I was looking at some economic reports and reading through comments. Then I began to think. I think that most Americans are in denial about what is going on in their country. I think they just think that life is tough and if you work hard youll make it. Im Hawaiian and I grew up on a Hawaiian homestead. I dont know anything about white picket fences and Mrs. Clever baking cookies in the oven. What I remember was my mother being active duty in the military and still having to work side jobs to make ends meet. What I remember was seeing neighbors sometimes living by candles because they couldnt afford electricity that month or being approached to buy food stamp coupons. When I went to a conference in California when I was 16, I remember being pulled aside at LAX by the security, patted down, and being spoken to in Spanish. I remember one of my aunts telling me about her life in the US during the Civil Rights movement and saying that racism designed by the people at the top to keep the poor fighting amongst themselves while they take from everyone else.. Things are really bad in the US, not just for indigenous peoples, but for everyone and the US is becoming like Louis XVIs France. The US needs to face the facts that: its infrastructure is falling apart; poverty is shamefully high; its media is ranked 46 is terms of press freedom (the lowest in the industrialized world); its environmental laws are broken or bent by powerful corporations; it spends more money on prisons than schools; its military throws away billions of dollars like recently the over-purchase of tanks; its universities are not producing scholars but functionaries and are losing world wide respect not to mention they are horrendously expensive; its support of Israel and dictatorships in general goes against the principles that most Americans like to believe in; and even the Affordable Health Care Act is inadequate compared to the care most Americans actually need. The imperial state that most Americans grew up with in the 1950s is long gone and its just holding on the vainglory illusions of a by gone era. With that, Americans need to also realize that it is in its own best interest to focus on its own internal problems for example its poverty and education--which are tied together. A child can not study when he/she is hungry nor with the rise of tuition rates can a smart youth attend a good college without setting him/herself up for 20 years of debt. The US needs a better education system--one that produces thinkers and an educated population that understands human rights, womens rights, indigenous rights, and the plight of African-Americans and Latinos. The US is importing doctors from other countries because most students can not even afford medical schools in the US. There is something wrong in a country when college football coaches make more than school superintendents. The US can only work on those above issues when it wakes up that poverty is real and is the source of a lot of its problems. It is also in the US best interest to decolonize its possessions in the Pacific and in the Caribbean--- everyone knows which ones Im referring to---to bring about long term stability. Its tax laws and the way it taxes people needs to be restructured. The trickle down economics that tax laws are still based on has even been denounced by economists and the Pope. It also needs to move Bureau of Indian Affairs away from the Department of the Interior to the Department of State or create a new cabinet level Department of Indigenous Affairs as a symbolic gesture to its commitment of nation-to-nation dialogue, indigenous rights and reconciliation. The genocide committed during the American Indian Wars is a scar on the American national psyche. Also, Israel. The US really wants peace in the Middle East, it needs to hold Israel accountable by withholding its military and foreign aid The US needs a new Roosevelt with a new New Deal. If not, future generations will look upon the Pax Americana and utter What a horrible waste of potential. These are just my thoughts.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 22:50:39 +0000
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