LiveReal.org

It's our world. Lets unite!

Be Heard! Calling all Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, and Moderates! Join our political blog

America The Beautiful

There is yet hope for saving Americas' grace. I think we are not yet at its apex. We have work to do and I think our country is indeed the promised land.

Within our borders, we have all the world's climates, can grow all the world's foods, have vistas representing all the world's beauty. Within our borders, willy-nilly, often against the will of whoever was in power, we have all the world's races, all the world's languages, all the world's religions, all the world's art and music and dances, all of its cuisine, all of its songs of joy and all of its dirges. It's all here, somewhere, though, I admit, probably mostly in New York. But somewhere in America you can find somebody who can step up and explain to us the culture of the place they came from no matter where you point on the globe. If there is any country in the world that can bring all the world's people to the table, this is it.

And here's what makes us different. It's that Constitution. That product of the age of enlightenment, that incredible document that was so far ahead of its time that we still struggle to live up to it. Yes, I know, it's in great danger right now but it still stands and it still insists that all are created equal and that all have rights and that all citizens can vote (void in Florida and Ohio, but still.)

I think if I were God and I wanted to create a demonstration project to show the rest of the world how it's supposed to be, this would be the place, with these people, with that piece of paper. We are, most certainly, in a period of regression. But if you look back and see where we started and where we are now, you will see enormous progress even though it's been the two steps forward and one step back kind of progress.

Even now, when there are people who want to drag the country back to how it was 100 years ago, we are light years ahead of how it was when I was a child and we're not going back there. Women won't accept it. Minority groups won't accept it. Disabled people won't accept it. Gay people won't accept it. And the fact is, neither will most of those white men. You're proof of that.

It will always be a struggle to keep taking those two steps forward and enduring that awful step back. But it's worth it and we can't lose hope.

-LiveReal.org

I wish I could be so optimistic. Maybe it's my own selfishness and egocentricity that prevents it; if what you say does indeed happen, it won't be soon enough to benefit me or any of us now living.

American capitalism is just as sick, or sicker, than European communism ever was. Our leaders are smarter, though, and may be the best the world has ever known at running over others to get what they want without killing so many people.

Instead of the blunt, violent approach of an Orwellian "1984", our leaders, with their accomplices the mass media, just feed us a constant stream of lies and mindless entertainment to keep us fat, happy and ignorant. In particular, they have mastered the art of the Big Scare: playing on our prejudices (gay marriage, immigrants) and our deepest fears (terrorism) to convince us that we poor sheep desperately need them, even as they lead us to the slaughter.

People are incapable of believing that anything bad could come from a Bush. Even when evidence is presented to the contrary, he cannot but believe, deep in his heart, that his leaders have his best interests in mind. It's kind of beautiful, in a way. It smacks of an earlier time in our country, when people trusted their leaders unquestioningly. I am reminded of Americans weeping bitterly when FDR died in his fourth term; he was practically a monarch; the only President many people knew for their whole lives. I have relatives who still believe, while new evidence to the contrary appears every day and we can actually see things getting worse in America by the moment, that our President is a deeply good man who only wants the best for our country and the world. Of course, we are taught to think this from the time we learn to talk.

The truth, however, is that it only took them about 200 years to figure out how to game the system. Our elections will never again be free of question, and I fear that whether the Republicans, the Democrats, or the Air-Breathing Fish party is in power, they will be run by a very small group of unfathomably wealthy men whose goal is to create more favorable situations for sucking wealth out of the world and its peoples and concentrating it in their own hands, while all the time making sure that

We the People have fewer and fewer rights and recourses. We are seeing the end of the American cycle. Something else may rise to take its place, and that something may even be good and honorable, but I couldn't help feeling that this 4th of July was less a birthday party than a wake.

-Billy Burton, SD