A country in which the news media puts more emphasis on the absence or not of a flag pin on a candidate’s lapel than they do on the veracity of his/her statements and the consistency of his/her policy votes, is one that deserves its fate.

A nation in which the most carefully-crafted, public relations and campaign-generated slogans, such as “entitlement reform” “anchor babies” "welfare queens" “debt ceiling,” “draining the swamp,” “fake news” "black-on-black crime" are mindlessly repeated by the lemmings, but who then shrink from reasoned and nuanced debate about such things as why the energy sources every single person relies on remain in the hands of private ownership or why the country administers healthcare to its citizens through “insurance companies” or why we give such massive tax breaks to oil companies, is a country that deserves its fate.

A nation in which seeds into its young people’s minds relentless American Exceptionalism propaganda in the form of some of its very first memorized school words being a pledging of “allegiance to the flag…,” popularizes capitalistic-centric board games and toys such as GI Joes and an endless array of play army soldiers and guns, and devises curriculum full of exalting hero worship and imperialism instead of teaching that mass social movements have been responsible for the entire cornerstone of a better way of life, will be a nation of citizens which will also be reluctant to criticize the current occupants of its government when they are acting for the interests of its largest companies and against the interests of the welfare of its people, and then be smeared and shamed by those blinded by the misinformation of nationalistic marketing campaigns into denouncing dissenters as unpatriotic and Un-American.

A country in which the landscape is now dominated by gleaming new banks on every corner, national corporate drug store franchises stocked with barrels full of pills of the latest Big Pharma creations and expanding their floor space to cater to our every daily whim, and hair/nail/tanning salons employing exploited undocumented labor, therefore has little to no room on its commercial strips anymore for the local small business operator, a performing arts venue or community center in which could gather citizens who may seek respite from the barrage of consumerism and wish to discuss their predicaments together in person.

A world in which the top Google searches internationally are for usually for people such as David Beckham and Kim Kardashian and social media sites’ “trends” show similar celebrity gossip topping all interests, deserves its fate.

A country with an education system that considers history the story of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree and 11th grade Honors program in political science assigning for homework the memorization of all the president’s names as a course requirement, is one that deserves its fate.

A nation in which millions continually invite into their family living rooms tawdry, deceitful and crass characters from reality tv shows such as Jersey Shore and mindless, and vapidity from shows such as Dancing With The Stars, deserves its fate. The fact that such a staggering amount of people are attracted to the sad spectacle of voyeurism and tough-talking douchebags tells us something unsavory, or how badly they've been beaten by the system to embrace such empty spectacle.

A country that has accepted as normal, supermarkets with massive aisles filled to the brim with high fructose corn syrup-added products, dozens and dozens of sugary breakfast cereals, not stopping to wonder how it is that such a deluge of brightly packaged, mass-produced boxes, cans and bags are owned by a handful of food conglomerates and appear in each of our neighborhoods without wondering how they had been grown, harvested, packaged and distributed in such readily-available, abundant quantities, deserves its fate. Staggeringly high incidents of diabetes, obesity and heart disease put a strain on healthcare services. In an American culture uniquely around the world known for restaurants which offer all-you-can-eat buffets and one in which fast food culture has even been welcomed inside our schools and hospitals, there should be no wonder there.

A country in which austerity means school art and music programs are discontinued or can no longer offer instruments or supplies, or after-school programs to its students, but our government can find billions and billions of dollars for more weapons, tax cuts for the rich and bailouts for criminal banks, is spiritually and morally bankrupt – and deserves its fate.

A society which has created commercial holidays around consumer events such as Black Friday that turn human beings into malevolent monsters and then celebrates it with the same predictable “news” coverage each year, but can’t be bothered to even have a national conversation about the alarming epidemic of suicides among homeless veterans, the inadequacy and indignity of many of our old age homes and the lack of affordable daycare programs for children of working parents, deserves its fate.

A country in which its official storytellers have made it their business to sanction and sanitize Martin Luther King’s legacy by stripping away all the radical, revolutionary aspects of economic and racial equality at his core message, in the interests of making him more palatable to fear-laden white Americans and thereby preventing a coalition of disenfranchised poor white and black from forming, deserves its fate.

A country in which a disturbing amount of its citizens confuse the ultimate enshrinement of freedom and liberty onto the ownership of guns, and not in the freedom to be found in a political system that should provide for its taxes paid universal healthcare, free college tuition and welfare programs for parents of young children, the infirm, the elderly and unemployed, deserves its fate. The true freedom of living without the specter of being foreclosed upon by debt collectors for an emergency visit to the hospital apparently doesn’t register in the minds of those so gripped by fear of the “other,” that they’d rather clutch their finger to a trigger of a gun as the embodiment of “freedom” instead of voting for “entitlements” for those they consider undeserving and who they may join the ranks of someday.

