Fall
of An Empire: An Inside View
By
Rev. Paul J. Bern
Much
has been discussed and written about the decline of America over the
last several decades, and increasingly so as time marches on. The
latest announcements via the main stream media about rumors of wars
and the earth's damaged environment – damage that absolutely must
be repaired if humankind are going to survive as a species – are
becoming ever more frequent. I've been studying these two
interrelated phenomena for the last eight years or so, and achieving
world peace and environmental cleanup are the twin finish lines in
the race for permanent peace and balanced living globally. So, if
this is the finish line to this race for “life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness” as it is described in the Declaration of
Independence, then where is the starting point? I had to stop typing
and just sit and think for a short while before I wrote down any more
of this, but if I had to pick a single starting point, it would be
American education.
The
average student loan debt upon graduation from college with a 4-year
degree was $40,000.00 as of 2011. If you are just graduating or
recently graduated from college, you will have to go back to school
and earn a new degree, or otherwise change vocations, about once
every ten to fifteen years over your lifetime in order to keep up
with changes in the job market and new technologies. That is a
frightening prospect for anybody. I argue that if we have to go back
to school that many times in our lifetimes just to stay gainfully
employed, then it is the system that is broken. The graduates are
doing their part by their years of diligence in school, but the
educational system has stopped putting up their fair share, and the
results are an educational, financial and vocational train wreck for
every new graduate.
Higher
education as it stands right now is only for those who can afford it,
or only for those who can “qualify” for predatory student loans
that bury new graduates under mountains of debt so large that many
can never be fully repaid. Unfortunately for these people, it is now
standard operating procedure for prospective employers to check the
credit of job applicants, and this is a practice that needs to be
outlawed because it too is discriminatory. The end result of this is
that the further behind one gets on his or her student loan payments
due to unemployment the worse one's credit rating becomes, and so the
harder it becomes to find suitable employment, and so on. This is a
social injustice that must be vigorously opposed at every turn. It
amounts to economic discrimination based on class; in this case
employers (those who possess wealth) vs. the unemployed (those who
have none), and that is a civil rights issue if ever there was one.
And so, to correct this injustice, higher education should be free to
everyone who desires it, and it should be available unconditionally.
For details on how this can be accomplished simply and without
reinventing the wheel, please order
my book, “The Middle and Working Class Manifesto”. Thanks so
much!
I
cannot overemphasize the fact that the loss of housing, jobs,
savings, pensions and other investments, plus transportation, access
to higher education and the human dignity that goes with them, and
the loss of access to health care, are all civil rights issues for
the early 21st
century. The fact of the matter is that we all have the right to all
of the above as American citizens – the fundamental right to
shelter, to a livelihood and a living wage, to preventative health
care, to free education for life instead of having to pay for it. But
instead I'm sure you all have noticed, as I have, that America's
existing constitutional rights are being systematically taken away
from us a little bit at a time by the top 1%. The only way to stop
this from occurring is to take to the streets in nonviolent protests,
to organize and initiate general strikes, to flood the social media
in order to better organize, and to keep doing these things until
satisfactory changes are made. What
will happen if this does not occur? Where will our formerly great
country end up if everybody sits idly by and does nothing? Let me
paint a portrait for you of what would likely happen in that event, a
devastating portrait of a country in ruins. The end, you see, has
nearly arrived. In fact, the end of all things as we have known them
is a lot closer than you may have previously thought. Allow me to
present a few examples.
[1] The number
of Americans that have become so discouraged that they have given up
searching for work completely now stands at an all-time high.
[2]
Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week before
taxes.
[3] Since 2001,
over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.
[4]
In 2012, 1.6 billion cellphones were sold worldwide. So how many of
them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.
[5]
According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute,
if the U.S. trade deficit with
China
continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose
over half a million jobs this year alone.
[6]
According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the
foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding
30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S.
employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent
to 21.1 million.
[7]
As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in
manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were
employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
[8]
In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita
broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.
