Posted on 03/05/2019 4:49:58 AM PST by vannrox
“There’s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that [America is] the greatest country in the world. We’re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies…
“[America] sure used to be [the greatest country in the world ]… We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reason. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reason. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world’s greatest artists AND the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed… by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.” ― Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom (Episode 1)
Life in America has become a gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, misery-drenched, demoralizing existence.
We have managed to survive crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns.
We’ve been held up, stripped down, faked out, photographed, frisked, fracked, hacked, tracked, cracked, intercepted, accessed, spied on, zapped, mapped, searched, shot at, tasered, tortured, tackled, trussed up, tricked, lied to, labeled, libeled, leered at, shoved aside, saddled with debt not of our own making, sold a bill of goods about national security, tuned out by those representing us, tossed aside, and taken to the cleaners.
We’ve had our freedoms turned inside out, our democratic structure flipped upside down, and our house of cards left in a shambles.
We’ve had our children burned by flashbang grenades, our dogs shot, and our old folks hospitalized after “accidental” encounters with marauding SWAT teams. We’ve been told that as citizens we have no rights within 100 miles of our own border, now considered “Constitution-free zones.” We’ve had our faces filed in government databases, our biometrics crosschecked against criminal databanks, and our consumerist tendencies catalogued for future marketing overtures.
We’ve seen the police transformed from community peacekeepers to point guards for the militarized corporate state. From Boston to Ferguson and every point in between, police have pushed around, prodded, poked, probed, scanned, shot and intimidated the very individuals—we the taxpayers—whose rights they were hired to safeguard. Networked together through fusion centers, police have surreptitiously spied on our activities and snooped on our communications, using hi-tech devices provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
We’ve been deemed suspicious for engaging in such dubious activities as talking too long on a cell phone and stretching too long before jogging, dubbed extremists and terrorists for criticizing the government and suggesting it is tyrannical or oppressive, and subjected to forced colonoscopies and anal probes for allegedly rolling through a stop sign.
We’ve been arrested for all manner of “crimes” that never used to be considered criminal, let alone uncommon or unlawful, behavior: letting our kids walk to the playground alone, giving loose change to a homeless man, feeding the hungry, and living off the grid.
We’ve been sodomized, victimized, jeopardized, demoralized, traumatized, stigmatized, vandalized, demonized, polarized and terrorized, often without having done anything to justify such treatment. Blame it on a government mindset that renders us guilty before we’ve even been charged, let alone convicted, of any wrongdoing. In this way, law-abiding individuals have had their homes mistakenly raided by SWAT teams that got the address wrong. One accountant found himself at the center of a misguided police standoff after surveillance devices confused his license plate with that of a drug felon.
We’ve been railroaded into believing that our votes count, that we live in a democracy, that elections make a difference, that it matters whether we vote Republican or Democrat, and that our elected officials are looking out for our best interests. Truth be told, we live in an oligarchy, politicians represent only the profit motives of the corporate state, whose leaders know all too well that there is no discernible difference between red and blue politics, because there is only one color that matters in politics—green.
We’ve gone from having privacy in our inner sanctums to having nowhere to hide, with smart pills that monitor the conditions of our bodies, homes that spy on us (with smart meters that monitor our electric usage and thermostats and light switches that can be controlled remotely) and cars that listen to our conversations and track our whereabouts. Even our cities have become wall-to-wall electronic concentration camps, with police now able to record hi-def video of everything that takes place within city limits.
We’ve had our schools locked down, our students handcuffed, shackled and arrested for engaging in childish behavior such as food fights, our children’s biometrics stored, their school IDs chipped, their movements tracked, and their data bought, sold and bartered for profit by government contractors, all the while they are treated like criminals and taught to march in lockstep with the police state.
We’ve been rendered enemy combatants in our own country, denied basic due process rights, held against our will without access to an attorney or being charged with a crime, and left to molder in jail until such a time as the government is willing to let us go or allow us to defend ourselves.
