America The Betrayed, Walt Whitman and You

As a Long Island poet myself, I find the works of Walt Whitman irresistible.  I also lived, laughed, loved and got politically involved in the community dedicated to his name.  Today the words of Walt Whitman were used to lure me into reading a thought-provoking article about the betrayal of America, written by Richard C. Cook.

In pertinent part, I'll start myself with the words of Walt Whitman (notorious for his poetic talent and bisexuality): “Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, disorderly, fleshly, and sensual, no sentimentalist, no stander above men or women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest.”  This was stated in his self-published book of poetry, Leaves of Grass.  I felt is was a perfect description of regular people who are writers, trying to put it out there.

Richard Cook notes Whitman was revered by the anti-establishment beatniks of the 50's and 60's.  A prolific writer himself, Cook then discusses how the Establishment has slowly taken over since that time of rebellion, leading us into a recession that is taking us to a terminal depression. 

He states, in part:

"The Establishment fought back with a vengeance and, through the most egregious betrayal in history, reduced the world’s greatest industrial democracy to the pathetic shadow of its former self we are today.

The first thing the Establishment did was destroy the industrial job base by shipping millions of good jobs to China and other Third World nations, where slave laborers could be forced to churn out consumer products at a fraction of the cost of similar work done by American workers.

Acting through the CIA and organized crime, the Establishment flooded the cities and college campuses with illegal drugs in order to rot the minds and souls of our youth.

They dumbed down education to the point where young people who graduate today know little and can do less of a practical nature. Vocational training is dead. A high school graduate is worth virtually nothing in the job market, and many college graduates are semi-literate and self-absorbed, often lacking backbone, skills,  or initiative. Some high school and college graduates are even drug addicts or alcoholics.

They turned the economy over to thieves from Wall Street and created a military machine that turns youth into murderers and assassins whose job it is to conquer the world for the fat cats of global capital.

They ruined the arts, literature, and music through crass commercialization, making it almost impossible for any real original creativity to be produced or communicated. The one bright light in this darkness is the internet, which is  being threatened by commercial suppression of freedom of expression by the ambitions of big communications companies. Thank goodness too for the rare creative genius like Michael Moore who has the courage to hold up a mirror to this deeply diseased society.

Then they wrecked people’s health with processed food and constant inducements to a sedentary lifestyle while pumping us full of dangerous vaccines and prescription drugs. They drummed it into everyone’s head that we are basically weak, ill, helpless creatures who can only survive by taking pills and making constant trips to doctors, hospitals, and clinics.

They induced us to fight over our possessions and freedoms in law courts with the aid of greedy lawyers in front of rapacious judges who have built up the largest prison population in the world.

They pulled money and credit out of the inner cities and rural areas leaving those segments of the nation and their populations to rot.

The list could go on and on and on."

Sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it?  This is all the stuff I hear people talking about everyday.  Richard Cook ends his article with these statements:

"It is time for each and every individual who values his or her own life along with the creative potential of the human spirit to begin to work with others to create a new nation and world. The government isn’t going to do it for us. Please believe me. This is not a system that can be reformed. It is a system that must be replaced. And it must be replaced by the ordinary working men and women who have been crushed, used, and abused during the past ugly half-century.

Americans, get to work. Call your friends and family together today and begin to figure out what to do. Start with 15 minutes of prayer and meditation. You will be shown the way from within yourselves. My own view is that setting up local currency systems, as many communities are now doing, is a good place to start."

If any of this hits home for you as it did for me, take a few minutes to visit Richard Cook's article entitled, "America The Betrayed" to read more.  What do YOU think?