Government

America Needs To Look Within

This election is another sign of a struggling country.

I’ve spent the past several years researching and writing about our country on a blog hosted by Professor Sheila Kennedy, who teaches civics at Indianapolis University. There are some profound thinkers on this blog. Like half of America, they really got walloped with the symbolism of this election. How can nearly 50% of registered voters fall for an obvious con man? To entertain his base, he’s used racism, sexism, misogyny, profiling, faux religion, and even made fun of disabled people and our military. He’s attacked all media as fake except Fox News and a few other right-wing tabloid propaganda sites. His policies have enriched himself and other billionaire oligarchs.

Why are so many Americans falling for this guy?

I’ve been taking the United States of America’s collective inventory for nearly a decade and wrote the outcome on this website. Each discovery behind the shiny model presented to the world by our media every night. What I learned was, the foremost thinker and scientific mind, the great Albert Einstein, already did this in 1949. The other great American intellectual, Noam Chomsky, did the same thing in the 1980s and 90s.

Basically, we are a massive fraud held together by propaganda – marketing and public relations (US Media), which tells the world how great we are to its citizens and global citizens. Our military doesn’t spread democracy to impoverished nations; it spreads capitalism for our oligarchy, who then extracts the country’s resources.

The American Dream was a facade…exceptionalism isn’t even close to being true. Our religion doesn’t look anything like the man who brought it about. The brochure shows this beautiful house with an amazing view, while the reality is it’s a shack overlooking mounds of buried trash surrounding the whole area with an immense stench.

People have been philosophizing the best form of a government for a long time. I think Plato and Einstein have it right; it requires a centralized planning committee comprised of philosopher-kings. We have a self-chosen oligarchy due to their extreme wealth – mostly inherited.

I said four years of Trump would expose the deepest secrets of this country because he’s NOT a polished liar like most career politicians. He didn’t use “dog-whistles” to trigger a response from our hate-filled citizens. He used bullhorns and billboards. He cannot put that genie back into the bottle, but there’s more.

Nationalism is part of the whole Ayn Rand objectionism, which began around Reagan. It’s the whole theory of being anti-collectivism or against globalization. However, we are all connected as Einstein, and ALL religions tell us. That is the fundamental truth. We are all interconnected as humans with other living beings, along with this planet. There is no us and them. There is a collective WE.

The problem with Ayn’s objectivism embraced by Koch’s and the other oligarchs behind the GOP is that EACH person defines it. If you’re racist, guess who is excluded. And so it goes, ad infinitum.

Capitalism, as practiced by the USA, is NOT the best choice for our economy. Other countries see the outcomes it produces (mass inequality and this election), so they despise the USA military coming into their country. Who can blame them? We are NOT the pillar of a functioning democracy (we rank 25th), and we rank low in happiness (18th) and wellness (37th). We have a strong economy, but it only produces for the oligarchy and a few others.

It is evident that our socio-economic-political reality isn’t perfect despite all of Barack Obama’s speeches on “American exceptionalism.” It just isn’t our reality. As the election boards light up, two distinctly different realities exist within our urban centers and rural communities. There are different core beliefs between states. One potential presidential candidate wants to unite this country while the other candidate wants to divide the country. How different are they?

How did America become so divided while also believing that we are the greatest country on Earth when there is no evidence supporting this belief?

Welcome to further analysis…

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Todd Smekens

Journalist, consultant, publisher, and servant-leader with a passion for truth-seeking. Enjoy motorcycling, meditation, and spending quality time with my daughter and rescue hound. Spiritually-centered first and foremost. Lived in multiple states within the USA and frequent traveler to the mountains.

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