A country in which its government is beset by 35,000 lobbyists, who literally write the legislation which permits and protects corporate plunder, under the false aegis of “what’s good for business is good for America,” while workers rights are eroded, the ratio of CEO to worker pay is astronomical and the amount of people living in poverty and have no savings is at deadly levels, deserves its fate.

A country in which reality tv encourages brusque interaction and personal attacks as acceptable and even celebrated behavior, while volunteering to help the less fortunate and standing in public solidarity with the maligned are dismissed and ridiculed, deserves this fate.

A country in which its people know more about celebrity chefs and have turned eating into a sport, but don’t have the first clue about how much corporate control reigns over the select food products available and how beleaguered our farmers are as they barely scrape by not being able to compete with the big corporate agro farms, deserves its fate.

A country in which citizens tune in regularly to corporate news sources, who then feed them non-stop FEAR, manufactured controversy and celebrity gossip, but expects them to be civically engaged and informed voters, deserves its fate.

A country in which its media cowardly avoids explaining in the simplest and clearest terms how it has come to pass that the vast majority of people have been ground down under a vicious and inhumane system of unbridled capitalism, deserves its fate.

A nation in which its sports culture commands the inordinate attention of the vast majority of working men who can reel off all manner of sports stats and trivia, but can’t tell you even the most basic characteristics of legislative bills that effect their purchasing power to attend the very games they follow with such unending zeal, deserves its fate.

A country in which its citizens adopt the calloused language of imperialist murderers to refer to human beings killed by its military as “body bags,” “enemy combatants,” and “collateral damage," deserves its fate.

A society in which stadiums and public spaces are named after corporations and vainglorious, extremely rich people who can’t be persuaded to be philanthropic anonymously, deserves this fate. It’s a society that conversely does not pay homage to its artists, scientists, literary folk and musicians in its public squares.

A society in which overprocessed, mass produced fast food overwhelms our main streets, but local farmers toil endlessly yet can’t find a place at the table to bring their harvest to market and are frequently under the thumb of predatory bank debtors, deserves this fate.

A society in which priests are locked up for feeding the homeless and a school cafeteria worker is fired for giving a free meal to a hungry kid, while a typical Wall St corporate fete wastes enough food to feed entire schools full of kids, deserves this fate.

A society in which a black woman can be aggressively pulled over by a cop and spoken down to then die in custody and a grand jury sees no foul play, while a young white man from an affluent family can kill a car full of people while driving drunk can receive no jail time by an “affluenza” defense, deserves this fate.

A world in which, given the amazing platform of interconnectedness of social media, has used Facebook mostly for sheer pathetic self-aggrandizement and bolstering sad egos - instead of sensing its incredible potential as a platform to share our grievances in a worldwide conversation, coming to a better idea about why the lives of untold billions are unnecessarily difficult with respect to the basic needs of food, shelter and clothing, and then discuss how to throw off the yoke of global corporate monopoly domination which inhibits it, deserves its fate.

In a country of which at one time had aspired to the Four Freedoms of speech/worship and freedom from want/fear, has now become one that regularly punishes dissent, abides a police state and seeks to ostracize diversity because it is manipulated by a constant state of fear and material desire, now sees freedom in a divined American right to purchase as many cheap, disposable products made by slave labor in the sweatshops of the SE Asia for the lowest price possible at monopoly chains such as WalMart, CVS and Home Depot. It deserves its fate.

A country in which vapid entertainment on par with a high school talent show such as American Idol can generate as many votes as a presidential election, while 40% of the population doesn’t vote at all, deserves this fate.

Such a country can not recognize a Bernie Sanders.

Such a country deserves a Pumpking Fuher Reality Tv Show Host.

That country, our country now, has for a long time been forged in the image of its corporations, lobbyists and venal politicians – not functioning as an egalitarian system which would be at the heart of a healthy and flourishing middle class. Its' the result of a malfunctioning society diseased by consumerism, American Exceptionalism, a false idea of the American Dream and a Worship of the Rich.

The Democrats, from under Clinton and then Obama, have become a nefarious party but with benign and likeable faces to appease the masses, with bright and intelligent minds, who masterfully weave poetic compassionate rhetoric to mask the deviance of their bought-and-paid-for pro-corporate/anti-people policies. They’ve made the Faustian bargain for power that comes with being beholden to Big Money from Wall St and Corporate America.

Bernie Sanders spoke direct, honest and clear truth to power about this endemic corruption, the malfeasance of politicians working in the interests of their donors instead of voters.

For it he had runaway numbers and massive support, and would certainly have demolished the incoming president in the election, had the entire Democratic Party machine not so actively destroyed him through a deceitful web of marginalizing, defaming, tipping the scales and outright election fraud and voter suppression we’d be entering a new progressive epoch tomorrow.

This is the fate we deserve.

Garbage In, Garbage Out.