Open Letter to the Nation

My Fellow Americans,

Let me preface this by saying that I love my country. I also believe that the hallmark of a true friend is that they will tell you the things you don’t want to hear but that you need to hear. So understand that the things I am about to say, I say because I love this country.

Americans are lazy:

We spend an average of over four hours per day watching television. In that four hours you could run a marathon (2-3hours) or play a round of golf (2-3 hours) or walk around the block 20-25 times or read a newspaper or any number of things that could improve your mind and/or body. We choose to be spoon-fed information via television and then claim to have no time for anything like politics or personal betterment.

How does this laziness impact us? The most apparent impact is our gullibility as a nation. If somebody famous or known says something is true, we will jump on the bandwagon and defend their position angrily and even violently despite not having checked out the facts ourselves. We as a nation do this all the time. We listen to the claims of the people of notoriety such as politicians and celebrities and just assume they are right. Why? Are they smarter than us? No! Look at Paris Hilton or George W. Bush. They are not experts in the field of anything but looking good on TV. So why do we trust that their opinions matter more than our own? It’s easier than looking things up for ourselves and making informed decisions. Americans watch an average of one hour of news per day. Of that time the vast majority is spent on network news programs and mainstream press outlets. Things such as C-SPAN and Public Television which present alternative views and interpretations of the news are virtually unwatched. Infotainment has replaced real news and Americans are overall just fine with that.

We as a society back bad plans and bad people because they sound good no matter whether they make sense or not. Case in point: Iraq. There were people screaming that the Bush administration’s case for war was a load of hooey and pointed to evidence as to why it was hooey but the administration version was really slick and sounded good so the vast majority of Americans followed along like good little sheep and backed the fools and their fool mission. Now we in hindsight look at the ones who stood up against the war as the visionaries. The truth is that they were not visionary, they were just not lazy. They checked the facts and saw the obvious holes in the Bush theories that everyone else ignored because it was easier to believe the lies than to find out the truth. We were fooled because we were lazy. Checking the facts might have cut into our TV time. God forbid that should ever happen.

Americans are ignorant:

Ignorance and stupidity are different things but can lead to the same results. Americans have the capacity to learn but we seemingly steadfastly refuse to do so. We have witnessed the demise of empires throughout history and seen how the hubris of the leaders leads to a downfall of the society. Despite having this knowledge we refuse to recognize the parallels in our own society. When someone points out the similarities, we ignore them and call them crazy.

In the face of our own history and things like Watergate, we close our minds to the possibility that our president and vice-president might have done things that were unspeakable in the interests of personal gain. If someone recognizes a pattern of corruption in the actions of a leader they are labeled a "conspiracy theorist" and dismissed as being a crackpot.

With this vast information age and the internet with its capabilities of finding volumes of information from around the world about virtually any subject, we still just accept what we see on the news and never look any deeper. We choose to be ignorant. It is not forced upon us. It is our own choice to not dig deeper.

What does ignorance cost us? It costs us our freedoms and choices. When we allow others to mislead us and simply back them up, we give them our choices. When we allow corrupt leaders to use their offices for personal gain we give up our freedoms in the name of their security. As leaders become more corrupt, they have to limit the people’s access to information in order to hide the things they do from scrutiny. Things like the US P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act have eroded our freedoms to scrutinize the actions of our leaders but have not secured our ports, borders and other points of entry. Neither have they improved the safety of Americans overall. The government can find out what books you read but the library can’t even tell you that they were looking even if you have done nothing wrong. We let this and other laws pass because we were not paying attention and did not force our elected officials to scrap the bills before they became law. Our own willful ignorance took away our freedoms.

Americans are shallow:

This is perhaps our biggest shortcoming. We as a nation are so concerned with our "image" that we will bankrupt ourselves in order to buy things we don’t need. We are so concerned with saving face that we will not admit when we are wrong. We put so much importance on looking a certain way or having a certain thing that we allow ourselves to be consumed by it to the point of ignoring everything else going on around us. We are so afraid of looking "different" that we will not stand up for the things that we know are just and fair.

The cost of this societal shallowness is immeasurable. This core idea that image is "important" is at the heart of what is destroying our society in my view.

We need to realize that being "right" is not as important as being considered and thoughtful. "Right" is mostly subjective and often in our society is not accompanied by being factually accurate. Being on the winning side of an argument does not make you correct. It merely means that you won an argument. If you win the argument but are still ignorant of the facts, you are nothing more than a fool with a forceful personality and have quite possibly enabled another fool by winning them over to your uninformed viewpoint.

Clinging to objects as a measure of worth is folly. It only empowers those who control the goods when you are a slave to fashion or lifestyle. You relinquish your personal power when you allow others to tell you what you "must" have to be happy. You cheapen your decisions when they are made to follow the crowd. By basing decisions on need over want and conscience over current trends, you empower yourself and take back power from those who would control you through manipulation. By buying less, you also wrest some control back from those who use money to manipulate leaders and public policies.

Fairness and justice in a society require the involvement of the people within that society. If you are so afraid of looking different that you allow horrible things to be done in your name, you become as guilty as those who commit the acts themselves. Heroes are forged from the steel of a strong will and unbreakable conscience. When the citizens of a society stop doing the right thing for fear of ridicule, that society is doomed to destruction.

Conclusion:

Our society has a lot of failings and it also has a lot of potential. Because I love America, I have to stand up and point to the things we can do better. I must point out our failings because I am aware of them and to do less is to be unpatriotic. I do not claim to have all of the answers to America’s ills but I do know that if we don’t begin to take control of our country soon it will no longer be a country of "We the People". Our leaders have shown their contempt for the people in their careless commitment of soldiers to wars without merit. They have shown their contempt for the Constitution by stripping our freedoms in the name of "national security" that manifests in reality as false security for the people and profits for the politicians and their friends. All this they have done and yet we still believe in them. It is time for "We the People" to take back that which we have given and stop being slaves to our comforts of mind and body.

We have choices. We can choose health over television. We can choose information over spin. We can choose to find enjoyment in books creating images in our minds rather than tiny pixels dancing in front of our eyes making us forget how to have an imagination. We can choose justice over rhetoric and symbolic gestures. We have but to make the choice. Our nation is ours to lose or gain. Will you choose the easy way or the heroic way? Will you choose to live in fear or stand up for the grand and proud America we have the ability to create? What will you tell your children and grandchildren about your life when you grow old? Will you tell them about all the stuff you had or will you tell them about how you made your country become once again the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave"? What will your American legacy be?

It's your call America.

Become a part of taking our nation back at http://www.reform-america.net/ today.