Race and Inequality in the US.
Ever flip on the news after bedtime routine only to find the kids crept halfway down the stairs where they watch, wide-eyed as chaos unfolds on the streets of Portland, Minneapolis, Kenosha or Chicago?
There’s a civil war brewing in America.
Both sides want power; the power to tax, spend and regulate, power over the money & banking system, power to control the military, and power over the hearts and minds of our children.
Both use emotion to construct a narrative, stoking us to lust, bark and rage for their cause.
One side wants our kids to believe that America is evil, racist, and corrupt, built on the backs of slaves and at the direction of only exploitative, capitalist pigs.
They engender guilt, coaxing our sense for fairness, our desire to virtue-signal, and frankly, self-interest and laziness, promising spoils from printed money and the flogging of capitalist pigs.
The other side says America is fair and just, a shining beacon of freedom to the world, a force for good and the great liberator, built on gumption and American exceptionalism.
They offer spoils too – it’s spoils all around from newly printed money! – while caressing our very desperate desire to believe in something bigger, in the inherent good of God, country and self. If we buy their line, we don’t even have to think. It’s just butter-cream-frosting as far as the eye can see.
Both sides need that we suit-up and take sides. Their side, preferably, but any side will do. That’s what gives this whole charade any real power. How each will use it is anyone’s guess.
The only sure thing is that your freedoms will erode over the next four years, as they did the last four, and the four before that, slowly suffocating economic opportunity for all but the well-connected
Pick a side though, champ. We’ve got a button for you…
The real story
There’s some truth to both narratives.
Massive injustice litters our nation’s history, like that of every other.
Before 1865, much was accomplished on the backs of slaves. America has seen discrimination in all forms, against all races and classes, some undoubtedly more than others.
Much from the American experiment is also a shining example. Never before did so many ascend from a poverty so dark it’s beyond the wildest of your 21st century imagination.
They came by the boatload with nothing but dirt beneath nails, fleeing authoritarianism, oppression, and destitution, stamped in the damp halls of Ellis Island and given nothing.
That is, nothing but the chance to live free in the New World.
In other words, everything.
Everything they could dream of or imagine, all balled up in the freedom to control their own destiny, to work hard and keep what they earn, and to make their own luck.
The history of humankind is one of murder, mayhem, and desolation, mostly at the hands of governments or warring tribes associating only by race, culture, or creed.
What was born here in 1776 was different. The ideas of liberty and limited government became the best example in history of the mass-raising of living standards. Rags, to relative riches.
Rights were not equally shared across race or gender, an epoch folly, but reminiscent of the time. These rights were fought and won later, a righteous struggle that was long overdue.
That rights were not shared was the epitome of wrong. That they were fought for and won is the embodiment of right. That’s a lesson to explain to your children.
The other lesson to nurture is that liberty through limited government is history’s best, most proven formula for prosperity across humankind. For which race? The human race.
All of us.
Sadly (for most of us), limited government now dwells among the dodos and dinosaurs.
The US Federal leviathan towers over the individual, over the community, over the state, and over the world, more power consolidated now than anything ever before known.
That is the real problem.
As they wrestle and salivate for this power, posing, interrupting, charading, neither narrative captures the nuance. The big lessons are lost on both. In their place are only hyperbole and emotional rally cries.
As parents, we must teach our children to dig deeper, to reject this surface-level manipulation, to think for themselves. We must nurture their curiosity, their skepticism for authority, to help them develop an internal moral compass, to see right from wrong, and to stand against injustice from wherever it comes.
If we raise them to simply fall in line, to speak only of our side and theirs, red or blue, that will be the final nail for the American experiment.
The last generation of Americans will someday give rise to a generation of only sheep. That will not be us.
The real, real story
Whatever you believe of the past, present day America resembles it little.
Individuality has been replaced with groupthink through emotional persuasion, regulatory capture, and warring, barking factions led by sociopathic busybodies fighting for control.
Political theatre is the story of the day, designed only to divide and conquer. Critical thinking is extinct, especially in our institutions of higher learning. It’s all just marketing copy now.
Election 2020 is downright surreal, like living inside a parody of a satire of a caricature of a lampoon. I keep waiting for Bill Cosby to throw open the front door, perhaps with his pants down this time, a studio audience cued to laughter as another ornament falls to the floor from a ceiling in decay.
Those who read us often know where we connect the dots.
All roads lead to a broken, crooked, debt-based paper money system, born August 15, 1971, dead or dying in the near and fast-approaching future.
When your money isn’t real, neither is anything else.
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Want more like this? Try My Plan to Save the World.
