AmericaRevealed.org
In order to function or
rather, survive in these United
States, We the People must pay a
price. We must pay for food, phone, insurance (health, car, home owner's,
etc) as well as cable, car payments, mortgage or rent, electricity, water,
food, taxes, et al. We must on average, somehow come up with a base
income each year to live within our self-made and ignorantly perpetuated
matrix. It is the price we must shoulder to support our allegiance
to a system which operates on greed and centers upon materialism propagated by
media and deeply engrained in our psyche. It is the price we must pay in order
to "survive" in a nation that has made profit a priority instead of provisions
for its people.
For many in America, this
price is too high. As reported by Cornell West and Travis
Smiley, one in two Americans or 150 million people, have fallen into poverty or
could be classified as low income. The economic realm in which these 50% exist,
as opposed to the plantation days where room and board were at least
guaranteed, their slavery is dependent upon the ability to somehow, in whatever
way possible, obtain the money to survive upon the plantation else end up on
the streets; discounted among the rabble and at the mercy of the in-place system.
This continued media and
governmental machine, backed by money from the richest of our owners, seems
only exists in order to continue to enable these plantation owners to profit by
the pains of our labor and the obsession many have to escape being associated
with the "have-nots". Why else would so
much money and lobbying effort be spent in Washington and within State governmental
establishments and media manipulation if not to convince us to continue
supporting a faltering government and a decreasing standard of living? After all, when a government which was
originally designed to protect us citizens from the machine becomes part of the
system which enslaves so many and elected officials only become elected with
thanks for corporate donations, wouldn't it make sense that their corporate
media minions deliver the message to further our absolute subservience to it?
Citizens United has enriched
this system's rulers, increased the power of government over our lives and has
further fortified the cage within which more and more of us citizens find
imprisoned today. When some speak of
freedom, is it real freedom they are expounding upon or is it just a
continuation of the illusion they wish to propel in order to convince the rest
of us that we still exist within a free nation? The answer is obvious to anyone of sound
thought but still, so many exist inside this prison without any thought for or
recognition of the walls within which they are being held and continue to
propagate this same system. After all,
no one ever wants to risk standing up to the government for fear of
retribution.
The Stockholm
Syndrome describes behavior in a similar situation where kidnap victims
over time, become sympathetic to their captors. The name derives from a 1973
hostage incident in Stockholm,
Sweden. At the
end of six days of captivity in a bank, several kidnap victims actually
resisted rescue attempts, and afterwards refused to testify against their
captors. As a result of this syndrome, captives begin to identify with
their captors initially as a defensive mechanism, out of fear of violence.
Small acts of kindness by the captor are magnified, since finding perspective
in a hostage situation is by definition impossible. Rescue attempts are also
seen as a threat; since it's likely the captive would be injured during such
attempts.
We see this behavior in America,
today. People are victims to a growing
Police State, a militaristic intrusion of privacy by a governmental structure
which tells us we are being protected from terrorists and an ever expanding
system of fees, fines and threat of punishment incurred by not only the private
sector but also from the government to fund their expansive control over our
lives. Many voice no objection to this system because they have been convinced
that these actions are either necessary for our protection or they fear
backlash from any form of disobedience. With the thought that somehow they will
be favored by their captors, many have taken to protecting the system as did
some of the hostages in Sweden;
many others follow blindly without protest if only to hold onto the illusion
that they are still a free people.
When the issue of remaining rights
is questioned within the realm of this new form of slavery, one must ask the
question of whether the prison within which we exist allows us any rights at
all or whether we have merely been allowed by the masters to imagine that we
have them. As an example, we are all
allowed a certain amount of "free" speech but if that speech or if any of the
rights we are told we have interfere with the mechanism entrapping us, those
who cross the line are reprimanded in order to return them to their
shackles. Eventually, slaves either
learn to adhere to the mandates of the system or they are dragged to the courts
of injustice and broken so as not to pose a threat to the system again. Where are you in this process? Have you been convinced it is the status quo
or if not, are you too afraid to voice any objection to it for fear of
reprimand?
We all are in some way or
another, tied to the machine. We watch
their faux news, purchase their tainted goods and do not resist the pollution
their factories expel. We have become
chained to ideals which tell us we will still have jobs and thereby support our
families if we just adhere to the policies said to help us: To conform to the
standards of "normalcy". All we have to
do to rise above the rabble is reject those who do not conform: Those who do not comply. This is simple enough, isn't it? Reject you morality"reject your
conscience. To be saved, all you must do
is swear allegiance; swear you will protect the machine else fall with those
who would choose to fight back.
How did we come to this
point in America? In an Era of big government controlled by
powerful corporations, a military offense enabled by fabricated paranoia and
driven by "exceptionalism", hostage takers like those of Stockholm have arrived
not only to hold us hostage for someone else's money but to cash in on the full
value of our lives, our labor and our national purpose. Becoming a hostage to those whose greed has
overtaken their morality is now the premise of the machine and perhaps, always
has been; but how many will recognize the reality of it with enough purpose and
sense of self-protection to fight back against it? Very few it would seem,
given the proof of late. Instead of fighting, the people have risen up against
each other and taken sides with the slave masters they prefer against their own
people. The machine has taken over: It has robbed us of not only our minds and
hearts, it has taken our souls; it would seem that it has won.
It is not just America
either, which is suffering in this manner. Across Europe,
austerity measures are being implemented to enslave the people. This has
been the case in nations like India
for a very long time but not until the last ten plus years, has it been so
realized in the West. In order to further the global, corporatist state,
the people have been cast aside; expected to survive without any national
assistance or sympathy from their "leaders". The same people
being discounted though, continue to stagger to the polling places and electing
their next captor in some sycophantic hope that the next Caesar will
be better than the last.
Every day we are inundated
with propaganda meant to enable the machine. We follow blindly like pawns
driven to extinction by an incessant desire to perpetuate death within the
ranks of our mindlessness. The problems are abundant and the solutions
few. We slave each day to survive while
the plantation profits and the shanty town within which we have come reside
within and ignorantly accept keeps growing; robbing our liberty and forcing us
into servitude. This slavery is of our
own making though. The more we allow the
system to dictate our opinions, force our allegiances and profit from our
ignorance, the stronger it grows. Now
more than ever, the slaves must revolt by rejecting the mechanisms which binds
them. The parallel between a plantation
and our national, economic structure becomes clearer when one spends only a few
moments to step away from the television ignorance and recognize it.
We the People, in order to
preserve our Union, must unite and leave this
plantation. We must all in one fashion
or another, disconnect ourselves from the machine. We must once again, regardless of the
material losses we may suffer as a result, free ourselves and find the shores
of Liberty we
were promised. Slavery is not a destiny
we should accept for ourselves or for our children into which we are selling them
with apathy. The time has come to
choose: Will we accept this bondage or will we once again decide to be
free? Like the Revolution of 18th
century, now is the time for We the People to reclaim our destiny and take back
this land. Now is the time to fight back else risk losing all that this nation
ever meant or ever will mean.
Steven Forrest is a Project Architect living in St. Petersburg, Florida. Currently, he is working to implement Green Building initiatives in several communities across Florida. Given the current situation in America and the continued (
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