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Active Humanism |
THE U.S.A. TODAY
I can hear the outraged protest from Establishment media
disclaiming what I say, but as our grandparents were fond of
saying, "the proof is in the pudding," meaning what goes into the
recipe is what comes out! And what we are today as individuals,
and as a nation, is the direct consequence of ruling class
priorities, prejudices, and desires riding roughshod over the
massive ignorance and timidity of common working citizens. We know the economic system of the country favors people with lots of money and penalizes citizens who have little, or none. We know comparatively few wealthy families and groups own or control most of the republic's land, raw materials, food, essential industrial resources, and the use of communications, transportation, and energy technologies. We know they control the republic's money supply, its major sources of credit, and millions of jobs enabling them to create economic inflation or depression. We know this power makes them the true rulers of the United States: we know it makes them the "American Establishment." We know some of these Americans now possess more wealth and wield more power over more people than any monarch or dictator, past or present. The Great American Gunpowder Family owns or controls so many corporations around the world, it employs millions of people and operates one of the fifty states as its personal kingdom. We know that the big corporations are replacing states and countries as planet Earth's central people organizations. We know "business" is government in the United States of America. It's why there is always public money for the cause of profit, but never enough to improve social conditions for working commoners. To increase profits, we know these people have influenced the creation of laws allowing them to move their corporations to foreign lands providing cheap labor and low taxes, and that thousands of smaller businessmen have followed their example. We know they have convinced Congress to pass legislation lowering tariffs, which not only brings them bigger profits, but gives their foreign corporations the edge over American corporations. We know the number of jobs in the country may have increased as our political leaders would like us to believe, but we know they are minimum wage jobs, many deliberately designed to be short of a full legal work week to deprive employees of legal health and pension benefits. We know some corporations fire thousands of employees not because they're losing money, but because shareholders aren't making enough return on investment. And we know these self-serving decisions have impoverished millions of former middle-class working citizens. We know the poor and homeless are everywhere: in big cities, in suburbs, in rural areas, in the North, in the South, in the East, in the West. We know many of these unemployed are unable to afford even the least expensive housing and some, who do work, can afford to live only in their automobiles. And we know the political leaders of at least one American city have had the city's park benches removed to keep the homeless from becoming a public nuisance. Although common workers make considerably more than they did before WWII, we know every thing costs considerably more, and that workers today lose more of their earnings to taxes than workers did then. We also know the rich, who make astronomically more today than they did prior to WWII, pay relatively lower taxes than they did then. We know poverty in the U.S. has risen to dangerous levels. It's been estimated more than 26 million Americans visit soup kitchens, food distribution centers, and homeless shelters, although many of them have high school and college degrees. We now know it's a myth that higher education guarantees better income and security. We know it takes two working parents to make ends meet in 2002, as it did in 1902. We know the corporate community prefers to hire adult females and teenagers, because they accept lower wages, and enlarge the pool of hungry laborers willing to work for lower pay. We know many American workers are single mothers trying to supplement the meager sustenance reluctantly provided by fathers who have deserted their families. As more children are left unattended at home, we know they are cared for by older brothers or sisters, who themselves are still children. We know an estimated one of four American children younger than three years of age lives in poverty, with little hope for a brighter future. We know millions of American farmers have been reduced to serfdom on giant corporate farms, as most small farmers in oppressive societies throughout time have been forced into serfdom on estates of the wealthy. We know these giant corporations export American food crops to other nations and charge Americans artificially high food prices, as Mother England has done to the natives of her colonies for centuries. We know employers in the U.S. still pay unfairly low wages to the workers who produce the essential things of life, and that most working commoners are never more than a heartbeat from bankruptcy. We know economics, the hokus pokus language of the business world, has never included a value in the Gross National Product for depletion of the nation's natural resources. The loss of nonrenewable minerals, the ravaging of farmlands and forests, and the pollution of our rivers and lakes by unregulated businesses has never entered the official ledger and, therefore, the ledger has never reflected the nation's true health and wealth. And we