[9] One
prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be
three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040. At any
rate, the Chinese economy will eclipse the US economy by 2016.
[10]
The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now
living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of
poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.
[11] The true
U.S. unemployment rate, if everyone is counted who currently aren't
being included in the “official” government numbers, is at least
20%.
[12]
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are currently 6.3 million
vacant homes in the United States that are either for sale or for
rent.
[13] Since the
year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year
2000 there were approximately 72 million middle class jobs in the
United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class
jobs.
[14]
18 percent of all residential mortgages in the United States were in
negative equity as of the end of the third quarter of 2012.
[15]
In 2010, 55 percent of Americans between the ages of 60 and 64 were
in the labor market. Ten years ago, that number was just 47 percent.
More older Americans than ever find that they have to keep working
just to survive. Retirement in America has become a lie and a cruel
joke.
[16]
As 2007 began, there were just over 1 million Americans that had been
unemployed for half a year or longer. Today, there are over 6 million
Americans that have been unemployed for half a year or longer. If we
have all this economic and military might while one third of our
children come from households that rely on food stamps to eat, then I
would say there is something really wrong with this picture.
There
can be no doubt that the USA has become a second-rate country when
half of its working adults can't find meaningful work.
There
can be no doubt that the USA has become a second-rate country when
it is the last developed nation in the entire world without national
health insurance for its citizens.
There
can be no doubt that the USA has become a second-rate country when
all the good jobs get out-sourced overseas for pennies on the dollar
while formerly employed Americans and small business owners lose
their houses, their cars, their savings and wind up homeless and
destitute.
There
can be no doubt that the USA has become a second-rate country when
it is the last developed country where there is no family leave for
its workers.
There
can be no doubt that the USA has become a second-rate country when
our nation has more people in prison than any other country in the
world.
There
can be no doubt that the USA has become a second-rate country when
our country has accumulated the largest foreign trade deficit and
federal budget deficit in the history of the world. Since the
government is either unwilling or unable to address these issues in
an intelligent manner, it is up to us, “we the people”, to
tackle the job from the bottom up since the top-down approach
apparently isn't working.
Today,
the United States spends roughly 76 cents of every federal tax dollar
on just four things: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and interest
on the $14 trillion debt. That leaves 24 cents of revenue to pay for
everything else the federal government does. Barring serious efforts
to curb the growth in the country's debt, by 2020 Washington could be
spending 92 cents of every tax dollar on Medicare, Medicaid, Social
Security and interest alone. That would leave just 8 cents to pay for
everything else. This is just one reason why the country's fiscal
course is often described as "unsustainable." There is one
more major thing that makes America as we have known it to be
"unsustainable", and that added ingredient is oil.
World
civilization is based on oil. The world is running out of oil. The
oil companies and governments are not telling the truth about how
close we are to the end. Whoever controls the remaining oil
determines who lives and who dies. Sixty percent of this oil is under
a triangular area of the Middle East the size of Kansas. But instead
of an alternative energy plan we got the invasion of Iraq by oilmen
wedded to a dying business, willing to kill hundreds of thousands to
cling to the last drop. The US is never leaving the region or
withdrawing from Iraq. The oil won't last that long... It's not about
greed any more. It's about survival. Because the leadership of this
country was initially too greedy to switch from oil to solar, wind,
geothermal and other renewable alternatives, it may now be too late.
Had the hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the invasion and
occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan (might as well include western
Pakistan plus Yemen and Somalia while we're at it) been put into
alternative energy the world might have had a fighting chance. As of
now that is far from certain.
World
oil reserves are far lower than officially reported, the situation
far more serious than publicly admitted, and we're already past “peak
oil”. That's the word from two anonymous IEA whistle-blowers, The
Guardian reports. To add insult to industry, the figures were
deliberately massaged, at least in part, to appease the United
States: Apparently the IEA was concerned that reporting the true
reserve numbers – and keep in mind that determining oil reserves is
as much art as science – it would trigger a buying panic. The
US enters the picture encouraging the IEA to underplay the rate at
which oil fields are being depleted – something which the IEA has
admitted in recent months is occurring more quickly than previously
acknowledged – while at the same time overplaying the possibility
of new large discoveries.
