Opiate of the USA

Rebirth of a Realist

Opiate of the USA
In Deutsch-Französischen Jahrbücher— Karl Marx said
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
Marx lived and wrote a long time ago. As hard as it might be for my grandson to believe that was even before cell phones/
Today there is new opium that replaces religion. It is called mass media. Through it the oppressed can sigh and believe and make believe.
On January 15,2007 Americans celebrate a holiday. It is the birth of Martin Luther King that they celebrate. They will hear, and see excerpts from his famous "I have a dream speech over and over that day.
WE will hear from billionaire Oprah Winfrey and the half-black Senator, who may be a presidential candidate, Barack Obama and White Americans will feel good.
Reality can not penetrate the media induced high they will receive, however the truth makes the often repeat of the Dream speech an obscene mockery of the great man whose birthday we celebrate.
The truth is Northern schools are more segregated today than they were before the dream speech. The wall of fear between the all white suburbanites and the non-white city dwellers is much thicker than it was then.
According to The State of Black America 2005, the income level of African American families is only one-tenth of that of white families, and the welfare enjoyed by black Americans is only three-fourths of their white counterparts. In 2004, the poverty rate was 24.7 percent for African Americans, 21.9 percent for Hispanics, and 8.6 percent for non-Hispanic whites. In New Orleans, 100,000 of its 500,000 population lived in poverty; with the majority of them being black Americans. The homeownership rate for blacks is 48.1 percent compared with 75.4 percent for whites. Although blacks are just 12.2 percent of the American population, 41 percent of American prisoners detained for more than one year are blacks, and 8.4 percent of all black men between the ages of 25 and 29 are behind bars.
Only 29 % of students in a Connecticut all black school graduates with their class. The drop out rate leads to the unbelievable rate of street shootings in our cities. All of our cities have become places of fear. Guns are everywhere.
Martin Luther King’s dream is still just that, a dream, but on January 15 we will breath deeply and once again go on the nod and enjoy our media induced high.
David Truskoff
www.erols.com/sutto