Are Americans a Broken People?
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 18, 2026 03:15
VIEWED: 19858
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Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States?...
When people become broken, they cannot act on truths of injustice. Furthermore, when people have become broken, more truths about how they have been victimized can lead to shame about how they have allowed it. And shame, like fear, is one more way we become even more psychologically broken.
U.S. citizens do not actively protest obvious injustices for the same reasons that people cannot leave their abusive spouses: They feel helpless to effect change. The more we don't act, the weaker we get. And ultimately to deal with the painful humiliation over inaction in the face of an oppressor, we move to shut-down mode and use escape strategies such as depression, substance abuse, and other diversions, which further keep us from acting. This is the vicious cycle of all abuse syndromes.
Perhaps the "political genius" of the Bush-Cheney regime was in their full realization that Americans were so broken that the regime could get away with damn near anything. And the more people did nothing about the boot slamming on their faces, the weaker people became....
The U.S. government-corporate partnership has used its share of guns and terror to break Native Americans, labor union organizers, and other dissidents and activists. But today, most U.S. citizens are broken by financial fears. There is potential legal debt if we speak out against a powerful authority, and all kinds of other debt if we do not comply on the job. Young people are broken by college-loan debts and fear of having no health insurance.
The U.S. population is increasingly broken by the social isolation created by corporate-governmental policies. A 2006 American Sociological Review study ("Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades") reported that, in 2004, 25 percent of Americans did not have a single confidant. (In 1985, 10 percent of Americans reported not having a single confidant.)...
We are also broken by a corporate-government partnership that has rendered most of us out of control when it comes to the basic necessities of life, including our food supply. And we, like many other people in the world, are broken by socializing institutions that alienate us from our basic humanitA long list of school critics from Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, John Holt, Paul Goodman, Jonathan Kozol, Alfie Kohn, Ivan Illich, and John Taylor Gatto have pointed out that a school is nothing less than a miniature society: what young people experience in schools is the chief means of creating our future society. Schools are routinely places where kids -- through fear -- learn to comply to authorities for whom they often have no respect, and to regurgitate material they often find meaningless. These are great ways of breaking someone.
Today, U.S. colleges and universities have increasingly become places where young people are merely acquiring degree credentials -- badges of compliance for corporate employers -- in exchange for learning to accept bureaucratic domination and enslaving debt.
www.alternet.org/politics/144529/are_americans_a_broken_people_why_we%
27ve_stopped_fighting_back_against_the_forces_of_oppression?page=entire
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Playing with 'Monopoly money' in a game that cannot be won , yes that is demoralizing...
Why would anyone expect otherwise ?
Everything is Broken :
Broken lines, broken strings,
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds.
Ain't no use jiving
Ain't no use joking
Everything is broken.
Broken bottles, broken plates,
Broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts,
Streets are filled with broken hearts.
Broken words never meant to be spoken,
Everything is broken.
Bridge: Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground
Broken cutters, broken saws,
Broken buckles, broken laws,
Broken bodies, broken bones,
Broken voices on broken phones.
Take a deep breath, feel like you're chokin',
Everything is broken.
Bridge: Every time you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face
Broken hands on broken ploughs,
Broken treaties, broken vows,
Broken pipes, broken tools,
People bending broken rules.
Hound dog howling, bull frog croaking,
Everything is broken.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7065177340464808778#
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O2B: Indeed.
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In answer to your titles question...
NEVER.
Beaten, but never broken.
So long as one person remains free.
NEVER.
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You say "never" and yet.... things are going downhill, and nobody doing much about it.
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Are Americans a Broken People?
Some are.
Some aren't.
Some would be broken no matter how well the country works.
Some will never be broken no matter how badly the country works.
Does the idea of Americans as a Broken People make you feel better, or more justified?
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Its always darkest before the dawn.
Besides, a free society must... from time to time...expunge the poison in itself.
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We are also broken by a corporate-government partnership that has rendered most of us out of control when it comes to the basic necessities of life, including our food supply. And we, like many other people in the world, are broken by socializing institutions that alienate us from our basic humanity long list of school critics from Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, John Holt, Paul Goodman, Jonathan Kozol, Alfie Kohn, Ivan Illich, and John Taylor Gatto have pointed out that a school is nothing less than a miniature society: what young people experience in schools is the chief means of creating our future society. Schools are routinely places where kids -- through fear -- learn to comply to authorities for whom they often have no respect, and to regurgitate material they often find meaningless. These are great ways of breaking someone.
It's good to know that folks are finally seeing this and calling it out.
I've fought "The Breakers" all my life, because of the very problems this article outlines, dumping sand in the works at every turn and corner - this article doesn't touch on the hellcamps and forced medication issues, but rather the core issue of, again, the abuse we commit in the name of raising kids, which pollutes our entire society.
We're beginning finally to see a slight tidal shift in the matter, Sudbury Schools, the fall of the Hellcamps, people speaking out and standing up, even articles like this - wasn't that long ago folks like John Taylor Gatto and Alice Miller were given about the same regard as PirateNews, because it was so much easier to dismiss them than face the truths of what they have been saying.
But that tide WILL turn, because natural human instinct is not what we have been told it is, not what we have been hammered into believing it is, and every human contact that isn't malicious or exploitive just proves it that much more, and with that solid core of human nature, one can resist most of this, just as a good parent-child relationship causes most kids to blow off predators before they get their hooks in.
To put it simply, sane people make a sane society, and finally people are asking the question, out loud and in public - "What the hell are we doing here ?" - and that is as good a sign as one could hope for.
Cause that's what it's all about, innit ?
Hope.
I tend to lose sight of that when busy puttin a boot to some ass, and as such, appreciate the reminder.
On a related, but amusing note, imma share this bit with you out of my inbox this morning.
School suspends 'crisp dealer'
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3599919.html
You just have to laugh - the only reason the powers that be really control anything is cause we let em - imagine what'd happen if we just pointed and laughed instead ?
-F
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"Cause that's what it's all about, innit ?
Hope."
Exactly.
Noone ever listens to me...
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