Wednesday, October 27, 2010
One Nation Under Fear:
Op-Ed By Phillip T. Alden
October 2010
Some Americans like to refer to our country as a "peace and freedom-loving" nation, and some like to call America "a Christian" nation, although our behavior both domestically and around the world is neither "peaceful" nor "Christ-like." (We are also not "a Christian" nation but a nation based (partially) upon religious freedom, including freedom from religion.)
In many ways I am proud of our country, but in many ways I am not. I consider myself a patriotic American, but that doesn't mean I have the typical knee-jerk reactions that many Americans have. I believe that peace is patriotic, and that our wars of adventurism do nothing but sustain a foreign policy that is incredibly dysfunctional. We spend over 700 billion dollars a year on a military-industrial complex that can never get enough of our tax dollars. In addition, we're wasting billions more on misadventures like George W. Bush's Iraq debacle, and now Obama's Afghanistan debacle.
Nobody in their right mind would say that we have achieved anything positive from our wars since World War II. In Korea and Vietnam we shot and bombed poor rice farmers, and in Iraq and Afghanistan we are bombing poor goat herders. In war the real casualties are innocent civilians. Instead of stabilizing nations, (as we did following WWII,) we are leaving them worse off than before. Both "governments" we installed in Iraq and Afghanistan are beyond dysfunctional and don't have the support of the populace.
But you won't hear this on Fox News, or from any mainstream media outlet in this country. With very few exceptions, and none on TV, American "news" has become a bad joke – and a propaganda tool for extreme right-wing assholes like Rupert Murdoch. It's pathetic that I have to surf the web to foreign news agencies to find out what is really going on – both here and abroad. When I was a child we had men like Walter Cronkite – real journalists with unquestioned credibility. If it wasn't true, (to the best of his knowledge,) Cronkite would not report it. Real journalists like Cronkite also did their own "fact checking." It's no wonder that TV viewership has been declining for years, and that, despite the "24/7 News Cycle," Americans are less informed and more ignorant than at any time in my 46 years on this planet.
Americans have had a lot of their comfortable illusions smashed since October of 2008. My father never invested a single dollar in the stock market, and had my parents lived long enough, they would have had plenty of money for them to retire comfortably. My parents knew that our stock market is really the nation's largest casino, and with casinos the odds are always with the house. Las Vegas and Wall Street were not built on "winners." Now most Americans have been forced to realize what my parents knew all along.
We now compete with China, (a dictatorship,) over who is the world's number one jailor at a given time. In my home state of California we spend more on prisons than we do on education. And most of those languishing in our brutal and violent prison system are non-violent drug offenders. The idea behind America's prison system was to keep violent and dangerous people away from the citizenry. Non-violent drug offenders don't threaten me in any way. America is a drug-using nation, from beer to Vicodin to cannabis. But wealthy, (and often White,) people who can afford a good lawyer don't go to prison when they are convicted of a non-violent drug offense. If you're a Person of Color or Poor the system works much differently.
Our mass media has fed us a steady diet of fear for decades, and people are getting tired of that diet, hence the declining TV viewership roles. In addition, the recent "recession" and record-high unemployment has Americans feeling more fearful than we have in a very long time. We all know our state and federal political systems are hopelessly corrupt and broken. There should be no one serving in Congress for decades until they are so old that they can barely make it to the floor for a vote. But that's a minor problem with our electoral system, which has so many major problems it's hard to know where to begin.
The only antidote to fear is to face it, and to solve the problems that breed the fear. But that takes unity and a common sense of purpose, which we don't have right now. What we have are countless groups with their own agenda, and a populace that is either blinded by their own personal or religious agenda, or they are too apathetic or ignorant to truly change the system. Sadly, the intelligent and progressive Americans are outnumbered by those I mentioned before.
I believe that all Americans could bring about positive change, if they weren't constantly lied to or denied the information they need to make truly informed decisions. There are also those who are blinded by extremist belief, and although they are vocal and loud, they are a minority and can be overcome.
That isn't going to happen, though. Instead these extremist groups are going to do as much damage to this country as they can before they fall away. They don't truly want to work to make this country a better place. They just want to elect people they (mistakenly) believe will further their pointless and destructive agendas. Others have been so apathetic they didn't realize they were destroying their own futures. Now college graduates are moving back in with their parents, (if they can,) left with a mountain of debt and little to no job prospects. Older workers, many robbed of their savings by the Sub-Prime Economic Crime Wave of 2008, face even worse prospects.
And the people who want to take charge want to make things worse. The Meg Whittmans and Carly Fiorinas of this world want to make their White and wealthy friends wealthier at the expense of everyone else. Right now, in my county, there is no money for disease prevention and education. The tattered social safety net, under attack since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, is in danger of falling apart completely – leaving us with no public health system. Most people don't even know that the average person on Social Security Disability gets only $900 a month, (plus Medicare.) Have you tried living anywhere in this country on $900 a month?
But that's the ignorance of the masses and the demonization of the sick and the poor by wealthy people who seek greater wealth at the expense of others, and they don't care how much destruction they cause. I think 2008 taught us all that. Many of these people are so short-sighted they don't even see how they are screwing themselves over in the long run.
So how much war and fear and dysfunctional government do you want? There seems to be an endless demand, as I watch Americans get kicked in the teeth by their own country again and again – and they do nothing but ask for more.
