The 99th post

I believe I am living in the most dangerous place on earth - the Land of Illusion, formerly known as The United States of America.

My country is floating on a cloud of illusion that we are still the greatest and the most powerful nation in the world. The truth is our status as a world power is slipping daily and our enemies, who are making alliances around the globe are growing stronger every day. Maybe someday the voicemail systems will be in Arabic (or Chinese or Korean or Russian) and we can press #2 for Spanish and #3 for English.

People here are under the mistaken impression that our schools and our level of education is the best in the world, when the truth is we fall ever closer to the bottom of the list every year that goes by. We continue to "prepare" an ever failing nation's children for “jobs and careers” that haven't existed in years and crank out kids by the thousands who can't read past an eighth grade level, can't perform basic math calculations and know more about Hip Hop culture and the newest cell phone ring tones than History or Geography. Meanwhile our American companies quietly hire engineers from India and China on a daily basis while handing our new grads a broom and a mop.

We continue to believe in the mythological story of the "American Dream" when the truth is the new "American Reality" is one of unemployment, underemployment or a life of Welfare, Medicaid and Food Stamps. The truth is our nations decline is fueled by outsourced jobs, illegal aliens and Walmart-style employment tactics that strip away health care benefits, pensions and livable wages layer by layer until the only thing that remains is the shell and a memory of what a Middle Class way of life used to be.

We continue to sing about "purple mountains majesty" and "amber waves of grain" when the truth is the land we love has been raped and peddled to the highest bidder. Between bananas from Chile and lettuce from Mexico, we can't even feed ourselves anymore. The family farmer has been replaced by business men with farm subsidies - being paid to grow nothing - and the family farms were driven out of business and bankrupted decades ago.

We continue to watch commercials showing poverty and ignorance as a way of life that applies to some other third world country around the globe, when the reality is that it's in our own backyard. We write out a check to Save the Children when the truth is that 1/3 of our nations children are growing up in poverty right in front of our face and "No Child Left Behind" is a farce and a failure.

We continue to accept politician words like "global economy" and "free market" when the truth is they are just labels slapped on to cover up an unprecedented corporate level of greed and corruption that is truly mind boggling. We like to believe in the Ward Cleaver illusion of the 1950's workforce; flying in the face of facts that tell us the average CEO earns 3-400 times more than the other workers in the company. The truth is that outsourcing American jobs has become our number one export, and dismantling the American workforce the number one agenda.

We continue to uphold the myth that everyone in the country has access to the best health care on earth, when the truth is we are one of only two nations on the planet that don't have universal health care coverage for it's population. A whopping 80 million Americans do not have health care coverage at any given time. We can't cure or adequately manage the top ten chronic illnesses that pummel the shit out of the national healthcare budget and we have no plan, goal or direction for the mental illness and drug addiction's that have ravaged our work force population and filled our prisons to the brim. The nations Emergency Rooms are in crisis, filling the role of the dwindling primary care doctors offices and non-existant Medicaid clinics. The nations hospitals are being bankrupted with disenfranchised elderly who have no long term care provisions or assistance and our prisons and homeless shelters are serving as Mental Institutions and Drug Rehab centers.

We continue to debate the nonsense of Democrat vs. Republican when the truth is we are flipping the two sides of the same coin - neither one of which is brave enough or honest enough or capable enough to pull us out of the mire we are sinking further into every day.

We stand open armed and closed eyed at Ellis Island, while the truth is our borders are as porous as our bank accounts and retirement plans. Illegal aliens walk across or drive across, unseen and undocumented by Immigration, but expected and welcomed by businesses across the county who are rapidly replacing any remaining American workers with the newest form of slave labor.

We delude ourselves into thinking that the terrorists are somewhere out in the desert, with ski masks on and a machine gun in hand when the truth is, they're across the street from us, and standing behind us in the supermarket; hating us and waiting for the opportunity to attack us like a pack of rabid dogs.

We continue to “charge” our way to happiness, when the truth is our collective debt - both on a personal level and a governmental level - is staggeringly unsustainable. Foolishly believing the party will never end - yet when the day comes and the foreign nations who own us, call in the markers on our debt - our governmental and personal economy will collapse like a financial house of cards.

We persist in the myth of our own civility, when the truth is our streets, our schools and our public places are filled with gangsta's and barbarians who measure the worth of other people in terms of what can be taken or stolen from them. Manners, decency and respect for life have long left the building and we didn't even notice.

We continue to delude ourselves that we are one nation under God, when the truth is that God has been torn down and traded off from our schools, our government and our churches decades ago in the warped attempt at making everyone happy. The truth is we are growing a nation of children who are adrift and making their way ever closer to the amoral whirlpool which is sucking them under.

We wrap ourselves in the pink clouded belief that our politicians are “American’s”, when the truth is they belong to their own special nation of the Billionaire Elite; manipulating and manufacturing laws and loopholes to benefit only themselves and those that own them. They line their pockets as fast as they can, while laying the rest of us out on a silver platter.

We delude ourselves into thinking that Middle Eastern wars are “winnable”. When the truth is we are fighting ideology and fanaticism wrapped in centuries of ignorance, bloodshed and animal hatred that we can't even begin to understand. Our President justifies his actions by sending minor officials to attend the funerals of other people’s children and continues to play war games in an Ivory Tower drenched with honorable men's blood and draped with a White House web of Lies.

We placate ourselves with Disaster Relief plans and Community Drills when the truth is the infrastructure, the resources and the capable manpower is so inadequate for just every day use, that should a disaster befall us, our best option would be to become flexible enough to be able to bend over and kiss our own asses good-bye.

Our President fiddles while Washington burns, and we just stand around and tap our toes to the American Idol music.

I want my country back. But I'm afraid it's too late.
All I can do is stand there and watch us circle the damn drain.