All right so WTF America?
Seriously.
France is beset by unending protests and rioting over labor law. Granted, you have a lot of people pissed off for various reasons piggybacking on the peaceful folk and firebombing cars, but still overall it comes from labor issues.
President of the United States schemes with the Prime Minister of Britain to potentially fly an American plane painted in U.N. colors over Iraq to get it shot at if they can't come up with any other war rationale. President spies on American citizens, leading Republicans get caught in all kinds of scandals, conservative forces basically call Feingold a terrorist sympathizer for stating officially that Bush really fucking needs to fucking stop fucking up America. Every other day something happens that makes me feel like maybe this could be it, the thing that finally pisses Americans off enough. But what do we do? Watch more cable. I hear Tom and Katie are no longer an item, yo.
But hey. I'm part of the system too. I am enraged as always about the administration. But I'm caught up in my own life. Trying to get a new job, settle into a new house, and really learn a familiar city. Right now, I want to either sleep or watch my Netflix DVDs. I'm not exactly out there protesting myself. I'm not writing letters to my congresspeople. I'm trying to get a new job so I'll have the money to buy new glasses so my eyes won't hurt so much that I can't stand to be on the computer for long and thus don't open up the time to writing letters to my congresspeople.
For me, right now, it's all about doing something locally. I'm trying to make a difference in Philadelphia by obtaining meaningful work and getting some meaningful volunteering time in. It's not exactly banging down the doors on Capitol Hill. At least it's not, though, absolutely nothing at all. At least, while in my heart I just want to talk endlessly about the American Idol elections, I'm paying attention to the truly important ones. (CHRIS DAUGHTRY, BY THE WAY. CHRIS. DAUGHTRY.)
I'm exhausted. The country's fairly exhausted. I think we're all jaded. I think we've come to expect that our politicians will be corrupt. I think it's hard to get us to bat an eye anymore. Yes, people are being taken to task. Yes, DeLay and Abramoff have gone on the chopping block for their crimes. But are these sacrificial lambs going to change an entire culture? Is Washington finally going to stop being a city run by corporate interests and snuck-around money?
I'm tired. Pennsylvania Democrats are tired. The head honchos have given us Bob "I Am Boring" Casey. He is such a standard politician that I couldn't care less, except to be incensed that I will have to vote for a pro-lifer if I want Santorum out of office. Did it matter than I responded to Move On asking people if they should support Casey with a resounding NO? Didn't.
But I have to stay awake. We all do. We have to stay alert. Gas prices are heading back up. Iraq is dissolving into civil war. Illegal immigrants are under attack in a nation of immigrants. (I'll bet you the Republican leaders would stop trying to fuck with immigrants if they realized how many restaurants their attempts to boot or imprison or charge them would close down.) Immigrants are doing a much better job of being pissed off about the state of things than most of us citizens.
I just keep reading about the state of things in Paris everyday and I'm like.. Okay. Granted, the French come from a great tradition of absolutely fucking with their leaders when necessary. My god, the French revolution was some nasty nasty business. But we have the revolutionary spirit too, don't we? We wouldn't exist without it. We fought for our country. How did corporate powers succeed in making such a perfect blanket of consumerism over us that we are complacent in our disconnected lives? I read a lot about how, but I'm still like, how? I experience how but I'm still like, no srsly, how???
I live now, really officially live now in the city that gave birth to America and all of its supposed ideals. I walked to the Liberty Bell by accident the other day while just roaming around the city. In all honesty, our Founding Fathers did not really represent nor abide by all the great Ideas that we've been raised to believe Are America. Many of them have been added to the overall concept by generations of tough people fighting to be recognized as equally valuable, capable human beings for one reason or another. But they are nice ideas, don't you think? And I see the people in charging of governing according to them breaking them down all the time, in supposed defense of their concept of democracy. Which apparently involves censorship, a loss of privacy, war and nation-building on false premises, and a creeping sense of a new, modern McCarthyism. Consider me a cognitive terrorist.
America is an awesome country in theory. Where, exactly, did the practice go wrong? There are so many things I could name, and yet, it's hard to put words on decades of work by the powers-that-be to get this kind of control over the citizenry.
