Net Neutrality Is Dead and So Are We

This is the world we’re allowing? Year after year after year, since the 1980s, we’ve been standing by and letting these major corporations (which, with “Citizens United,” the Supreme Court has mystifyingly classified as “people”??) rob us blind and take advantage of us. I mean, seriously, what the hell are we doing? Americans have been so duped into thinking that everything must be a competition and that there is only “so much” to go around, that we’re starving ourselves and each other. We no longer believe in a living wage, let alone a thriving one (which should be our right!), and instead gleefully watch as all our money is sucked up by the same few families and companies. The American narrative that “anything is possible,” while originally an inspiration to immigrants and the poor, has been masterfully usurped and poisoned by the powerful few. Our body politic is diseased. 

We’ve been duped. We’ve been psychologically and emotionally manipulated. We’ve bought into a powerful but ridiculous “self-made,” “independent,” “bootstrap” mythology that these plutocrats have spoon-fed us for decades. This is a lie. It always has been. For decades, we have been told that demanding a better life for ourselves and out neighbors is “selfish” and “entitled.” Instead, these elites have convinced us that, if we really want it, we should work harder for it. So, we do. As each year passes, we work longer hours. We take on a second and a third job. We de-unionize because we believe the companies that tell us unionizing caused the problem. We keep medicine privatized because we believe them when they say universal healthcare is too expensive. We educate ourselves, taking on crippling debt in the process, because we believed them when they said a higher education would lead to that elusive, better paying job with “benefits” like a week’s paid time off and, if we’re really lucky, health insurance and maybe a couple of weeks off for maternity leave. We’re told, oxymoronically, that our societal problems are the result of a “destabilized family structure,” all the while we’ve been convinced that we have to spend more and more time at work, which leaves less and less time for family. Wages go down. “Right-to-Work” turns us into a labor class fighting against itself for the least opportunity, not the best one. Housing prices skyrocket.

We were told it would all trickle-down, eventually. But “eventually” never came. We’ve convinced ourselves to believe all these lies, to work “hard” and guard our “benefits” selfishly because there might just be enough for me. Because it feels right–feels American–to work ourselves to death. We listened to their lies. We keep listening. And we’re killing ourselves because of it. Literally. “Someday” will never come.

The corruption running rampant through our government, and our willingness to allow it, could very well be the end of the United States as we, and the world, has known it. How will history look back on all of us? On these days? 

“Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.” — John Adams