What's going on?
Marvin Gaye sang the song back in the day,
and I think it applies pretty well these days too. I've gotten to the point where I don't really care much about what it is people say to me when I talk about this stuff, because I'm tired of hearing, "Well, it's not like you can change the whole world." Thank you Captain Obvious, you really laid a new one on me there. The thing is, who cares if you can't change the world, maybe we can change something. I can't be the only one who feels this way. I can't be the only one who looks around and thinks, "how did it all come to this?" Why is it we're one of the wealthiest countries in the world and there are millions of people without health care? Why do people in this country starve, children especially?
I know there are people out there who respond to this kind line of questions with, "Because people are too lazy to work. Because they should have gotten an education. Because we let people live on Welfare, so everyone expects a handout...." And so on. Really though if we look at it, that's just self congratulatory bullshit, because what they're saying is, "look what I did," and that's great and all, but it still isn't a good enough rationalization to let people go hungry or stay sick. The really telling thing about it is we find reasons to let people go hungry or stay sick instead of finding reasons to keep those things from happening. They would tell you it's because there's no personal responsibility, but they're the same people who can go to work, geting paid well, tell someone why they aren't going to be covered for this or that by insurance, why they don't qualify for aid with one thing or another, and when they're challenged, the answer is, "well, that's our policy." Where's the personal accountability in that? It's ok if we aren't personally accountable for morally repugnant decisions made under the guise of "legitimate" jobs, but let someone steal to eat or to be able to pay their gas bill so they don't freeze, and their criminal. There's a higher law than just the ones we read about in our schools and the ones we think we have to keep our society from pulling itself apart. There's the law of what lying to ourselves will do in the long run. The law of what will happen to a society which finds too few at the top and too few at the bottom too. These might not best be characterized as laws either, but more as principles. Principles which have been proven by history, and we're choosing to ignore many of them.
We're not human to each other anymore. We're numbers and statistics. We're rungs on the socio-economic ladder to each other, we're symbols of our status, not people anymore, not human beings. I don't know when it happened, but it has. We're letting ourselves and each other down, dehumanizing and demoralizing each other and by just doing that, ourselves too. We have become so wrapped up in our things, our material wants and desires, we don't even see what it is that's happening anymore. Taken in combination, our government is wiretapping it's citizens, writing supoena's to members of the press, giving preferencial treatment to those in it's members inner circle, become openly corrupt, and policy is being sold to the highest bidder. One of these things taken seperately wouldn't say so much, but in combination, they say some very frightening things about where we are going and where we are. I think probably even more telling is the fact that it seems so few people even care. We're so lost in our range rovers, big screen t.v's, duplex homes, Martha Stewart living, and reality fucking television that we don't have time to look at the truth. The truth is we have lost what we once were. The promise of what it once was to be "The American People." We once had a chance to become the greatest society the world has ever seen, where democracy was real, where the rights of the individual mattered because the individual couldn't survive without the whole, where people in neighborhoods did good things for each other, just because they could. The Great Depression was characterized not only by the crime which became rampant, but also by people, the everyday common people helping each other as they could. You might not think it, but it's true. I've heard the stories of people who owned what used to be small, privately owned grocery stores in the community, doing everything they could to make sure people just got to eat, and just got to see a doctor, and just got a chance, because it was the right thing to do. I've heard the stories because my great grandmother was one of those people giving away food and money in the form of loans she never asked to be repaid. I know this because when the elders in her community gathered at her funeral, they told me, the people she helped remembered, and they've turned around and done the same for others.
Somewhere along the line, we got lost. We stopped looking at our neighbors as people and startied looking at them as "the own who owns the Range Rover," "the own who owns the Chevette" and so on. We're so busy watching American Idol and Survivor we don't have time to get to know the people in our neighborhoods. We'd rather be locked up indoors with our stuff than be out in the world being a part of humanity by living with and enjoying the society of others, because let's face it people, we really even aren't a society of people anymore at all. We are a capitalist society, through and through. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we can completely blame capitalism for all of this because there is personal accountability. We don't do anything for each other to just do it. We don't do things because they are the decent and human thing to do. The majority of us don't even really worship any God of religion anymore, it's all the God of our wants and desires, the god of the dollar. We are suckled on the tit of the capitalist machine until we are fat and happy and she will suckle us no more.
