It seems the rich have us by the short hairs.
They control our federal government, which they are dismantling. They control the few corporations that own our economy and have jacked prices so high that they are the only ones not feeling the pinch.
If we don’t act soon, most of us will eventually become serfs in their medieval, dystopian world. They will live in castles and we will be obliged to draw their baths and address them as their lordships.
Of course we did this to ourselves, or perhaps more accurately, we sat by as they did this to us.
We believed their lie that once they became fabulously rich, they would share their wealth with us and we would become fabulously rich, too. All that money would stream or trickle down to us. Greed would be good for all of us.
The lie was hatched 50 years ago by a few rich families who saw into the future and did not see enough money. They gradually bought enough Congressmen and Senators to own the Republic, and the leaders they owned neatly ended unionism, affordable education and social programs that gave the poor a chance.
Working-class kids who went to college in the sixties became too smart and created too much trouble for the ruling class, so the ladder to the middle class had to go. Abortion for the poor had to go because it allowed the underclass to get some purchase and it eroded recruits into their mercenary army.
Those already born into the middle class bought into their plan.
They trusted the rich, who told them they didn’t need the government to succeed. All they needed was enough drive and verve and we would become just like them tout de suite.
The rich were right in one regard.
We did become just like them. Many of us – too many of us – became contemptuous of our brothers needing a hand up. We walked past the homeless man with the tin cup. We became intoxicated with the idea that we were just like the rich, privileged and noble, just not quite rich yet. We treated rich people as our friends and treated those who would be our friends, including the poor, as our enemies.
We, the ordinary people of the United States, dug ourselves into a hole.
Fortunately, we know the way out. We can restore those institutions and laws that once made our nation the pride of the world and add new ones necessary for lifting us higher, ones too long delayed.
Publicly funded elections. Universal health care. Daycare. Compulsory national service. Unions. Affordable education. Job training. Equal opportunity. Environmental protection. We know what those are. The paperwork and the memories of our gutted programs still exist. They are close, not distant. The new ideas will need tackling but our nation’s health is a history of adopting new ideas and programs as times changed. Besides, many of them exist already in many other nations, even in nations not as wealthy as ours.
We need a peaceful revolution to save this country and we need to start it immediately, while the Republic can still be saved.
We will need each other. A true rebirth of America will require all people to speak to others outside of their circle of friends to begin a national discussion, to make new friends and heal old wounds, to quietly sit and think, and then to speak with modesty and courage.
This is possible because this is America. Anything can happen here, as our nation’s current plight proves. We arrived here by taking a path that most of us now realize was a mistake. Nations, like people, make mistakes. But mistakes can be fixed. The path that led us here can be walked in reverse to the place where we were 50 years ago.
From there, we choose a new path.