In truth, America’s leadership has never fully taken her people into her confidence; no nation does.
There are things of such a delicate nature that the general public can’t be told. To avoid panic or massive disruption, leaders deem certain information classified. It’s a privilege of worldwide leadership.
Unfortunately, it’s a sword that cuts both ways. This privilege can easily be abused to the benefit of government insiders and, in that, it becomes a commodity often sold covertly. To those of us who continue to shrug our shoulders and disbelieve, the new hidden agendas may still be undisclosed, but most of those in history are written and available to open our minds any time we wish to be painfully and disappointedly enlightened.
Such information bears a heavy reality whether long disclosed or just coming to light, whether by historians or those who fought in, or bore the brunt of, quiet wars. Our government sent our troops to locations throughout history to fight in skirmishes disguised as covert international missions. Many were actually battles fought for the benefit of big business in America. It’s not news and it’s not new. It is however, time to make it old.
Democracy isn’t a given. It must be maintained. What we’re willing to do whether to benefit others or to impede others is personal, but it’s not so much inherent as it is inherited. Sadly, our current condition demonstrates too clearly that many Americans feel that America is no longer the land of the free, and anyone who recognizes and takes umbrage at that injustice shouldn’t be free to mention it, either.
Right now, in places around the world, humans are suffering. Some of the conditions they are fleeing, we helped create, quietly, and many for sheer financial profit that wasn’t essential to American sovereignty.
Right now, across our nation, humans are suffering as well. We’ve reverted to many old schools of thought and negative attitudes which we thought we were near overcoming. Whatever else we believe, as Americans we should believe we’re obligated to be the best people we can be and must work to make the world a better place for as many people as possible. That starts right here, at home.
Neither we nor our leadership should ever allow open season on anyone to go unaddressed whether the excuse is color, gender, gender specifics, religion, heritage, the clothing or hairstyle which denotes that certain heritage or religion … the list could go on. We’re supposed to be America, the land of the free – or striving to be. No type of specific aggression can be tolerated, ever. We can’t allow ourselves to be dragged back into the dark ages.
We also can’t allow ourselves to get distracted. A few months ago, while our whole nation was lost in the distraction of elephant hunting, platinum tax breaks were quietly gifted to the super rich. More tax cuts to the wealthy slipped by while we argued over the Kavanaugh nomination. Open season, literally, was declared on our wildlife, nursing mothers and their cubs, and hibernating animals, and more platinum tax breaks to the wealthy slipped through a tilted Congress, while we were purposely distracted by minutiae and staged aggression.
Let’s not forget the drilling in our protected national parks, the pipeline endangering the water of our indigenous people, Puerto Rico left without power and sufficient necessities for over a year, mass murder via shootings ignored by representation supported by the arms industry, heads of state insulted, protocol ignored, jobs evaporating, cuts to necessary public assistance, and now, blatant lies told so as to steal from public programs because they are a drain on the federal budget, when they have nothing to do with federal budget.
We can all see our nation is in trouble. Will we survive without immediate change?
America’s people have taken many issues to the streets, and now we must all take it to the polls. We can’t be dissuaded for any reason. Some covert skirmishes are still in play and the booths are now the battlefield (voter suppression). Indeed, among other planned obstacles, the booths themselves are the weapons too, so Americans, now, must even be sure to check that our individual votes are clicked off exactly as we enter them.
We must vote – vote for what America should be and almost was, once.
We must vote for the many, the hopeful, for the nation we want to be.
Vote.
