I can’t believe it took me this long to fully accept that the United States of America as a government and ruling system, is completely corrupted.
The people by and large are decent folks, just like people in any other country when you don’t include the government or politics. But, I’m embarrassed to say that our government has been too heavyhanded in its affairs around the world.
At home, it’s even worse. I used to be proud (as much as a Christian could be) that we are the oldest democracy. But that also means we’ve a head start in the corruption of our representative republic, which is what we actually are. The amount of grift, money laundering, nepotism, cronyism, bribery in the form of lobbying, self-dealing, and self-interest among this fuzzy group of politicians and their hangers on is downright depressing.
When people like the Clintons, Northam, Newsom, Gingrich, etc. all play to a different set of laws, then we really have no laws at all. We have capriciousness.
This post described it well, just before Trump’s election in 2016:
It is broadly illegal to price-fix via any mechanism where market power exists. So says 15 United States Code, Chapter 1. Go read it. Virtually the entire US Medical System operates on business models that are facially in violation of that section of law. The latest outrage is an off-patent device called an “Epipen” used for severe allergic reactions; if you need one and don’t have it you have a very good chance of dying. They cost about $60 10 years ago, and are about $100 today anywhere else in the world. Except here in the United States — where they’re $400, and if you get on a plane, buy a bunch and bring them back to sell (to make a profit and undercut the price) you go to prison. The exact same sort of price-fixing with the direct support of the US government and FDA is present in virtually every area of medical practice — from drugs to devices to hospitals. All of this facially appears to be illegal; were I to even have had a discussion with a competitor on fixing pricing when I ran my Internet company that would have been a federal offense.
How many people are dead — broke — or both as a direct result of these practices? There is an entire industry that accounts for nearly one dollar in five spent on all items in our economy and it has multiplied its share of spending by a factor of roughly six through the use of these tactics. You, I and everyone else in the country are being overcharged by a factor of five times as a result,it’s destroying the Federal budget and has or will destroy state and local budgets also. You can’t run a car repair shop without quoting prices before you start turning wrenches and yet it is essentially impossible to get a price, nor to bind the hospital to any figure they give you, for a procedure before it is done.
My videos, which are coming soon, will simply talk about life from a Christian point of view and how I make sense of the world. Because, what we are living in is a spiritual sickness, and we need God. Only he can save us, so Lord, come quickly.
I’m still glad that I’m an American, and I am pleased that we have the values that we have. They may not be all Christian, in that it focuses too excessively on the individual’s rights and freedoms and the laissez-faire attitude toward making a living. I believe that the Acts 2 template is the ideal model, but that’s a spiritual community and a faith-derived value system. I think you do have it in the smaller towns and communities, and I think that is the ideal balance of individual vs. community from an American perspective. I simply wish it were more prevalent, especially in our day and age of everyone becoming their own brand or channel or celebrity.