American Democracy is Bitterly Depressing and Lonely
The US economic policy created a divided, polarized, individualist culture that dehumanizes and destroys us, and we uphold it.
Here we are, advocating for war, defending millionaire politicians, and ignoring the poverty that fills our streets and the rage that engulfs society. Soap operas tell us about the evil world, forming our opinions and blinding us from our government’s international cruelties.
No one wants to be alone, and everyone is an expert, intent on proving everyone wrong to substantiate their significance, yet we solve nothing while furthering our alienation. We perceive patriotism as support for our government, not our communities, and our existence is pointless because we solely live to work.
We don’t have a shared history, but our problems are collective, and we’re too polarized and isolated to realize a win for workers is a win for everyone. There’s no collective goal, and we never reach our full potential because our sole objective is ownership.
A culture that prioritizes capital trivializes creativity, significance, intimacy, and self-determination. Our jobs are dead-ends, generating profits instead of value for society, and most of us are mentally and physically struggling with financial purposelessness.
We’re miserable, apathetic, and exhausted. Forced obligations erode our capacity to care for ourselves, our children, the elderly, and each other. Yet, we have the energy to argue over beating Russia, which swallows our time to discuss climate disasters, police brutality, public health, poverty, classism, racism, labor, gender, and civil rights.
The financially satisfied Americans who benefitted from New Deal policies don’t notice those benefits no longer exist, and everyone is terrified of impoverishment. One percent fears wealth redistribution, while financial stress torments ninety-nine percent because money buys food, accommodation, health, security, status, and fundamental needs.
Government policies modernized slavery, auctioning our lives to the highest bidders who exploit us to pursue inexpensive labor. Regulations that protected us from capitalism’s objective to achieve profits deserted us, fostering capitalism’s inherent flaws; to increase revenue by suppressing wages and staff.
“A class of laborers lives only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital.” — Marx and Engels
American democracy is producing capital relentlessly, and technological advancements didn’t set us free. They replaced humanity, stole our privacy, and impoverished us. We work long hours and years or beg for change from the still employed, and our parents’ arguments over finances become ours, and we pass this tradition on to our kids.
Societal conformity to capitalism dehumanized and enslaved us to a paycheck, constructing humans into savages by detaching us from each other and ourselves. We exchanged ourselves and humanity for money and bought nothing but loneliness, disappointment, anger, and fear.
Our opinions and cultural differences will never align, but our self-preservation and fundamental needs are the same globally. Yet, we align ourselves with political identities and cultural issues, consciously dividing and alienating communities.
“How can the world’s largest economic power say that it has no milk for children after President Biden announced $40 billion to buy arms meant for the war in Ukraine?” Brazilian President Lula da Silva pities us while we dismiss the Global South as ignorant poor people, not realizing they cherish life and our culture values nothing.
The US war expenditure has reached at least $113 billion, but our government can’t afford national healthcare during a pandemic, and workers can’t have paid sick days. We’re trying to make sense of senselessness, and the world is changing rapidly, yet we know everything and defend our political party’s every decision.
What a waste of time and life. We will never know our full potential because American democracy devours us, and we don’t realize that we don’t want to be swallowed. Unfortunately, we’ll have to cut ourselves out of the belly of the beast if we ever figure out we’re imprisoned, and it’s going to be messy, but it’s too late — there’s no other way.