By Keith C. Milne
It is somewhat shocking to me that so many people in the United States still believe that we are the worlds biggest super power and that no one would dare challenge us in a serious way militarily or otherwise. Additionally, the many Americans not only seem to take Americas position on the world stage for granted, they pretty much take everything for granted.
Collectively as a society we Americans take our wealth, our resources, and our rich existence compared to so many others completely for granted. We take for granted that we almost always have electric power and, for the most part, clean water–anywhere, anytime. And the same goes for wastewater treatment, police, fire and ambulance services, as well as access to quality medical care 24/7. Mega-supermarkets, malls, high speed internet, electronics galore, any hobby imaginable and all the gear to make it happen in a grand way. Endless variety of almost everything imaginable–all fresh and ready to go–and often available 24 hours per day!
All of this wealth is truly astounding to people who are used to having far less to choose from–if they have any choices.
However, here in the United States, especially those of us who were born and raised here, we just expect all of these goods and services to always be there without much, if any, thoughts about them.
We certainly do not want to pay for any of the necessary price hikes needed over time to keep our water clean and waterways clean by upgrading our wastewater treatment plants! These critical services of our existence are so ubiquitous and persistent that, to most, these things seem to have been there forever.
This phenomenon is normal in the sense that everyone in the world, no matter where they live, generally view their on-going reality as “the norm” unless they have a basis for knowing better or seek a contrast and comparison with another way that is in existence.
In the U.S. with much of our country living VERY WEALTHY compared to the majority of the world, all of the aforementioned goods and services that most Americans born and raised in the U.S. grew up with, have long ago–while they were little kids sort of faded into the woodwork as their “norm.” No modern American can say that they haven’t always known or grew up with high quality public utilities, shopping malls, and endless choices of goods and services. Nor can they deny largely taking it all for granted.
However, all that we continue taking for granted–along with our freedom to vote, which many do not take advantage of–is at stake now that we have weakened our country and allowed ourselves to become very vulnerable to a military strike from China or Russia because we are so divided and distracted and arguing with each other over a bunch of lies that former President Trump started, promoted, and continues to perpetuate.
Several things come into focus when we’ve let ourselves be so misled that our democracy is at stake for not paying attention to what is happening all around us and realizing that:
- There is great profit to be made from keeping the entire country politically divided and fighting over every little thing! Advertising at all of these new fringe media sites alone constitute another billion dollar advertising avenue that never existed before.
- There are huge profits to be lost by the medical complex, which includes insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, medical hardware manufacturers, and hospitals if some of the proposed “social programs” are in fact implemented by the house and senate somehow.
- There are huge profits to be lost (but lives saved) by allowing for implementation of strict gun laws.
- Keeping the masses politically divided by presenting them with a constant rain of new and controversial topics, then teaching them through constant biased rhetoric which reactions to these events are politically appropriate, allows the individual to slowly learn how to become a part of and belong to a political group or subscribe to a certain ideology and engage in that groups mindset. Aim certain opinions and angry reactions in just the right way to the right geographical group and quite nicely you will (and we have let the mass media owned by corporations) divide us and keep us divided.
- Engaging in #4 prolongs and contributes to keeping the profitable (for corporations) status quo intact.
- The status-quo is unsustainable!
- If MIGHT towards our so-called enemies has NEVER worked before, then why do we all still engage in the shared delusion that might will work, just this one time, because our “SIDE” is the right one!?
CONSTANT misinformation from the likes of Fox News, and the new upstarts News Max and all of their second cousins twice removed that are proliferating online now, scrambling for your attention in order to convince you of something that is based on a lie or lies, along with Facebook and Instagram who have also knowingly allowed and engaged in spreading misinformation and lies even while they could measure the negative impact on people and their anger levels, even while they could see the negative impact it was having on our country, and continued keeping it up in order to maximize their own profit.
Yes, the so-called “Liberal Media” like MSNBC and CNN have a slant too, but it’s a pretty people friendly one, and rather than spread lies about who lost the last presidential election, they tend to favor telling the truth about the results based on legal decisions, facts, science, and the like. They also discuss policies that are inline with what most people ultimately want: universal medical care, pre-school and day care for their children, and proper care for the elderly. In other words things that cost money to help people for a change, rather than constantly whining about tax hikes and financial burdens on the wealthy.
