Made in America vs Destroyed in America

I am old enough to remember this slogan and was proud to see it displayed on any product for sale.

What happened?

We blinked and everything changed.

Now it is seldom seen at all.

That phrase "Made in America" once meant and symbolized quality, durability, pride in construction, pride in innovation, and enthusiastic inventiveness in general.

The U.S. was the shining example set for the rest of the world to live up to and follow by example. We stood for freedom, justice and equality for everyone. It was the true "American Way".

Our government was the world beacon for democracy at its best - when that word had meaning - and denoted pride for our liberation from the oppressiveness that our forefathers fled from in their respective "old countries".

Our government was set up to represent "the people" - especially the rule of the majority; and afforded equal rights to the minorities, as part of this great nation's citizenry.

We were a government in which the supreme power was invested in the people, and exercised by them directly, or indirectly; through a system of representation involving periodically held free elections.

We were a country by, and for, the common people when constituting the source of political authority and absent of hereditary, or arbitrary class distinctions, or privileges.

Does all this sound familiar to anyone? Does it all sound good and just, and provide equality for every citizen? It is "Webster's" definition of democracy as founded by our forefathers.

So, where did this 'nearly perfect' democratic government go? And why did it dissipate so rapidly and radically?

The answers are so simple they are laughably ludicrous in that simplicity.

And the solutions to returning to that once desired way of life is just as laughably ludicrous in their simplicity as well.

The new America was the "land of opportunity" and everyone had a good shot of getting a piece of that elusive "American Dream".

An "American Dream" that meant something different to every single person, and every single one of those dreams were as valid as any can be.

That dream of living in a country that promised equality in the pursuit of happiness, freedom of choices, and living a life without oppression or fear - from others and/or from our very government itself.

We talk much about the "need" to put restraints, restrictions, or regulations on our children; placing boundaries; having "rules" of conduct for them to live by so they will grow up and become decent, loving, honest, hard working and tolerant adults.

We used to take pride in living our own lives in a manner that they would be proud to emulate. What we 'preach' to our children today is not what they see us 'doing' as adults today. And what they 'see' of bad adult behavior today is O.K. behavior sanctioned by other adults of authority in our society.

Society (people who make up that society) have made some terrible choices for strictly selfish reasons that were the core causes of our current destructive ways of life.

• the 1st major mistake: Taking restrictions, rules of fairness, or regulations away from those irresponsible adults who represent us in governmental and political affairs and/or those who provide goods and services to the American people.
• This 'lifting' , or removal, of regulations opened the door to the development and the growth of greed and deception by these providers of goods and services and those who were hired (politicians) to represent us as people, not corporations.
• An ideal society would have limited the size of a company, the use of its profits (i.e. the fairness of charges for those goods and services), and its adverse influences in our society in general, that promote greater levels of greed and deception.
• It is obvious that the consolidation of several successful companies into one larger creation increases the greed and self serving components directly by the number of subsidiaries that are part of the larger entity.
• It also allows for decreased responsibilities to a community, depersonalization and desensitization of those companies to the needs of the communities they serve, as well as their employees.
• We should never have allowed the capacity of ANY company to be desensitized to the specific needs of the communities they service. NO company, corporation, business, or conglomeration should EVER have been allowed to reach the point of being "too big to fail".
• the 2nd major mistake: was believing that any corporation has become "too big to Fail". The corporations who dug themselves into the holes they found themselves in by excessive personal indulgences did nothing but destroy the basic foundations of our very society. Their demise would only have hurt those who created their own condition, instead of "bailing" them out by damaging our entire economic structure.
• It troubles me deeply that the common people still advocate this protection of those who caused our downfall in the first place and are still doing so. Thereby placing greater importance on the "greed factor" than the "people factor.
• the 3rd major mistake: Trying to "re-adjust" our current instability by imposing more hardships on the common people while vehemently protecting those who caused this crisis in the first place. A greater emphasis on the smaller community based businesses would provide more stability and sustainability. There are still those proponents who adamantly profess that their 'Corporate America' friends actually do 'create' the jobs. This is simply not factual.
• This shows a major shifting of the basic fundamentals of the very democratic premises on which our great nation was originally based. Giving more credence, value, and importance to the wealthy, than the common people, further undermines the very core of our democracy, and our American way of life.
• the 4th major mistake: Allowing wall street the power to 'control' consumer prices, manipulate, speculate and ultimately commit "legalized robbery" is also beyond my scope of understanding of how this happened and why it is still allowed to continue to exist.
• the 5th major mistake: Letting the major motivating factor of any powerful nation disintegrate and sink to the lowest level of debasement is also beyond my comprehension.
• We are now a nation that puts greed, personal gain and control, above common sense, above the common interest, and above the common people.
• the 6th major mistake: The American people trusting those very people who were "hired" (by election) (or appointed by those elected) to protect us, and not paying attention to their 'personal' agendas that they all take with them to Washington D.C..
• Or how easy it became for the powerful greedy faction to "buy" these representatives off.
• We can blame the politicians, and fight over minor components of why these things are happening, but the ultimate blame belongs to the "common people" for their complacency and misplaced trust they put in those who pretend to represent us, and not themselves first. Or to blindly trust that there is actually any common decency left in our society, our government, and politics in general, at all.

This country WILL fall. There is no doubt about that. There has never been any government in our history that has continued to exist and flourish on the premises of greed and excessive self serving of the greedy and excessive oppressive control.

It is only a matter of time. We will get NO relief from a government so steeped in corruption as ours currently is.

There will be no legislative uprising to try to amend this problem, as long as the people continue to allow these scoundrels to rob and pilfer at will without restrictions.

After all, those who are so in need of the restrictions would have to be initiators of those restrictions upon themselves - the very people who need the restrictions and regulating. Talk about an exercise in idiocy and futility.

The current uprisings by the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements are a start, but they each represent the extremes of each party and by themselves will accomplish nothing but to further the demise of our great democracy.

They both demand legislative changes, but do not go far enough, and have just enough clout to hasten our bitter end instead of being the remedy.

by: d.william 10/13/2011

Now here is a video that EVERY person should view.

When an 11 YEAR OLD BOY is more intelligent that 99.9% of adults, the entire U.S. congress, the entire business community, and world leaders who turn a blind eye to what is going on in this world, it is a sad state of affairs for society today, and a small glimmer of hope for our tomorrows.