A Brief History of America in My Lifetime

When I was 10 years old in 1950, we moved from Chicago to Kansas City, and a few years later, out of the city into one of new developments—houses could be had for 10 to 12K, bought by recent graduates of colleges and law schools with the help of GI loans (if you were white). America was a beacon of freedom and opportunity… if you were white, employed with a living wage. Did not openly dissent and gain the ire of HUAC or the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of Government. Then you began to notice how many were--here, not abroad--were not included in that National Family Photo album. And then you began to realize that the abuses of power abroad were not shortcomings or errors, or inconsistent with national policy, but were systemic--and terrible for those caught up in our proxy wars and economic pillage. And then you began to see, as the Civil Rights Movement grew in strength, that poverty and racism and entrenched patriarchy here in  the U.S. were part of that systemic injustice everywhere, so when King began to connect the dots, it was no surprise that he was murdered. And when our proxy war in S.E. Asia was derailed by popular protest, it was no surprise that the predator class gathered ranks and decided there was too much 'democracy,' that the social movements of the 60's had to be demonized, unions--and every other effective form of popular civil resistance, destroyed, undermined or infiltrated and subverted, and with that--the media privatized and controlled. And when the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own ineptitude and corruption, exhausted by our perpetual arms race--it was no surprise that our Empire of Money and Death would seize the opportunity to globalize its power, that the corporations--the oporational machines of the preditor class, would become the defacto government, and what was left of government, become a mere specticle. And Lo, it all came to pass as they had foreseen.