We’ve lost the concept of collective responsibility. Everyone thinks society owes them something, while they owe society nothing. Like all of this structure we’ve been building for centuries, is going to stay stable just because.
As if: you can become a billionaire without streets or laws.
As if: you shouldn’t have to pay taxes but the postal service should still bring you mail.
As if: a market can be completely ‘free’ – despite the fact markets need rules to exist.
As if: you have the right to be a horrible parent, but it’s the school’s fault your kid sucks.
There are about 40,000 homeless veterans in the USA. Most Americans won’t even think about them this year, until November 11th when they post an obligatory status update on social media.
There are over 2 million homeless children in the USA. It is estimated that it would cost $20 billion to end homelessness here. Jeff Bezos just recently made over $2 billion in a single day, yet some of his employees in Ohio qualify for food stamps.
Around 60% of eligible voters participated in the 2016 national election. Every election, we point out that voter participation is low compared to most developed countries, yet we won’t even move election day away from Tuesday, or make it a national holiday.
There are over 40 million Americans under the poverty line. Over 10% of us.
The war on drugs is still completely going, except in the case of opioids. There are over 100K people in federal prisons for drug charges. There are over 1 million people in state prisons with drug offenses as their most serious charge. To anyone with even a cursory understanding of the drug war, it is clearly discriminatory and unproductive. But no one cares because private prisons are the new slavery.
It used to take a village to raise a child. Now, in the new age of personal responsibility, it’s acceptable or even encouraged to ignore the actual issues of our society. We have religious leaders who molest children and then become city-council presidents. Hell, people WITH CHILDREN don’t even care what the environment (or economy) will be like when their kids grow up.
We refuse to hold elected leaders to any standard of ethics or communication.
We refuse to support additional political parties that would balance our national politics.
We don’t care that words lost meaning.
We don’t care that nobody understands most of our current wars.
Do we care about America anymore? Did we ever? Or have we always just cared about money, and using the USA as a vehicle to acquire it?