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For the past 15 years I’ve been saying “we’ve gone from being ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’ to being ‘the land of the free to rip you off and the home of the bravely corrupt’.”
Any way you look at it, it is what we have been reduced to! Free enterprise at the cost of ALL else has become the norm. It’s no wonder we find ourselves in the midst of both a financial and moral crisis unlike any other. Yet we’re so “civilized” that we simply let some of the most corrupt live at home in their laps of luxury; others serve a little time and go right back to their celebrity lives. How quickly we forget; and how easy it is for some to buy forgiveness!
Federal prosecutors got so excited about the huge bed of corruption in the legislature of Alaska, that they sacrificed ethics for convictions; now those crooks are walking around free again, while others escaped serving any time, and others escaped conviction all together. Pharmaceutical companies are getting rich while we’re bombarded by the media with ads for pills to fix everything that’s wrong with us, and other pills to fix the things that the first pills either miss or create, all the while these drug companies are making their millions while others are dying from these same pills. We sell our garbage to China, they sell it back to us as products that at a minimum are of junk quality, and in the worst case are things that kill. We pay through the nose for fossil fuels while oil companies rake in billions in profits and are excused from paying fines and penalties. Not a day goes by that we don’t all get some rip-off email offer, some untrue inheritance claim or other sham offer.
Greedy, greedier, greediest, that’s what the last 3 decades have been. The Savings & Loans and Junk Bonds, Enron & WorldComm, now, what seems like ALL the banks, credit card companies, investment firms, insurance AND car companies. Generations have had their retirements shattered, while a small handful of folks have cornered the cash. Madoff, made off!
It’s as if life has become one huge rip-off, Ponzi scheme, and we’ve lost our moral compass – as a planet.
Years ago when I was planning my move to Alaska a friend of mine asked me what I was afraid of, as if it was fear that was motivating my move. It wasn’t, it was a dream …but if there had been something I was trying to get away from, if my dream was in part, a reaction to what I saw around me, it was this – the decay of society we find ourselves in now. Have we become a modern day Atlantis? Only time will tell.