Who’ Da Thunk It?
Everyday life in the dying American empire
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As a child growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, I was raised to believe in the American Dream. My parents had benefited from programs like the GI Bill, and were employed in workplaces with strong unions. They believed that hard work, combined with a college education, would allow my sister and I to achieve a comfortable standard of living.
By the time I began to pursue my adult life, in the mid 1980’s, life in the US had radically changed. President Ronald Reagan fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, and decades of union-busting tactics ensued.
The significance of Reagan’s actions is rarely discussed today in the mainstream, and for understandable reasons: It was the first huge offensive in a war that corporate America has been waging on this country’s middle class ever since. As Warren Buffett — current estimated net worth $101 billion — has said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” https://theintercept.com/2021/08/06/middle-class-reagan-patco-strike/
In 2023, the “rich class” war against the people is so commonplace, that many of propaganda techniques used to brainwash the people into submission go unnoticed by the majority of US citizens.
We have become a nation of people brainwashed into believing that a “for-profit” healthcare system is somehow superior to the healthcare systems offered by all other highly industrialized nations. That somehow, it is acceptable that over 62% of us file for bankruptcy due to medical expenses.
We have become a nation that somehow can tolerate that mass shootings are just a part of everyday life:
The U.S. is setting a record pace for mass killings in 2023, replaying the horror on a loop roughly once a week so far this year.
And, how are the corporations that manufacture guns and other lethal weapons responding? By posting tweets like this one from Daniel Defense:
