The rapid deterioration of the common person’s sense of safety is highlighted by the firearm and ammunition boom following the attacks of September 11th, rather, the common person’s sense of safety, since a household with a firearm has been shown to be more dangerous than one without. This sad(obvious) fact—that households with the combination of loaded weapons and children tend to have higher rates of shot children—showcases the spiraling problem this nation has with guns. From the old west to speakeasies to present day Iraq, guns have played an important symbol and tool in the shaping of American ideology, and granted that violence is interwoven in the history of every grand empire; they now become the destructive entity that personifies our fear. It is time we realize the extension of a fear is in reality deadly.

America might embody the land of opportunity for many immigrants and starry-eyed kids, and it truly is for the privileged wealthy upper class. There aren’t too many better places to live and raise children—if you have fair skin and an extremely large bank account to boot. If, on the unfortunate other hand, you have darker skin or less money, you might very well be familiar with the visible but overlooked system of oppression; those strong forces keeping a lid on true upward social mobility. Discriminatory phenomena, acting as those oppressive wires of the birdcage, are present at both the educational and occupational levels and successfully keep the quality of life down for those it negatively effects.

The disturbing tendency of this country’s citizens to be uninformed is seen in examples of poverty, patriarchy, and race issues. The elite controlled mass media paints an American landscape that is what many of the toiling workers would like to expect from their land of opportunity. The pesky reality of the situation is bleaker than that—for anyone with dark skin, no penis, or no money. When it comes to issues of poverty, either, the problem gets swept under the rug, the victims eventually shoulder the blame, or emphasis shifts away from the ‘have-nots’ and towards the similarities of the wealthy and the middle class.

The portrayal of the poor and the working class in the media serves a very real purpose for a very real ruling class. This ruling class needs the working class to continue in their toils, to produce the goods and services that keep the entire system a float. The only way to keep two entire classes—the lower and working—from realizing their plight is to pretend it isn’t there. This is where the all-powerful media comes in. Television and print news do the dirty work of demonizing the poor and telling everyone who isn’t impoverished that the American dream is alive and well, and they do this because the media is simply one of the various tools the rich have for protecting the status quo.

From a very early age children in this country are taught which gender roles are deemed important and the accompanying behavioral characteristics. This is apparent as early as pre-school and kindergarten in the differences in the amount of attention teachers provide to each sex and the activities with which they have the kids participating in. Little girls are put into cooperative activities like ‘playing house,’ where domesticity is stressed as the natural thing for women to do, whereas little boys are placed in competitive sports that stress individual prowess and accomplishment—masculinity as the measure. These are examples of the patriarchy that has this country engulfed in an ideological clash.