We are told in our very own Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," and further, "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…" These very words are the words that those that signed such, pledged their lives, and their sacred honor upon. So too, these were the words that led to the resolve of those people to make revolution against the empire of Great Britain, so as to tear apart those cords that bound those men to that monarchy that did not afford those men, the right to their own self determination and their right to a fair return of the labor so made.
Yet, the government as currently exercised and practiced within the United States, appears to be a government that answers not to the people, but rather is in fit, form, and function, a government that favors the elite and well placed, at the expense of the people. For instance, in what is supposed to be an egalitarian society, one would suspect that the disparity in income and wealth so accumulated, would be on a path in which the wealthiest and the most powerful of Americans would be ceding ground to the population as a whole. In other words, through the form of progressive taxation, estate taxation, and antitrust legislation, those that have created wealth, would in the course of events, ultimately pay a fair share of that wealth back to the people of this country in order to provide those people of that government of the people, with the fair foundation for their own wealth creation. Yet, never in the history of America, have so very few had so much. In fact, as reported by politifact.com, just three individuals, have more wealth than the bottom 50%, or 160 million Americans, combined. That, is proof positive, that the government is not now, nor has it been, a government of, by, and for the people, but rather that this is a government that clearly aids and abets those that are the richest of the rich at the expense of the people.
Additionally, this country, use to have an incarceration rate, that was less than 100 persons per 100,000 adult residents, which was basically consistent with other western European nations; yet in the twentieth century that rate went first above 100 persons per 100,000 in the 1930s, and then really took off in the 1980s, of which the United States reached an incarceration rate of an astonishing 716 per 100,000 adult residents in 2013. This startling and unprecedented growth rate in incarceration for an advanced nation was built around the concept of criminalizing those that were impoverished as well as those that were involved in some capacity in illicit drug usage or possession. In other words, the United States found it more beneficial to lock up its own people, rather than to constructively deal with systemic problems within its domain.
So then, America as demonstrated by those that hold the highest governmental offices, as well as by those that are the most powerful corporations, is a country that is built for, of, and by those that are both powerful as well as rich, and in no way, form or manner is it a country, of, by, and for the people. This, in substance, is the very reason, why this country which was birthed as a bastion of freedom, has morphed itself instead into a country that double-speaks all of the time, for the rich get richer, the powerful get more powerful, and the people lose, each and every day, more of their liberty and their freedom.