Part 1 [6 min.]

MUSHROOMS

Our president, congress, corporations and military establishment have acted on these feudal principles since our founding as a nation. It is not surprising that this should be so when our founding fathers were white supremacists, as evidenced by their letters and other facts of their lives preserved in the Library of Congress. It was they who superimposed capitalism onto the egalitarian principles of the Constitution for the express purpose of reserving the power and benefits of citizenship to white landowners. It was they – the wealthy few of their time – who created the two governments: capitalism for the rich, democracy for the poor.

I am loyal to the democratic, egalitarian constitutional principles upon which my country was founded. I am disloyal to the tenets of capitalism because they have eclipsed the light of our constitution in our everyday life.

Corporate America is not the America we teach our children about, but it is the America we actually live in. We imagine that we are all equal under the law, yet we spend most of our days within the feudalistic structure of our economic system. There, we willingly subject ourselves to the domination of Kings, Dukes, and Princelings – in today's corporate language: C.E.O.s, Vice Presidents, and Employers – who then become our political leaders.

"Skin-color-racism," – "apartheid, American-style," is an integral element of this system.

We proudly, or resentfully as the case may be, live the roles of masters or servants in this grand, seductive game. And then, worst of all, we use these corporate labels, as was done in feudal times, to define our worth as human beings, and the value of our citizenship.

By these means, we buy and sell that most precious of possessions: our citizenship. It is for sale in the market place of capitalism!

We corporate Americans chuckle cynically at the idealism of the young as they struggle with the obvious disparity between the constitution and the market place. But, we have swallowed the myths of our "peculiar democracy" with the same zeal as our children are made to swallow the myth of Santa Claus. In our maturity we are expected to continue to give lip service to the ideals of social and economic equality, while "graduating" to the "realities" of the market place. The difference is that, unlike Santa Claus, democracy actually exists here. But it is a political system held captive, perverted and rendered impotent by a ruthless economic system.

America could be the land of the free. I want my country to be what we say it is. It will be, someday, I am certain. But, only if we face up to the truth and abandon capitalism. The means for change need not be violent or revolutionary. If we all think long and hard about solutions and alternatives, we will surely proceed to a truly unique American result, as new and breathtaking as was our Constitution, upon which that change would be based.

However, before any change can be made we must first have accurate information. Only by finding where we are, can we determine how to proceed to a desired destination. If we conclude that we are not where we should be, and further, that we have been headed in the wrong direction, then we have two additional tasks to perform before we can strike out in the right direction. We must find out how, and why, we got here. This is important, because the faulty directions have sounded correct, or we would not have followed them for so long. We do not want to fall for them again in the future. These are matters of history, though, and luckily we are one of the few countries which does not destroy our historical records, but only buries them. The information we need is there. We need only read it.

Access to that information is limited in order to prevent change, or in order to channel the means and direction of change through the hands of an elite few. Dissemination of accurate information to the public is the antidote.

But, the American public is carefully prevented from having accurate information about what is done in their name by the president, congress, the top military brass and the top two percent wealthy of this country. That small, elite group knows what I am telling you, here, yet they perpetuate the lie we live with.

We are like mushrooms: We are kept in the dark and fed the "shit" of false patriotism.

[Go to Part 6]