For the past four months I’ve traveled through two countries and eight cities of South America. The collective GDP (per capita) of Ecuador and Peru fall in the lower 50 percentile of the world and poverty levels are visually apparent at every corner. But given all the disadvantages of this Southern Continent, I have yet to run across a homeless person. How is this possible?
Meanwhile, back in the USA (the wealthiest country in the history of the planet), official statistics reveal 650,000 homeless nationally with real numbers most likely rising much higher. If this statistic isn’t shocking enough, the country just learned it spent two trillion of its hard earned tax dollars dollars on a war that enriched private contractors to the tune of billions while leaving another foreign country and its people in ruins. Not to mention, much worse than our arrival 20 years prior. Trying to square the homeless number with this military boondoggle is nearly impossible unless you’ve been propagandized to unrecognizable levels or-you’re working for Lockheed Martin.
And so it goes-Socialism for the corporate rich, Machiavellian survival for the majority of working Americans. For the record, It would have taken a small fraction of the two trillion to eradicate all homelessness, fund medicare for all and support a $15 minimum wage with plenty remaining to manage a strategic operation overseas. But war is a business that operates within a model that’s recurring, highly profitable and easily extended to suit the needs of the operators. In the words of highly decorated and two-time Medal of Honor recipient Major General Smedly Butler:
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
Still have doubts? Read the 'Afghanistan Papers' yourself.
So, returning to the question at hand-how has the impoverished South eradicated homelessness with a sliver of resources enjoyed by the United States? How about priorities, values, soul and a consciousness that embraces truth over illusion and slogans. American Acceptionalism or South American Exceptionalism?!
"The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it."
George Orwell