My Heart Aches For America

My America was the envy of the world. It compassionately shared its vast wealth to rebuild Europe and Asia after World War ll and it later established the Peace Corp to help poor nations help themselves.

Its space program captured the world's imagination, doing what mankind had only dreamed. And its manufacturing capacity was stunning, producing everything from state of the art computers, to televisions, to Levis, to cars the world wished for.

Its exports far exceeded its imports, but that was to be expected when the world desired so many American made goods, considered to be the best of the best. And we as a society prospered, rich beyond what anyone had anticipated as recently as the Great Depression, as we shared the wealth among each other, building a vast middle class and offering the promise of an even better tomorrow for our children.

Flash forward to today. America is immersed in perpetual wars, in which everyone and everything is a threat to our "national security." Our powerful war machine, now one of our biggest employers, builds endless weapons of mass destruction, fighter jets, etc., and we have military bases almost everywhere, all at taxpayers' expense.

Our debts are at all-time record levels and they are skyrocketing, as we owe money to practically everyone, every place in the industrialized world. 70% of our economy is now "shopping," in which U.S. consumers buy goods largely made elsewhere.

As for government oversight, what British Petroleum has done in the Gulf of Mexico is a fine measurement. It matches what we saw with Wall Street nearly sinking the global economy while the SEC and other regulatory agencies slept. And frankly, we are not nearly out of that financial mess, nor is there any new strict oversight. I believe we will finish the job of helping to destroy the world's financial system.

I'm 65 years old and have heard promises of energy independence since the early 1970's gas lines. Where is this policy? Where are the new technologies behind it such as solar and wind rather than oil and coal? Or do we just keep drilling and polluting until we can't anymore.

My god, this whole thing is disgusting! The U.S. didn't know what to do when Katrina struck in 2005 and it still doesn't with BP. It's answer to 9/11 was to illegally invade other nations and fight endless wars. This cruel military stupidity is our policy today.

A policy so bad, that unlike the Vietnam War, the U.S. military censors most of it so Americans won't be repulsed by it. Who wants to see Iraqi and Afghan and Pakistani orphans or mothers crying for their dead husbands or children? Even the dead and wounded U.S. soldiers and their families are largely kept from sight.

If all of this isn't bad enough, we now have a huge standing private Army run by firms such as Halliburton and Blackwater and the media doesn't ask about them nor does the public, yet they are a direct threat to what is left of our democracy.

At home, 15 million Americans are out of work, 1/2 of whom have been unemployed for over six months, and some for years. We have millions more under-employed. Our government has no answers for them, as we waste this vast resource.

And no surprise, we have huge numbers of homes awaiting foreclosure but hidden by Fannie and Freddie from public view at the direction of our government, that wants to maintain the fiction that real estate values are rising, even if it is only because this mountain of eventual foreclosures is out of sight.

It does this to assure consumers our economy is growing and that they should borrow and spend as our government does and with the hope that a recovered economy can absorb all these foreclosed homes.

So what will America's future be as our debts mount, our energy crisis grows, our manufacturing jobs are elsewhere, our vast taxpayer funded war machine expands and we layoff school teachers?

We have no leadership capable of solving these and other major problems, so it's up to you and me. We can sit in silence as so many people do, figuring there's nothing they can do and by their inactivity making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or we can get involved, pressuring government officials and taking direct action.

I choose the latter approach and am doing everything I can to stop America's wars, knowing that will also help to stop the financial bleeding as well. How about you? Will you pick or join a cause and make a difference? Do you have the depth of caring? If so your conscience will thank you and so will future generations of Americans.

Dick