Although the United States of America is often touted as the land of opportunity, it really provides no opportunity to escape from the class into which you are born--unless, of course, you are willing to exploit others to do so.
A group of violent people killed to get more than their fair share, then used their profits to hire other killers to increase their land holdings. Now, there is no place left on the globe where a person can exist without paying space rent to a landlord to do so. Some of the jobs that people are forced to perform to get the money to pay rent on space to exist make it impossible for people to live with themselves. That's why the U.S. has the highest rates of both incarceration and addiction in the world. Please note that I did not say the "free world".
Most people have been brainwashed to believe that the degree of security they enjoy, which includes police protection, indoor plumbing, unlimited drinking water, and access to 24 hour propaganda/entertainment, which residents of the "third world" can only dream of, comes only at the expense of the poor forced into military service to guarantee it.
In fact, the price is much higher. The price for this imaginary security at the expense of others comes with a very high price tag indeed--that of your very humanity. People allow their taxes to be taken and their money invested in whatever brings them the most profit, without ever questioning at whose expense their profits are guaranteed.
In reality, the only profits that can be guaranteed are those that are not earned, but rather, extorted at gunpoint. Whether it is investing in exploiting the poverty of others through charging interest on poverty, or stealing the natural resources of other countries at gun-point, security is not possible without tyranny. Since the advent of drones gunpoint is no longer necessary, just a cowardly "battle" between those with the natural resources, and those in possession of unnatural resources, such as a desire for security at any cost.
More and more, our "security" has created a world of conditions under which I no longer wish to live, much less prosper. Greed and ambition have replaced kindness and principle. Success as defined not just as survival, but as the ability to force others to perform all the menial tasks required to achieve it. Success is defined as never having to do any actual work, but having the power to force others to do it for them.
Sometimes, I feel that I can't breathe. I look around for an escape and find none. The whole world has been monetized--every relationship, every human interaction, every formerly human instinct has been perverted into a money-making venture. Popularity has become synonymous with survival--the end result of "democracy"--a system of voting reserved for land and slave owners, a system of mob rule in which bullies are elevated to idol status.
I need offer no more evidence than the "election" of president Trump. Perhaps the whole of humanity should re-enact the Masada , http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/maps/primary/josephusmasada.html in order to retain the right to call itself human.