Third World Vermont, A Conspiracy?

What if the everyday involvement in our lives by the government was aided by unseen influence of the private sector (business)? Based on our needs for money and profit, these external forces could shape American society and their self-interest. Case in point, the consumer perpetuating nuclear family. What we're looking at is the destruction of communalism by instilling "possessive individualism", which down the road leads to good capitalism and consumerism.


Communalism is when neighbors and communities work together, interact, and communicate. When you know your neighbor, you know how bad the times really are. Divide and conquer, if people are talking to each other they're not divided. This is how communication undermines the control of large populations, but how would someone stop people from having conversations? What if another means of communication were available, an artificial means of providing information (or disinformation) to people? Now they know all of what's going on so they don't have to leave their homes and talk to their neighbors.


Enter the newspaper, radio and the television set. What if one could influence and control media? Knowing that it's the means by which people who lead busy productive consumer driven lives working for the private sector stay informed? They rely on the media as a means of communication to know how their neighbors are doing, because they never see them anymore. The public believes in the freedom of the press, and trust that because its free, it's without influence and truthful. The question you ought to be asking is who owns the media, and are you willing to let the media tell you how your neighbor is doing, instead of asking them yourself?


Individualism promotes self-reliance and a self-first attitude that puts people, families, communities, and states in competition with each other. People compete for better educations, to get better jobs, to make more money. the goal of every parent is to help their kid get ahead. In our modern democratic society you are judged more by the money you make than your worth to the community in which you live.


Municipalities compete for state funding, and states compete for federal funding. They compete by conforming most to what the government higher up wants. Often times the federal government forces mandates on the states by threatening to withhold federal funds. The drinking age in Vermont would still be 18 if the federal government hadn't threatened to withhold transportation money from the states that didn't raise the drinking age to 21. This leads to the question of a government of, by, and for the people. So if government isn't acting in our best interest, who's interest are they acting in? Ever hear of a lobbyist?


Obviously our government doesn't act in the best interest of labor, otherwise among the other industrialized nations of the world, we wouldn't stand alone with South Africa in tolerating ancient union-busting devices. The right to strike is lost when there is fear of permanent replacement workers. The decline in strikes in the U.S. is paralleled by a decline in workers income. Labor hasn't been helped by its negative portrayal in movies, or media where it's labeled as a special interest. Years of support for labor by communities has eroded, when in fact the interests of labor are the interests of communties.


If striking workers are replaced and left with no job, is that not heading them down the road to welfare? What about kids having kids, and teenage mom's on welfare? Is it right to make the true costs of bearing a child out of wedlock clear, by letting them be felt when they are incurred, namely at the child's birth? Many people harp on welfare because they think these are lazy, unmotivated people. Maybe some are, maybe they're not, but is it right to deprive their kids the means to survive, better themselves, and potentially one day lead a normal life off welfare? By punishing the poor instead of helping them, are we not continueing the cycle of poverty?


What about interjecting a religious issue such as wedlock into government? What about separation of church and state? This is where you have to wonder about the roles of religion and government. The encouragement of religious enthusiasm has a long history within the psychic processes of counter-revolution. It has long been used to tame the masses, breeding the chiliasm of despair. The desperate hope for some world other than this one, which can offer little.


Religion is where many people get their beliefs and values. Let's take for example christianity which is the predominant religion in the U.S. Christianity dictates that in this life people must work hard, to get to the next life (heaven), in which they will be rewarded. Whether or not heaven really exists, religion helps to disspell the notion that people control their own destiny.


In this way everyday Vermonters are being exploited the same as is done to people in the third world. The difference is that the exploitation and control is unseen in the U.S., because it is so buried and ingrained in our culture. How many average citizens realize the multitude of ideals that are the foundation of American society, actually shape and mold up into controllable workers. If the system that is supposed to be of, by and for the people is truly not, hasn't our nation been built upon a lie?