Are Americans Afraid to Speak Out Against Our Leaders?
Why Have We Turned Our Heads?
If we take a look at our history, any time that society has become oppressed by someone or something, it has been the American way to do something about it. Looking back at the sixties, the Vietnam war, and the civil unrest that took place, I am having a difficult time understanding why, now with things just as bad if not worse, we are not doing something about it.
When I say "it" let me list a few things that I am referring to. First, we have a war that unless we want to fool ourselves, we were not given an honest reason why we began fighting it. Weapons of mass destruction was the formal reason, but I think most would agree that is not a true statement.
A government that has given our leaders the power and ability to make themselves profit, while the average working persons are struggling to keep their homes.
Our schools have taken a beating, and it has been reported recently that our children are getting less of an education than ever before. The education level our children are receiving is about 30th place in the world.
The middle class is disappearing, with the gap between the upper class and poverty level growing by leaps and bounds. It has been reported that in this country about 1% of the population owns 97% of the money. There are more millionaires and billionaires now than ever before in recorded history. History tells us that when the poor majority is forced to be poor, and oppression becomes unbearable, a revolution is bound to happen.
We are losing our freedoms left and right. The bill of rights was written so that we would retain certain rights, yet if my ability to read and understand what I am reading, we have lost several or more of those rights already. Above and beyond those, which I will discuss a little later, we have allowed our legislators to rewrite and amend what is left of those rights until they almost do not mean anything anymore.
Our law enforcement has been given such power over the average citizen that most fear saying what they are thinking for fear of being imprisoned. Somewhere in the medieval times it was made illegal to put a man in jail for being poor, yet, I am watching in my town people being hunted down and jailed for FTP--failure to pay. Not that long ago it was FTA, - failure to appear that was a reason only for a jail term. Now I see that many people are being jailed for FTP, and this in a time when just finding work is not easy, and people are losing their homes, and families are becoming homeless. Our local government is receiving a $108 dollar a day for each and every person residing in our jail. This seems to me like poor mans court all over again. This is oppression, taking away a families home, when the bank was at fault, this is oppression.
Yet, we do nothing, and let it happen to us, as if we deserve this treatment.
The Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, have been amended so much that the original documents no longer exists in our time in history. We no longer have the freedom of speech, mainly because we don't use that freedom anymore. Are we so afraid of what will be said or done either by our own government or by society that we no longer speak our minds?
I am saddened as I watch our freedoms taken away one by one. How can we call ourselves a free nation, when we are so burdened with the way we have allowed our laws to imprison the way we live? Our right to bear arms is a joke. Can you imagine what would happen to me if I walked down the street in Anytown, USA with six guns on? I would guess that it would be a matter of minutes before I had a law enforcement officer making me sniff the pavement with my hands behind my back.
We Americans do not even have the guts to speak out passively with a demonstration of peace as was done in the sixties. Sit ins taught our rulers that even though they had the upper hand, and could arrest us, that we would not tolerate the way we were being treated. Now we quietly tolerate it in jail.
What happened to us America? Are you sure that this is a government that is of the people and by the people and for the people? We act as though we are bad children, and the government our parent laying down the law for us, or we will be punished.
Do any of us think that anything that is going on in this country is worth debating, at the very least? or taking steps to end the things we feel are unjust? Do we feel that it is somebody else who should do the fighting for the rights we are losing?
Are there no more freedom fighters left? Come on people, if only to change one small wrong, it is a step in the right direction. Do you think that certain CEO's are getting the best of our money, and they are doing so illegally? Say something, do something, we are losing our freedoms, losing our homes, and in the end, we will lose everything.
