America’s New Slavery

by S. Paul Forrest

AmericaRevealed.org

In order to function or rather, survive in these United States, We the People must pay a price.  We must pay for food, phone, insurance (health, car, home owner’s, etc) as well as cable, car payments, mortgage or rent, electricity, water, food, taxes, et al.  We must on average, somehow come up with a base income each year to live within our self-made and ignorantly perpetuated matrix.  It is the price we must shoulder to support our allegiance to a system which operates on greed and centers upon materialism propagated by media and deeply engrained in our psyche. It is the price we must pay in order to “survive” in a nation that has made profit a priority instead of provisions for its people. 

For many in America, this price is too high.  As reported by Cornell West and Travis Smiley, one in two Americans or 150 million people, have fallen into poverty or could be classified as low income. The economic realm in which these 50% exist, as opposed to the plantation days where room and board were at least guaranteed, their slavery is dependent upon the ability to somehow, in whatever way possible, obtain the money to survive upon the plantation else end up on the streets; discounted among the rabble and at the mercy of the in-place system.

This continued media and governmental machine, backed by money from the richest of our owners, seems only exists in order to continue to enable these plantation owners to profit by the pains of our labor and the obsession many have to escape being associated with the “have-nots”.  Why else would so much money and lobbying effort be spent in Washington and within State governmental establishments and media manipulation if not to convince us to continue supporting a faltering government and a decreasing standard of living?  After all, when a government which was originally designed to protect us citizens from the machine becomes part of the system which enslaves so many and elected officials only become elected with thanks for corporate donations, wouldn’t it make sense that their corporate media minions deliver the message to further our absolute subservience to it?

Citizens United has enriched this system’s rulers, increased the power of government over our lives and has further fortified the cage within which more and more of us citizens find imprisoned today.  When some speak of freedom, is it real freedom they are expounding upon or is it just a continuation of the illusion they wish to propel in order to convince the rest of us that we still exist within a free nation?  The answer is obvious to anyone of sound thought but still, so many exist inside this prison without any thought for or recognition of the walls within which they are being held and continue to propagate this same system.  After all, no one ever wants to risk standing up to the government for fear of retribution.

The Stockholm Syndrome describes behavior in a similar situation where kidnap victims over time, become sympathetic to their captors. The name derives from a 1973 hostage incident in Stockholm, Sweden. At the end of six days of captivity in a bank, several kidnap victims actually resisted rescue attempts, and afterwards refused to testify against their captors.  As a result of this syndrome, captives begin to identify with their captors initially as a defensive mechanism, out of fear of violence. Small acts of kindness by the captor are magnified, since finding perspective in a hostage situation is by definition impossible. Rescue attempts are also seen as a threat; since it's likely the captive would be injured during such attempts.

We see this behavior in America, today.  People are victims to a growing Police State, a militaristic intrusion of privacy by a governmental structure which tells us we are being protected from terrorists and an ever expanding system of fees, fines and threat of punishment incurred by not only the private sector but also from the government to fund their expansive control over our lives. Many voice no objection to this system because they have been convinced that these actions are either necessary for our protection or they fear backlash from any form of disobedience. With the thought that somehow they will be favored by their captors, many have taken to protecting the system as did some of the hostages in Sweden; many others follow blindly without protest if only to hold onto the illusion that they are still a free people.

When the issue of remaining rights is questioned within the realm of this new form of slavery, one must ask the question of whether the prison within which we exist allows us any rights at all or whether we have merely been allowed by the masters to imagine that we have them.  As an example, we are all allowed a certain amount of “free” speech but if that speech or if any of the rights we are told we have interfere with the mechanism entrapping us, those who cross the line are reprimanded in order to return them to their shackles.  Eventually, slaves either learn to adhere to the mandates of the system or they are dragged to the courts of injustice and broken so as not to pose a threat to the system again.  Where are you in this process?  Have you been convinced it is the status quo or if not, are you too afraid to voice any objection to it for fear of reprimand?

We all are in some way or another, tied to the machine.  We watch their faux news, purchase their tainted goods and do not resist the pollution their factories expel.  We have become chained to ideals which tell us we will still have jobs and thereby support our families if we just adhere to the policies said to help us: To conform to the standards of “normalcy”.  All we have to do to rise above the rabble is reject those who do not conform:  Those who do not comply.  This is simple enough, isn’t it?  Reject your morality…reject your conscience.  To be saved, all you must do is swear allegiance; swear you will protect the machine else fall with those who would choose to fight back.

How did we come to this point in America?  In an Era of big government controlled by powerful corporations, a military offense enabled by fabricated paranoia and driven by “exceptionalism”, hostage takers like those of Stockholm have arrived not only to hold us hostage for someone else’s money but to cash in on the full value of our lives, our labor and our national purpose.  Becoming a hostage to those whose greed has overtaken their morality is now the premise of the machine and perhaps, always has been; but how many will recognize the reality of it with enough purpose and sense of self-protection to fight back against it? Very few it would seem, given the proof of late. Instead of fighting, the people have risen up against each other and taken sides with the slave masters they prefer against their own people. The machine has taken over: It has robbed us of not only our minds and hearts, it has taken our souls.

It is not just America either, which is suffering in this manner.  Across Europe, austerity measures are being implemented to enslave the people.  This has been the case in nations like India for a very long time but not until the last ten plus years, has it been so realized in the West.  In order to further the global, corporatist state, the people have been cast aside; expected to survive without any national assistance or sympathy from their "leaders".  The same people being discounted though, continue to stagger to the polling places and electing their next captor in some sycophantic hope that the next Caesar will be better than the last.

If one does stand up against the system or dare not comply with the standard of this uncaring mechanism, we are met with fines, fees, possible imprisonment and castigation, the price of which takes the cost of survival to a new high.  It is not enough anymore to merely survive; we must all support the machine no matter the cost to our families or to our collective, societal future.  Those who levy these costs think nothing of our burden for they only have their own profit in mind, greed as their interest and the impersonal furthering of our slavery to propagate.  

Every day we are inundated with propaganda meant to enable this mechanism of greed. We follow blindly like pawns driven to extinction by an incessant desire to perpetuate death within the ranks of our mindlessness. The problems are abundant and the solutions few.  We slave each day to survive while the plantation profits and the shanty town within which we have come reside within and ignorantly accept keeps growing; robbing our liberty and forcing us into servitude.  This slavery is of our own making though.  The more we allow the system to dictate our opinions, force our allegiances and profit from our ignorance, the stronger it grows.  Now more than ever, the slaves must revolt by rejecting the mechanisms which binds them.  The parallel between a plantation and our national, economic structure becomes clearer when one spends only a few moments to step away from the television ignorance and recognize it. 

We the People, in order to preserve our Union, must unite and leave this plantation.  We must all in one fashion or another, disconnect ourselves from the machine.  We must once again, regardless of the material losses we may suffer as a result, free ourselves and find the shores of Liberty we were promised.  Slavery is not a destiny we should accept for ourselves or for our children into which we are selling them with apathy.  The time has come to choose: Will we accept this bondage or will we once again decide to be free?  Like the Revolution of 18th century, now is the time for We the People to reclaim our destiny and take back this land. Now is the time to fight back else risk losing all that this nation ever meant or ever will mean.