Five Things That are Destroying America

I don’t know if most people have noticed while learning American history that things are much more different now than they used to be and not just because of technology. We look at life differently, we value different things, and we judge people differently. These are the top five things I think are destroying America.

5. Hardware Consumerism – Ever since computers started being a household product, whether through a PC, MP3 Player, or DVD player, there has been a huge amount of progress in creating better and better computer systems. We have seen ourselves going from VHS to DVD in a matter of years, and our PCs go from 1 megabyte to 1 terabyte hard drives. What this means is that as soon as you buy a computer hardware product it’s outdated within 6-12 months and needs to be replaced by a newer better version. On average this has turned into 300-400 million electronic products being thrown away per year. This means that we need 300-400 million electronic products per year to replace the old ones, turning America from a huge outsourcing country into a country dependent on imports and consumption from other countries, annihilating the dollar and our heritage of exporting more than importing.

4. Wal-Mart – This seemingly harmless company has a reputation for helping communities, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Wal-Mart is a company that thrives on the destruction of small “ma and pa” stores. Essentially they roll into town on hundreds of thousands of dollars in subsidies from the local government, usually because they think Wal-Mart will benefit them, place down there building and effectively put every small business in the town out of business because of their low prices. They can do this because they make most their own products and buy the rest in extreme bulk. America is founded on businesses started by families and maintained by good service and values; it fits what we were all taught about America, a land of opportunity. After Wal-Mart has destroyed these businesses it then drives its product prices up, it’s wages down, and rapes the community for everything it has. The worse part about this is that if Wal-Mart ever decided to leave these communities they would be destroyed because there are no other business to support the demand of the community.

3. Christmas – Now before everyone flips their shit, hear me out. Every year you, your family, friends and co-workers all go out and buy gifts for one another. You do this because its tradition, or you don’t want to be the asshole that doesn’t buy someone a gift when they bought you won. Once every year everyone dips into their credit, goes into their savings, and puts him or herself financially in trouble for the sake of a tradition. This tradition is causing lots of problems, but in our case of destroying America it’s creating a particular problem: changing what we value, and how we value people. Christmas is one of the largest proponents of consumerism, and like clockwork it goes to work every year. Generation after generation we buy our children gifts; they buy their children gifts, and so on. This teaches our children an altered sense of value, and how we evaluate the value of other people. Did you ever stop and think about why you make fun of your friends for having a VHS player, or why we chastise our co-workers for not getting that flat screen monitor yet? It’s because we value people based on what they own, and how up to date the product is. Our values in America have become superficial. We have a harder time seeing value in generosity, or kindness. In fact we often find kindness to be a weakness because it’ll sometime prevent us from gaining more material possessions.  Even intelligence is only valued in how much it can create a profit.

2. T.V. – When’s the last time you’ve read a book? What about the last time you’ve created something? Well if you’ve spent the time reading this then you may be part of the 15% of Americans that read regularly. T.V. has turned the last few generations of American’s from possibly being the most innovative, original critical thinkers in the world to a generation of dead brained audience members.  It has become a hypnotizing tube of exaggerated information and superficial entertainment, contributing very little to the minds of the young and old. The T.V. teaches us that we no longer need to critically think, the T.V. will do it for us. It will tell us what we need to know, what is entertaining, what we need to buy, what we want to buy, and how our country is being run. Disagree with what the T.V. has to say? Well that’s too bad because you can’t talk to the T.V.; it’s a one-way path of communication.  There is no longer a reason to read when stories are read to us, keeping us occupied from our very un-fulfilling lives. Un-fulfilling because we spent to much time as kid’s watching T.V. instead of reading and developing critical thinking skills.

1. Terrorism – This word strikes fear into most Americans as it brings images of thousands dying in New York on September 11th, 2001. This word is used to describe an enemy that we have sacrificed everything as Americans to protect ourselves from. We have thrown our constitution out the window in order to support a president who told us he could protect us. We act like the country that said, “ Give us liberty or give us death” but we are far from that anymore.  We have given up our liberty because of terrorism, and most Americans (probably because they are too busy watching T.V.) are totally oblivious to how much they have sacrificed in order for security.  We have destroyed something about America that is vital, and we’ve created another ideology for America all together, “Give us security, we don’t need liberty as long as we’re alive”.