When I was growing up, America was the greatest country in the world, the shining light of freedom and opportunity, the country that brought down the Nazi Machine, the country that drew a line in the sand and told the Soviet Union that they had to stop. Kids walked to school without fear of being picked up by predators, sat in classrooms without fear of being shot by one of their angry classmates, graduated and went on to college, got jobs and participated in the American dream. Americans got in airplanes without being stripped and scanned and inflight they were served free meals by cheerful flight attendants. And somehow the airlines managed to make a profit back then. Probably because, in those days, the CEOs of corporations made more than the employees but not 1000X more. Nobody got $50 million bonuses because it was generally accepted that nobody was that much better than everyone else. There was a strong, working middle class working in America, and they members of unions that would protect them from the creeping greed of their bosses and provide for them in retirement.
Then somewhere in the sixties, it started to change. The insidious rise of the super rich began – the military industrial complex forced America into Vietnam – the first of the little bogus wars where Corporate America went “international” and got super rich and greedy. No amount of profit was enough. Somewhere back then, American banks also went international disguised as the IMF, loaning money to third world countries as a ruse to enslave them and steal their natural resources when they defaulted on their loans. The first in a series of really sleazy Presidents sat in the Oval Office – thanks to the corporate lobbyists who were now running the show. And as this all happened, Americans began to feel disconnected and pissed off. Their representatives didn’t represent them anymore. The Government passed laws to help their bosses smash the unions, take away their benefits, and ultimately drive them out of their houses. The Media became corporate and stopped telling the truth. Americans didn’t believe the six o’clock news or anything they read or heard anymore because it always turned out to be some interest group spinning their agenda.
So don’t be surprised that America is now an oligarchy controlled by the one percent. It didn’t happen overnight. It has been creeping up on America for a long time.