This thread ought to become the longest in FR history but it's not looking good so far.
I recently wrote an essay of my own, entitled The Unraveling of America, that pretty much reflects the same regrettably sad observations that MacKinnon does here. MacKinnon is requesting solutions ('Can we save the United States from its rapidly approaching demise?') I don’t know that there are any solutions – not realistic ones anyway.
And that incredibly sad fact is basically due to the fact that the majority of Americans simply don’t care. The sense of responsibility (the responsibility to see that we are informed about our roots, to see that we understand the integral part that each of us needs to play in maintaining our liberties and our national sovereignty … and the responsibility to pass those qualities on to our children) that was once an innate and irrevocable part of citizenship has eroded beyond the ability to identify it.
Without that sense of citizen responsibility, a free society’s days are numbered. And, once it is lost, I don’t know how it can be reclaimed.
Post-9/11, there was a flicker of reclamation, but it was never fanned into a flame. Too many diversionary tactics continually mounted by the mainstream media, Hollywood, and academia. And we allowed ourselves to slip back into our apathetic stupor once again before the year was out.
While driving to an out-of-state appointment the other day, my husband and I were listening to what passes for the on-the-hour five minute ‘news’ report on one of the major (ABC?) affiliates. On that particular day, two sentences were devoted to the fact that the last remaining survivor of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima had passed away. I was so stunned by the brevity and flippant nature of the report that I literally counted the number of sentences devoted to the next ‘story’. It was the ‘story’ of the imminent release of Paris Hilton from jail. And it merited eight full sentences of coverage – four times more than the death of an esteemed member of our ‘greatest generation’.
My husband and I looked at each other, and, without a word being said, simply shook our heads in unspoken agreement that the contents of that five-minute ‘news’ segment represented a microcosm of the ‘bread and circuses’ death knell that the mainstream media is foisting upon the citizenry, each succeeding generation of which knows and appreciates the ‘real America’ less and less than the one that went before.
None of what ails us – from the threat of international terrorism, to the nightmare of illegal immigration, to the unprecedented power of the unelected, unaccountable mainstream media, to the Marxist influence in public education, to the corrupting power of special interest groups, to the purposeful, premeditated destruction of the best healthcare system the world has ever known … -- none of those gargantuan problems could continue to exist if we as a people began to re-value the attendant individual responsibilities that come with being a citizen of a free country: namely being educated and informed, seeking and respecting truth, and demanding accountability from our leadership.
As a nation of free men, we are chosing to die by suicide, because no malevolent force, from within or outside of our borders, can do us as much harm as our own indifference.
~ joanie
Allegiance and Duty Betrayed