Far-right nut case Governors like Ron DeSantis (R) Florida, and Gregg Abbot (R) Texas doing everything they can and GOING OUT OF THEIR WAY hoping to aggravate and anger anyone they feel they want to classify as liberal, and ram hard line policies down peoples throats by legislatively, with great authoritarian zeal, legislating in ways that disenfranchise women and minorities and working families, all the while calling themselves conservative!
Here are some of the latest distractions for the masses to digest and argue about and kill each other over:
Doing away with a woman’s right to choose?
Mandating that no mask mandates can happen or can be determined at the local level?
Allowing no Covid vaccine mandates when the greater good demands it?
Offering big money to police officers to come to Florida so they won’t have to get a shot to protect themselves and others and the security of the Unites States?
What a bunch of patriot-wanna-be nut cases! How is any of this conservative? This is about as big government as it gets,
Big Pharma continues charging people thousands of dollars for medicine that costs pennies to make, like insulin for type I diabetes, and insurance companies continue charging more premiums every year, while they cover less, and while they simultaneously increase the amount of “our share” of the total cost of our healthcare onto us every single year!?
MEANWHILE, most of us are toiling away at jobs that we can barely tolerate, for wages that either require some of us to take on another job for the additional pay or the benefits, or work at a job that barely pays the bills, or one that pays the bills, but doesn’t leave anything for us to be able to save for the future with! But, no worries, right?
Surrounded by all the wizardry of modern electronics beckoning us to take on increasing debt to pay for the gadgets that abound, we tune out when we can with the latest vape pen while we immerse ourselves in content ladled up by the biggest contributors to our current state of divided loyalties and divided everything: Fox News and Facebook! Yippie!!
Even the great divide in the U.S. isn’t enough to make us take stock and change our ways. It’s Sooooooo “Hatfield vs. McCoys.” So entrenched in our own little distracted, divided, self-rightous ways we are that, I fear, we are willing to risk it all in order to see “OUR SIDE” win! But in the end, there would be no win for anyone, and all that we currently are taking for granted will simply vanish!
WAKE UP AMERICA!!
We are all human beings that need the same things as other human beings. None of us will win anything except pure misery if we go to war with each other. Are we really wanting to turn this country into Middle-East 2.0 with bombed out cities and chaos all the time?
If you think things are screwed up now, you will not even believe how bad things will become if we go to war with one another with the current types and capabilities of weapons and technology that we’ve developed to kill! Even if you survive, you will not know how you’re going to be able to get anywhere safely. Food will be hit or miss at best, water ditto. Sanitation will go to the wayside and before long, even those of us who have survived all the bombing and shooting and the hunting down and killing of each other, we will soon be dying of dysentery, or another pathogenic disease as medicine and medical assistance will also become scarce at best.
At least for the time being, one big job for all of us is to stay sane!
One way to head in that direction, which I have recently rediscovered, is to TURN OFF YOUR TELEVISION! Even reducing your viewing of television by 20% will make you feel much better. At least start throttling back on the amount of time spent watching political news! Just by discontinuing hearing all the time that “THE OTHER SIDE” (see how divisive the rhetoric is and the choice of words are?) is now doing this, that, or the other thing, and then choosing to react to it negatively. Just turn off that stupid dividing box. TURN IT OFF!! DO NOT LISTEN TO DIVISIVE NEWS RHETORIC ANOTHER MINUTE!
And, that includes your darn “stupid” phone! Whoever decided to call it a “smartphone” was only referring to Steve Jobs and the other tycoons of tech who have become the part of the elitist top 1% wealthiest club! Yeah, they were smart, the got the rest of us suckers to keep buying up all that they offer while our true right to privacy has become a memory in the rearview mirror.
And, now that stupid $1200 phone of yours is letting big brother know everything about you and where you are at any given minute. The rich will now be able to see the masses coming when they rise up against the inequity.
When political distraction and apathy around voting begins to become even more common in the near future, and this country that we’ve been taking for granted no longer resembles how it was intended to look or function, it will be we who still stand that will be very sorry that we collectively let authoritarian regimes come in and take over or start a consequential war by inciting just enough fear and misinformation into a future election that a majority knee jerk reacted and voted for the wrong person, and their stupid wrong policies just long enough to permanently ruin this great democracy.
I challenge you to turn off your television for a whole night. Come home and turn it off if it’s on, and leave it that way if it’s off. Try it. Do music. Do a movie. Do a run. Cook something new with great music playing and watch your foul mood from the day melt away.
