Strange land of the 'not that free.' I like that, because there are a series of policies that have been put in place for decades now that uphold the doctrine of profit over people, otherwise known as primacy of the shareholder.
Corporations routinely pass on risk to taxpayers (consider TARP, but there are a multitude of smaller instances), while pocketing profits.
In the meantime, we are expected to be rugged individualists who pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, and God forbid we band together and demand change.
The current system is designed by oligarchs to route money as much as possible from the national treasury, taxpayer money, to billionaire parasites (oligarchs) and corporations.
This is actively promoted by well-funded 'think tanks' like ALEC, the Federalist Society, CATO institute, and many others. This stems from two conservative ideologies that walk hand-in-hand: the neoconservative (American empire), and neoliberal (privatize everything in sight, cut all regulation, and gut government social programs) philosophies.
While that goes on behind the scenes, as it has ever done, we see the Koch Brothers funding the Tea Party movement, which has now been taken over by Dominionist Christians who are worse than the worst of the Taliban. They lie, cheat, steal and their objective is to impose a white-dominated 'christian' theocracy on this republic. This has grown through the 'education' of the American public through dumbing down schools with 'controversy' around creationism, watering down history texts, and pounding them with base reality TV, tasteless sit-coms and creating a very real idolatry around sports.
We are at war, and have been for decades. Trump, and the January 6 traitors are only a symptom of that.
In order to save this Republic, we need to change policies, which means a long, hard fight at local and state level, because it is only through this that we can exert better control over policies that affect us.
Consider: We squandered $4.2 trillion on forever wars that ground up two generations of our children and grandchildren, we squander trillions on a drug war designed to impact minorities more severely than white people, and fritter away another $3 trillion on a feckless, irresponsible 2017 tax cut for billionaires and corporations.
Americans have been carefully 'educated' by the right to believe:
1. Government is the enemy.
2. All taxes are bad.
Democrats need to take a page from Biden's book, which has been surprisingly (to me) progressive, and RE-educate the nation to see that all taxes are not bad, and the government must necessarily be the solution to funding those projects and services the private sector cannot or will not provide - things like HEALTHCARE and SOCIAL SECURITY, the police, firefighting, roads, bridges, dams, water and sewage treatment, pre-K, K-12 and postsecondary education, arts, and R&D. These things are the rightful job of government.
It is a legitimate question to ask members of Congress what Congress has done in the last few decades that has materially benefitted Americans and their families.
All this has to do with priorities, you know. It has to do with how we collect taxes, and how we focus that tax revenue to serve the American people. This is the way to win this war - to force changes in priorities through educating Americans, progressives taking over local nomination apparatus, and local governments whenever possible, and electing people whose priorities have to do with using our tax money that we pay in to this government for programs that directly benefit us and our families rather than billionaires. Yes, we must balance the needs of business, but the pendulum has swung WAY too far in that direction already, and needs to swing back toward workers, the environment and the people.
The first thing we could change: Right now, corporations only contribute 6.8% of the money the government collects through taxes while individuals contribute 86%. That is a major imbalance we need to rectify NOW.
So, it is about policy, not politics, not ideology, and certainly not religion.
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