…..of the i sing
46 million people are on food stamps.
14 million are unemployed, and millions more are under-employed.
2.9 million homeowners in 2010. were drawn into foreclosure.
48 million Americans live in poverty – almost 10 million more than before the recession hit.
Once upon a time, America was a wilderness. It was home to man and beast. It was the most precious, the most open and the most beautiful continent in the world. Then in the late 17th century the europeans began to flock like geese to the new promised land. From sea to shining sea evolved into a culture of the working class. Nothing prevented the early americans from setting up and building communities and homes that were free from the monarchies of western europe.
Most of us know the story. It is the story of the American Dream, a location in the universe where a shining city on the hill brought possibilities and promises; resources were plentiful and justice for all was the new call of the wild. No one said that it was going to be easy. There was famine and pestilence and broken relationships with the Native American people. There was to be war with England and France and the Mexicans and the Spanish. There was to be war among ourselves in the Civil War where the ideology of equality would eventually be extended to the negro, and eventually to women.
Most recently the destructive power of mankind would be seen not only in the Great World Wars, but in how the war ended…millions of charred bodies would suffer under atomic explosions. That moment called the worlds attention onto the era of the deluxe american life–cars in the drive way, children, well dressed and in school, mothers carrying a message of virtue and ethics into the families. An idyllic memory, if not for all for most of america, captured the attention of the world. New York was the capital of the world in fashion and commerce and industry. Chicago the white city, Hollywood, the film capital of the world, Miami, the playground for the rich and famous to get away from the cold winters of the northeast.
Throughout America more and more people were settling into an American Dream. Eisenhower finished the interstate roadways that Harry Truman had begun in Kansas and Independence, Missouri a full century before as the first commissioner to be charged with paving the trails that were born out of the American migration west.
My God, we even made it to the moon…..Kennedy, Kennedy & Kennedy along with Martin Luther and the Great Society were to push forward the agenda of an America where more and more people could begin to grow and cultivate a life of moderation. Back yards, picket fences, mowed lawns, garages and grilling along with vacationing and the automobile, the mountains and the sea shore and the national parks of America all converged to give us the illusion that we were a civilized nation that had arrived at all that it had at the hands of hard work, Thomas Edison, the Slater Cotton Mill, General Electric and Westinghouse–to name only a few.
America was cultivating and manufacturing itself into a greatness never before seen on earth. We were harnessing nature; and with the good intentions of the hard working men and women of america we became the envy of the world and the most important player on the international stage of world politics. The end of the twentieth-century arrived with hardly a glitch–not even a hint of the Y2K crisis predicted by the eccentric few who warned of an apocalyptic digital catastrophe.
We had been around for some 350 years and never were our shores touched by a foreign mercenary. America remained some kind of a pristine label. Whatever was wrong in the underbelly of the nation had not yet been exposed. The second millennium saw stocks rising, share holders happy, investors buying homes and inventors creating ever new digital toys for the Great Generation to amuse itself with. We were each in our own way computing ourselves to becoming the greatest consumer nation on earth. We ate more fuel and emitted more carbon than all other nations put together. We were the fattest people on earth and there was pride in our gluttony. We delighted in being the envy of the world–anger and lust powered our economy that was ever being greased by greed.
Here we were at the threshold of time careening along in our jets and carriages, content as hogs in mud, proclaiming in God we trust while living out the most deliberate and flagrant lives on a stage cast with the seven most deadly sins known to the universe.
Then came the call we never expected–the twin icons of western greed, the granite and steel structures that represented the Fountain Head of mighty and tall were crushed to piles of fallen rubble and sadness by a solitary man on camel back seeking revenge for every crusade ever launched in the name of God………
The world as we knew it began to change–the ship of state would begin its onslaught while ever so slowly turning and turning until it began to head straight into the headwinds that had blown it forward. We were in reverse, returning to the oligarchies from whence we came. Now the governing powers of wealth once again took the reigns of government and hitched them up to the corporate paradigm.
We will be rebuilding america on the backs of the poor and the working class. New pyramids will be erected in praise of the Guards of homeland security that allegedly protect up from harm.
The new currency will read–In Guard We Trust!
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