know only constant borrowing and spending by the common masses keeps the failed capitalist system alive. We know all of these truths. OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM IS ANTI-COMMONERWe know that after the Republican takeover of the federal government in 1981, the men of the Establishment intensified their attacks upon the laws and policies initiated by the New Deal president-laws giving commoners minimal protection against the abuses of privileged businessmen. We know the Republican party's "Contract With America" has reduced government's protection of the environment, the poor, the elderly, and children, and also reduced government's participation in cultural events and public broadcasting. To confuse commoners, and to lend respectability to its myopic philosophies and economic plundering, we know the Establishment has woven a complex web of public interest organizations, think tanks, newspapers, magazines, radio and TV talk shows which advocate the desirability of capitalism and attack all who disagree with its dogma. We know this strategy has increased opportunities for private enterprise to siphon even greater amounts from the public treasury, and we know it's the uncaring selfishness of business and politics which has bankrupted the United States of America, not the welfare needs of working and unemployed citizens, which make up only a small portion of the national budget. It's been the billions of dollars poured into corporate and municipal pork barrel projects that helps keep the country in debt. We know in any given year almost half of all U.S. and foreign corporations operating in the United States pay no taxes, forcing government to borrow the money it needs. We know it's these billions of dollars in unpaid taxes combined with the repayment of billions of dollars in unnecessary loans which helps keep the country in debt. We know gambling—the most despicable form of thievery—has been accepted by the nation's political community as a legitimate way to raise more money for politicians to squander, and that in many states gambling casinos and state lotteries now operate legally to drain savings of Americans who can least afford the loss. We know the state lotteries are the sole hope of escaping impoverishment for millions of Americans, and playing the lottery has become their only hope for a better future. We know the right to privacy in the U.S. is fiction. We know Establishment spy agencies regularly perform unlawful search and seizure, forge public documents, plant false stories in newspapers, deliberately stage incidents, incite riots, interfere in the affairs of other nations, and spy upon those who criticize the American System. We know there are private data banks containing information on almost every citizen of the United States, and we know for a small sum anyone can buy anyone's credit report revealing the most intimate details. And we believe that under the protection of their "invisibility" members of some spy agencies commit murder with impunity to the nation's laws. Despite professed policies of "peace," we know the United States government spends humongous amounts of money and human effort to develop the science of killing, and is the planet's prime promoter of war and producer of armaments. During the latter half of the 20th century, American merchants of death profited handsomely from wars in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, and Bosnia. We know the American Establishment regularly imposes its will upon people of other nations, often without the consent of the men of Congress; intimidating them into compliance. We know commoners throughout planet Earth have long felt the pain inflicted by the American Establishment, and that other people of Earth see us differently than we see ourselves. Many see us as a two-faced people, talking peace but favoring war; advocating equality, but tolerating discrimination; praising democracy, but favoring totalitarian leaders. We know the dislike of Americans by many people of the planet has little to do with jealousy of our material abundance. When the World Court—the court of international opinion—ruled against them, arrogant American rulers merely declared themselves beyond the jurisdiction of the court and world opinion. We know the Establishment's political puppets have done everything possible to discourage and dismantle research projects to develop low-cost solar, wind, and other clean energy sources. We know all of these truths OUR LEGAL SYSTEM IS ANTI-COMMONERWe know people, who believe capitalism isn't good for common workers, are considered "outsiders" to the American System. We know females, poor people, black people, people of ethnic minorities, and the men and women of the scientific and academic communities who seek knowledge and truth, rather than profit and power, are also outsiders. And because they're outsiders, these and many more millions of Americans are considered outsiders to our judicial subsystem, which often punishes them merely for being outsiders. We know the prisons of the United States are being handed over to the corporate sector to manage, and that "prisoners" have become profitable commodities. As a result, we know American prisons are filling up quickly with a greater proportion of nonviolent "criminals" than the prisons of any other major country, and that the building of new prisons to make room for new "criminals" has accelerated. We know American prisons bulge with poor, illiterate, young males, many of whom have black skins. And we know, although many of us won't admit it, it's not because the