Once upon a time,
in the 1950s and 1960s,
being a citizen of the United States of America,
especially if you were a white male,
was a pretty good deal.

In a world where

• most people were poor and unlikely ever to be much richer
• many people had no say of any kind over how they were ruled, and
• many people were at risk of dying by violence due to large and small wars

We were generally comfortable economically, and that situation seemed to keep getting better. We had a democracy - a corrupt one, and one that excluded a lot of our citizens, but it still was a democracy, where organized people could have an impact on government, even on the Presidency. (We had proved that when we forced Franklin Roosevelt, elected on an austerity platform, to create programs like social security and to favor trade unions, despite his aristocratic background.) And we were safe from the world's constant war. Sure, there was a lot of violence in our lives, but it was more or less self-inflicted. Nobody was coming to our nation to hurt us.

Of course, we were ruled by a small elite.

That goes without saying. They managed the democracy that they allowed us; they cut deals with the heads of the labor movement, and they took some of our young men now and then for their international adventures. But they managed us like a good hog farmer takes care of his stock -- perhaps with a certain contempt, but with attention to our health and welfare and security.

We had sort of made a deal, after a lot of struggles had been fought, accepting an anti-socialist government that ensured we would never have the protections workers in other countries had. We had agreed to let our masters lead us deeper and deeper into exactly the kind of overseas scheming that Washington and Monroe had tried to keep us out of. But still it seemed like a good deal. We were in hog heaven.

But then things started to fall apart for white folks in the U.S.A.

Around 1973, the economic rules changed. The Vietnam war was essentially over, and the United States security elite had suffered its first major defeat since it turned to empire in the 1890s. Recognizing our national vulnerability, the oil producing nations of the world decided they could raise prices on us without being disciplined by a coup or invasion. The ruling elite looked at the situation and made a decision. They decided that this time, they would pass on the costs to Americans.

Perhaps they were angry at us ungrateful citizens. After all, we had driven Lyndon Johnson out of office, and we were about to force Nixon to be the first President to resign. There were some tentative linkages between the people of color, who had always been aware of unjust practices, and those who had often managed to ignore all that. And women were acting differently, claiming power over their own lives.

There was rebellion in the land, though compared to other places and times, it was a pretty mild rebellion.

But hog farmers don't take kindly to swine who even think about running the farm.

Anyway, the ruling elite decided that this time, they would pass on the costs to us, even if that meant our standard of living went down for the first time since World War II. And of course, once they did it the first time, they kept doing it. They no longer protected our jobs, our currency, our small businesses, or our farms.

After all, they were the rulers of a world empire. Why should they be sentimental about one set of livestock that happened to be the one closest to home? There was always another farm to pillage, another country to loot. Why should they treat us any differently than anyone else when it came to making a buck, just because we were Americans like them? And so we have seen our jobs pay for less and less each year, and more and more of us have worked more hours with less job security, just trying to stay in the same place.

But, of course, they still did treat us differently.

We still were the only people on the planet whose votes had some direct influence over what they did. And we still had our security, our protection from the world's violence.

In 2000 we lost the vote,

In November 2000, the Supreme Court and other elements of the Republican Party told us that we were no longer allowed to decide who our titular leaders would be. The Democratic Party leadership, of course, stood by and let it happen. In fact, they discouraged those who went into the streets to defend democracy. Al Gore and Joe Lieberman were almost as afraid of the people as George Bush and Dick Cheney are. Gore knew if he urged people to stand up for the Constitution, the people who who stood up might not have sat down again. We might have gone farther than just putting him in office. We might have gone on to take away the rights that corporations have usurped, to take away the right to pollute and the right to operate unsafe workplaces and the right to evade taxes. We might have even tried to restore the foreign policy that George Washington enjoined us to follow -- a foreign policy with no clever alliances with thugs, an even-handed foreign policy. We might have taken away the privileges of Gore's friends and sponsors. So Gore didn't call out the people in his own defense, and the Supreme Court's blatant theft of the White House was allowed to stand.

and in 2001 we found out

we had lost our security

Less than a year later, on September 11, 2001, we found out that the ruling elite had lost interest in protecting us. It was more important to them to play global power games -- like turning a little gang of kinda crazy religious fanatics into a well-trained armed force, and then letting them run Afghanistan and pass on their training to others. It was more important for them to make an alliance with the cruelest elements of Israeli politics, no matter how that might outrage other nations in the Middle East. It was more important for them to have bases in Saudi Arabia, even if the idea of a Western power having troops within striking distance of the holiest shrines of Islam was bound to be provocative.

The members of the ruling elite were quite willing to put you and me at risk to make these gambles on power.

On a beautiful fall morning in Manhattan, the cost of those games became clear. Most of the people who paid with their lives, of course, were ordinary working people. Nobody had told them their lives were on the line for our foreign policy; they just thought they were getting up to go to work. But our ruling elite certainly knew that we were at risk, and had known it for years. To most of us, September 11 was a life-changing event. To the few at the top, it was an unexpectedly high cost of doing business.

So here we are. Already far behind much of the world in areas like infant mortality and social security, already having let our labor unions be weakened almost to death, already bathed in a mass media culture that would have made our grandparents throw up, we now have lost everything we traded our souls for. We no longer have wealth -- the average person in many countries is more comfortable than we are. We no longer have the vote. And we no longer are protected, high above the violence of the world. What used to be hog heaven is now not even the best hog pen.

It means something different now to be an American. We are not going to be the envy of the world much longer. The new Europe will surpass us in comfort and wealth, and do it while keeping the respect of the world -- because whatever they do, they will be more moderate, more reasonable, more responsible, than we are. Our streets, so long safe despite our complaints about crime, will be battlefields. We will look sadly backward to what used to be instead of optimistically forward to a better life. The old reason to be an American -- that it was a hell of a good deal -- doesn't apply any longer.

The first and best reason is that, as bad as it is here, you come from someplace where it's even worse. No-one can argue with that. We are meant to be a refuge.

The second reason to be a citizen of the U.S.A. in this new situation is that you really believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the long struggle to make them more real and more inclusive. That you love the people that have waged that struggle so much that you are willing to stay here and struggle with and for them and for a future worthy of the best of our past, no matter how bad it is now. If you are ready to stand where Dr. King and Eleanor Roosevelt and Cesar Chavez and Dorothy Day stood, it still makes sense to be a citizen of this nation, and to try to make its promise real -- for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health.

The third reason would be that you like being the servant of an empire, even if you are treated like crap. You like being part of a country that pushes people around, that operates arrogantly in the world, that operates on force and not respect. It doesn't really bother you that democracy, prosperity and security are gone, because you kind of enjoy a big-dog-eat-little-dog world. Because you might just maybe get to be one of the big dogs. And you think this empire racket is going to last for long enough for you to get something out of it.

So that's what it's coming down to, folks.

Once, it was a sign of good fortune to born in the U.S.A. Now, it's something different.

It's no longer a spectator sport to live here, though a lot of folks haven't realized it.

We are all on the playing field, the game is serious, and the old song says it best

Which side are you on?

justice?

or

greed?