Saturday August 27, 2011...How did we get into this mess?

Why do I feel like the country is being run by the Tories ('God, King and Country' )and I am one of the rebels?

25 million Americans don't have a full-time job. 46 million Americans don't have health insurance.

American schools are at the bottom of the list of industrialized nations in education. 15 million children live in families who are below the poverty level. 15 million unemployed people. 3½ million homeless people. All this in one of the richest countries on Earth.

This country feels more and more like a monarchy with the wealthy acting as the aristocracy and their puppets running the country per their wishes. I understand that the Tea Party is upset, but I think they are mad at the wrong people. They should be angry with the rich and powerful who are taking over the country. The rich and powerful control politics, finances, business and the armed forces. They have instituted a police state with their Patriot Act and are trying to extend their empire to the corners of the earth through wars and trade acts. The politicians see the polls and know what the people really want, but they act in accordance with their wealthy controllers.

The average citizen holds no control over his elected official. The press is owned and controlled by the elite and they only present the news that they are allowed to. We are given the choice of which of their politicians we want to elect, but they have already financed both parties and win control no matter how we vote. Our choices are diminishing and so are our rights and privileges. The government is eradicating the unions and slowly erasing our social safety network.

Global society is dividing into two blocs: the plutonomy and the rest. Growth is powered by the wealthy few, and largely consumed by them. Then there are the 'non-rich,' the vast majority, now sometimes called the global precariat, the workforce living a precarious existence. We rebels are the precariat. We are definitely the non-rich and the non-powerful.

Maybe when enough people see what's happening we can institute a change in direction and see about helping ALL of the people find the blessings of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. After all, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed and whenever those governments become destructive of the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, those people have the right to alter or abolish those governments to effect their Safety and Happiness. These thoughts were so eloquently expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution and should never be forgotten.

Now that the blessings of our society are being accumulated in the coffers of the very few, we find our life styles diminishing and our choices narrowing. We stand on the outside, looking in, on the benefits of our society and wondering how we got here.