I am back to work, and actually excited about being a wage slave once again – the pay is good, but the training hours are brutal. 60 hour weeks are not what they were when I was 21. 51 is a whole ‘nother ball game. I mention this for two relevant reasons: 1) It may make you forgiving of any errors found within, since I am penning this an hour before deadline, and much more importantly 2) Yesterday I took a nap and had a fairly lucid dream in which I ended up explaining to a teenaged girl why “Americans are so dumb…”
I whipped it off as a short story of almost the same title to keep the epiphany I had fresh in my mind for today’s missive.
I want to offer the idea in a more cohesive manner to this esteemed audience, rather than the off-the-cuff explanation my sub-conscience offered the little girl.
I also am asking you to check your historical preconceived notions, and consider the possibility of what I am thinking, as well as offer your thoughts on it.
“Lily, think about it. France had a long time to grow up. Wars, revolts, leaders and kings, assassinations and like most of Europe, has had time to try and balance between what is ‘good for the people’ and ‘what the rich want.’ Its not so hard to convince the French after hard times, that all Frenchmen – something they all hold in common – deserve to have nice things. Not just a few.
The same for every Country in Europe, they have an identity that binds them. The US not so much. There is no sense of countrymen for people from so many places. Each identity group- primarily the white anglo-saxon capitalists think they are the ONLY face of Americanism.
Its not just that though. Because in Europe they have fought hard – I mean the richest that rule – to make sure that Socialism only goes so far. Far enough to keep them from revolting, bonding against the power. They worked hard to make sure Capitalism was always in charge and to this day paint Russia as a demon.
America, the US? I think, really was a new experiment in Capitalism.
Why do you think that so many in Europe are multi-lingual like you? And we are not? Europeans can ride a train and be in another country in an instant – quicker than we can go state to state, and realize how cool other people are and never want to war on them. USers are isolated.
If you were making a new country and wanted your rule to be unquestioned; create a belief that the elites know whats best, and that Capitalism, English and the cycle of working and buying to make you rich, what would you do? You certainly wouldn’t want to have to share with the poor. Socialism is painted as helping ‘others’ not ‘USers’ I mean, they aren’t helping you get rich, so why would you allow people to think helping them is good? You wouldn’t want too good an education to happen, then there would be no one willing to work for nothing. You certainly wouldn’t want them to know too much world history – only American History which you make sound like we were the best place with the best way on Earth.
That’s why socialized medicine that everyone else has hasn’t been allowed in the States. They tell us its bad, and won’t work. And for a while? Most Americans had more “stuff” than other people, but to get it, and having known nothing else, they don’t realize the actual quality of their life sucks compared to most places. They don’t have TIME, they don’t have community and a feeling of belonging, beyond “I got a new Iphone too!” They have no sense of pura vida. We have become convinced our only value is not in how we live, but what we have.
Americans aren’t stupid, they just were raised in a system that isolated them from reality. If they knew other languages, they would know what other people thought or said. If you don’t know what they are saying, you trust the so-called smart guys when they tell you that they are evil. That they have bad intent.
So, really, if you were planning on starting from scratch, and wanted to be the new rulers, and untouchable? You would plan a country exactly like how they made the US.
They made sure that we wouldn’t get any ideas, right from day one, and if we did? The McCarthy era cinched it.
In fact, if you remember nothing else – the US’s real motto is – “Don’t give them any ideas.” In the rest of the world, the ideas are already there in their history. We don’t have that. Our history is only one system period. Rule of the rich, by and for the rich. ”