When I took A.P. U.S. History in high school… I learned about the crooked ways of the Republic. I learned that for the most part, the prosperity of this country is owed to the unthanked labor and often the death of the oppressed, starting with the poor ignorant English folk who came as indentured servants, starving to death at the hands of gentleman-adventurers who dreamt big but did little actual work. But the Native Americans are [the most obvious] first victims of the nascent Imperial onslaught… [starting with] the diseases the filthy Europeans had brought over, and… the depradations of… imperial Spain. The English did not become numberous enough to challenge the Natives for a while, although, I must say that it didn’t take long for treaty-signing and subsequent backstabbing to become standard policy. After that came the despoilment of Africa….

[While white supremacy] was the rule of the land, North and South, [the idea that] enslavement [was the] inherent status of an entire race [seemed most vociferously expressed by] indolent Southern “gentlemen”… [those] shiftless, degraded petty tyrants of Dixie. [Civil war and Emancipation soon ensued, but exploitation of the poor and disenfranchised continued apace.] …[I]mmigrant “free” labor was in fact cheaper to maintain. The transcontinental railroad would have been impossible if not for the spent lives of the Chinese and the Irish. There there was the theft of Mexican soil. (I sometimes imagine an alternative history…. What if the Californios had again rebelled during the Civil War, splitting the country three ways? Then imagine that the North did not prevail over the South, and therefore three [Anglo] American republics persisted in the place of one. [Perhaps] the Native Americans of the West would [not] have been [as] wantonly slaughtered, and the Plains and the Desert would have remained a buffer zone between California, the Union, and the Confederacy. And Wars for Independence might [have succeeded] in Spanish colonies long before [the crumbling empire of] Spain and the Union ever crossed swords….

In any case, it is easy to see the idealogical stains of time upon our history. I do not believe in anything as absurd as race memory, but you cannot deny that culture is passed down generation to generation, and you can still see the detritus of Rome, the Germanic bands who would rather stay in [outside the empire]—the brand of justice practiced by Calvinist zealots during the witch trials was an unchanged relic of the [uncivilized borderlands] of the Empire of Rome. Say what you will about cultural relativity and such, but [I am not fond of cultures] that [value] warfare above all else.

While civilization is far from perfect, it does have a mitigating effect on [the manner in which we kill people.] And this scion of Rome… teeters on the edge of barbarism and calls it freedom, likening the right of the illiterate to wield destructive weaponry to the right of a well educated citizen to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[Maybe I should have known better, but I feel like I have been lied to.] It was one thing [to live under the illusion] that [only] the past was riddled with the corpses of the poor, the Irish, the Italians, Black people, Native Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, et al. [In this illusion], there was hope that things could change, because democracy [is supposed to be] real and your vocie [is actually supposed to mean] something. It is another thing to [have this illusion stripped away from your eyes and] realize that nothing has changed. The cynicism and the distrust of the masses that the Founding Fathers [seeded]… the Constitution [with] echoes more soundly than the ideals [that they wrote about]… despite Thomas Jefferson’s warning. [For] we have chosen stability over freedom, and so are guaranteed neither…. Despite the facts of past history, and the horrible depradations committed by our nation that forged our prosperity, I still loved this country because I thought that [the] flag actually stood for some lofty ideal, and that his nations failings were due to natural human frailty, the unfortunate sins of [people] who [were] at least striving to be virtuous. But I see even this fuzzy rationalization stripped away, see that, like all nations and empires that came before and all that are sure to follow, we are ruled by the tyranny and greed of the rich and powerful, who care nothing for the weal of their fellow… lowly citizens, unless it somehow [ensures the] further [increase] their wealth and might, and all the words spoken for these two hundred years were [just] empty promises, merely tools of the rich and powerful to remain rich and powerful. And so [maybe] the Statue of Liberty ought to be torn down, the plaque removed. There is no haven for the ppor, for the oppressed yearning—yearning!—to be free. There is no democracy to ensure the rights of all, even the minority. Democracy is but an empty word, some abstraction left over from ancient Greece, with little of its meaning remaining. Even the claim to the less lofty label of republic is rent asunder, for it has become clear that the people in power care [very] little for res publica, the affairs of her people.

And whither now can I flee? The supposed paragon of Freedom has [displayed] her true colors…. This 200 year peculiar experiment has [finally] failed, and the tyrants [are rejoicing]. Democracy has at last been slain, not by her enemies, but by her own hand, and the most bitter pill is that no one mourns her death.