Regaining our losses

America is often referred to as the “greatest country in the world” but why? We had the promise, the ability, the opportunity, and the heart to be. We had the hope and the best of the world’s peoples. Somehow, though, we have fallen short of the completion of this greatness.
We have, as many other smaller nations with far fewer resources have, been amazing when our backs were to the wall. We’ve done things when faced with crisis around the world and at home that were nothing short of miraculous.
America also has a leg up on other nations in that we not only have a geographical size most other nations don’t, but our land is almost completely resource worthy. We’ve got growing zones for every food and every season of the year and many of those zones are productive all year long. Yet, our government allows so much of our food to be grown offshore by our own American producers, with American protections.
We all understand international trade reciprocity but the scales have completely tipped over, and not to benefit our world relations. Several national brands of fruit, for example, went overseas to grow fruit we used to grow in America. That was about corporate profit, not international trade agreements … and that’s also just the cold draft off the tip of the iceberg.
America has massive human resources with every skill we need and our go-to attitude didn’t just make us strong in world crises; they made us a force to be reckoned with throughout the crises that befell our historical and repeated fights to be an independent nation. Our history is imperfect but real, and exposing the whole of its checkered past is imperative to our growth. We must face it, embrace it, and make it the history we learn, teach, and use to truly make us the productive and united nation we must be.
The atrocities, thefts and genocides that were committed in getting the soil of America to where we plant our national foot today can never be ignored. It must be used – embraced as the reality of what was done by those who came before us, it must be the force behind never letting it happen again, to not let the suffering go without exposing it and gaining from its lesson.

The gain is for those who endured the misdeeds, whose possessions and lives were sacrificed but it’s also for all who have come since. It’s the tie that binds all of us into one great nation where everyone works together with equal status, and we need a leadership that ensures that.
After we reconcile that part of what we were with all parts of what we need to be, we move on. Again, we’re a nation that can be, and can grow, make, do and have everything we need on our own. Being in that cat-bird seat allows us to, first, make great strides for all our people. Then, we can trade and travel around the world and forge new trails for the world to see, participate in, and benefit from. We’re a nation to be emulated, not mocked.
So, then, why don’t we grow our pineapples tasty and sweet in Hawaii anymore? Why are they pulpy and filled with sinew and grown in Thailand, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Honduras, the Philippines and the Ivory Coast? “International relations” is the red herring. The answer is corporate profit, and America suffers so it can soar across the seas. Sadly, this profit driven attitude and the powerful corporate influence over our government has cracked America down the middle and keeping us misinformed and separated is part of the power.
Any nation of a divided people is easier to overtake, to control, to lead astray. When the people are divided over what’s best for them as a whole society, they can be fooled. Without truths, they can’t know what’s best for them and can’t unite against the forces that have lead them astray and disempowered them. It’s a formula, and it works perfectly but not for us; it only works for the profiteers. Though it won’t work for them in the long run, they aren’t interested in the long run. They think they’ve got that covered.
While these profiteers and their allies in leadership allow our greatness, which is our people and our inherent power, to languish while they exploit the poor offshore, America loses ground at home and around the world, every day.
Food for thought, to go with our cardboard pineapples.

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