Truth and Meaning: American Feudalism

Every day, we hear the mantra of the conservative extremists crying for less government, a plea that I share. We should have less government spending on the military industrial complex. We should have less government intrusion into our individual reproductive choices. Government should not be discriminating against people based on who they love. And our government should decriminalize nonviolent, victimless crimes and reduce our ridiculously high prison population.

Of course, these are not the freedoms that neo-conservatives want. They want illusory freedoms — impossible dreams born out of misguided delusion and just enough privilege to support the status quo. They want the freedom to buy any weapon unimpeded under the delusion that more guns means more security. They want so-called economic freedom under the delusion that every American has a equal and realistic shot at success. They want religious freedom, not out of any sense of loving one's neighbor, but so they can sit in judgment of their neighbor.

Neo-conservatives want to return to the "good old days" — not the good old 1950's, but the 1350's. They advocate for a return of a monarchy of the wealthy elite, imagining that the entities like the Heritage Foundation, the NRA and the American Family Association actually care about them. By voting for intellectual midgets who mouth the right platitudes, they imagine that their precious little freedoms will be protected. By electing bigots and scientific illiterates, they imagine that the government will protect them from terrorists, Muslims, atheists and gay people.

But what we really get is government by those who can afford to buy it. We get endless war because Halliburton needs higher quarterly returns. We get exploding oil trains and leaking pipes because Exxon has no interest in pursuing alternatives to fossil fuels. We get genetically-modified foods because Monsanto wants every private farmer driven out of business. We get epidemics of addiction because Budweiser shows us how horses and dogs can love each other. We get colossal rates of domestic violence and sexual abuse because pharmaceutical companies make more money by telling women they are not beautiful and pumping men full of sexual enhancement drugs.

So while you work your entire life and enjoy your rare time away from work, American nobility profits from your fears and your endless quest to be better off than your neighbor. Even more ironic, the feudal lords of corporate America convince you that by helping them stay wealthy, you are helping yourself. They feed you the delusion that you work and consume products in a "free" market while shipping your job to China, busting your union and fixing prices on many commodities.

Your enemy is not your Middle Eastern neighbors, or your gay neighbors, neighbors who use food stamps or your neighbors that don't go to your church. Your enemy is a small group of ultra wealthy people who did little or nothing to earn their riches and who have no intention of ever letting any of it trickle down to you. Your enemy is not the flesh and blood people who live where you live, but the corporate "persons" who are buying your government and shipping profits overseas. Your enemy is not the person who supports a woman's right to determine when she will have a child, the man who loves another man or the person who uses a different name for god. Your real enemy is America's feudal lords who swear allegiance to nothing but money, who love nothing but money and who worship nothing but money.