What are the ordinary people most afraid of for America?
No one can argue with the fact that the entire planet is in a situation that is dangerous. Much of what we are facing on our planet right now is either long in the tooth or something we’ve faced before. Those facts don’t make the conditions any less frightening. Our home planet is frying, and some world leaders will wage war over what will be the spoils.
Stateside, our current social climate and our political condition are frightening. America has entered a place that has created a lack of our former compassion. Divided, we’ve become more individualistic and less a nation of united peoples who are extrinsic in our purposes and collective in our goals, even for our own country. More Americans than ever are asking whether or not a specific political intent serves them specifically, rather than the nation whose flag they plant on their lawn. The worst of all our divisive issues is the abandonment of America’s most important factors – her people and the conditions they foster most reflexively: our national strength and progress.
America is where so many of the world’s people came. The hopeful and the hopeless, those running to and running from something, the haves and have-nots all sought out America in which to spread their wings, embracing what this nation advertised. Even those brought here as slaves, against their will, and without any privileges, made critical and lasting contributions to this nation. As do all immigrants’ descendants, here is where, despite the lack of true total equality, they created the melting pot that became the hope of equality and the destiny of achievement. Here is where the real people comprise the twisted cable of mixed peoples who are America’s strength. It’s frightening that we seem to be losing sight of that fact and our unity.
There were always Americans who believed their long history on these shores, their heritage, color or religion made them more American, or entitled to be so, than other people; too many still do. Too many media mouthpieces continue to propagate versions of that, and our nation’s enemies, including our own American opportunists, use it against us. This willingness to watch our people suffer, our nation decline, and risk our independence, to perpetuate this power play is frightening. The fact that no dangers seem to make its proponents compromise their dangerous goal is frightening too.
The most frightening of all our current troubles, however, are numerous counter-productive government associations. Through this corruption, all other national threats are created, propagated, legitimized and become business as usual. We know America has always had power players, privileged people and corruption to some degree, and wealthy insiders covered their tracks with obligatory civic duty and some generosity. Never, as today, has such conflict of interests gone without alarms, without persecution, and with so little prosecution. Never has corruption been made so comfortable, been made to look like business as usual, or been so overtly acceptable.
We are in a critical situation that allows those who should be working to the betterment of the largest portion of all elected officials’ constituency, to really only work for a small percentage of America’s people, as well as very much to their own advantage. Many public servants are invested in, and/or ingratiated to, large corporate cartels. A few are connected, as an insider, for money and corporations from outside the U.S. No one can truly be representative of the majority of Americans with such weighty obligations.
The confidence and nonchalance with which many elected officials crisscross between public position and service to their corporate ties not only must raise our eyebrows but should also raise an alarm even if for no other reason than the hubris and privilege it demonstrates on their part. Such activity can only be done with such confidence because they know they are safe.
In this way, the American people are not only being forgotten, they’re being buried, and the insufficient legislation and ignored prosecution that allows our leadership – supposedly working for us – to do all these things unchallenged and with impunity, is our greatest threat. It’s why this corruption is what I fear most for America. From this, many other issues result or go unresolved.
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