America Needs A Reality Check

America has been getting a little sloppy recently. We have this dude who used to yell, "You're fired!" on reality TV who is now one of the frontrunners to lead our country.  Our political debates have turned into an argument session you would expect between teenage siblings. Racial tension is at its highest in years. Young twenty-somethings all over our nation are drowning in student debt. Degrees become expensive posters to the unemployed. Gas prices are finally going down, so that's nice... No, wait. They are rising again. But the worst thing of all is that we are still being told we are "the best country in the world."

Lies.

Mass shootings have become the norm here. In the words of Obama, "We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency. It doesn't happen in other advanced countries. It's not even close."

It's maddening.

Our congress is torn between every single major topic, meaning we are unable to getting anything passed. (Thank God we did legalize same sex marriage recently, though.) Our politics are corrupt. Our political decisions are being bought by corporations disguised as large donations. Our prisons are overflowed with men and women who are locked away for possession of marijuana, while the cigarette companies make billions legally killing people with tobacco. We spend as much on military defense as the next seven countries combined, while our own people starve.

And even with all of this, our biggest issue is our ignorance. We don't even see our flaws. We think everything is dandy. "AMERICA IS NUMBER ONE!!!!" However, we are 28th in educational system, 34th in life expectancy, 80th in "soundness of bank", 26th in child well-being, and number 1 in having Donald Trump being a serious presidential candidate. 

We wave that red, white, and blue and scream out "freedom!" As if we are the only country that is "free." We are $19 trillion in debt to China. We pray everyday that we are not involved in today's inevitable mass shooting. We are locked up in our corporate cells everyday from 9-5. We drown in bills and student debt that we still cannot pay off. We turn on our TVs to watch millionaires live lives we could never dream of. We flip through magazines and overdose on their images. We let corporations hold our hands and guide us down their golden paths, paved by cheap child labor. Swish.

We are just puppets to the puppeteers of America.

We are free. We are free. We are free.