I remain convinced that America has lost it’s collective mind. Consider the evidence: We’ve leaned so deeply into the turn of trusting symbols over substance that we elected a man who we all basically accept is a deeply flawed and egotistical liar who puts his personal interests over the rest of the known universe and insists still that the former president might not have been born American. He continually litigates past victories and relies on pithy one-liners and ill conceived attacks to get his way. He is, in essence, classic Flash Thompson without any of the athleticism and all of the bluster.
He isn’t even the biggest problem. No, the real problem is how we’ve ceded control to the corporations. America is corporate and the corporations that lead America are more often than not located outside of America (for financial reasons… supposedly). The largest educational supplier, Pearson, is located in the UK. Cengage, a rising force on the learning scene, is also located in the UK. Nobody cares, so long as books are cheap and speak to the facts that make them feel comfortable and safe.
That last point, safety, is a disturbing trend. More and more we are picking up guns and disguising fear of the other as fear of the criminal. In truth, it isn’t really disguised at all as the criminal is most likely to be portrayed as someone brown. It is as if the Obama victories were a wakeup call to a slice of Americans who got really tired of being blamed for things that weren’t in their control (slavery and historical racial politics) and sometimes were (like the high unemployment numbers among uneducated whites). So they grab their guns and say, “We got these and we got this.”
I’m worried about what is happening to my country. Most of all, I am starting to wonder if it is moving in a direction where our position in international standing is going to slip to a point where we are more likely to be the engine of finance than we are to be the engine of democracy. After all, if we are going to continue to see Trump as America’s Id, then perhaps we ought to also see that the begrudging attention he gets is more about how he can be used and manipulated than it is about how he is someone to be admired and perhaps revered.
Just Like Us.
Some Thoughts:
- Contacted site5. Got the site back. Change happens when you force it.