There
should be protests and demonstrations in the streets because of big
oil's hijacking of the US economy (the Occupy, Anonymous and “99%”
Movements were only the start). I must say I'm a bit surprised and
disappointed by this fact, but I continue to be hopeful for a
resurgence in protests all across America. But what will millions due
in a real national emergency? For example, right now gas is about
$3.75 a gallon. But America's supply chain for petroleum has a
problem. Over 80% of US oil refineries are located in the Gulf Coast
area, consisting mainly of southern Louisiana and southeast Texas,
right in the middle of hurricane country. All of these refineries are
at least 30 years old. All it will take is one category 4 or 5
hurricane to knock these refineries off-line for a few weeks or
months and the US will find itself in very serious trouble. Then
there is the fact that the US gets 40% of its imported oil from one
country, Saudi Arabia, which ironically is the birthplace of Osama
Bin Laden. If Saudi Arabia decides to cut off our supply of Middle
Eastern oil, the US will also be in very serious trouble. If Iran
decides to blockade the strait of Hormuz (Google or Yahoo that), much
the same thing will occur. No matter what happens, the price of gas
is sure to rise up to between $6.00 and $7.00 per gallon by the end
of 2016 or the beginning of World War 3, whichever comes first. What
will we do then? At these price levels, working Americans could be
paying nearly $200.00 to fill up their cars with gas, even more for
full-size trucks and SUV's. What will we do when we can no longer
afford to drive to work? I'll bet you won't be sitting at home alone
crying in your coffee!
Can
you now see that we as a united people must protest all this systemic
greed in order to keep these things from happening, or at least to
lessen the severity of their impact? As I watch the street battles in
Egypt, Syria and Iraq on TV and the Web, all I keep thinking about is
how they have mustered the courage to fight their government's
tyranny while Americans remain unready to revolt against the peculiar
American brand of consumer tyranny. How ironic that in the nation
with monumental gun ownership among its citizens there is no hint of
people giving up on meaningless elections and taking to the streets
in massive numbers to protest their corrupt government. Just this
week a new report documented this: Nearly a year and a half into the
economic recovery, some 45.6 million Americans continued to rely on
food stamps, and that was in November, 2012. That amounted to more
than 14 percent of the population relying on food stamps to purchase
groceries, just another result of stubborn high unemployment and low
incomes among the employed. As of late 2013, that number in now
approaching 17%. For this to be happening in the richest country in
the world is simply inexcusable.
Anyone
with a smidgen of intelligence and critical thinking capability knows
that in almost every conceivable way the US is in awful shape for a
large proportion of its citizens. The
nation needs to shift into revolution mode. Watching the Superbowl,
pro wrestling, the World Series, Dancing With The Stars and American
Idol will not improve our
situation. Neither will playing video games. While we're all
preoccupied with the nonsense and insanity of everyday life through
all our little electronic diversions of endless variety, America's
government, banking and financial sectors are awash with corruption,
greed and dishonesty. Our health care system no longer produces
healthy citizens compared to many other nations, despite costing
much, much more. Our physical infrastructure is a disgrace, crumbling
and threatening public health and
safety.
Upward mobility has largely disappeared and the middle class
continues to sink into a lower class. Economic inequality has
skyrocketed with the rich becoming richer and everyone else suffering
more and more. The large number of homeless, hungry, poor and
imprisoned Americans defines a nation that has lost its glory and its
luster.
