Greed's Grip

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

   The video in the link pretty much sums up the reality the documentary we recently watched in a digestible visual graph, but that's not important. I liked the video, but that's besides the fact. Personally I loved Inequality For All to the point where I feel like it should be required viewing. I feel strongly enough about the subject to want every American, regardless of political affiliation or social class or whatever else, to be remotely aware of the reality we face in this country. Now I love America, believe me. The ideals America stands by, these originally enlightened concepts of free speech, justice, equality, liberty, I value them more than anything. They're essential to my moral fiber.. The idea of America is what's genuinely great and beautiful about it. That being said, I'm not afraid to admit the reality of America. And the reality is, we're defending a country that doesn't exist. We believe America to be the land of opportunity, equality, freedom, liberty, all the noble ideals the founders strived towards. We even become enraged at the thought of it being anything else, dismissing any critique of our  country like it were treason. And this is where our downward spiral comes from. Because we refuse to question ourselves, to take a step back from the flag waving and chest beating to see what we've become, even to take  any opinion but our own practiced ignorance into account. We let the American ideals, the genuine heart of our country, be manipulated into this cutthroat, hateful, bigoted, greedy, and most of all scared country we live in today.  It's horrifying how easy it was too.
   This all does tie into wealth. So the top 1% is what really runs our country. Not democracy, not our upstanding morally sound citizens, not the working man, wealth. And unfortunately we're being tricked into letting it continue. If you remember the documentary, the end of it tied together political polarization with wealth inequality. To an extent it's like  one  just escalates the other. You can consider our current political landscape to be an actual plutocracy. We see the power as congress, the house of representatives, the president, etc. But more and more, the power we see is a puppet of whoever bought them into that title in the first place. And we wonder how the wealthy keep getting away with it? The population is tricked into helping them. We're being exploited, again and again, into helping the wealthy stay wealthy. We're digging our own graves. We support politicians that are either too corrupt or too stupid to make a difference, or politicians that literally are the wealth stifling us in the first place. We blindly watch biased news bought and paid for by the men in charge, believing every bit of it and getting more hate filled with every bigoted remark telling us who the enemy is and what anti-american crimes they committed today. We oppose any actual action taken against the injustice we live under, and even get the idea that opposing this is anti american. Because that's just it:They've manipulated the American ideals into a blind, ignorant uber-patriotism for their own benefit. They're keeping us down by keeping us proud. They're dumbing us down, along with our supposed ideals. They turned everything against us, and tricked us into actually supporting it ourselves.
   I don't know what the future of the country holds obviously. Whether or not all the corrupt politics, the class gaps, the social ignorance and general bigotry will fade or disappear, or just grow, we'll find out later. But what I know is we need to be able to see it happening, and do our bests not to be tricked into following it all.  It's the least we can do, and it's really our responsibility as citizens to  realize this before it's too late. We can get America to live up to it's name, to fulfill its ideals and become what it should be. It can be the greatest country in the world and more. But to do that, we need to see what's wrong with it to begin with. And there's a lot of work to be done