Mourning In America

We traded freedom for flags and justice for billionaires’ profits

Photo by Lee Lawson on Unsplash

The United States of America is blowing up more brilliantly than any fireworks we’ll see this week.

On the eve of the holiday that celebrates our nation’s founding, Republicans chose to ignore all our cherished ideals. They’re gutting food aid, Medicaid and more not to fix a crisis, but to funnel billions to the ultra-rich.

The Declaration of Independence threw off the rule of the British king, but we’ve willingly enslaved ourselves to a far more brutal tyrant.

No person who is economically enslaved is truly free. Income inequality has robbed much of the population of the rewards of their labor while giving more and more of it to the wealthy.

You think income inequality is bad now? We just threw fuel on the income inequality fire.

Get ready for even greater income redistribution

The wealthy used to consider “income redistribution” a bad thing. Their assumption was that, like Robin Hood, the government would take from the rich and give to the poor.

Now, income redistribution is apparently just fine with many wealthy people, because our government intends to take from the poor and give to the rich.

It is as if the government has broken into the house of a poor man, removed his last few dollars from his pocket and handed it to the richest people in the country. That’s essentially what the government will now do, but to millions of people all at once.

America has decided to close rural hospitals, cut Medicaid (and Medicare!) and food assistance to the poorest of the poor, reduce clean energy jobs and more — not to pay for a dire necessity or to cut the raging deficit but to give more money than ever to the ultra-rich.

At the same time, we’re pouring billions into militarizing ICE, an agency that now resembles a secret police force more than an immigration service.

Expect to see more and more violent “disappearing” of legal immigrants and yes, U.S. citizens, along with undocumented immigrants. ICE is not targeting violent criminals. They’re going after fruit pickers, gardeners, roofers and housekeepers. And they don’t care when the wide net they cast grabs a few citizens, too.

Poor children will go to bed hungry so that billionaires who couldn’t spend their fortune in a dozen lifetimes can hoard even more. The deficit Republicans have always claimed to care about will explode.

This is evil.

We had a pretty good run

America held onto democracy for 249 years. But now Americans have chosen less freedom and more income inequality, an odd thing for a country that loves to brag about freedom.

Americans love flags, fireworks and patriotic songs. The Constitution, freedom, the rule of law and social safety nets, not so much.

Personally, I revere our Constitution far more than I do the cloth symbol we wave around. And it’s sad to me that many of the people who were most eager to discard our freedom and equality — I speak, of course, of Trump supporters — value only the symbol.

Americans are no longer free.

And it’s folly to think everything is going to go back to normal after Trump is gone. It’s much harder to claw something back than it is to hang onto it in the first place.

Most Americans have always believed we are special, that our golden age would go on forever. We’d forever be safe, secure, free and privileged.

The U.S. had an economic engine stronger than anything the world had ever seen before, at least lip service for freedom for all, and a military whose might none could best.

Our decline begins now.

No foreign power took our freedoms. We surrendered them freely, with flags waving.

Don’t miss my current special series, Poverty and Privilege, which comes out every Saturday:

Poverty and Privilege is the story of Richard, a man with generational wealth, and Lauren, a single mom struggling to keep her household afloat. The twist is they both have Ivy League educations but life has turned out very different for each of them. The story is true but names and certain identifying details have been changed.

Part 1, Unlikely Allies in an Unequal America

Part 2, The Country Club Lunch

Part 3, One Family’s Fall From the Middle Class

Part 4, Billable Hours Don’t Pause for Birth

Part 5, The Value of $60,000

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. I also have a new Substack aimed at authors who want to self-publish books, called The Indie Author. My most recent book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class. My most recent novel is The Trailer Park Rules. If you prefer to give a one-time tip, I accept Ko-fi.

All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park

For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.

Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.

When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.

Welcome to the Loire Mobile Home Park! Please observe all rules.

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