By Jake Sallerson
Capitalism will destroy America. At this point, anyone with the capacity to look forward in time while at the same time examining human nature will understand and agree with this statement, and here's why: Capitalism is to America as AIDS is to the human body.
AIDS takes the smallest component of the unified structure and not only weakens it – say, the way cancer does – but it turns the cell, or in this case the average American citizen, against the well-being of the whole.
Capitalism teaches us greed, selfishness and to fear our fellow countrymen and women, but it also does a funny thing; it teaches us to revere wealth over one another. It teaches us that at the end of the day, the only people who are truly important to us are the ones we care enough to provide our earnings for, be it ourselves, our families or, in some rare cases, our friends or charity.
What capitalism does is take America or the human body (an entity designed to stand as one) and it pits every base structure against not only itself but against all other aspects of the whole structure. It fails to maintain its ability to defend against even the simplest of attacks that an otherwise healthy body would autoimmune itself against and, instead, becomes wholly vulnerable to the point of mortality.
For any Christians out there, if truly a follower of the Christian faith, then you immediately must dismiss capitalism as the work of evil. For it teaches the exact opposite virtues of those taught in churches all over the world: kindness, compassion, others before you, generosity and that we are all the same.
I am not a Christian, but as my mother was raised Catholic, I have some insights to the religion, and the one phrase standing out most to me is a saying of Jesus from the New Testament: "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."
How much more accurate of a passage could possibly be found concerning the foundational credence of my argument? What more need I say?
DEATH OF AMERICA
The truth is, capitalism is going to be the death of America, and it's only a matter of time. The reason I bring this up is due to President Trump's decision to remove America from the Paris Climate Accord. Mr. Trump is putting money before the well-being of all of us. Though he would argue he is making better deals for all Americans, sadly, Mr. Trump only sees dollar signs.
In the short term, perhaps a few dollars will be made here and there so that we can continue utilizing ancient methods of energy consumption, but in the long term, he is accelerating and expediting the process by which our planet deteriorates to the point of no return.
This is something we cannot allow to occur any longer. We cannot put dollars before human beings.
We cannot be so ignorant and so consumed by the acquisition of material wealth so as to accept the lies we are being fed that will destroy our country economically and our planet ecologically.
RESTORE VERMONT
I have made the very conscious choice to come forward to advocate strongly for a group whose only goal and function is to restore Vermont, and maybe even America, to its rightful place as the true leader of the free world.
Intelligent, compassionate, thoughtful, and community-based, this organization seeks the unity of everyday Vermonters and like-minded Americans to put each other first. To work together to strive for economic as well as a myriad of similarly important functions of our day-to-day lives such as agriculture, industry, commerce, banking, education and government to truly serve the individual as a whole rather than as a misbehaving child who is seen as a nuisance instead of the future of the species.
I am talking about the Second Vermont Republic. A movement started during the Bush administration with efforts to find workable solutions to dealing with the unprecedented corruption we as Vermonters recognized during that era.
However, when President Obama was elected, Vermonters felt such a push toward needing a solution was no longer necessary. Essentially, the scale had righted itself and though still necessary to participate, drastic measures were no longer necessarily needed.
Nothing could be further from the truth today.
President Trump is threatening the well-being of every American day after tweet-filled day. We can no longer stand idly by and watch and wait for this monster of a leader to destroy everything we have worked so diligently to create in the last 241 years.
When I ran for state representative last November, I chose not to run on a platform as a candidate backed by the Second Vermont Republic; doing so seemed too radical for someone entering the political arena, not to mention as an individual under 30 years of age.
However, I can now say, the optics of perception are not only irrelevant, they too will damage any chance we have at rectifying this situation.
Radical is exactly what we need. Radical in the sense of new, as in untried, as in revolutionary. Radical does not mean extreme and it does not mean moving forward without thinking, planning or intelligently formulating a strategy capable of meeting the threats facing our nation, our state, and our very own well-being.
I am beyond tired of the political sphere of influence needing to meet the standards of what is considered politically acceptable for ideas to be heard. The political arena isn't designed to keep America stagnant or in the past; it was made so new ideas could be heard. Maybe it's time we started acting like such a concept actually exists, if not in America then at least here in Vermont.
Sallerson lives in Warren.
