America has reached a place of complete desperation where the hopes of the future have been placed in the aspirations of two people-Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The wife of Monica Lewinski’s ex-boyfriend is by far one of the most corrupted and vile individuals ever to seek high office and Donald Trump; well Trump is a real estate billionaire and reality T.V. star who started the race claiming to be an outsider-but ultimately ended up showing his support for the corrupt Republican establishment with his endorsements of Paul Ryan, Kelly Ayotte and John McCain. These are career politicians by the way, that support gun control.

Too many Americans feel that their minimal participation in the political process is all that is required and that voting in the right candidate is all that is needed to set the country on the right course. This is a process that repeats over and over again; one political party holds the reigns for four to eight years and then the other party promises to fix all of the problems created during that period. The people, for the most part, tend to just follow along, not really taking any active part in the process until just months before the election.  Of course, this is something that the political elite anticipate and capitalize on, an ignorant, uninformed population.

“Just because you don’t take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” (Perciles)

It is the personal belief of this author that there is a deliberate creation of hopelessness amongst the population in order to sway opinions and attitudes in the favor of the elite. People are either paying no attention at all, blissful of the potential danger their apathy creates, or their minds are preoccupied with problems that others tell them they should be concerned about.  Others are aware that the system is a complete sham and that we are being manipulated to the ends of a power hungry oligarchy that seeks to completely dominate all aspects of human being.  We are the conspiracy theorists and our opinions are usually completely disregarded.

Whatever the case may be one thing holds true; most Americans, because we are so busy with our day to day lives trying to survive, have completely forgot that the government of the United States belongs to and answers to us. We have forgotten that the maintenance of liberty requires personal responsibility and that holding political representatives accountable is our duty, and if we wish to pass onto our children a better, more secure nation, we must guard liberty with a jealous fervor.

Any athlete or fighter knows that an opponent’s biggest strength can often be exploited as their biggest weakness. Our liberty has been turned against us in that manner because the definition of liberty itself has been twisted into something that was never intended.  America was founded on the idea that individualism is superior to collectivism in the sense that an individual working to advance his own interests will inadvertently advance the interests and well being of the nation. This, for the most part has held true. Collectivized nations, where individuals are forced to work for the state, have always failed because an individual will not be motivated to work hard when the majority of what he works for is dispersed to others who have done nothing to earn it. Liberty is based on the idea that man, when left to his own devises, will act in a responsible manner while pursuing his own interests. Because the vast majority of Americans have adhered to living according to Christian principles for most of our history these concepts have created the greatest and most prosperous nation the world has known.

Liberty itself has been turned into a weapon.  It was once understood that living in a free society meant living responsibly. We have always had the freedom to do whatever we wished, but because we were based on a Christian morality we knew the difference between right and wrong. In order to gain power, the political elite corrupted the idea of what is considered moral to the point that no one even knows anymore what is right. For instance, in a book called the Happiness Hypothesis, (which was something this author had to read in college,) Jonathon Haidt argues that concepts of right and wrong are not universal but rather social constructs that we invent  to justify our feelings of what we think should be right or wrong. He actually uses incest as an example by arguing that there is no universal truth which suggests that incest is wrong, we only think it should be wrong. This is moral relativism and it has replaced our traditional Christian based morality.

The fact that our nation’s morality has been corrupted isn’t really the problem. It is only corrupted because the majority of America has not paid enough attention, or didn’t stand against the corruption. All too often environmental manipulation techniques, the division of classes, the labeling of different social groups- calling people racist because they have the audacity to oppose the absurd, for example, has created a nation that is afraid to speak out. A fear of losing the lives we have built for ourselves dictates what we say and who we associate with. If we are working in a job that pays our bills we are not likely to stand against any corruption that may be taking place if there is fear of reprisal or social isolation. Can you imagine the power we would have if we put the principles we say we believe in ahead of our fears to speak out for them? Therein lies the point; our biggest strength has been turned against us. Individualism has been turned into a weapon and has been used to isolate every one of us into social classes that all have differing ideas of what freedom means to them. Look at the left for example; they know what they are doing when it comes to unifying people behind a goal; the only problem is they are willing to lie, cheat and absolutely corrupt themselves in order to achieve a society based on ideas that have already proven to be disastrous. What are people who say they love America and the principles she was founded on willing to do in order to change course? The first thing we have to do is realize that each and every one of us can do more than what we are doing now. People, our children are facing an America with no future and we continue to chug along with daily life believing that our vote will fix it.