COVER -> American Dreams
I want to open with some points for you to ponder. Then we'll get to "the beef." Consider these facts:
- A baby born in Washington, D.C. today is much more likely to die than a baby born in North Korea. Each day in this country, America, an average of 81 newborns perish. In all, in 1995, there were 29,583 infant deaths according to according the US Department of Health and Human Services. Half of those deaths could have been avoided, as they were the direct result of little or no prenatal care for the indigent mothers -- they had no health coverage as a result of our national policy regarding health insurance.
- The United States consumes five times more methylphenidate -- commonly known by the popular brand name Ritalin -- than any nation on earth. The United Nations International Narcotics Control Board has twice written warnings about American kids' dependence on this drug. Retired US Drug Enforcement Administration deputy assistant administrator Gene Harslip says, "We have become the only country in the world where childrfen are prescribed such a vast quantity of stimulants that share virtually the same properties as cocaine..."
- Depending on whether we choose to take estimates from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development or homeless advocates, on any given night in 1996 we could find between 500,000 and 800,000 homeless people in shelters or eating at soup kitchens. An extrapolation on these estimates leaves us with the startling conclusion that in 1996 between 1.2 and 2 million Americans experienced homelessness during that year. When the Clinton Administration produced the report Priority Home! The Federal Plan to Break the Cycle of Homelessness, its data indicated that between 4.95 and 9.32 million people had experienced homelessness in the latter part of the 1980s. According to current statistics, one of every four people who lack a roof over their heads is A CHILD.
- Consider, when thinking of the foregoing, that a person making the current minimum wage -- a working person -- cannot afford to house his or her family in most metropolitan areas of this country.
- The "war on drugs" is giving America a huge population of non-violent prisoners. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, more than sixty percent of all federal prisoners are serving time for drug offences. Now consider this: for every 1,000 violent crime arrests made by police, three people are ultimately sentenced to prison; for every 1,000 drug arrests made, sixteen people are sentenced to prison. The demand on the bloated prison system in this country leads to violent criminals often being released on parole or probation to make room for non-violent drug offenders who have mandatory sentences.
The laws in fifteen states now require life sentences for certain marijuana-related offences.
- Speaking of violent crimes, in 1992 (take any year you'd like, the numbers are about the same) police recorded notification of 10.3 million violent crimes. From these reports, they managed to accomplish 641,000 arrests. These resulted in only 165,000 convictions, a staggeringly high percentage of which were plea-bargained.
According to the math we use in my 'hood, these last facts seem to say that not-that-many violent criminals get caught and convicted in America, and them that do are let out onto the streets early to make room for non-violent drug users...Hmmn
"Okay, Homeboy, that's a pretty horrible set of facts," you're probably saying, "but how are they at all related to each other?"
Thanks for asking.
The relationship between all those horrible facts is that they are truths about life in America today that you WON'T read much about in your corporate-controlled newspaper, almost any magazine, or see portrayed on your television broadcasts tonight. We are all privy, in our daily lives, to these dirty secrets about every day American life that the "Mouthpiece Media," as our publisher gamely calls them, SIMPLY PRETEND DON'T EXIST.
Now what I mean to discuss in this article, Homes, is WHY the perspective that a litany like that above would give a person is so anathema to "the media."
The Number One reason is obvious to most people -- news like that doesn't SELL anything. It surely doesn't put anyone in a buying mood to think about the actual social problems that our political leaders, and we as citizens, need to address. It certainly undercuts anything any politician of either party says about this being a nation of "family values" when you look the way we treat, and harm, kids in this country as a direct result of social policies pushed by political leaders from the White House on down.
Many of these hare-brained social policies are shaped by the corporate interests which control our government with money. These same corporate interests who set our social agenda capitalize on the power and reach of the media conglomerates they own to push that social agenda in other countries. This allows the world's only remaining superpower the luxury of exercising its will to make the rest of the world more like us, no matter whether being so actually hurts the people in their countries or not. If the media bombardment -- from Hollywood to CNN -- doesn't make them comply willingly, we are not above compelling other nations to fall in line, as the Bush administration decision to cut funding to foreigners who offer abortion counseling unsubtly demonstrates.
Our media trumpets the impression, in both subtle and blatant ways, that America is the best country in the world and that, therefore, it follows that the American way of doing things --- from politics to consumerism -- must also be the best in the world. But the evidence of our own eyes has to tell us that that is a Big Lie.
If the American Way is so good for people, even the American people, why are we the least educated population on earth, the most violent, have the largest national demand for drugs (both "legal" and "illegal") on earth? Are all three of these things symptoms of a desperate nation?
And what makes us desperate?
How does constant fear, job insecurity, a higher level of poverty in the population than our government is willing to admit (because it speaks to corporate venality and callousness and the fact that corporate welfare eats up over $200 billion of our national budget each year,) and rampant violence grab you?
The argument of the apologists for this corporate-induced misery will tell you that Americans have never had it better.
The truth is that the richest Americans have never had it better.Thanks to our new form of government -- and it is new, Homes, ask anybody who was a working person in America after the second World War but before 1980 -- all policies are for, by and of the corporate boardroom. Or, as Edward S. Herman wrote for Z Magazine's July-August, 1998 issue:
If we assume that the purpose of the economy is to serve and improve the welfare of the entire body of citizens, the U.S. model has clearly been a major failure. It has served a minority, and the majority have not only failed to share in the income gains yielded by the model, they have suffered from reduced benefits, greater job instability and stress, and a diminution of expectations and sense of hope for the future. There can be little doubt that the high crime and drug use rates in the U.S. are related to the country's failure to provide decent work, help, or encouragement to vast numbers of its own citizens.
Our response, We the People, is to become a Prozac nation; to import most of the world's cocaine and heroin, import or grow marijuana in mass quantities; buy into the fantasy pushed by corporate bullsheets and Idiot Box broadcasts that just buying more "stuff" will make us happy, healthy, sexy and cool like "everybody else." Only the "everybody else" they are telling us about doesn't happen to be anybody we personally know. Don't worry, let chemicals and electronic toys make you happy.
Hey, wait a minute! IF YOU WERE HAPPY, WHY WOULD YOU NEED THAT STUFF?
The truth is that, if you're the average working American, you're putting in more hours working and away from your family in order afford your standard of living than at any time in history since the Great Depression.And what the Mouthpiece Media isn't telling you is that you're actual income (when benefits and vacation time, or other perks like paid sabbaticals to take care of your children are factored in) is less than your opposite number in Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, Finland --yes, Finland!-- and Japan.
Doesn't that make you wonder, Homes, since Japan's economy is supposed to be stagnant right now, how come a Japanese worker is doing better than you are in the "booming" US economy.?.. Well, okay, they are starting to talk recession now that the rich have lost a little money gambling on tech stocks.
You want to talk "productivity?" Let's! The average German worker, who gets about six weeks a year more than you off, Homeboy, is now considered the most productive in the world. According to the German Economic Research Institute, Klaus works 1639 hours per year to your 1904. That's one of those other things that make you go, "Hmmn."
Fact is, in most of Europe countries are adapting the 35 hour work week, while you complain to corporate Mouthpieces Time and Newsweek that you need to work 60 or 70 hours a week just to keep up.
Former President Clinton made it hip to claim that your life as a worker in America is the way it is because of the competitive pressures of "globalization." But think about it, my man, how come that same globalization is allowing corporations and governments in other countries to treat their people like valuable human beings --- while the opposite is happening to you?
Now you understand why so many folks might have been on the streets of Quebec a couple months back when a new trade agreement that the corporates want to foist on us was being discussed? Maybe we could all benefit from a lot less of the American Way...