Picture It, America

To understand America and what is happening to her you might have to close your eyes and visualize what it is like to be at the top.  

So you're a billionaire with many billions of dollars.    You have so much money that there is never a fear of running out.  You remember perfectly well how you got the money and you know you can duplicate your efforts any time you choose.

You have so much money  you can buy anything in this world.    What's more, you can buy any ONE in this world.  Any time you place a call to anyone on earth, your call is taken because your name is etched in the sun.  The most powerful people on earth are your friends even though you have no real friends at all.

It wasn't always like this.  You had to start somewhere.   But you barely remember any more the early days.  You haven't been to a grocery store in 30 years.  You haven't driven a car; the chauffeur picks you up at the door.  You have not stood in line to board a plane since Jimmy Carter was president.
You have 'people.'  You tend to business whether it's funny business or money business.

Thirty years ago you were nearly a whole person.  Occasionally a glimpse of the old you enters your mind like a ghost and scares you half to death because that's not you now.  You are a liar now.   And that's one of your better qualities.  You learned some fine arts along the way to the top.  You learned diplomacy when you realized that people didn't respond very well when you were a hothead.  You certainly learned manipulation which is close cousin to diplomacy.   You learned poise.  You even learned how to walk quickly, chin in the air,  with an aloofness that paints your grand mystique.

In the beginning you lied to get somewhere.  Now you lie when it would be easier to tell the truth, so ingrained is it in  the power 'game.'  Of all the qualities that you developed lying is the most useful.  It protects even you from the truth and by now you wouldn't know the truth anyway.

Many times long ago you tried the truth and found a.) no one believed you b.) it made the 'game' much more difficult c.) it literally cut into profits.   When Clint Eastwood exclaimed in a movie 'You can't handle the truth!' you knew you could have written that line yourself.

You are very clever in simple ways most people would not think of.
You delight in recalling your most profitable scheme ever, that of bottled water.  All you did was pay for a couple of small studies about the hazards of water that comes out of the faucet.  You already had the bottled water infrastructure in place so when your studies went viral you were pre-positioned.   Profits still flow in as your business fills hard plastic bottles with tap water and sells them for $30 a gallon.  Simple and brilliant.

Your most complex scheme, the one hardest to put in place, was the marriage of the media to the political and power establishment.   History will record this properly one day as the point at which America's failure really began as we are nothing without a free and curious press.

To be continued....