We've turned a blind eye to a war for oil. A war, the politicians tell us, is about the American way of life. Some people would disagree and say that a war for oil isn't a war for the American way of life. I'd say it is, because we don't care what the cost in suffering and death, we will defend this way of life, this altar of financial growth, no matter what. We won't try to find alternate fuels or alternate modes of transportation, we won't even ride the bus just because it would mean less gas. It's not worth it to us. Lives lost and suffering immeasurable, is not worth our comfort. We are lost, maybe beyond finding our way back at this point. There was a time in the past, maybe not so far past, maybe today still is that time when another response to the things I'm saying would be for someone to say, "this is America, if you don't like it, get out," And the truth is, I've come to a point where I think that's what I'm going to do. I'm lost among the people I am supposed to be one of, an alien in my own world and land. Beyond that, I've come to a point where I feel like participation is complicity. It's like I'd be an accomplice to this crime we're committing against each other, ourselves and humanity as a whole by staying here and contributing to this system of doing things, this system of beliefs and this spiritually empty society we've created and protect with no thought, and worst of all, no heart. The famous speech said "Friends, countryman, lend me your ear." I've come to a point when I feel I have such precious few countrymen, that I need not feel any loyalty to the rest anymore.
We've become what we tried to run from. We've become what our forefathers tried best to avoid, to my mind, and I'm ashamed. It's truly unbelievably to me to think and say I'm ashamed to be an American in this day and age. I'm ashamed to see what we've become and what we're about. Most of all I'm probably ashamed that not only do we not care about any of it, but we're so selfish and self absorbed we won't take the time to actually look at it. If it threatens our comfort for one second, we will ignore it completely, no matter the cost in suffering of human lives lost.
and I think it applies pretty well these days too. I've gotten to the point where I don't really care much about what it is people say to me when I talk about this stuff, because I'm tired of hearing, "Well, it's not like you can change the whole world." Thank you Captain Obvious, you really laid a new one on me there. The thing is, who cares if you can't change the world, maybe we can change something. I can't be the only one who feels this way. I can't be the only one who looks around and thinks, "how did it all come to this?" Why is it we're one of the wealthiest countries in the world and there are millions of people without health care? Why do people in this country starve, children especially?
I know there are people out there who respond to this kind line of questions with, "Because people are too lazy to work. Because they should have gotten an education. Because we let people live on Welfare, so everyone expects a handout...." And so on. Really though if we look at it, that's just self congratulatory bullshit, because what they're saying is, "look what I did," and that's great and all, but it still isn't a good enough rationalization to let people go hungry or stay sick. The really telling thing about it is we find reasons to let people go hungry or stay sick instead of finding reasons to keep those things from happening. They would tell you it's because there's no personal responsibility, but they're the same people who can go to work, geting paid well, tell someone why they aren't going to be covered for this or that by insurance, why they don't qualify for aid with one thing or another, and when they're challenged, the answer is, "well, that's our policy." Where's the personal accountability in that? It's ok if we aren't personally accountable for morally repugnant decisions made under the guise of "legitimate" jobs, but let someone steal to eat or to be able to pay their gas bill so they don't freeze, and their criminal. There's a higher law than just the ones we read about in our schools and the ones we think we have to keep our society from pulling itself apart. There's the law of what lying to ourselves will do in the long run. The law of what will happen to a society which finds too few at the top and too few at the bottom too. These might not best be characterized as laws either, but more as principles. Principles which have been proven by history, and we're choosing to ignore many of them.
