The American Dream: A Slow Disease


 As a citizen of the United States, I can confidently say that I am very happy to have been born and raised here.  There is an element of disaster and hardship that I feel I have had the privilege of dodging simply by birthright.  That of course, means everything to me.  That is a point of clarification I wanted to make before I say what it is that I feel needs said.

  This country was founded upon an anthem that says we are all deserving of our lives, our liberties, and our individual pursuit of happiness.  I couldn't agree more.  But along with this pursuit that we have the privilege of chasing, we also have the scary ability to define what liberty and happiness are, and that, most times, is the culprit to our growing problem of greed, violence, and undue ownership.  We have subjectively, and selfishly defined what it is that we are entitled to. That mindset will always lead to the deification of personal boundaries, liberties being skewed, and power being corrupted.  It also leads us to empirical living.
   There is so much propaganda that desensitizes our capacity to think outside of what we are being told.  These tools are being used in media, art, film, and radio.  Subtlety acts as a leaky faucet...until next thing you know, the buckets overflowing and we're all drowning.  Our greed and accumulation of wealth has distorted our thinking in such a way that we cut corners and pretty soon, we have even distorted and scandalized our life preservers to the point that they do not function at all as they were intended.  But nobody knows that until our boat is sinking and we breathlessly reach, only to have our hopes of life dashed. 
   We have become parasites to our own opinion.  Our lives slowly bleeding dry.  Opinions and questions are becoming our doctrine, while love and truth are shoved bleeding out the door.  Nothing is a matter of truth or error anymore...we call it 'perspective.'  And few of us know that we have even taken a hiatus from the life we were purposed for.  Like coming out of a deep sleep, it's only in the waking that you truly realize you ever drifted off to sleep to begin with.  We need to wake up, and live outside of slumber.  We need an alarming clarity of life's purpose and intentions. 
    We honestly need to reestablish some objectivity and silence the lies that lead us to over consumption, making a name for ourselves, relying on democracy as freedom.  We actually unknowingly operate out of a monarchy, where God is the King of Kings.  He is the only reason there is freedom and can be the only way to freedom.  If you leave that job up to the constituents of a democracy you will never eliminate the heart that lusts after gold and silver, the appetite for our own applause.  Our hands are tainted.  Checks and balances were supposed to be our safety net from all of these possible ensnarements.  Yet the scale is still uneven.  We have begun to steal from others to even our own scales.  An injustice we call freedom.
   There are so many people who have given their lives for a country who will not give her own back in reciprocity.  There are those who kill out of regimes that inaccurately promise freedom.  These people bruise the earth from under the ground.  Their burial plots are planters for more hate to grow. 
   We need to be a people who are not after self-interest, but the interest of everyone. We've got to realize that we are not here to live or fend for ourselves.  That the 'American Dream' isn't at all what it was meant to be, and the proof is the road of disparity that we have been travelling.  It's time to ask God what our lives are for, to come under His identity, to be nameless and faceless, and ignore the trends of this world.  To bring down a powerful empire.  To demand justice and freedom FOR ALL.  To let the King of Kings establish our lives, hand us our liberties on a golden platter in front of our enemies, and to become the happiness we are all searching way to hard to find.  To become the solution, no longer contributing to the slow disease America has become.