Which America did you grow up in?
The Jim Crow America? The America that denigrated and underpaid women? The America that taxed wealthy Americans 90%, where rivers regularly caught on fire, where victims of sexual assaults were blamed, where pedophile priests went unpunished and their assaults hidden, child abductions were ignored, or the America that sent 50,000 mostly unwilling draftees overseas to die for a cause that they did not agree with?
Or the America before Corporations were declared people, the Voting Rights Act was not trashed, abortion was a woman's choice, science was not denigrated and denied, school children could recite a Pledge of Allegiance that did not have the words "under God" added, currency had the motto "E Pluribus Unum" ("Out of Many, One") instead of "In God We Trust," colleges were more affordable, CEOs only made 50 times what their workers made instead of 300+ times, Social Security was a worker-funded retirement insurance program and not a welfare entitlement, Earth Day was part of a non-political environmental protection effort and not a job-killing liberal scheme, executives overseeing fraud went to jail, lapel flag pins were not proof of patriotism, and more working class people had well-paying jobs and company pensions that weren't transferred to an under-funded government agency and didn't have benefits slashed?
America has problems now, America had problems in the past, America will have problems in the future. Longing for an idealized, romanticized America that never existed. Be careful what you wish for.
The Jim Crow America? The America that denigrated and underpaid women? The America that taxed wealthy Americans 90%, where rivers regularly caught on fire, where victims of sexual assaults were blamed, where pedophile priests went unpunished and their assaults hidden, child abductions were ignored, or the America that sent 50,000 mostly unwilling draftees overseas to die for a cause that they did not agree with?
Or the America before Corporations were declared people, the Voting Rights Act was not trashed, abortion was a woman's choice, science was not denigrated and denied, school children could recite a Pledge of Allegiance that did not have the words "under God" added, currency had the motto "E Pluribus Unum" ("Out of Many, One") instead of "In God We Trust," colleges were more affordable, CEOs only made 50 times what their workers made instead of 300+ times, Social Security was a worker-funded retirement insurance program and not a welfare entitlement, Earth Day was part of a non-political environmental protection effort and not a job-killing liberal scheme, executives overseeing fraud went to jail, lapel flag pins were not proof of patriotism, and more working class people had well-paying jobs and company pensions that weren't transferred to an under-funded government agency and didn't have benefits slashed?
America has problems now, America had problems in the past, America will have problems in the future. Longing for an idealized, romanticized America that never existed. Be careful what you wish for.
No comments:
Post a Comment