What I think "it" would take would be for something sudden to happen that would absolutely affect a majority of people's lives immediately and directly. For example, say gas went up to $20 a gallon. Guaranteed you would have total chaos. Say one megacorporation bought control of every single line of communication and started charging $500 a month for internet access. Riots. Things would blow up. Do I want this? God no. I want people to not need this level of shit to get them engaged. I hear immigrants and supporters were out in giant throngs in L.A. Decent throngs here in Philly. Why? Because their very lives are under direct attack if the laws change hideously against their favor. So long as all the bullshit going on now is sloooowly creeping in, people are content not to notice, content to be distracted. Then suddenly we wake up and the cost of food has doubled while the minimum wage hasn't budged in years.
I really want this country to wake up. I wish I weren't bound by the necessities of my own life. Need a serious income, need benefits, need to be close to family, and so on. I wish I could just quit everything and dedicate myself full time to making people give a second thought about what's all going on.
Instead, I'm writing on LJ to an audience who mostly already feels as frustrated as I do and are likewise not really able to do much about it. Whether you're American or not, you live with American suckage. That's the way of the modern world. We all have our own day-to-day demands and it gets harder and harder to satisfy all of those and still have time to make our rage do something more than just sit around and burn inside of us.
The sixties are becoming increasingly mythic because that level of sustained civil unrest is starting to become impossible to imagine in current America. But there's so much sneaking bullshit going on all around us every single day, and we don't have the time or energy to stop the bullshitters from getting away with it. I don't want us to wake up when we're already drowning in it. I'd like there to be at least some breathing room.
But so many have drowned all ready, and paddling up here where you can sort of see what's going on gets pretty damn exhausting. This country's like a reeeally smelly onion. The more layers you peel off, the more the truth stinks. And the harder it gets to keep peeling, cause you just can't take it anymore.
I'm sort of at that point where I've been peeling and peeling for months now, and right now I just want to crawl into bed, and let my allergies and oh, say, a really uncompelling episode of Seinfeld take me. I have no excuse. I could use some serious, serious reenergizing. Anyone have any reenergizing thoughts? Some inspiration?
France is beset by unending protests and rioting over labor law. Granted, you have a lot of people pissed off for various reasons piggybacking on the peaceful folk and firebombing cars, but still overall it comes from labor issues.
President of the United States schemes with the Prime Minister of Britain to potentially fly an American plane painted in U.N. colors over Iraq to get it shot at if they can't come up with any other war rationale. President spies on American citizens, leading Republicans get caught in all kinds of scandals, conservative forces basically call Feingold a terrorist sympathizer for stating officially that Bush really fucking needs to fucking stop fucking up America. Every other day something happens that makes me feel like maybe this could be it, the thing that finally pisses Americans off enough. But what do we do? Watch more cable. I hear Tom and Katie are no longer an item, yo.
But hey. I'm part of the system too. I am enraged as always about the administration. But I'm caught up in my own life. Trying to get a new job, settle into a new house, and really learn a familiar city. Right now, I want to either sleep or watch my Netflix DVDs. I'm not exactly out there protesting myself. I'm not writing letters to my congresspeople. I'm trying to get a new job so I'll have the money to buy new glasses so my eyes won't hurt so much that I can't stand to be on the computer for long and thus don't open up the time to writing letters to my congresspeople.
For me, right now, it's all about doing something locally. I'm trying to make a difference in Philadelphia by obtaining meaningful work and getting some meaningful volunteering time in. It's not exactly banging down the doors on Capitol Hill. At least it's not, though, absolutely nothing at all. At least, while in my heart I just want to talk endlessly about the American Idol elections, I'm paying attention to the truly important ones. (CHRIS DAUGHTRY, BY THE WAY. CHRIS. DAUGHTRY.)
I'm exhausted. The country's fairly exhausted. I think we're all jaded. I think we've come to expect that our politicians will be corrupt. I think it's hard to get us to bat an eye anymore. Yes, people are being taken to task. Yes, DeLay and Abramoff have gone on the chopping block for their crimes. But are these sacrificial lambs going to change an entire culture? Is Washington finally going to stop being a city run by corporate interests and snuck-around money?