We’ve had the very military weapons we funded with our hard-earned tax dollars used against us, from unpiloted, weaponized drones tracking our movements on the nation’s highways and byways and armored vehicles, assault rifles, sound cannons and grenade launchers in towns with little to no crime to an arsenal of military-grade weapons and equipment given free of charge to schools and universities.
We’ve been silenced, censored and forced to conform, shut up in free speech zones, gagged by hate crime laws, stifled by political correctness, muzzled by misguided anti-bullying statutes, and pepper sprayed for taking part in peaceful protests.
We’ve been shot by police for reaching for a license during a traffic stop, reaching for a baby during a drug bust, carrying a toy sword down a public street, and wearing headphones that hamper our ability to hear.
We’ve had our tax dollars spent on $30,000 worth of Starbucks for Department of Homeland Security employees, $630,000 in advertising to increase Facebook “likes” for the State Department, and close to $25 billion to fund projects ranging from the silly to the unnecessary, such as laughing classes for college students and programs teaching monkeys to play video games and gamble.
We’ve been treated like guinea pigs, targeted by the government and social media for psychological experiments on how to manipulate the masses. We’ve been tasered for talking back to police, tackled for taking pictures of police abuses, and threatened with jail time for invoking our rights. We’ve even been arrested by undercover cops stationed in public bathrooms who interpret men’s “shaking off” motions after urinating to be acts of lewdness.
We’ve had our possessions seized and stolen by law enforcement agencies looking to cash in on asset forfeiture schemes, our jails privatized and used as a source of cheap labor for megacorporations, our gardens smashed by police seeking out suspicious-looking marijuana plants, and our buying habits turned into suspicious behavior by a government readily inclined to view its citizens as terrorists.
We’ve had our cities used for military training drills, with Black Hawk helicopters buzzing the skies, Urban Shield exercises overtaking our streets, and active shooter drills wreaking havoc on unsuspecting bystanders in our schools, shopping malls and other “soft target” locations.
We’ve been told that national security is more important than civil liberties, that police dogs’ noses are sufficient cause to carry out warrantless searches, that the best way not to get raped by police is to “follow the law,” that what a police officer says in court will be given preference over what video footage shows, that an upright posture and acne are sufficient reasons for a cop to suspect you of wrongdoing, that police can stop and search a driver based solely on an anonymous tip, and that police officers have every right to shoot first and ask questions later if they feel threatened.
Are you depressed yet? You should be.
More than depressed, however, you should be outraged at what has been done to our country.
I’m outraged at what has been done to our freedoms.
We are no less prisoners than those who are incarcerated behind prison walls.
As Aldous Huxley recognized in his foreword to A Brave New World Revisited: “It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free—to be under no physical constraint and yet be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national state, or of some private interest within the nation wants him to think, feel and act. . . . To him the walls of his prison are invisible and he believes himself to be free.”
The prison we inhabit may not be as bleak as the soul-destroying gulags described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his masterpiece The Gulag Archipelago, but that’s just a matter of aesthetics.
It’s time to stop waiting patiently for change to happen, stop waiting for someone to rescue you, and stage a breakout.
Get mad, get outraged, get off your duff and get out of your house, get in the streets, get in people’s faces, get down to your local city council, get over to your local school board, get your thoughts down on paper, get your objections plastered on protest signs, get your neighbors, friends and family to join their voices to yours, get your representatives to pay attention to your grievances, get your kids to know their rights, get your local police to march in lockstep with the Constitution, get your media to act as watchdogs for the people and not lapdogs for the corporate state, get your act together, and get your house in order.
Appearances to the contrary, this country does not belong exclusively to the corporations or the special interest groups or the oligarchs or the war profiteers or any particular religious, racial or economic demographic.
This country belongs to all of us: each and every one of us—“we the people”—but most especially, this country belongs to those of us who love freedom enough to stand and fight for it.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are fast approaching the point at which we will have nothing left to lose.
Don’t wait for things to get that bad before you find your voice and your conscience.
As Solzhenitsyn’s character reflects The Gulag Archipelago:
“How we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if … during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Take your stand now—using every nonviolent means at your disposal—while you still can.
