Dear editor:
Our Constitution is rarely read or even consulted by those who demand we follow it explicitly. We have an Electoral College to diffuse the popular vote from overriding the goals and agendas of the elite. We have a two-party system to restrict who the popular masses (majority) can vote into office. We ask people to vote who have never looked at, let alone read the Constitution of the United States.
Our country is rife with dissension and ignorance. Lies are reported as lies, yet continued to be spouted as funny or possibly maybe true. To not repeat them never occurs to the media.
Criticizing our government makes one unpatriotic even though we have decimated our manufacturing base with trade deals that only help multinational corporations. We have incarcerated more people, especially blacks, by using the 13th Amendment to take away every right they have as citizens, denying them the right to vote or rent or get jobs that pay above minimum wages. Forcing the effects of slavery on a group of people that we swear are no longer enslaved.
We fire drones into countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan from Utah by young men who have never seen blood and guts splattered all over buildings and probably never will. We demand the "right to bear" arms, even though the Second Amendment does not specifically give us that right. The NRA is using it to sell guns manufactured at huge profits to those too ignorant to know when they are being played.
Our laws protecting the environment are designed to make us think we have a government that cares about us as they are weakened or expanded, depending on what the corporation wants to exploit or develop. We sell our country to foreign companies because the Native Americans have no right to the resources under their reservations. Our government will sell to the highest bidder what was deeded to these people when first we stole their land that we thought was the best, forcing them into areas we felt too barren for any white person to successfully produce anything worthwhile on.
People across America could not stop the Keystone XL pipeline when their land was taken and given to a foreign company by right of eminent domain. Becoming nonprofitable stopped the pipeline, as it stopped drilling in the Arctic Ocean. Nothing we did or said meant a hill of beans.
We are fed pictures of our first lady in her French gowns and holding hands with the president while he prosecutes whistleblowers for exposing the lies and deception by our government in violation of our right to privacy. The First and Fourth Amendments have been essentially removed from our Constitution. In the meantime, the biggest crooks that almost bankrupted our country and stole millions of homes by fraud and deceit were rewarded not with jail time, but with more money.
Pretending these things aren't happening or didn't happen does not make us better, it just makes us fools.
Judy Ladd
Hot Springs
Editorial on 11/28/2015