A common man's pride

The nation has A-D-D. Most Americans get their beliefs from television and movies. They shun books as if they might die if they actually were forced to sit quietly and read for a moment. America is no longer a nation of craftsmen and statesmen. Gone is the work ethic from our ranks, gone is our desire to shape base elements into great works that last for a long, long time. Gone is the pride in our workmanship, gone is the reverence of patience, gone is the respect for taking the time to do something well, even for taking the time to simply think.

We have become a country that worships disposal. We buy the cheapest crap, and throw it away two months later and buy an identical piece of crap to replace it. Once we built things to last and revered the working class who created these things. Now they are reviled by the richest as pawns, and derided by the poorest as slaves. The American people allow CEOs to plunder profits and gasp in greedy awe at their mansions, their yachts, their multiple “homes”.

And somehow we scorn our working class for daring to desire better pay and healthcare. Unions were what brought our country, up- from the truly industrial slave days of the early 1900s. And now, they are mocked and undercut by these celebrity CEOs who sell out their own workers by outsourcing to China, India, and Pakistan.

And still, the people worship them, in the name of the almighty dollar. America, contrary to popular belief, was NOT Built on free market Capitalism. It was built on the Constitution and the rule of law and enabling the common man to become a better man.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and what we are doing now to our nation is creating a chain with only one strong link at the top, with thousands of brittle links beneath it. Americans who mock the working class and work to prevent the betterment of the lower and middle classes are simply selfish cowards. But these cowards’ policies are ruining our country, except for the richest of the rich . Creating a middle class that is poorer, hungrier, and sicker will eventually doom our nation.

A lot of parallels have been drawn of Iraq and Vietnam. One parallel that I think has not been mentioned enough is the one between our current leadership and the leadership of the Soviet Union in the 70’s. It was not communism that brought the Soviet Union down, from it’s perch as a Superpower. It was corruption, a military industrial complex that drained its nation’s coffers, and a ruling elite that scorned and punished its citizens.

Democracy will not bring America down, and neither will capitalism. But unfettered corruption coupled with a mentality that values corporate profits over our nation’s well-being WILL inevitably destroy everything that Americans HAVE fought for, all these years, from wars to protests in the streets, to political leaders standing up for what IS right and not what profits them the most.