I was looking at the History of Us on the History Channel...

[MrScorpio]

And I couldn't help but thinking that our time of fixing our own problems... Actually doing what has to be done in order to overcome adversity, is long passed us.

There was a time when inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs actually solved more problems than they caused.

But we had to let the "capitalists" take over from the real pioneers, to be followed by the corporatists and all the politicians who catered to them.

To these people, money became more important than safety or improvement of quality of life.

So it's no surprise why we're so hell bent to commodify our very existence to the point where we're no longer classified as human beings rather than statistics that make up some sociopathic corporation's bottom line.

We've lost our way.

And now we have a nation that produces great wealth without providing anything tangible in return, treats people as if they were disposable and drives hard to make desperation the primary motivation of our lives.

America is a bloated empire now, limping its way into oblivion.

[Scuba]

1. As Lincoln said....

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. "

Not a quote the Republicans use alot.

[SoCalDem]

2. Our vision of "US" is highly influenced by a bunch of old movies,

and idealized novels about US.

We do not have the capability of critical thinking ( did we ever have it?). We flail around from one extreme to the other, and then get worried about how nothing changes, except for the worse.:(

Our unflagging optimism that many of us cling to, is a conglomeration of ideas from the inventive minds of a bunch of eastern European immigrants who created the myth of the American Dream (for that group it truly WAS). They were creative innovative flimmakers, and their legacy lives on .

[LargeGreenSpider]

3. Add to that a corrupt corporate media

as well as a generation that has sought more answers in sky goblins and other religious b.s. instead of science.