We're not human to each other anymore. We're numbers and statistics. We're rungs on the socio-economic ladder to each other, we're symbols of our status, not people anymore, not human beings. I don't know when it happened, but it has. We're letting ourselves and each other down, dehumanizing and demoralizing each other and by just doing that, ourselves too. We have become so wrapped up in our things, our material wants and desires, we don't even see what it is that's happening anymore. Taken in combination, our government is wiretapping it's citizens, writing supoena's to members of the press, giving preferencial treatment to those in it's members inner circle, become openly corrupt, and policy is being sold to the highest bidder. One of these things taken seperately wouldn't say so much, but in combination, they say some very frightening things about where we are going and where we are. I think probably even more telling is the fact that it seems so few people even care. We're so lost in our range rovers, big screen t.v's, duplex homes, Martha Stewart living, and reality fucking television that we don't have time to look at the truth. The truth is we have lost what we once were. The promise of what it once was to be "The American People." We once had a chance to become the greatest society the world has ever seen, where democracy was real, where the rights of the individual mattered because the individual couldn't survive without the whole, where people in neighborhoods did good things for each other, just because they could. The Great Depression was characterized not only by the crime which became rampant, but also by people, the everyday common people helping each other as they could. You might not think it, but it's true. I've heard the stories of people who owned what used to be small, privately owned grocery stores in the community, doing everything they could to make sure people just got to eat, and just got to see a doctor, and just got a chance, because it was the right thing to do. I've heard the stories because my great grandmother was one of those people giving away food and money in the form of loans she never asked to be repaid. I know this because when the elders in her community gathered at her funeral, they told me, the people she helped remembered, and they've turned around and done the same for others.
Somewhere along the line, we got lost. We stopped looking at our neighbors as people and startied looking at them as "the own who owns the Range Rover," "the own who owns the Chevette" and so on. We're so busy watching American Idol and Survivor we don't have time to get to know the people in our neighborhoods. We'd rather be locked up indoors with our stuff than be out in the world being a part of humanity by living with and enjoying the society of others, because let's face it people, we really even aren't a society of people anymore at all. We are a capitalist society, through and through. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we can completely blame capitalism for all of this because there is personal accountability. We don't do anything for each other to just do it. We don't do things because they are the decent and human thing to do. The majority of us don't even really worship any God of religion anymore, it's all the God of our wants and desires, the god of the dollar. We are suckled on the tit of the capitalist machine until we are fat and happy and she will suckle us no more.
We've turned a blind eye to a war for oil. A war, the politicians tell us, is about the American way of life. Some people would disagree and say that a war for oil isn't a war for the American way of life. I'd say it is, because we don't care what the cost in suffering and death, we will defend this way of life, this altar of financial growth, no matter what. We won't try to find alternate fuels or alternate modes of transportation, we won't even ride the bus just because it would mean less gas. It's not worth it to us. Lives lost and suffering immeasurable, is not worth our comfort. We are lost, maybe beyond finding our way back at this point. There was a time in the past, maybe not so far past, maybe today still is that time when another response to the things I'm saying would be for someone to say, "this is America, if you don't like it, get out," And the truth is, I've come to a point where I think that's what I'm going to do. I'm lost among the people I am supposed to be one of, an alien in my own world and land. Beyond that, I've come to a point where I feel like participation is complicity. It's like I'd be an accomplice to this crime we're committing against each other, ourselves and humanity as a whole by staying here and contributing to this system of doing things, this system of beliefs and this spiritually empty society we've created and protect with no thought, and worst of all, no heart. The famous speech said "Friends, countryman, lend me your ear." I've come to a point when I feel I have such precious few countrymen, that I need not feel any loyalty to the rest anymore.
We've become what we tried to run from. We've become what our forefathers tried best to avoid, to my mind, and I'm ashamed. It's truly unbelievably to me to think and say I'm ashamed to be an American in this day and age. I'm ashamed to see what we've become and what we're about. Most of all I'm probably ashamed that not only do we not care about any of it, but we're so selfish and self absorbed we won't take the time to actually look at it. If it threatens our comfort for one second, we will ignore it completely, no matter the cost in suffering of human lives lost.