Citizens Lost in Freedom, I-280 Tragedy

  Our way of life; or life by auto, ups everyone's chance of being killed while driving. The combination of Sprawl and automobiles has ruined the American landscape. Land resources and local historical places paved over or marginalized by too many roads, too many parking areas, too many malls, too many offices, too many housing projects. Cities the centers of life in most nations have been turned into nowhere; people having to fend for their own. Our Interstates Highways have especially become Truck Ways; hauling all things made in China from coast to coast.

  The automobile along with American individualism, liberty and obsessive private property concepts have destroyed a society. In fact the only work allowed by our hostile congress in the nature of economic recovery is to continue with more road work and infrastructure upgrades, some necessary others to expand sprawl that favors corporate developers instead of Urban or economic ecology engineers. American exceptionalism is the very ruin of us all, driven by the narcotic of money, this exceptionalism is another form of stupidity; believing ourselves' to be Americans at the same time having no power or understanding of true citizenship. We do not live and learn, we live and consume. This not only exhausts the resources of the planet, put pollutes in the process, two ways take us to the uneconomic society;  allocation of all possible resources for corporate power and the end result known as "throughput" the resulting waste and pollution that degrades and poisons us, while the corporate oligarchs profit merely for profits sake. This “throughput” is given to us as our problem, corporations purposely ignoring this responsibility of consequence. 

  Fracking to off-shore oil drilling delaying the future, preventing green renewable technology from blooming are examples of the darkest forces of profit.

  We now live in a nation where very little of what should make Americans exceptional as it did in its birth, citizenship. Although our so-called leaders of today fool themselves into believing they practice democracy we as citizens should remember their power is always; elected (rather appointed) officials are only serving terms of office. Our foundation must become an informed educated citizenry, as the founders intended. Most people feel they are being ruled as subjects, instead of realizing their Constitutional place as citizens in a democracy striving for a “more perfect union”.

 Every time in history a need arises for some understanding of “union”. The Constitution itself is an example of this idea, some movement should arise to amend or add amendments to the Constitution.  The first step of its creation was State submission to Federal power in Interstate and foreign affairs;then  the expulsion of slavery; civil rights for blacks and woman, now in our time it is environmental and economic justice which is one in the same that needs established justice under its structure. 

  The expression freedom is not free; is not true freedom is a made up concept from an expectation of independence from a Monarch of which Americans or Colonials were inferior for not being born in the mother country. Therefore even when the British were defeated by the Army we were not free, but free of them. The human condition is a constant state of responsibility, mutual respect and recognition not only of other peoples, but all life. In our present situation corporate power has separated themselves from this inherit human condition. So the super-rich, the one percent are free. This “freedom” is not only unnatural it has become criminal, selfish and serves no purpose of union or common good.

  When President Eisenhower warned of the power of the military industrial complex, it was time again to struggle or reestablish this union; this did not occur and the Red Scare was allowed to entrench corporate power and continue war and conflict.  Since the end of World War 2 we have been on a path of environmental destruction on a scale unknown. We seemed to have learned little and are in fact taught little. The concept of citizenship somehow became dangerous to vested interest. We were denied political diversity under the pretext Americans were inherently instilled with superior qualities of humanity without honestly knowing or caring to know the real history of our people. History does not repeat itself, crime does. We have become a nation of criminals practicing a gangster form of economics which became a way of non-economic results. We are worse off now than before and with many more serious problems for our future generations. Our system has brought us nothing good, is for the few and has allowed a minority of corporate powers to rule the planet for consumption. As of December 2013 may it be said the United States is not united and has failed in its ideas’ and goals for the “more perfect union”.

  In most elections we find a majority of "registered voters do not vote. This outward and visible sign of the apathy and alienation inherit in our lives. This could easily be remedied by mandatory voter registration; like the mandatory draft registration. Then when an election occurs and a low turn occurs the election would be nullified. This is one way of attempting to bring back citizenship and real democracy.