Politicians are there to make you think you have a choice. You don’t have freedom. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the land that matters. They own and control corporations. They’ve long ago bought and paid off the Senate, Congress, state legislatures, and city halls. They’ve got the judges in their pockets, they own all the major media corporations, so they control pretty much all of the news and information you hear…They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. They lobby to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everyone else…It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it. — George Carlin
Who owns America?
Is it the government, politicians, corporations, foreign investors, or the American people?
While the Deep State keeps the country divided and distracted by an uncertain Presidential election (where the tightening of police state powers will ensure the continuation of endless wars and out-of-control spending while ignoring the basic rights of its citizens and the rule of law), America is literally being bought out from under us and sold off.
Consider the facts.
We lose land to corporations and foreign interests every year. Foreign ownership of U.S. farmland has increased 66% since 2010. In 2021, it was reported that foreign investors own nearly 40 million acres of U.S. farmland, an area larger than the entire state of Iowa. By 2022 that number had increased to 43.4 million acres. The rate at which U.S. farmland is being acquired by foreign interests increased by 2.2 million acres per year from 2015 to 2021. The number of acres of U.S. farmland owned by foreign entities increased by more than 8% (3.4 million acres) in 2022.
Every year, we lose business to foreign companies and foreign interests. While China owns only a small portion of foreign-owned U.S. land, 380,000 acres (less than the state of Rhode Island), Chinese companies and investors are also buying up major food companies, commercial and residential real estate, and other businesses. As RetailWire explains, “Many brands started by early American pioneers are now flying the international flag. This revolution is a direct result of globalization.” The list of once-famous American brands sold to foreign companies continues to grow. Among them are U.S. Steel (now Japanese-owned), General Electric (Chinese-owned), Budweiser (Belgium), Burger King (Canada), 7-Eleven (Japan), Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge (Netherlands), and IBM (China).
We, as a nation and as a people, are sinking deeper and deeper into debt. Essentially, the U.S. government maintains its existence on credit cards, spending money it doesn't have on programs it can't afford. Most of that debt has accumulated over the past 20 years, thanks to fiscal mismanagement by four presidents, 10 Congresses, and two wars. The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed and must repay over the years) is over $34 trillion and will grow by another $19 trillion by 2033. Of the U.S. debt, foreign ownership accounts for 29 percent. According to a report by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, “52 percent of that is held by private foreign investors and the remaining 48 percent is held by foreign governments.”
The Fourth Estate has been taken over by media conglomerates that put profits over principle. Independent news agencies that were meant to serve as a bulwark against government propaganda have been swallowed up in a global corporate takeover of newspapers, television, and radio. As a result, a handful of corporations control much of the media industry and, therefore, the information presented to the public. Similarly, with Facebook and Google appointing themselves arbiters of disinformation, we are now dealing with a new level of corporate censorship by companies that have a history of colluding with governments to keep citizens ignorant, silenced, and in the dark.
But most importantly, the US government, sold long ago to the highest bidder, has become little more than a front for corporate interests. Nowhere is this more evident than in the manufactured spectacle that is the presidential election, where members of Congress are trained long before they are elected to dance to the tune of their wealthy backers, to the point that they spend two-thirds of their time in office raising money for them. As Reuters reports, “It also means that lawmakers spend more time listening to the concerns of the wealthy than anyone else.”
In the American police state oligarchy, it apparently doesn't matter who wins the White House, because they all work for the same boss: the global corporate state.
So much for living the American dream.
“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.
We are forced to pay for endless wars that drain us: money for surveillance systems that track our movements, money to further militarize our already militarized police, money so the government can raid our homes and bank accounts, money to fund schools where our children learn nothing about freedom but only obedience, and so on and so forth.
This is not the way to live.
It's tempting to say that there's very little we can do about this, but that's not accurate.
There are things we can do (demand transparency, reject cronyism and corruption, insist on fair pricing and honest accounting, and end incentive-driven government programs that put profits over people), but this will require “we the people” to stop playing politics and unite to stand up to the politicians and corporate interests who have turned our government and economy into playful arenas of fascism.
Unfortunately, we have become so obsessed with identity politics, labeling ourselves based on our political leanings, that we have lost sight of the only label that unites us: we are all Americans.
Those in power want us to adopt an “us vs. them” mentality, which leaves us powerless and divided, but as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and its fictional counterpart, The Diary of Eric Blair, the only “us vs. them” that matters is “we the people” vs. the deep state.
About John and Nisha Whitehead:
Constitutional lawyer and author John W. Whitehead is founder and director of the Rutherford Institute. His latest books, The Diary of Eric Blair and Battlefield America: The War on Americans, are available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at (email protected). Nisha Whitehead is executive director of the Rutherford Institute. Information about the Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
