All Empires Crumble.
Slavery, land theft and genocide were the foundation and means which fueled the American empire. 400 years later, this empire faces a reckoning.
Freedom, equality and pursuit of happiness are not merely unrealized ideals, they were the lies cum myths necessary to keep a restive population submissive.
The question is, what do we do about it? Do we continue to be mollified by our purchases as we try to buy our way out of despair? Do we allow the daily grind that keeps us worn out and distracted to prevent us from working for a better world? Do we throw in the towel in the face of the all powerful monied interests who now run the show?
Believe it or not, this is neither the first nor the worst time of struggle for justice. Think of the prospects of an enslaved person living during the height of the enslavers’ power. Think of the power dynamic in play on the day that those four young men sat down at a lunch counter in Greensboro. Think of the thousands of people who lived entire lives fighting injustice, dying with no change in sight, but whose work did lead to significant change after their deaths.
This is not a time to give up. Genocide Joe loves to talk about America being at an inflection point. He’s right, although he is not seeing the deeply rooted inflection point that lies at the root of our problems. This isn’t a battle between democracy and fascism, because we don’t have a functioning democracy anymore. The inflection is that our culture is already crumbling. We have lost our empathy, we have lost our interest in community and civic participation, we have embraced materialism as a be all and end all, and that embrace is making us selfish, ignorant of actuality, arrogant and doomed to failure. Already our life spans are shrinking, we spend most of our lives unhappy and under stress. With a nod to Jimmy Cliff, “the American dream is really a nightmare.”
This is a battle for the soul of nation, will it be wholly commodified and fortified to maintain a wealthy elite and continue an ever-widening chasm of inequality between to the 1% and the rest of us, or will we shake off our lethargy and depression, acknowledge the reality that we are the majority and, if we act together, we would have the power to wrench power away from the capitalist and monied interest who are destroying the commonweal for the sake of profit?
Giving up is an option, but not one we can live with.
