Illusion and Reality: What You Should Really Be Thankful For

Illusion: The Pilgrims and Indians were "friends".
Reality: The Pilgrims and their descendants took away the land, killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of their "friends" in order to create the foundation of the American Dream.

Illusion: Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal".
Reality: Indians, Africans, and any other person of color was forced to become Anglicized, discriminated against in their homes, jobs and various other aspects of everyday living, humiliated and dehumanized for hundreds of years.

Illusion: Slavery ended with the victory of the Union over the Confederacy along with Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Reality: Slavery still exists in the United States. Slavery is a global epidemic. Slavery does not look like it use to-it has taken many forms so that it is unrecognizable for the willingly ignorant, sleeping majority. Slavery takes place in your home when you are being forced to pay outrages prices for your rent and mortgages. Slavery takes place when you are harassed on your job in addition to having to work outrages hours for a minimum pay that you have to turn around and pay your monthly expenses with. Slavery takes place when you are being bombarded left and right with advertisements to buy, buy, buy (mostly things that you don't need) which helps to make someone else's pockets richer. Slavery takes place when the 1% control the 99% and the 99% are the ones who allow for it to happen.

It's time to transform yourself from one of the willingly ignorant to willingly educated and proactive. It's time to shatter the illusions of yesterday and take a good look at the reality that's right in front of your eyes. Yes, the reality is harsh, more gritty, more...real. It's not as comforting as the illusion-and it's not suppose to be. The purpose of the illusion is to keep the 99% under control; to keep the 99% into feeding the illusion so that the 1% can remain in power. This needs to be flipped upside down and turned inside out!

It's time to realize that life is simple-it's the complexities that are created by man (the 1%) that make life more complicated and take away from the simple truths of life. There are certain truths that we should all be thankful for: the ability to breath, family, friends, purpose, help out our fellow man and protect our environment. These may sound so simple-cliché even, but it is these simple truths that some "civilized" civilizations are backing away from-even forgetting. This reality is becoming more and more an illusion when you think about it. When you read stories about how shoppers step over a dead body in order to continue their Black Friday shopping, you wonder. When you read stories about prominent, adult men sexually abusing little boys across the country for decades, you wonder. When you read stories about mothers or fathers kidnapping and killing their own children or other family members, you wonder. When you read stories about "reality" TV stars as if they are news and that their lives are more important than other, unheard stories of people who are starving, homeless, jobless, and abused, you wonder.

Or don't you?

I know I do.