Is America An Emerging 3rd World Country?

With a war that is costing this nation over $1 billion a day, a housing market that has lost any semblance of a bottom, and oil at over $130 a barrel, I would venture to say...maybe. Months ago I wrote a blog titled, "Who Will Officially Welcome Us to the 3rd World?" and posited that we were well on our way. I'm still as pessimistic as I was then, but now I'm simply hoping that this election will turn things around-but it's unlikely.

The two (op)posing parties have the same agenda-catering to the owners of this nation-not it's labor force. If you don't own a piece of this country-a major piece, then you are going to find it difficult in the future to maintain even a substandard lifestyle. There are those who have seen themselves as a part of the establishment, and voted based upon such a belief. And it is those same individuals who are now recognizing that they too are just a cog in the machine that can simply be shut down, dismantled, or discarded at the behest of someone else.

In 1999 gas prices were $.90 a gallon. And then some of you decided to elect an oil man for President, and by doing so, we've gone from below $1 a gallon to $4, an increase of over 400% in 9 years. Does anyone else besides me see a correlation? But who's to blame? Certainly not the wealthy or the politicians. They've just done what we've allowed them to do-become what we've allowed them to become. The Native-Americans (I still call them Indians), believed that the land belonged to all. But now we all are seeing that we're being excluded from a system that we've helped to build.

The economy knows no discrimination. When you pay at the pump, you don't get a Republican or Democrat discount. There are no discriminating practices when it comes to foreclosing on someone's home. It's simple, you can't pay-you're out. Although minorities may be the first to go when companies decide to lay off its labor staff, but eventually we all feel the sting.

I have a question to pose to those of you who swore that immigrants were taking your jobs-Are they the ones sitting at the desk you once occupied at that corporate call center? Wait, I believe I have the answer to that-no. I also have a tidbit of information for you. When public sentiment was that immigration was destroying the labor market, in a way you were correct-they just used the wrong homonym. Immigrants taking jobs wasn't the problem, it was job emigration-jobs leaving the U.S. to be had by individuals in nations as far away as India, China, and as local as Mexico and Canada. Dell Computer, American Express, and a host of other corporations were able to reduce their overhead by paying an Indian worker a fraction of what they paid a U.S. citizen. During the Bush II administration, these same corporations have enjoyed tax breaks that would comparatively make welfare look like the cost of a McDonald's happy meal-all at the expense of America, and Americans.

What bothers me the most, is that everyone is silent. No one is really standing up and screaming at the top of their lungs about any of this. But I know the reason why-you see, we've allowed them to label us, separate us, categorize us...willingly. African-American; Asian-American; the disabled; multi-ethnic; white; Democrat; Republican; Independent. We were Nascar dads and Stay-at-Home moms. But do you know what they call us behind our backs? CONSUMERS. If you're finding it difficult seeing the problem with the term, allow me to illustrate it for you. Imagine a large sow, (for those of you who've never been on a farm before, that's an adult female pig), laying on her side and beneath her are a dozen little piglets suckling. The sow is the system, you're just one of the piglets. Now let's say that, for whatever reason, the sow loses her interest in the piglets, gets up and allows them to fend for themselves. Some will probably survive, most will not. People, the sow has left the building.

Look, I know this is hard to believe. How could your government do that to you? Well, for those of us whose ancestors were brought here in chains, beaten, raped, tortured, and then set free without any psychological assistance to repair the damage that had been done to our mental (and physical) well-being, we've seen this before. You're just a number and if children are forced to work in sweat-shops for pennies a day-in modern times, how is it that you would think the very same thing couldn't happen here? It's a mentality-a mindset. It's a philosophy, and all it takes is for someone in a position of power to see it as a viable solution to a problem. Yes, it's just that simple. Sure, people are going to hit the streets in protest, but understand this-you're protesting against your sow, and if you piss her off enough, you may never suckle again. They control the food supply, the water supply, and although you'll still have air to breathe, they are making sure that you'll have more than your fair share when you're forced to live out of doors.

But all is not lost. I say look to the Amish. They've lived self-sufficiently for centuries. Never taking more than was needed (over-consuming). Living and working in small self-serving communities, (communism people). Capitalism is for those who control the capital and the resources. In a truly free market it might have worked. But this hybrid economic system we have serves only a small segment of our population-and they have no intentions of sharing. We all were nothing more than just labor, and America a labor camp. And now that we've made them uber-wealthy, they've picked up like a swarm of locust and are descending upon crops elsewhere while the rest of us sort through what's left of what was once a great idea, but is now nothing more than a dream turned nightmare.