Everyone seems to want to talk about what’s wrong with this country lately, so let’s talk. What follows will surely not be the common diatribe you are used to hearing, and in truth, it may be difficult to hear. The only way forward is to stop lying to ourselves, and to open our eyes.
The problem exists within each of us, and it seeps into every facet of our society and our government until it’s infected every cell of the social organism we inhabit. The problems are selfishness and greed. This country was supposed to be founded on the idea of a better way, of an equal footing, of an open mind. We, as its citizens, are supposed to be upholding the values of a more enlightened community as a beacon to the oppressed peoples of the world. Instead, we’ve allowed every functional institution to dissolve into near irreparable disfunction, we’ve sat idly by while the government has descended into an abyss of corruption and lame-duck impotence that has fallen, seemingly, beyond all control, and we’ve become so lazy and disillusioned by our own failures that we have fallen for the ultimate campaign of lies that has been attempting to control humanity since long before America was even conceived.
Those who truly run the world (and I’m not talking about Congress) have a vested interest in keeping things the way that they are and have always been. They profit from oppression, destruction, war, politics, and especially ignorance. Propaganda abounds in the interest of keeping people down. We are controlled by ideas, not by guns, armies, or police. An infrastructure of these kinds of ideas has been built into nearly every society for centuries, and at this point, these ideas are so ingrained in our common psyche that we believe they are our own, and we enforce them and reinforce them on our own. Those who have a vested interest in the current system don’t want the people to realize how much collective power they have, don’t want them rising up and pulling down false figureheads, don’t want them waking up to the lies that keep the machine running smoothly. For their system of control to function, there must be a large population of people doing all the work for only a portion of the profit, and supporting those at the top. Because this is an obviously unequal and fucked up system, those at the top must convince those at the bottom that if one works hard enough, one can ultimately ascend. They must create an entire culture of lies which reinforces the need to keep working blindly toward a goal that may never realistically be reached, and to continue supporting a system that is intrinsically broken, a system that is responsible for their oppression.
That being said, there are many vehicles within our current society whose function it is to distract us, and ultimately, to derail change, and thereby, progress. Aside from the biggest propaganda tool of all, the idea of “The American Dream”, we are controlled by the idea of the two party system. We have been sucked into a cycle of pointless politics, whose main purpose is to divide us, and we are so busy at each other’s throats that we can’t see the circles we’re swimming in. Two supposed schools-of-thought have corralled us all into two different sides, hell bent on dislodging one another. We have forgotten that the purpose of government is to solve problems, and that we should be electing a range of representatives who encompass all the diverse perspectives and backgrounds that call our country home. Diplomacy and cooperation should be the things we celebrate in a politician and in our government, and if our representatives cannot seem to get anything done, then we should oust them. If our political parties are broken and no longer represent the will and needs of the people, then they should be dismantled in favor of more functional ones. We must remember that we are all more alike, and share a greater number of common goals and ideals, than we are different. The purpose of our society should be progress, and the betterment of us all. The problem is that we’ve all been convinced that it’s admirable to cry ‘one for one and fuck the all, as long as I have what I need and want’. We’ve learned to disconnect our own successes from any form of social infrastructure, or government, or collective effort, and yet to associate our misfortunes and our unmet needs with an intrinsic lacking in our social systems. We all want to have everything we need and want - we all want to succeed - but none of us wants to contribute to the system that made it all possible. Fuck taxes, fuck civic duty, fuck voting - none of it matters anyway, right? I’m positive you all happily cashed your Covid stipend however, and still thought it wasn’t enough.
So here we are, faced with a major national crisis, and all of the problems we have been unable to agree upon, and therefore unable to fix, are collapsing simultaneously onto our collective heads under the pressure. As a nation, we are being crushed by the deficiencies of our system, and because we’ve neglected these deficiencies for so long, we have few resources to call on at this point to fix them. We stand at a crossroads, perhaps finally able to see the reality of our predicament. For the first time in decades, we are reminded of what is at stake, what we stand to lose if all of society collapses. It can be easy to think that we do not need each other, that we do not benefit from and are not harmed by the successes and failures of others. In reality, each of us is only as strong or as free as the systems we’ve created within our society allow us to be. Whether we like it or not, we depend upon the actions and work of others and we live our lives in relation to them as well. Success, failure, money, ethics, existence, all are meaningless without other people. Even the most self-sufficient citizen has need of other people, of laws, of access to land and privacy and rights. As a whole, we are only as strong or as free as the weakest and most oppressed citizen among us. Until we realize this, we are simply treading the same waters that have always threatened to drown us. As Dr. King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We all exist within a codependent system that we designed for ourselves and can control. Why shouldn’t we do a better job of fashioning it and refashioning it to suit our needs as citizens?
Unfortunately, selfishness and greed have somehow become synonymous with individual liberty and patriotism in this country, and that just makes it easier to turn everyone against one another, and to undermine our own interests in favor of the “personal liberty” of the billionaires who are robbing us blind. We are in this together. Contrary to the propaganda being stuffed down all of our throats, we can afford to invest in ourselves as citizens (especially if we stop funneling our collective tax money into the pockets of the wealthy and powerful, and instead toward our own support systems and interests), we can solve our problems, and we can affect change. The only way to lift ourselves up, is together. We cannot continue to ignore the mistakes of our ancestors, and especially not those we’ve made ourselves. The residual mantra ‘it ain’t broke, so don’t fix it‘ has long since failed to apply, and we certainly have our mending work cut out for us.
Like so many before me, I have a dream of an America not imprisoned by its own ideas, not at war within itself, but truly free to evolve, as one, toward the greater dream upon which it was founded. I hope that we continue knocking down walls instead of building them up, and that we can collectively aspire to create a truly free, open, and diverse society that fosters a new level of enlightenment. For the sake of Humanity itself, I hope we are up to the task.