At least six have been killed and twenty four wounded in a mass shooting in America, on Independence Day. The date, time, location and circumstances really don't seem to matter because NOTHING is altering the cycle of thought that is making the United States of America unique -- in all of the worst possible ways.
Unique in our unwillingness to provide medical care for the mentally ill, much less the wider population.
Unique in our unwillingness to address the extreme concentration of wealth that has left sixteen percent of children to be raised in poverty, with crippled educations and prospects to match, failing to contemplate how a child amid that sixteen percent MIGHT have been the person to cure cancer, solve a materials science problem accelerating the elimination of fossil fuels through more efficient batteries or become the next Beethoven or Beatle.
Unique in our perverse fixation on individual rights over our collective duties to each other.
Unique in our intellectual laziness that opts for tax policies based on jackpot fantasies (you could be rich too so don't soak the rich) which starve the funding for public institutions in education and justice that enable upward mobility.
Unique in our stupidity that fails to see how those decisions prevent us from acting collectively for the benefit of everyone and thus allow the status quo to continue enriching the already uber-rich.
Unique in our inability to understand the founding documents of our own country, which only declared independence from a tyrannical, remote king but did not declare the creation of 2.5 million individual one-person Americas with everyone living and acting at arm's length from one another, armed to the teeth, trusting no one.
Unique in our inability to learn from our own history and recognize we are already running USA 3.0. USA 1.0 proved completely unsuitable and melted down within five years of the British surrendering at Yorktown. USA 2.0 was corrupted in its first release by "three fifths" math that failed to recognize the full humanity of all Americans and took a war to trigger an upgrade. Our current operating system is always going to have flaws but downgrading to prior versions will NEVER solve today's problems.
We the people, in order to form a more perfect union...
E pluribus unum
The founding fathers didn't found a cult focused solely on individual liberty. They created a system of government that recognized that emphasizing individual rights was the most effective way to keep a government in check while allowing a government of the people, by the people and for the people to act on behalf of the people more effectively to protect those rights in a virtuous circle.
Many Americans have completely lost the plot and never learned or are now ignoring the balance required between individual rights and collective responsibilities. Because of this, both our individual freedoms and our union are in peril.
WTH
