This is not the America I grew up in. Everyone knows it, but most choose to pretend. They pretend we are still a country that hard work will pay off, and let you achieve the American Dream. That our children will have a better life than we did. That we may have our troubles, but we still have the best freedoms. Free speech gets conflated with freedom. Try some of that free speech in front of a police officer and see how free you really are.
We pretend that this is the home of the brave and land of the free. We are afraid to criticize our military, for fear of being seen as anti- troop. Most of the time that translates to telling everyone that will listen “We support your service.” It’s just lip service for the most part. We leave most of our veterans floundering without the medical, mental or employment opportunities they need. But hey, we watched American Sniper, so don’t question our patriotism.
We want the America we remember growing up in, and we know something is wrong. It takes too much introspection and critical thinking to figure out years of neglecting our cities infrastructure, schools and social programs, has led to a country falling apart around us where the general populace is too ignorant or hungry to realize how to fix it. That’s ok. We have American Idol to distract us. When that doesn’t work instead of blaming our county for failing us, we blame the other. The black male, the illegal immigrant, the muslims, the extreme left, the extreme right. It doesn’t matter as long as we can spout a sound byte, we think we know what we are talking about.We think free speech means we have to say every thought that we have whether it is constructive or hurtful.
Americans have the right to bear arms. This is one of our last absolute rights, which is probably why don’t want any laws restricting them.Somewhere deep down we have a vague feeling something is wrong. We may not consciously know all our privacy and freedom has been stripped, so we use guns to prove we have freedoms and fights that other countries don’t.Maybe if our other freedoms had not been taken away we would not be so afraid to give up things that sound like common sense solutions, like background checks. When the government has slowly taken every other right away without most noticing, it makes sense that in the back of our mind we are afraid we might be the next one they come for. Our guns give us the illusion that we are still a free country and are safe in our homes and neighborhoods.
We have let our country fall down around us, because we believed the politicians who promised to lower taxes and give us a better standard of living. What we failed to realize was that it doesn't matter if your federal tax bill is slashed, because the poor and middle class pay most of their taxes through property, gas, and sales taxes, and if there’s no tax, you still may be stuck paying a fee or service charge. Don't forget dollar for dollar the average person pays a much bigger percentage on rent, utilities and food. It doesn’t matter how much the government cuts, it will never benefit the average American.
We bought into trickle down economics, not realizing that was not rain the rich and corporations were pouring down our backs. America is funneling all our money to banks and the wealthy 1%. Even American companies that make less expensive goods are starting to feel the pain of a shrinking lower and middle class. Everyday you can find an article about American based companies losing money, because people are not buying.We can’t spend what we don’t have.
This is not the America I grew up in, and unless politicians and the public wakes up, it never will be again. We are spiraling into a feedback loop, where companies will start failing because we can no longer support them, which will mean even more job loss and even less money. This will cause tighter laws and more evolution into a police state as the desperate rebel. We gave up essential liberty for temporary safety. We need to quit blaming the other and join hands with them, demand a better New Deal, fix our roads, educate our kids, feed our masses. Demand the police and politicians start working for us again, instead of against us. This is not the America we grew up in, it never will be, but it can be an even better America.