If you look at the history of the USA through an unfiltered lens, you see a number of very striking realities that must cause cognitive dissonance in any thinking person. I will list the ones that I have identified here, in the way that I perceive them, in order to spur discussion:
1) The U.S. Civil War released a LOT of cheap labor when slaves were “freed” to work in the factories up north, and the new factories being built down south.
2) The New Industrial Wage-Slaves were so much better for the “Ownership Class” (Thanks, Dubya!) because they were self-maintaining. The burdens of food, shelter, and transportation to work were transferred from the owners to the wage slaves, and at a cost probably quite a bit lower than maintaining ownership of these slaves and their families.
3) Welcome to the new Freedumb! Factory owners were now free to pick and choose, hire and fire any individual wage slave without consideration for their families, health, or personal circumstances.
4) Wage slaves were free to starve, along with their families, if they did not work hard enough to please their new corporate masters.
5) This situation continues to this day, through the era of labor unions and their defeat by the ownership class, the brutal suppression of Socialism, and the exploitation of anyone entering the labor force without privileged credentials.
6) Those who choose military servitude over wage slavery get to go and die in the struggle to suppress human rights elsewhere, in the interest of the military/industrial/political complex.
7) Read the famous speech by Major General Smedley Butler: “War is a Racket”. General Butler earned 16 medals during his 34-year career, including 2(!) Medals of Honor, yet in the end, he saw that he had been hoodwinked and exploited just like every other American fighting man, to ultimately fight against his own best interests.
I think that's enough, for my first post here. Thank you for your consideration.