essay – 13 (part two)
Wednesday, January 12, 2017
Word Count – 603

I believe that America is at the same point that England was at the beginning of the 20th century. England was ruled by a corrupt, degenerate upper-class – England’s one-percenters – that owned all the wealth and lived off the exploitation of its people. American government is totally controlled by the party that represents the interest of its corporate oligarchy and it was voted into office and power by the least financially secure.

The War-To-End-All-Wars (1914-1918) was the beginning of the end of the British Empire. And the last nail was hammered into the coffin in 1945.

Empires don’t have a one event on/off switch. It took 31 years for England to go from the empire on which the sun never sets to an island nation. How long will it take for the American Empire to officially be done?

The following is an examination of 4 indicators that I believe point to the beginning of the end.

political – 47% of eligible voters did not vote on November 8

  • Gerrymandering, as practiced by the modern Republican Party, has atrophied government and made it the pawn of corporate America – the one-percenters.
  • A man, who for many years, has paid no taxes, and who boasts about it and claims it’s an indicator of his intelligence, has been elected president.
  • His election is tarred by evidence that a foreign power skewed the vote in his favor.
  • Nine days before inauguration, and the president-elect has to defend himself against reports of sexual perversion. Today’s news-conference was the stage-set of a politician accused of using hookers. You know the look – all the family shows up, especially the wife who says she trusts her husband. (In today’s version, Pence played the wife role.)

technology – American ingenuity is asleep or dead

  • In 2011, NASA closed the 30-year space program. A program that pioneered many of the advances we now take for granted.
  • We’re all using technology invented 20 years ago, but paying through the nose for the latest updates. Updates that add no value to already bloated, cumbersome and underused systems.
  • All our beloved devices are made overseas. China and India being the biggest exporters of digital gadgets.
  • In a country that manages its consumption, its information, its stock market through bits and bytes, electronic voting is not an option.
  • On the Internet, false news, conspiracy theories and outright lies live on equal footing with facts and intelligence reports.
  • The president-elect communicates in 140-character tweets.

health care – the true coin-of-the-realm

  • In a society where workers move from job-to-job with alarming frequency, attaching health care to payroll is the only way to stop worker mobility. Therefore is it any surprise that corporate-government wants to control who gets health car? Control health care and you control the work-force.
  • Health care has been dubbed Obama Care and therefore easier to vilify and repeal.
  • Health care is also tied up with women’s heath issues and contraception and therefore suspect.
  • The group that voted on November 8 is also the group most at risk of losing its health care coverage.
  • Healthy eating and healthy practices have been dubbed elitist preoccupations. It’s time for sugar, salt, fast-foods and over-eating to regain their primacy in the American cuisine. Salads, vegetables OMG! This is America! We don’t eat that crap.

education – a political flashpoint

  • Forget skills, forget science, forget Math, forget reading, and certainly forget writing.
  • What’s important is that your daughter is in class with her friends; that your son gets A’s and no C’s; that creationism is taught; that the football team has the best playing-field.
  • And let’s make sure that black and poor children stay in inner-city schools; and that only white and middle-class kids attend suburban schools.
  • Remember that parents and politicians dictate the curriculum; teachers need to realize that they are mere servants.
  • In early 20th century England schooling was only for the upper-classes; girls were taught the niceties and prepared to be married off; and boys … Please! They’re going to inherit the title, the house, the stables, and the servants. Learning … Please! The tutor just needed to keep them busy until they could be shipped off to boarding school.
  • And let’s not forget that admission to Oxford and Cambridge was based on social-class not intelligence. (I love the fact that public-schools in England are tuition heavy private schools. Tell me that isn’t a great abuse of language.)
  • In 21st American, at the elite universities, legacy preference is an admission priority. Remember, proud C-student George W. Bush was accepted at Yale and know-it-all Trump is a graduate of Wharton.

click to read part one – golden showers