Become when? I don't mean to sound crass, but the US has been owned by private interests for a very long time. It has done despicable things for a very long tim

Become when? I don't mean to sound crass, but the US has been owned by private interests for a very long time. It has done despicable things for a very long time. There has never been some golden age of American freedom and enlightenment. To assume so is the greatest problem for America today - there is some strange belief that there used to be these "good old days" that never really happened. We have been assholes since the early 1800s and we've been the top shit dog on campus since the 1940s. I don't really know if there's such a great difference between what we did to the Native Americans or Africans or Latin Americans. The only difference between then in now is force projection and the lack of pretense.