Don’t wait to reflect back on missed opportunities to push back against tyranny.
Don’t wait until you’re the last one standing.
Time is running out.
WC: 2073
Just a suggestion but “Get over it”. It hasn’t been “Our Country” for a long time. What we really need to do is wake up and recognize reality. What we should probably be focusing on is what takes place on the soil here next. But we probably won’t because it is so much more pleasant for the time being napping under a pleasant delusion.
I fear she is breaking up with me.
The way the "best" nations get around this problem is by having an almost homogeneous culture. If that's your thing, fine. If diversity is your thing, fine. Just don't expect the same outcomes from two different policies.
And we have to buy our own food and pay for our lodgings!!
And if your standards aren’t high (like caring that it’s not a woman) sex is easier to get!
What a revolting development.
Plus the quote from the Newsroom overly romanticizes our past. If the point is we are not perfect, then that is 100% true. No person, no country ever was perfect. Even the founding fathers were not perfect. Even the "greatest generation" was not perfect. They all had their flaws and we should learn from them and never repeat them. We never were perfect and probably never will be.
But over all I would rather be here than anywhere else.
"Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are Sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a Sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever."
--President Davis
But anyone looking back at, say, 1945 can say that we were Great at some points in our history. We beat Hitler, we beat Tojo, we had the only big industrialized economy that wasn't destroyed in the war. Only we had atomic weapons. Then we went on to face down communism in the Cold War and we caused the Soviet Union to collapse without making that cold war get hot.
We were Great.
But we have lost the country, at least for now. Globalism, diversity and political correctness have turned this country into something I no longer recognize.
But we can Make America Great Again and there is no shame is stating that desire. Those on the Left who hear a dog whistle of racism in that goal are actually a huge part of the problem. They are the reason we are not currently Great. They need to be defeated.
BKMRK.
BUMP
The author of the article lost me in the first paragraph, while stating our test score rankings in math, science, etc. Having read about this phenomenon in years past and not believing it, I did some research on those test scores. When you break out the scores by the race of the US students taking the tests, Asian American and Caucasian American students are right in the top 5 countries in the world. Other races in America test in the bottom half of countries and drag down the average, hence the fable that the US is in decline from an intellectual capital standpoint. Fake news!
Africanized cities are no longer America. The new very large villages eschew American values
"Don’t wait for things to get that bad before you find your voice and your conscience. As Solzhenitsyn’s character [ME: Good God Man...it isn't a 'character' in a play or a novel, that was Solzhenitsyn himself!!!!] Solzhenitsyn reflects in The Gulag Archipelago:
“How we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if … during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward...”
To me, that is one of the most powerful paragraphs written in one of the most powerful books ever written. We should take heed.
Don't ANY of us surrender.
Good post.
“We have lost the country...”. So why should we care? In a world of Open Borders 20 million of us could go where ever we wanted. Just like they do. Do you really beleive the libtards in gummint would try to prevent 20 million of us from just migrating into Canada for the Summers and Mexico for the Winters? What is in between is just flyover country to them anyway.
Blood and soil is an anachronism. Just like fixed defenses. It’s just blood now.
The author buried the lede too deeply.
Honestly, I didn’t even read the first 3/4 of the article. We know the problems. The author did himself a disservice by keeping his salient point until the end.
Those of us who pay attention don’t need to be depressed, we have known all this for some time.
The author’s point was: Fight for what is yours, and this country is yours.
“There’s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that [America is] the greatest country in the world. We’re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies…”
I submit that most of this “bad stuff” is caused by what we call illegals.
If you doubt what I just said, ASK AN INDIAN (Native American that is) They call tell you all about ‘uncontrolled immigration’ ! NUFF SAID !!
“Don’t ANY of us surrender.”
Don’t ANY of us ever surrender any of our weapons !
I am not. I know that surrender leads to the camps where one is starved as they await slaughter and individuals such as Hillary Clinton come by to gloat. I am not saying that I will be a hero. I am not saying that I will do great things. All I am saying is that I will not go to one of Hillary’s camps.
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