ideals. The only time that people were ever really willing to accept real change was during a real crisis like the Great Depression when they themselves felt the threat of poverty.
I think a lot of it started with the founding of our country. America was a continent overflowing with resources and room. It was a place were we really could "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps" in the beginning. Where we could start all over from whatever failure encouraged our ancestors to come here from the country of our origin.
We enslaved people and put people on reservations while we grabbed everything else for ourselves and claimed that we did all by ourselves. And when the Natives and the slaves were free we said to them. Well you have your freedom now pull yourselves up. We never once recognized that the playing field was not level. The resources and the land were not easy to get anymore. We had a 100s of years head start.
Then we did not see what was really happening when the robber barons took over and became so successful. We were sold the bill of goods that they worked hard for everything they got. But they were no different than the corporations and banksters today. They used power over congress to consolidate their ownership society blocking most of us out. They used mineral rights laws to gain access to treasure that laid under the farmers land and exploited it for their own good. They used public domain laws to claim land for their railroads and other purposes. And we looked at how rich they were and told ourselves that "anyone can do it".
After the robber barons ran out of luck and ended us in the Great Depression many started to realize that maybe we couldn't always do it alone. So the New Deal was created to for once give each other a helping hand. Many still did not accept this idea of helping hands and they tried to end the New Deal from the beginning. Also the New Deal did not reach everyone. It did not reach into the ghetto or to the reservation. Poverty pretty much still ruled in those areas with little interruption. But most of us were doing a lot better so we just assumed that was their own fault.
Since then the only time that we tried to recognize our dependence on each other was the 60s era and LBJ's war on poverty. And that ended with a real backlash in the 1980s which we are still experiencing today. The conservatives convinced people that since poverty did not end totally with the war on poverty that it was never going to work and we were all to blame for our own fate. And here we are today facing politicians that follow trickle down economic theories and want to expand our greed to the entire globe.
What I ask myself is: How did Europe learn the lesson and we failed to understand it? Religion? Propaganda? Greed?What is wrong with us that we cannot learn such a simple message - we need each other?
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