I am sure we all feel alienated in the real world today, at least sometimes, I know I do…. How can we not? Events happen at a blurring, spinning, frantic, staccato pace, we are caught on a mindless treadmill of school and homework or work world or family raising events that whip by us in a frantic, mind numbing blur…Often times it is all we can do to drag ourselves through the day and after a perfunctory dinner or a few rare shared moments of family time or the luxury of watching a favorite television show, we collapse into bed at night….It seems we have lost control of our lives-because we have…

Many of us do not even make it to the bedroom most of the time, we literally pass out on the couch or in our easy chairs in an attempt to watch that favorite TV show, and wake up in the middle of the night on the couch and shuffle off to the bedroom only to be jarred awake by that annoying, mindless blast of music or buzzing of the alarm clock…

We shower and dress and maybe grab something to eat and then we are off on our morning commute to school or work world, we are either jammed in like sardines on the subways or buses or caught in gridlock on the jam packed freeways… Is this any way to live our lives, the only one we have?

We are suffering from a deep collective malaise, a fundamental disconnect from the real world around us…How do we even know what the real world is anymore?…We feel helpless, some of us can rage against the machine but we are scattered and not coordinated well enough to have any real effect…We sigh and say well “the rich get richer” but only because we let them!

Politicians lie to us daily to further their own schemes, the government rewards the rich and greedy while it stifles and persecutes the poor, the minorities, the aged, the immigrants-and THIS rhetoric in a nation of immigrants! Our entire birth as an independent nation was founded and forged in the heat of revolutionary fervor BY immigrants…Unless you are an Indian, a native American, every American today is descended from immigrants!….Immigrants built this country!

While we may be jam packed shoulder to shoulder on the subways or bumper to bumper on the freeways, we are all isolated in our own private little worlds…We are physically next to other people, but there is no real connection, no communication, no sharing…Most of us have headphones to blot out the external reality of where we are and what we are doing on the subways, or have blue tooth or CD’s to listen to in our cars…Again, we are cut off from all outside sources, we are alienated within our own private world…We are all on “The Highway to Hell” as AC/DC sang so eloquently……

Once we get to school or work world we are shunted off to our desks or cubicles and then most of us stare all day at a computer screen or make necessary but perfunctory telephone calls to complete strangers delivering information that may or may not even be welcome…We put people on hold, we take or leave voice mails, we complete reports, we write inter office emails to our superiors…We engage in work projects that are all so crucial at the time but that we can’t even remember a week later….We have so very little time to get to even know our co-workers, let alone bond with them to any degree…

After the school bell rings or we punch out from work, the reverse commute starts all over again, the drive or subway home…Exhausted from a lack of sleep and punch drunk by the revolving door routine at work, which spits us out at the end of the day like so many useless units, we are caught in endless traffic jams or are again wedged in shoulder to shoulder with complete strangers on the subway…

We finally walk or stagger through the doors of our home and get ready to repeat the same routine again…Most Americans are severely overworked, underpaid and sleep deprived all the time….Where is the passion, the joy, the exuberance we thought was our birthright? Where is the closeness and camaraderie of good friends and family to share the good times with? Where in fact, as the Kinks and Van Halen plaintively sing “Where have all the good times gone?”…Where is the hope for the future? We need to make some fundamental changes in this country!

The sad fact is, most Americans today simply do not have the time for anything except to repeat the same patterns, tumble into the same pitfalls, stumble over the same obstacles as the day before and will do again tomorrow….Wash, rinse and repeat the cycle…Wash, rinse and repeat the cycle, day after day, and the days turn into weeks and the months turn into years and the years turn into a lifetime, until at the end, like in the movie Soylent Green, the treadmill dumps us off into the pit of forced retirement….

We are a nation of sheep, as the wise man once said, and the alienation, the disconnect from the real world gets worse as we get older…Most of us don’t have the time to get to know our own family, let alone our neighbors or co workers; we don’t have the time to explore our selves, let alone our significant others….

And if we don’t have the time to get to know ourselves, how can we possibly learn to connect with others? Plato perhaps said it best back in the Golden Age of Greece, around 400 BC: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” We are becoming a fractured, divided, hate filled country where special interest groups already in power, funded by the obscene wealth of the 1%, strive to drive even deeper wedges between regular working class Americans the old “divide and conquer strategy”

Why? Because they can… They are able to foster their endlessly greedy schemes of raping the planet of all it’s mineral wealth, cutting down the rain forests, (the very lungs of the planet!) polluting the air with greenhouse gas emissions poisoning the atmosphere, and killing off wildlife  and dumping toxic waste in the oceans, all in the name of the great god profit….

What can WE do about it? Fight back! Support strict limits on campaign donations that currently allow the Super Pacs to buy the politician of their choice to support their absurdly selfish and super wealthy life styles, maybe a top upper limit donation of $500 for a political candidate….

Expose these fat cats like the fascist Koch brothers and their ilk, put them under the hot lights and the glare of publicity, condemn and punish them, make them pay off the national debt, give tax relief to everybody who is not a millionaire…..Remember, they did not earn their wealth, they stole it-from us!

If we become involved with a cause we will not feel as helpless and hopeless as before…If we fight back, we can improve our lives and hopefully our style of living will rise and we can afford to have more quality time off…Stop letting these fat cat 1% uber wealthy fascists divide us into red and blue states…We should all be united in red, white and blue!

Throw out the trash at the top, the kiss ass politicians who cater to the 1% because the 1% own them. Make some meaningful reforms through electing decent politicians who have the best interests of the country, instead of themselves, at the top of their agenda….

Fight these rich sob’s while we still can, expose and stop the 1% who are alienating us all! Take back our country from these corporate leaches, these bloodsuckers who are draining us all dry! If we do this, we will not feel so alienated and powerless….We will be American patriots again….We already have a cause and a reason to live, don’t let apathy rob you of your birthright as Americans…

Take back the power people, and stop the madness! We did it in 1776, and we need to do it again!

For more articles by John Whye, click on http://www.johnwhye.com