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Dr. Herb Ruhs & grandson
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USA, RIP
Remembering the richest third-world country on Earth
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News August 5, 2008
We in the US are suffering a crisis of loyalty to our country.
Historically it is as if we have moved from a jingoistic nativ-
ism
directly to national nihilism in a couple of generations. The deep
self-serving polarizations between the two dominant political
parties, the hidebound commitment of so many to various political and
economic ideologies, the increasing fundamentalist fanaticism of
various religious groups and, most of all, deep allegiances to
corporate and
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multinational goals, have left no room for simple
patriotic loyalty to country.
Everywhere we see patriotism proclaimed by scoundrels and the simple-minded and ignored by the rest. To an increasing number of US
citizens their chief identity is couched in membership in some
ethnic, religious or political group. Nowhere do we see people
saying that we are all on the same side and, for the sake of the
country as a whole, we need to compromise and settle our differences.
No-one seems to place the welfare of the entire nation before their
parochial con-
cerns. This is dissolution.
To an astounding extent, people identify first as members of a
faction and only as an afterthought as members of a community that
contains within it members of other competing factions. We have
become a nation of accidental traitors who care little about the
welfare or reputation of their country.
As a functional reality, the United States of America has ceased to
exist.
We have a Constitution that is ignored and disowned by every
center of power.
We have a system of laws that are so selectively
applied and enforced that it has become more of a system of excuses
for the powerful.
We have a government financial structure that has
primarily been used as a convenient cash machine for criminals.
We
have developed a national debt, as a result of this looting, that can
not conceivably be repaid and hence has driven the country
effectively into bankruptcy.
We have a military that has been
massively overbuilt and over-funded to the benefit of war profiteers,
and which is sent on missions that only decrease the
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Everywhere we see patriotism proclaimed by scoundrels and the simple-minded and ignored by the rest.
To an increasing number of US citizens their chief identity is couched in membership in some ethnic, religious or political group.
Nowhere do we see people saying that we are all on the same side and, for the sake of the country as a whole, we need to compromise and settle our differences.
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security of the
country while pursuing economic gains for the multinational companies
whose incestuous tentacles embrace the officer corps and their
co-conspiring politicians with bribes and promises of future corporate
positions and club membership in an international cabal of wealth.
We have a "representative" legislature that consistently ignores the
will of the people who elect them.
We have become a nation of irony,
conceived in liberty but now dedicated to oppression.
Our real, unspoken pledge of allegiance goes like this, "I pledge
allegiance to my faction and the lies for which it stands. One
nation under the thumb of international conglomerates with impunity
and wealth for marketplace winners and suffering and poverty for the
rest."
Our true national religion is unbridled capitalism and opportunism,
known in ancient times as the worship of mammon.
We have abandoned
our souls to the pursuit of commodities.
We treat as enemies anyone
who champions social reform, lest in the change that is called for we
end up having to make some material sacrifice.
We watch as our
nation is led in opposition to the rest of the world with actions
that are indifferent to the climate crisis.
In the face of dire
warnings of worldwide catastrophe we accelerate our contribution to
climate change as a matter of pride.
We enforce with military might
grossly unfair trade policies that are causing worldwide hunger and
thirst.
We are a nation of individual petty tyrants with a depraved
indifference to the suffering that we cause. We lack the attitude of
mutual concern that defines a nation. We are no longer a nation. We
are a loose association of consumers and pirates.
Finally, on every measure of standing except for strategic military
power, the US has fallen to a dismally low status. Last amongst
industrial countries in health care, public education, lawfulness,
justice, fair elections and much else. We are the richest third-world country on Earth.
The US is dead. Long live the ideals on which it was founded.
© by the author.
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