It
is the tyranny of silence that prevents so many of us today from
rising up to protest the "forever wars" against illegal
drugs, and especially for oil, that we cannot hope to win and can no
longer afford. It is the
same tyranny of silence that prevents us from rising up to protest
the government takeover – not by socialists – but by extremists
on the right who readily give tax breaks to the ultra rich at the
expense of everyone else. This same cadre of the military-industrial
complex has also been successful in more or less co-opting an
otherwise capable president into believing that cutting spending on
everything except war is the only way to solve our debt crisis. And
it is this same gang of madmen that characterized the inaction of
those of us who have suffered foreclosures of their homes, and those
of us who find ourselves without jobs, and those of us who "played
by the rules and worked hard" to get through school only to
graduate into an America of diminished expectations and heavy debt,
as well as all of the rest of us who have seen our salaries cut, our
benefits cut, our pensions cut, and who now say to ourselves, "It's
okay I guess, because at least I still have a job". Yes, it is
all of us, including me and you, who see the protests in Egypt and
cheer for democracy but are too afraid to reassert our ownership of
the democracy we have at home. We all have been made afraid, having
been bullied by the system. We live in a tyranny of silence. The time
to break that silence has arrived. And, as Thomas Jefferson so
profoundly expressed it: "All
tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to
remain silent."
America
's founding fathers stood up for their freedom, winning it from the
British. The Egyptian people have stood up for their freedom, too,
winning it from the Mubarak dictatorship, finding their courage even
when Mubarak's thugs flew fighter jets low over their heads, beat and
murdered protesters, and otherwise threatened violence. But how does
America compare with Egypt? The truth is there
is a stunning amount of inequality in Egypt. But America is even
worse.
*
Egypt's Mubarak stole billions from his people, while the American
oligarchs have stolen trillions.
*
Egypt has been living under a state of emergency for over 30 years,
yes. But Americans have been living under a continuous state of
emergency for 13 years straight.
*Mubarak
was supported by the military. But the military-industrial complex
has taken over America as well.
*Mubarak
ignored the wishes of his people. But has the American government
been listening to its people? Consider the 2010 Rasmussen poll which
found that "just 21% of voters nationwide believe that the
federal government enjoys the consent of the governed."
A
2010 Gallup poll determined that nearly half of all Americans believe
"the Federal government poses an immediate threat to the rights
and freedoms of ordinary citizens." Poll after poll shows that
"both national parties are deeply unpopular with an electorate
looking for something new and different." Polls reveal that 82%
of all Americans wanted Wall Street to be reined in, in a substantial
and meaningful manner, and yet our government has let Wall Street
have its way on all the important issues. Polls find that Americans
want the big financial players who acted with fraud to be punished,
and yet our government has let all of the big fish off the hook.
The
heart of the matter here is that what has happened in Egypt, Syria,
Libya and Greece desperately needs to happen here in the US. Even if
we successfully repair America's broken educational system, that is
only the starting point. If we do not then we will have only
ourselves to blame, and we will get whatever kind of tyrannical
government we deserve. But I do not believe that the American people
will continue to put up with this situation any longer. In fact, I am
convinced it is a certainty that the American people, if confronted
by the continuing class war that I have been writing about, will
ultimately rebel, forcing the current government from power and
installing a new one in its place by popular vote just like what
happened in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011. That rebellion has already
started with the Occupy, Anonymous and the 99% Movements, and I have
no doubt that these movements will continue to grow as time goes on.
I participated in Occupy DC when it started in early October of 2011,
and I must tell you that it felt really good to be a part of this
historic and significant movement of the people. I would urge
everyone who reads this to get involved in some way in this noble
undertaking. If you can't physically be at the protest, organize one
in your local area instead. Use the social media to promote it. Or to
be a donor to existing Occupy Movements near you, simply search for
them on the Web.
Besides,
the alternative is unthinkable. The alternative would be for the US
to turn into a third world country. We are dangerously close to that
point already. But we can still stop that from occurring and turn
things around in our favor if we unite together for change, and a sea
of voices rising up from a multitude of humanity can most certainly
change things for the better. The momentum for this movement is
already underway, so let's capitalize on that and really get things
rolling. Besides, it's a good positive experience to be a part of a
new 21st
century civil rights movement such as this. Be sure and get started
with this today, and for those who are already participating, keep up
the good work!
