I have been thinking about the peoples of the world who have
been sold unrealistic visions, mostly to their detriment. The Russian people, sold
the idea that Putin is their great savior. The Jihadists sold the dream of
dominating the world. The ludicrousness of some of these visions is so clear to
those of us outside their influence. And yet…..and yet……
It makes me wonder what foolishness we Americans have bought;
what Cool-Aid we have drunk. What would
an uninvolved outsider see about our visions?
We fancy ourselves a democracy, but really, if you think about
it, our elections are a bit of a farce. Most voters don’t understand most of
the issues, and many don’t even care. We never seem to vote for the real
candidate, but rather vote for a gussied-up image created by professional
image-makers, with media exposure financed by wealthy corporations, unions
and/or special interest groups. And as a
result, we get fairly unimpressive leaders – ideological fanatics of the left or
right, or people who don’t even believe
evidence (think the climate-change deniers). Why, for example, did we get
convinced (and I fell for it too!) that a junior senator who never sponsored a
single piece of legislation either in Congress or in his home state
legislature, who never met a payroll or ran a business, who had no experience
whatsoever in managing a legislature or even a small business, would be a good
president? Because we bought the image.
We fancy ourselves the land of opportunity, but really, if
you think about it, the country is essentially run by a small, wealthy, elite
group of business leaders, Wall Street wheelers-and-dealers, politicians, and
union bosses. The statistics on income inequality make that pretty clear. Some
CEOs make 400+ times as much as their average employees. Some unions (such as
some teachers unions and police unions) are
able to absolutely block any attempts at reform. Some big companies are able to
get (buy) legislation and regulations and laws in place that absolutely shut
out any competition (think Monsanto with its war on soybean seed producers – if
the wind blows in pollen from their GMO plants in nearby fields, the law allows
them to shut down an independent farmer and force him to buy their seed).
We fancy ourselves a land of laws, but really, if you think
about it, in America the wealthy often get off with major crimes (because they
can afford good lawyers), while the poor get jailed for minor crimes. We have
more people in jail, per capita, than the authoritarian regimes like Russia and
China and North Korea that we claim to despise. And our police, it has recently
been revealed, have the power in many states to seize assets “on suspicion”
without proof or even warrants, and have been using those seized assets to buy
themselves equipment. Not to mention the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that
have made the news recently. Or the fact
that we are using drones to kill militants in nations we are not even formally
at war with.
It seems to me we need to do a bit of self-examination and
soul-searching before we get so disdainful of those other poor fools who have
been sold such a bill of goods.
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