Simple Facebook posts are turning into days long disagreements that often distill into name calling and facetious insults.
We seem so mad, and yes, there is good reason to be. There is so much about life that is truly difficult. There is so much about the world that is unfair, ugly and unjust. It is daunting for anyone who has a healthy support system. For those who do not have those supportive relationships, it can be so much more than daunting, all the way to disabling.
Because American culture is rooted in the love of capitalism, so many myths have grown up around capitalism. There is the myth that if you keep on trying by working, you will one day be successful and by successful, we mean financially successful. The other myth is around the rugged individual who needs nothing and no one, but who is so cool (think Clint Eastwood and John Wayne) all success comes to him. These myths make us spurn the disabled and look down upon those who have not made financial success.
“THE RUGGED INDIVIDUAL”
We have wholeheartedly been betrayed by our own system of love of money. First, those who will benefit from legislation are, in fact, writing and passing legislation. This creates an unfair playing field for all Americans. Tax deductions go to the highest corporate bidder, the corporation that lobbies the most and bribes the most, wins the legislative game. How did Americans allow this to happen? How did we allow those we trust to become those that we must not trust?
I know how I, personally, let it happen. I trusted. I trusted those that I elected to take care of all Americans equally and justly. It wasn’t until I read John F. Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage, that I saw that legislators were NOT to be trusted. In fact, shockingly, Kennedy’s brief autobiographies were about exceptional people, not the average legislator.
It wasn’t enough to convince me that community leaders might not be genuinely interested in leadership. As a matter of fact, many community leaders have only been interested in making themselves wealthy. No one challenged it because for a very long time (and certainly throughout the 80s and 90s) everyone thought that if you made money that it was a good enough reference for your character. The whole country loved money and if you had it, no matter how you made it, you were admired. This was part of the cult of success.
For decades we Americans have been dimly aware that something is wrong with the center of our government. An entire group of professionals (called lobbyist) grew out of our lack of oversight. We overlooked training physicians in ethics, and it appears that we have overlooked the ethical life of our lawmakers. We have made no demands on legislators and we Americans have not commented on the wealth and benefits that they heap upon themselves (lifelong paychecks [no matter what], excellent healthcare, etc., etc.).
Behind this behavior by our lawmakers are the wealthy constituents who have bought and paid for a wide array of immoral and unethical laws. We have drug companies creating the opioid crisis, we have other drug companies charging a 1000% mark up on life saving drugs. We have health insurance companies giving people a death sentence by denying or postponing coverage for their insured. We also have food companies putting such strong insecticides on their crops that that same insecticide is showing up in children’s cereal.
It is no wonder that the millennials do not feel that their parents have done right by them. The vast majority of Americans have been legislated from the middle class into the lower classes and won’t admit it. It takes the fresh eyes of the millennials to see what we have done to the future. They see the compromised middle class because they live it.
“THE HOUSE HAS ALREADY BURNED DOWN”
Somehow the powers that be have almost convinced us that this is a race war, or a class war or any other type of war that you can dream of. That is why we are so angry. Because we know what we have lost, we know that we are in a hole that it will take decades to get out of. The current American political system demonstrates to us how far down the rabbit hole that we have fallen.
What we must do, so as not to destroy ourselves while we recover, is to see the truth of what has happened here in America. Everything that can be done to take away from the middle and lower classes has been done. We are not in a war with each other, we simply want what is ours back. We want to live in a fair and just America, where we can trust our legislators to be true to those who elected them rather than to big money.
We are not even in a war with corporate America, we just want what is ours back. We don’t want to give our tax breaks to the mega faceless corporation that paid our senators a million dollars each. We want that tax break for ourselves! We don’t want healthcare reserved only for the privileged few, we want healthcare for all. If pharma pulls out the boogie man of research and innovation, just know that American tax dollars pay for most of all research and innovation and Americans have never benefited from it (except to pay for overpriced medications). We just want our tax dollars back. We the American taxpayers want to benefit from the research and innovation that our tax dollars pay for, that’s all. We want what is ours to be ours.
So, let’s remember, we don’t need to be angry, there is no race war, there is no class war. We just want our country back from the greed of the few. We want our country returned to the benefit of us all. That’s what America stands for: the benefit of us all, each and every one.