poor are less honest than the rich, or the uneducated less honest than the educated, or blacks less honest than whites, or the young less honest than the elderly, or males less honest than females, but because many of the nation's laws are deliberately written to trap and punish these specific outsiders. We know most businessmen who regularly steal from the public with overpriced wares and services are rarely punished, for their kind of dishonesty isn't "illegal" in this country. Businessmen and politicians who have stolen from the people and been clumsy enough to get caught, therefore, are given minor punishment. We know a President of the United States who was forced from office for his dishonesty wasn't imprisoned with his henchmen, and the managers of a giant corporation charged with stealing from 400 banks weren't punished as harshly as a commoner who robbed one bank. We know other crimes of the privileged members of the Establishment, such as instigating war and the excessive collecting of wealth, aren't considered criminal behavior in our society—and in most cases, aren't even reported. We know the media, which is an arm of the Establishment, will no more spotlight Establishment crime via entertainment anymore than they have via the "news." Nowhere in print or on television will the crimes against humanity committed by the privileged families of the Establishment be included. Nowhere in the docudramas presented nightly to the American public will Establishment families who perpetuate poverty and illiteracy be portrayed as criminals. Nowhere in the offerings produced by the TV industry will the insidious ways of the American Establishment be revealed. Yet "criminal" activities of the common people have become daily TV entertainment for the common masses. We know the vengeful retribution dispensed by Establishment courts for two hundred years doesn't work, and building more prisons and hiring more guards won't solve the consequences of poverty and discrimination. We know punishment doesn't prevent, helpless, hopeless commoners from breaking the oppressive and self-serving laws of privileged people. And never will. We know poverty, hopelessness, and desperation are taking their toll, and that violence is increasing all across the nation. Nearly 400 outsider Americans are brutally killed in the streets of Washington, D.C. every year, while affluent insider Americans build walls around their communities and hire guards; hoping to isolate themselves from the violence of economically deprived outsiders. We know all of these truths. OUR HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS ANTI-COMMONERDespite high-tech equipment and an abundance of hospitals, we know infant mortality rates in the U.S. are among the highest of all industrialized nations, and diarrhea, the simplest and least expensive of illnesses to prevent, annually kills hundreds of American kids. We know the recurrence of tuberculosis and other contagious diseases, once believed conquered, is influenced not only by the influx of people from poor countries, but by the increasing numbers of unemployed and homeless Americans. To survive the stress of our hostile social environment, we know at least 10 million Americans annually are treated by psychiatrists or mental health clinics, and millions more depend upon tranquilizers, sedatives, and other easily obtainable "legal" drugs. We know these prescription drugs cause more damage to Americans than illegal drugs, and hospitalize more than 250,000 adults every year for adverse reaction; much of it caused by too many drugs, unnecessary drugs, wrong prescriptions, and poorly trained doctors. Despite the deluge of sickening rhetoric, we know the Establishment is anti-family. We know it deliberately creates stresses and strains within families by underpaying working fathers thus forcing mothers into the workplace; a policy which nurtures divorce, broken homes, neglected children, poor students, alcoholism, drugs, early sex, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, and suicides. We know the American business community supports the use of working women—lower paid women—as a means to compete with males for jobs, and increase profits. Because divorced parents spend less time with their children, we know many bitter and resentful young Americans have developed self-destructive attitudes, often refraining from meaningful relationships with others. A Senate subcommittee study has revealed more than 10 million American children of divorced couples suffer serious emotional problems, reducing their ability and desire to learn. We know American girls today have sex earlier than their mothers did, and teenage pregnancy in the U.S. is greater than in any other industrialized nation. Yet the American Establishment has legally forbidden doctors, under threat of imprisonment, to offer pregnant girls information about abortion. We know tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of American children are abused by their fathers, and that American women have developed an "underground railroad" for females who want to remove abused children from dangerous and unhealthy home environments. We know every year, more than one million American children run away from home; many becoming prostitutes or drug addicts. Or both. We know the greatest threat to female health in the United States—as it has undoubtedly been for females everywhere since prehistoric times—is a beating by a male. We know there are rehabilitation centers in the U.S. for abused females and children. But none for males. We know the high cost of medical