Now try a whole day.
Now try a whole week!
Keep yourself informed via trusted, vetted, mainstream media. Not super liberal, or super ultra right wing. News Nation or ABC, NBC, or CBS. Just enough to know what’s happening, but not constantly.
Kill your political life on Facebook! Kill it!
You want to keep in touch with family and friends on Facebook? Fine. Stay away from politics! Don’t get any of your news via Facebook or any other social media site, and don’t troll twitter and do politics on twitter! It’s just more divisive arguing and being opposed to others all the time. It’s toxic and it’s bad for Americans and America!
And, you MEDIA and Journalists. Stop speaking the language of division all of the time and at every turn. YOUR ARE THE BIGGEST CONTRIBUTOR OF THIS NATIONS DIVIDED STATE OF ANY SINGLE VENUE.
Finally, can we just stop talking about the biggest loser of all, Donald Trump? More than a year after his lost election, and nearly a year since the January 6, 2021 insurrection on this nations capital and our governing institutions, and it’s all still alive like we’re just going to keep repeating the whole thing over and over again. It seems impossible to watch any news of depth without having to hear Donald Trump’s name mentioned or his corrupt legacy being shown or talked about almost endlessly.
It’s not ending because the Media, controlled by huge money, has a vested interest in seeing it continue because it’s good for their bottom line.
We are all so manipulated by economics it’s pathetic. We beg hat in hand for the crumbs of the wealthy, thinking that if we end up in their favor well enough, or for long enough, that somehow some of their wealth will be bestowed upon us or that, if we toil long and hard enough, we too might know vast wealth like the very rich, and “it’s all good,” right?
Sad stuff! Picture it: substitute the American worker in the scene in the movie Oliver Twist when young Oliver, an orphan at an old British orphanage decides that he wants more gruel than they are going to give him for breakfast, and goes to the front of the room and asks timidly but firmly, “Please sir, may I have some more?”
It is time for all of us to open our eyes to our own contribution to the way our country has become divided.
It is imperative that we all stop taking everything that we still have to be proud of in the vast wealthy and fantastic country of ours for granted!
Choosing to stay divided politically is not going to work out well because negative begat negative. Divided is a negative.
Divided we are weak and vulnerable. United we are strong.
You identify as Republican. I identify as independent. One of my neighbors is a gay ultra-liberal black man, and another is a single mom moderate.
We all wake up with not enough sleep. We all bleed. We all have fears and are unsure of ourselves at times. We all have way more in common then we have that is different. We all need to work, eat, stay clean, get medical care, and know love.
We are the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, not the divided states of America!
Do not let anyone help you buy into our divided state. If they do want to help you stay put in your walled world, then they have something to lose if you choose to move in a better, more normal, and healthier direction of unity with others. Get away from them as fast as possible.
Can you see how some benefit by this division? I hope so, because it is key to understanding the core of the division. Profit, capitalism, and vast wealth is what underlies all of this sickness. We need to stop being pawns and fighting our neighbors who have to go to work tomorrow too! They have a mortgage too! They have car payments too! They have medical bills too!
Humans are extremely social creatures and need others in healthy relationships in order to be healthy and stay that way. We cannot divide ourselves into two! There are millions of us, how is two enough anyway? 🙂
Stop the judgement. Stop listening to the division machine. The rich are worried. They see us awakening. They are fearful of our true power to finally take this world and make it the best it can be for the majority of those of live on it, the good people of this world.
The wealthiest by and large do not give a damn about anyone or anything beyond their own ongoing accumulation of more! They fear global warming, socialized medicine, and universal day care for kids a hit on their bottom line and that’s it! They do not care whether or not they can permanently mitigate misery for billions of others by paying their fair share in taxes just like the rest of us do.
It’s hard to believe that we won’t tax the wealthy enough to solve all that ails this country and many other countries in the world, when by doing so creates so much good and abates so much misery for so many other people and their families!
Remember, these are Good People. Not Republicans or Democrats. Not Black or White. Not Gay or Straight. NO IDENTIFIERS beyond HUMAN BEING.
Please do what you can personally to stop misinformation, distraction, and political division from spreading. Please get out and join with others and have some fun for a change and look at others as you would want them to view you: as a non-perfect, frail, human being that is just doing the best that they can to get through this life intact, and hopefully, while having a little fun along the way.
The United States of America as a democratic nation, and your current, mostly calm and healthy life depends on you doing just that!