Prosperity and wealth lead to harsh reality and bleak future for Americans

Society is accustomed to the phrase “money runs the world,” and we have accepted the fate that has been bestowed upon us from our fathers, who lived under its harsh realities, yet maintained an outlook of prosperity and good will.
But the phrase itself, so cold and shrewd, gives little hope for the idea that man can live prosperously.
It is not, as was once thought, that our economic success would trickle down to those of less birth and advantage. That idea of old has little ground to piss on.
Rather, success only gives the successor just enough time to help himself before being drawn to the desire to feed again.
In our brief history the patriots teetered between dictatorship, anarchy, socialism and communism with little thought of what was to come. We strived for our middle class communes where those of normality could procreate until equality evoked us all.
Yet few have stopped to look at the necessities that the behemoth required as victims to continue the prosperity of the fortunate.
The engine of our success, who once were the middle class of yesterday, have been mechanized, subcontracted, downsized, consolidated and finally shipped to those who, in their own ignorance of wages work for pennies on the dollar.
But pro bono, who benefits from this destruction of the middle class?
Where has that wealth been shipped?
Definitely not to those who need it I tell you. This wealth has not gone to prevention of AIDs, not to Africa, not to the preventable diseases that plague the earth, not to those who can’t even find food to eat, and neither to those who live in the fallout of our own production, consumption and waste.
Not to the armchair generals, to the kings of media, to the stockpiles of excess.
I ask myself every day why I have been bestowed reason and human decency, but am forced to ignore it out of shame of ones own country.
The “white man’s burden,” no longer a faux pas of decency, is now a shame of living.
What have we done to ourselves, how do you live with the knowledge that five times as many suffer directly for your enjoyment and pleasure?
How long have we been at war with the hatred we created?
Don’t let it deceive you, dig deeper and you will discover the truth, awake your emotions, and bottle up your pride and fears for they will not help you.
Now we stare our worst fears in the face and we can do little but cower before the all-powering economic monster that we have created out of our own ignorance or greed.
They have taken our liberties while we sulked in our prosperity.
Now when we need them the thought of resisting means threat of success, threat of failure, threat of shame and threat of starvation.
We no longer have the right to assemble, we no longer have free speech, and we no longer have swift and fair trials.
The means of control never left us when the shackles of slavery were finally broken,  it simply evolved.
What was once a simple show of force has changed to a show of control.
You see it everyday when you look at your bills on your Wachovia account, excuse me Bank of America.
So it leaves to ask, what keeps you from showing your true colors?
Is it numbers on a bank statement?
The shiny new toys the police use without any regard for rights?
The shuttering feelings of those of age who have already accepted their fate?
I’m not asking you to march in the streets chanting “down with America.”
All I ask is do not live in ignorance and be mindful of the future, because it ain’t getting any brighter, sunshine.

Comments, questions, criticisms and concerns about this opinion piece can be emailed to Benjamin.G.Blackwelder@live.mercer.edu.