The American Dream is Dead...

Today I mourn the passing of a loved one.

This loved one was special because she was known as the land of opportunity.  A land where integrity and daring could could earn you a chance at success and fulfillment of dreams if you but embraced her.  She treated people fairly, though not perfectly.  Over time, the scope of those fundamental ideas grew to embrace us all.  Great men and women, with lofty ideas left their mark on her and in doing so, forever changed her.  She grew and developed as necessitated by need and as with everything that grows, there were errors along the way.  But she changed to accommodate and swore to uphold our rights of equality, giving us the freedom to speak our minds, protecting us from cruel punishments, creating a due process of law,  and ensuring we had the right to arm and protect ourselves.  She fought for our liberties as we fought to uphold her ideals in a world that was not ready for change.

And in that moment of perfect defining clarity, she became a of light in the dark and revolutionized the world.  She was the hopes and dreams of a few that turned into a nation of many.  A nation of mutts where the only pure thing among us were the 9 strongest words ever composed were written and born into law.

“We the people of the United States of America…”  
Words so powerful and moving, they were felt throughout the world.  She accepted all regardless of race or color.  Background or creed.  There was a universal recognition that we were all immigrants and to protect our fragile dream we bled for her.   The cost for our freedom was the lives of the people for which she stood.  And for over 200 years, through conflict internal and without, she was the envy of the world.

But times change and beneath these hopes and dreams there was a corruption that was slowly eating at the core foundations of her soul. Spreading throughout the land, fueled by greed, some will claim that this corruption began when we lost so many innocent lives to an act of terrorism.  In the span of one day we went from the land of the free to the land of the afraid.  The freedoms we lost that day will never come back and we will feel that wound for generations to come.
However, I believe that this is merely the culmination of events where we recognized our vulnerabilities.  I submit to you that in the days that followed, in our haste and fear we gave away many more of our freedoms out of fear.  I further believe the source of corruption began with our forefathers, not on that nightmare morning in September.  We built a country founded on capitalism and gave our allegiance to the dollar.  We created a system of checks and balances but were short sighted with our beliefs.  The age of great men and women is over and candidate values are bought and sold like commodities.  As a society, we allowed media to control our critical thinking and stopped innovating unless it was in the name of war.   We have no more hero’s and there is a great depression that hangs like a cloud over the land.  Our forefathers, perhaps mistakenly believing that men of honor and character would lead us into the future failed to understand that our basic human flaws of greed and wealth created a separation among the social classes who shared nothing in common but the belief it is “never enough”.

The rich never have enough money.  The poor never have enough money.  It’s “never enough” and when it comes to money we are all extremists and this created a division among the classes.  Rich and Poor.

All that said, we must also accept we are not innocent victims and shoulder some of the blame for the death of our country.  We are guilty of inaction.  Of standing on the sidelines as the government walked all over us.  There was a coup after 9.11 and the government used this aura of fear to assume invasive powers.  We were already fighting a war on terror and as cold as it sounds, innocents die.  In the span of a few years, we went to war externally but also waged a media war on critical thought and passed laws to protect the people (patriot act).  Unable to bear the burden of corruption our economy was pushed to the brink and we created stimulus plans to bail out the banks and companies that brought us to the brink of ruin.  People lost freedoms, homes and jobs.  Struggling to survive, we have since compounded the problem by imprisoning our own people for debts.  Bringing back a practice (debtors prison) we had previously abolished in the 1830′s.   But this is a one sided agreement.  I mean, how is it constitutional we must serve time for being unable to pay and yet we have this little thing called…  NATIONAL DEBT.  When do we imprison our politicians?  And for the future?  Well, we must protect our people so in their name we will build large data centers to spy on our people, collecting data from personal emails, to private tweets.  Phone calls to encrypted data and financial transactions. And the list goes on as we face new threats.  Even the internet, the last bastion of freedom is under siege.  The bills ACTA , PIPA, and CISPA are all funded by big money in the name of control and limiting our freedoms.   And thus my friend, I submit to you, that the American Dream is dead.

If there is the potential for someone, somewhere, in the world to commit a crime, and no one will be around to witness it, will America pass a law to prevent it?

Originally posted on my Website - www.theorysmith.com