The illusion of freedom...

As every schoolchild will tell you, the Civil War was fought more than 150 years ago to free the slaves from the tyranny of the slave masters. Just as the slave himself was the property of the slave owner, so was everything the slave earned and possessed.

What monies that might have been received by the slave through his labor were paid to the master. The slave was kept alive only by the sufferance of the slave master. Everything the slave possessed actually belonged to the master. In the event of the slave’s death, everything within the walls of the shanty reverted to the master.

According to the history books, that all changed with the South losing the Civil War, but in fact that is not true; slavery is alive and well and in practice here in the United States.

During the Great Depression, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt government came up with Social Security. This was signed into law August 14, 1935. It REQUIRED that all people pay a tax to provide  for future needs of the citizens as they age. This money was placed into a trust fund that was not supposed to be used for anything except what it was originally intended. Yet, over the years the fund has been raided and the real assets spent by the slave masters.

When the slaves reach an age when they expect to receive the benefits of their years of contributions, there is nothing in the coffers to cover the monies owed, so the slave masters demand that slaves pay in additional money.

An equally unfair burden on the slaves is the Medicare/Medicaid tax. Once again, the slaves were led to believe that when they were forced to contribute to the fund, there would actually be money available when they reached the appropriate age. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As before, the slave masters have dipped into the fund, and the monies have vanished. Should one of the slaves need to be placed in a long-term facility, he or she will forfeit all his or her worldly possessions. Upon their death, the government will seize all of their assets and auction them to PAY BACK into the slave masters’ coffers what they actually owed the slave.

The only way to end this slavery is for the slaves to rise up, legally depose the slave masters, hold them accountable for the thefts, and punish them.

It is time to end this illusion of freedom and replace it with the real thing. What is stopping it from happening?

The slave masters have always had allies that are willing to rise to their defense. When the slaves begin to get a belly full of the slave masters’ lies, the propagandists rise up like a chorus condemning the anti-slavers as anarchists, liars, right-wing nuts. They crucify the opponents to slavery in print and pontificate to the need to maintain the status quo. They create  false idols and flood the media with images designed to encourage belief in the need for slave masters to look out for us.

Other allies, more interested in maintaining their tax-exempt status rather than the welfare of their people, preach the need to remain where we are and pray for our leadership. I am all for praying and I truly believe it works, but our country prayed for relief from the slave masters in England in 1770s and again in the United States in 1860s, and when that didn’t happen, they took action. Perhaps that was the answer to their prayers all along.

Maybe it is time we followed suit.

Funk is a resident of Kalispell.