I'm tired. Pennsylvania Democrats are tired. The head honchos have given us Bob "I Am Boring" Casey. He is such a standard politician that I couldn't care less, except to be incensed that I will have to vote for a pro-lifer if I want Santorum out of office. Did it matter than I responded to Move On asking people if they should support Casey with a resounding NO? Didn't.
But I have to stay awake. We all do. We have to stay alert. Gas prices are heading back up. Iraq is dissolving into civil war. Illegal immigrants are under attack in a nation of immigrants. (I'll bet you the Republican leaders would stop trying to fuck with immigrants if they realized how many restaurants their attempts to boot or imprison or charge them would close down.) Immigrants are doing a much better job of being pissed off about the state of things than most of us citizens.
I just keep reading about the state of things in Paris everyday and I'm like.. Okay. Granted, the French come from a great tradition of absolutely fucking with their leaders when necessary. My god, the French revolution was some nasty nasty business. But we have the revolutionary spirit too, don't we? We wouldn't exist without it. We fought for our country. How did corporate powers succeed in making such a perfect blanket of consumerism over us that we are complacent in our disconnected lives? I read a lot about how, but I'm still like, how? I experience how but I'm still like, no srsly, how???
I live now, really officially live now in the city that gave birth to America and all of its supposed ideals. I walked to the Liberty Bell by accident the other day while just roaming around the city. In all honesty, our Founding Fathers did not really represent nor abide by all the great Ideas that we've been raised to believe Are America. Many of them have been added to the overall concept by generations of tough people fighting to be recognized as equally valuable, capable human beings for one reason or another. But they are nice ideas, don't you think? And I see the people in charging of governing according to them breaking them down all the time, in supposed defense of their concept of democracy. Which apparently involves censorship, a loss of privacy, war and nation-building on false premises, and a creeping sense of a new, modern McCarthyism. Consider me a cognitive terrorist.
America is an awesome country in theory. Where, exactly, did the practice go wrong? There are so many things I could name, and yet, it's hard to put words on decades of work by the powers-that-be to get this kind of control over the citizenry.
What I think "it" would take would be for something sudden to happen that would absolutely affect a majority of people's lives immediately and directly. For example, say gas went up to $20 a gallon. Guaranteed you would have total chaos. Say one megacorporation bought control of every single line of communication and started charging $500 a month for internet access. Riots. Things would blow up. Do I want this? God no. I want people to not need this level of shit to get them engaged. I hear immigrants and supporters were out in giant throngs in L.A. Decent throngs here in Philly. Why? Because their very lives are under direct attack if the laws change hideously against their favor. So long as all the bullshit going on now is sloooowly creeping in, people are content not to notice, content to be distracted. Then suddenly we wake up and the cost of food has doubled while the minimum wage hasn't budged in years.
I really want this country to wake up. I wish I weren't bound by the necessities of my own life. Need a serious income, need benefits, need to be close to family, and so on. I wish I could just quit everything and dedicate myself full time to making people give a second thought about what's all going on.
Instead, I'm writing on LJ to an audience who mostly already feels as frustrated as I do and are likewise not really able to do much about it. Whether you're American or not, you live with American suckage. That's the way of the modern world. We all have our own day-to-day demands and it gets harder and harder to satisfy all of those and still have time to make our rage do something more than just sit around and burn inside of us.
The sixties are becoming increasingly mythic because that level of sustained civil unrest is starting to become impossible to imagine in current America. But there's so much sneaking bullshit going on all around us every single day, and we don't have the time or energy to stop the bullshitters from getting away with it. I don't want us to wake up when we're already drowning in it. I'd like there to be at least some breathing room.
But so many have drowned all ready, and paddling up here where you can sort of see what's going on gets pretty damn exhausting. This country's like a reeeally smelly onion. The more layers you peel off, the more the truth stinks. And the harder it gets to keep peeling, cause you just can't take it anymore.
I'm sort of at that point where I've been peeling and peeling for months now, and right now I just want to crawl into bed, and let my allergies and oh, say, a really uncompelling episode of Seinfeld take me. I have no excuse. I could use some serious, serious reenergizing. Anyone have any reenergizing thoughts? Some inspiration?