The Underground Railroad

Contributors

• Talib
• Athanasius

What is America? What does it mean to be an American? Is America nothing more than an aggregation of assistants for the aristocracy? Does it mean nothing more than being grist for the economic mill? Are we merely servants of the owners of the means of production? Consumers of the crap that is created by colossal corporations? What is America? What does it mean to be an American?

Once upon a time people looked to America as the Land Of Opportunity™ - the place where anyone could come and make a life for themselves, where rags-to-riches was a very real possibility if a man (or woman) was to apply him/herself and go for it. Once upon a time America was a place of unlimited natural resources and unlimited social mobility – the son of a pauper could become a captain of industry if he worked hard enough and caught a couple breaks. Once upon a time America was a beacon of light, beckoning to the world:


That day is no more. Every bit of America has been developed into housing or it is owned by corporate conglomerates – America’s resources are no longer unlimited. Likewise, the upward mobility that once was is now stagnating, glass ceilings are becoming concrete, and America’s aristocracy is about as entrenched as the British noble houses. American government is no longer of, by, and for the people – it is of, by, and for the corporations, and those corporations are owned by the aristocracy. How soon we forget history - government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master, and it is wielded by America's aristocracy.

The America of yore is dead.

The Republican Party is ensuring that America as we have known it is properly embalmed, ensuring that wealth remains in the hands of the descendants of those who created/earned/bootlegged/stole it by repealing the Estate Tax at a time when deficits are already more than $300 billion annually. Instead of libetine free speech we have free speech zones, as if they never read Washington's words: "If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." Moreover, The Republican Party is doing its best to ensure that the huddled masses yearning to breathe free breathe somewhere other than in America with their Immigration Reform legislation. They are slamming the golden door shut in the face of the wretched refuse, the homeless and tempest-tossed.

This is not the America that I read about in school. This is not the America that I was taught to respect in the Boy Scouts. This is not the America that we have proclaimed ourselves to be throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries. This is not America, it's the British Empire of yore. It's the Spanish Empire before it, and the Ottoman Empire before it, and the Holy Roman Empire before it, and Rome before it, on back to the Persians, Babylonians and Assyrians before them. Have we defeated the Evil Empire only to become the Evil Empire? Has America indeed become what the ayatollahs have called America – the Great Satan?

The Great Experiment has failed.

Read or Post a Comment

<< Home