From Unknkown News
We in the US are suffering a crisis of loyalty to our country.
Historically it is as if we have moved from a jingoistic nativ-ism directly to national nihilism in a couple of generations. The deep self-serving polarizations between the two dominant political parties, the hidebound commitment of so many to various political and economic ideologies, the increasing fundamentalist fanaticism of various religious groups and, most of all, deep allegiances to corporate and
multinational goals, have left no room for simple patriotic loyalty to country.
Everywhere we see patriotism proclaimed by scoundrels and the simple-minded and ignored by the rest. To an increasing number of US citizens their chief identity is couched in membership in some ethnic, religious or political group. Nowhere do we see people saying that we are all on the same side and, for the sake of the country as a whole, we need to compromise and settle our differences. No-one seems to place the welfare of the entire nation before their parochial con- cerns. This is dissolution.
To an astounding extent, people identify first as members of a faction and only as an afterthought as members of a community that contains within it members of other competing factions. We have become a nation of accidental traitors who care little about the welfare or reputation of their country.
As a functional reality, the United States of America has ceased to exist. We have a Constitution that is ignored and disowned by every center of power. We have a system of laws that are so selectively applied and enforced that it has become more of a system of excuses for the powerful. We have a government financial structure that has primarily been used as a convenient cash machine for criminals. We have developed a national debt, as a result of this looting, that can not conceivably be repaid and hence has driven the country effectively into bankruptcy.
We have a military that has been massively overbuilt and over-funded to the benefit of war profiteers, and which is sent on missions that only decrease the security of the country while pursuing economic gains for the multinational companies whose incestuous tentacles embrace the officer corps and their co-conspiring politicians with bribes and promises of future corporate positions and club membership in an international cabal of wealth.
We have a "representative" legislature that consistently ignores the will of the people who elect them. We have become a nation of irony, conceived in liberty but now dedicated to oppression.
Our real, unspoken pledge of allegiance goes like this, "I pledge allegiance to my faction and the lies for which it stands. One nation under the thumb of international conglomerates with impunity and wealth for marketplace winners and suffering and poverty for the rest."
Our true national religion is unbridled capitalism and opportunism, known in ancient times as the worship of mammon. We have abandoned our souls to the pursuit of commodities. We treat as enemies anyone who champions social reform, lest in the change that is called for we end up having to make some material sacrifice.
We watch as our nation is led in opposition to the rest of the world with actions that are indifferent to the climate crisis. In the face of dire warnings of worldwide catastrophe we accelerate our contribution to climate change as a matter of pride. We enforce with military might grossly unfair trade policies that are causing worldwide hunger and thirst.
We are a nation of individual petty tyrants with a depraved indifference to the suffering that we cause. We lack the attitude of mutual concern that defines a nation. We are no longer a nation. We are a loose association of consumers and pirates.
Finally, on every measure of standing except for strategic military power, the US has fallen to a dismally low status. Last amongst industrial countries in health care, public education, lawfulness, justice, fair elections and much else. We are the richest third-world country on Earth.
The US is dead. Long live the ideals on which it was founded.
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