The Real America — Poverty, A Kept Condition
— Best way to enslave people is to make the folks you wish to enslave think they are free!
[Originally written as a Facebook Note on December 1, 2016 (edited)]
If you’re an American, would you like to know what kind of country you live in? Well, please read on.
America, a land priding itself on liberty, imprisons more people than any other nation on the planet. Imprisoning people has become so lucrative that a private for-profit prison industry has flourished and become rooted within our nation.
Creating The Drug War
Back when President Richard Nixon recognized that anti-Vietnam War protesters were also pot smokers, he federalized the nation’s marijuana laws to make the plant completely illegal. Any states not comporting their state pot laws to the federal code were threatened with federal transportation funding withheld. Following the peace protests and after the war, America became flooded with cocaine and heroin. US consumption becoming the largest market in the world.
The table was set. So began America’s Drug War! Three key considerations:
First, for politicians and profiteers, The Drug War proved invaluable. One sure benefit was drug smuggling routes became weapons smuggling routes, which were helpful funding and weaponizing actual or attempted overthrows of unfavorable governments (see Iran-Contra and exploits of former CIA contracted pilot, Barry Seal). Take a quick glimpse at America’s friendly dictators (and take some extra time and research who got to become the ambassadors to such nations):
Secondly, the Drug War helped to limit the voting pool of the electorate. As so many people got arrested, it got to a point where nobody wanted to serve on jury duty. Take a quick poll among friends. See how many folks believe if they register to vote, they’ll get called for jury duty — nobody wants to put their family and friends in jail! Not only did this change the structure and make-up of jury pools, it also helped limit who voted. Plus, those who became drug felons could no longer vote.
Since Nixon, approximately 50 percent of those who can vote do vote in national elections; 33 percent in state elections and only 18 percent in municipal elections. Now you know why big corporate money is so important during election season. Due to the limited voting pool, to become president, one needs 25.1 percent and to become the governor about 17 percent. To become the mayor? You need is around nine percent. Money guys and pedigreed politicians.
Of course, the standard USA-grade and bought politician has long pretended how good they are, how busy they’ve been. But, for decades, all they’ve done is pollute legislative agendas with draconian anti-drug laws. Meanwhile, with the genuinely-concerned citizen eye on these serious problems, tax cuts for the rich, privatization and deregulatory schemes and rising Pentagon budgets, in a blip, easily passed Congress. The beat goes on …. la-da-da-da-de, la-da-da-da-di …!
Thirdly, the Drug War became profitable not only for mobsters who politicians could always call upon in a pinch, but also for the banks that laundered the money.
Meanwhile, as jobs increasingly have been offshored for cheaper labor. America’s unions have been ravaged. The middle class collapsed into debt and, more and more, poor folk have been relegated to live within a dangerous underground economy. This, too, became an action inhibiting people from participating in America’s electoral system.
America increasingly has been drugged and dumbed down!
So let’s move on.
America’s longest lasting war in Afghanistan has proven profitable in two ways: a) drug money from the Afghani opium fields; and b) military-industrial complex profiteering. The US proxy wars and bombing campaigns throughout the deep Middle East and Northern Africa represented a huge economic bonanza for American corporations.
This is so sad; but so true!
Dakota Pipeline
Domestically, America’s largest banks and oil companies stand to gain inordinate profits from the Dakota pipeline now being built from Canada to Louisiana against the will of the people whose lands the pipeline must pass. Americans won’t even benefit from any of this oil as it’ll be shipped offshore from The Gulf.
So who are the police now hired to wage war tactics of brutality on over 400 Native American Tribes who’ve finally united in cause and decided to make a much-needed stand to defend their continuously treaty-broken lands? The oil pipeline is targeted to run not only through ancient Native American burial grounds, but also under the Missouri River which is a source of water for Native Americans living at Standing Rock.
The oil company’s security force is comprised of private mercenary soldiering as well as members of police unit super SWAT teams (organized mostly to wage the Drug War). Throughout our nation, once normal police departments are today equipped as adjunct militarized units way beyond the scope of community policing. Officer Friendly exists no more!
Who hires these militarized police units and private attack-dog security firms and who supervises their actions against tribal nations acting as innocent water protectors? They are led and sub-contracted by a private mercenary firm called TigerSwan, spawned from the infamous Erik Prince Blackwater Company, renowned and hated from the Bush-Cheney War on Iraq — there’s a reason why Blackwater company changed its name!
One can even make a reasonable argument the massive police presence at Standing Rock amounts to on-the-job training as America further tightens into a police state under the Trump Administration. Donald Trump will certainly beef up Department of Homeland Security immigration policing, intensify a renewed push with the drug war and further develop and contract with the privatized prison industry. We’ll also likely see more privatized probation departments and urine testing companies — big business for friends and relatives of politicians.
A good American would have read all of the above and studied the reference links carefully. Then you’d know union-busting and indebtedness helped to create America’s middle class collapse and how poverty has become a kept condition in America, the richest nation on earth; how poverty has helped to reduce the number of people who vote in America.
In prior days, global oligarchs squeezed Third World nations for oil, diamonds, gold, silver, copper, tin, timber, rubber and plantation labor in agriculture, etc.. But, today, due to increased communications and awareness, exhausting these resources has become more difficult. Hence, the US-friendly dictator! But capitalism needs its growth so if a war, a coup or regime change is needed? So be it … the beast must feed!
Today, we’ve discovered every day Americans have now become victims to the squeeze of the profiteers. We see the one percent vs. 99 percent and the CEO to worker pay ratio at well over 300 to one, compared to most other industrialized nations where the ration is 15 to one. Income inequality is rampant and American consumer buying power has markedly diminished, as well as the living wage jobs which accompany a strong consumer market.
Today, people are placated by being drugged out and fending for themselves, many reduced into homelessness or dying.
As a Baby Boomer, this is no longer the America I grew up in. Shall we welcome America’s new ultimate friendly dictator, Donald Trump? In pretty simple terms: N-O-P-E !!!
PS: Americans truly need the sound governing policies of Bernie Sanders!