care has placed a cruel burden on millions of Americans and, in this era of longer life expectancy, the financial strain of attending elderly parents bankrupts many families. We know all of these destructive social conditions and activities plaguing the nation will increase as family ties continue to deteriorate, and confused American adults and children futilely seek refuge from our hostile society. We know these truths. We know alcohol abuse is the nation's number one drug problem, and that there are more than 10 million professed alcoholics in the country with, perhaps, another 10 million hiding their drinking problem. We know some authorities believe alcohol is a contributing factor in almost half of the nation's annual murders. We know alcohol is the drug most widely used by America's young people, and almost four million high school students have a drinking problem. What we know has been confirmed in a report by a National Commission on Drug-Free Schools, which called alcohol and tobacco, not cocaine or marijuana, the most serious drug problems for American teenagers. Studies indicate many American children are indoctrinated to alcohol while in grammar school, and that alcohol and other intoxicating drugs are the leading contributors to fatal teenage accidents and suicides. We know cigarettes—when used as intended—are the only product on the market which kills 400,000 Americans every year; more than died in all of WWII. We know increased smoking by females has increased the incidence of female lung cancer, heart disorders, and caused more deaths among females than breast cancer. Together, alcohol and tobacco addiction are the greatest threat to human life in the United States. But we're not surprised the use of both drugs are publicly advertised and promoted, for we know both industries are owned by powerful Establishment families. We know guns are a hazard to health in the United States. Studies have indicated every two years more Americans die by guns than were killed in the Vietnam War. But the weapons industry, also owned by Establishment families, has used its political clout to encourage the private ownership of such weapons. We know the easy availability of guns combined with poverty and frustration has brought gangs and guns into the schools. We know violence and death on school grounds are increasing and that parents, students, and teachers are frightened. We know the workplace in the United States is a hazard. Independent surveys indicate more workers die annually of workplace related diseases and injuries than die in car accidents. We know serving in the peacetime military forces of the U.S. is considerably more dangerous to human life and health than ever before, for with each Establishment induced war, young Americans invariably—and unnecessarily—die. We know the consequences of corporate activities also threaten the health of Americans, for the privileged of the United States have allowed nothing—including the pollution of planet Earth— to stand in the way of increased profits. For two hundred years their production companies have spewed poisonous fumes and waste products into the natural environment with devastating consequences. In many places waters are so polluted they no longer support natural life, and swimming in them is hazardous to human health. We know millions of Americans now use bottled water for their needs which, of course, they must buy from profit-seeking businessmen. We know the U.S. government—the trustee of the nation's natural resources—is just as guilty as private enterprise of threatening the health and lives of Americans by its abuse of the planet's natural resources. The Defense Department alone has produced more than 8,000 toxic waste sites, many of which house nerve gas deposits and unexploded ordinance shells. The Department of Energy has more than a dozen plants and laboratories overflowing with toxic wastes. Tons of radioactive wastes, some known to remain active for millions of years, still wait for disposal. We know the men of Congress have decided to bury all of this monstrous danger one-half mile underground in a huge system of tunnels, despite not knowing what will happen to the waste over time, or how to warn future generations away from the danger. And because all of our leaders have refused to address the problem of everyday garbage disposal, we know they pay handsomely to have the political leaders of poor nations take tons of our garbage and toxic wastes into their lands, threatening the health and lives of their citizens. We know all of these truths. OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM IS ANTI-COMMONERWe know education in the United States today is a farce, for it's objectives are not to produce knowledgeable, responsible citizens, capable of meeting the needs of a true democracy, but to produce obedient employees, trained to fulfill the needs of the corporate world. We know the acquisition of knowledge for the sake of wisdom is considered an impractical reason for attending college. We know thousands of young children, unable to meet even the minimal demands of today's formal education, drop out of school every year. We know the high costs of "higher" education has become a nightmare for millions of students who work long hours and borrow funds to help their parents defray costs. We know having to work makes it difficult for many to finish their education in only four years and, upon graduation, find moneylenders have first claim to much of their earnings. A Department of Education report states:
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