By Timothy V. Gatto

The recent Revolution in Egypt is not complete. The Army still has control of the country and it is yet to be seen if they will give in to the demands of the people that fomented the revolution. This will take time and we will see sooner than later if the people of Egypt can be patient. Change comes in increments. We can only hold our collective breath and hope that change does come to these brave citizens of Egypt.

Meanwhile Americans are forgetting that our situation is not that different than the situation in Egypt. We to are under the control of forces that don’t have the majority of Americans interests at heart. The truth is that the Pentagon is one of the key players in our supposed “Democracy”. The Executive branch is almost subservient to military. Between the lobbyists that represent the Military-Industrial-Complex and the right wing that is in power in the House, the President seems to be between the rock and the hard place.

The United States is responsible for 47% of the World’s military spending. We have bases in approximately 800 nations across the planet. Just what is our aim is all of this while our economy falters and becomes impotent?

American exports are falling to an all-time low. Every year the United States manufactures less and less as our industries are outsourced by trans-national corporations to countries that can make these good cheaper albeit with less quality. Our free trade agreements have been catastrophic, driving illegal immigration from South America to the United States in droves. Columbian coffee now costs almost $12.00 a can. What did we gain from that Columbian agreement?

We are involved in Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and a host of other countries. The recent military appropriations bill was the largest in American history. Just where are the American people while this is taken place. The simple fact is that most Americans don’t know what is happening. The co-opted mass media hardly mentions these events, and if they do, it’s on the back pages.

The truth of the matter is that we have no free press in America except the publications that are read by the more educated citizens that are well aware of what is happening but few try to educate their less educated friends and neighbors. We seem to have a fear in this country of being labeled “dissidents”. The storm of patriotism after 9/11 is still with us and is partly responsible for the American Military to believe it can run amuck with no civilian oversight.

We have fleets that are as large as the fleet’s that operated in World War II, except with much deadlier weapons systems. Whether or not people in the United States know it or not, this is where most of our income goes to instead of being used to rebuild American infrastructure.

Meanwhile, with the largest military on Earth, we still can’t stop the Somali pirates hijacking American oil tankers in the Indian sea. The last tanker they hijacked accounted for 20% of our imports of oil. Does that explain the gas prices going up this month? Just who is the military working for anyway?

I have come to the conclusion that the American government no longer works for the people of America. They have an agenda all their own that is dictated by the Military-Corporate-Industrial-_ complex. The sad part is that these once American corporations are now trans-national corporations that have no particular allegiance to the United States. We are run by a military corporacracy. The cities in America are decaying and the World is passing us by. We have no high-speed trains to take the place of the automobile. The skylines of cities overseas put our cities to shame. We are a Superpower because of our military alone. Our industrial capacity is a thing of the past.

The lobbyists own our politicians. If not for their support, their campaign coffers would be barren. They do what they tell them to. Sadly, this all could have been stopped a long time ago. Congress could have acted to enact Campaign Finance Reform that really meant something. Instead we got a watered down version that succeeded in doing nothing to stop corporate money legally bribing our elected officials.

Corporate personhood is a myth. The corporations are responsible to no one except their corporate boards and shareholders and their bottom line is profit, not the security of the United States. Go to Wikipedia and look up the definition of corporate personhood. You will see that our government has been perpetrating one of the largest lies in history.

So celebrate the victory of the Egyptians. Just remember that we have our own variation of dictatorship at home in America. It’s going to take a mass education program to educate the average American to where our nation is headed. Do the majority of Americans want world hegemony? Do we want to dominate this planet? Is this what our fore-fathers planned when they wrote The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution? I don’t believe so, and I don’t believe Americans want to be embroiled in constant war.

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By Timothy V. Gatto timgatto@hotmail.com Read Tim's Book "Complicity to Contempt" and his Novel "Kimchee Days or Stoned Cold Warriors From Oliver Arts and Open Press and available on Amazon and all other online bookstores.