Op-Ed By Phillip T. Alden
October 2010
Some Americans like to refer to our country as a "peace and freedom-loving" nation, and some like to call America "a Christian" nation, although our behavior both domestically and around the world is neither "peaceful" nor "Christ-like." (We are also not "a Christian" nation but a nation based (partially) upon religious freedom, including freedom from religion.)
In many ways I am proud of our country, but in many ways I am not. I consider myself a patriotic American, but that doesn't mean I have the typical knee-jerk reactions that many Americans have. I believe that peace is patriotic, and that our wars of adventurism do nothing but sustain a foreign policy that is incredibly dysfunctional. We spend over 700 billion dollars a year on a military-industrial complex that can never get enough of our tax dollars. In addition, we're wasting billions more on misadventures like George W. Bush's Iraq debacle, and now Obama's Afghanistan debacle.
Nobody in their right mind would say that we have achieved anything positive from our wars since World War II. In Korea and Vietnam we shot and bombed poor rice farmers, and in Iraq and Afghanistan we are bombing poor goat herders. In war the real casualties are innocent civilians. Instead of stabilizing nations, (as we did following WWII,) we are leaving them worse off than before. Both "governments" we installed in Iraq and Afghanistan are beyond dysfunctional and don't have the support of the populace.
But you won't hear this on Fox News, or from any mainstream media outlet in this country. With very few exceptions, and none on TV, American "news" has become a bad joke – and a propaganda tool for extreme right-wing assholes like Rupert Murdoch. It's pathetic that I have to surf the web to foreign news agencies to find out what is really going on – both here and abroad. When I was a child we had men like Walter Cronkite – real journalists with unquestioned credibility. If it wasn't true, (to the best of his knowledge,) Cronkite would not report it. Real journalists like Cronkite also did their own "fact checking." It's no wonder that TV viewership has been declining for years, and that, despite the "24/7 News Cycle," Americans are less informed and more ignorant than at any time in my 46 years on this planet.
Americans have had a lot of their comfortable illusions smashed since October of 2008. My father never invested a single dollar in the stock market, and had my parents lived long enough, they would have had plenty of money for them to retire comfortably. My parents knew that our stock market is really the nation's largest casino, and with casinos the odds are always with the house. Las Vegas and Wall Street were not built on "winners." Now most Americans have been forced to realize what my parents knew all along.
We now compete with China, (a dictatorship,) over who is the world's number one jailor at a given time. In my home state of California we spend more on prisons than we do on education. And most of those languishing in our brutal and violent prison system are non-violent drug offenders. The idea behind America's prison system was to keep violent and dangerous people away from the citizenry. Non-violent drug offenders don't threaten me in any way. America is a drug-using nation, from beer to Vicodin to cannabis. But wealthy, (and often White,) people who can afford a good lawyer don't go to prison when they are convicted of a non-violent drug offense. If you're a Person of Color or Poor the system works much differently.
Our mass media has fed us a steady diet of fear for decades, and people are getting tired of that diet, hence the declining TV viewership roles. In addition, the recent "recession" and record-high unemployment has Americans feeling more fearful than we have in a very long time. We all know our state and federal political systems are hopelessly corrupt and broken. There should be no one serving in Congress for decades until they are so old that they can barely make it to the floor for a vote. But that's a minor problem with our electoral system, which has so many major problems it's hard to know where to begin.
The only antidote to fear is to face it, and to solve the problems that breed the fear. But that takes unity and a common sense of purpose, which we don't have right now. What we have are countless groups with their own agenda, and a populace that is either blinded by their own personal or religious agenda, or they are too apathetic or ignorant to truly change the system. Sadly, the intelligent and progressive Americans are outnumbered by those I mentioned before.
I believe that all Americans could bring about positive change, if they weren't constantly lied to or denied the information they need to make truly informed decisions. There are also those who are blinded by extremist belief, and although they are vocal and loud, they are a minority and can be overcome.
That isn't going to happen, though. Instead these extremist groups are going to do as much damage to this country as they can before they fall away. They don't truly want to work to make this country a better place. They just want to elect people they (mistakenly) believe will further their pointless and destructive agendas. Others have been so apathetic they didn't realize they were destroying their own futures. Now college graduates are moving back in with their parents, (if they can,) left with a mountain of debt and little to no job prospects. Older workers, many robbed of their savings by the Sub-Prime Economic Crime Wave of 2008, face even worse prospects.
And the people who want to take charge want to make things worse. The Meg Whittmans and Carly Fiorinas of this world want to make their White and wealthy friends wealthier at the expense of everyone else. Right now, in my county, there is no money for disease prevention and education. The tattered social safety net, under attack since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, is in danger of falling apart completely – leaving us with no public health system. Most people don't even know that the average person on Social Security Disability gets only $900 a month, (plus Medicare.) Have you tried living anywhere in this country on $900 a month?
But that's the ignorance of the masses and the demonization of the sick and the poor by wealthy people who seek greater wealth at the expense of others, and they don't care how much destruction they cause. I think 2008 taught us all that. Many of these people are so short-sighted they don't even see how they are screwing themselves over in the long run.
So how much war and fear and dysfunctional government do you want? There seems to be an endless demand, as I watch Americans get kicked in the teeth by their own country again and again – and they do nothing but ask for more.
