to fight in the defense of freedom. Especially the American middle class.
We’re supposed to be scrappy when it comes to defending our liberties. Not the kind of worthless trash that waits for someone else to fight their battles.
I don’t know about you, but I’m ashamed. Then again, I don’t work for Wall Street.
If I did I’d be as proud as Stephen in Django Unchained.
