Life sucks
I don't give a shit about the Katrina disaster. I must be some kind of cold hearted asshole right? It's not just that I don't feel the sympathy and desire to help that everyone else feels. I feel disgusted and ashamed. Let me explain.
Everyone is helping. Doing what they can, businesses are raising money and sending relief however they can. People are holding prayer vigils, sending canned goods and blankets, donating their time to help those in need.
Because we all know before the hurricane hit everything was peachy in paradise wasn't it? How many people do we kill everyday? How many people are killed everyday by the dictators we allow to stay in power or by those we put in power?
Yes it sucks to have your house collapse on you and kill you. It sucks to lose everything you own. It sucks to have to live in a fucking ball dome and go hungry. You know what else sucks? Being picked up in your own backyard because you look like everyone else in your country and being humiliated and tortured because some nut jobs from a completely different country attacked another country neither of which had anything to do with you. Suddenly you find yourself naked in a cold cell with a vicious attack dog tearing into your leg while people laugh and take pictures.
How about having your father come into your room every night and tell you he loves you just before he rapes you? What about being twelve and prostituted by your boyfriend who will kill you if you don't do what he says? Do you think it's a picnic to have a bomb kill you and your entire family because someone got a false tip? Do you think it's fun to be tortured and beaten to death by rednecks for being gay?
You want to know what else sucks? Watching your mother have her breasts chopped off with a machete before you are repeatedly raped and hacked to pieces yourself. How about being a six month old baby and having a group of men cut you open with a broken bottle so they can take turns raping you because there is a myth that having sex with a virgin cures aids. But you survive, if you can call it that, so you can grow up with the shadow of death looming over you, never having a real childhood and slowly wasting away.
It sucks to be nine years old and working in a factory for pennies a day making shoes so spoiled white kids can pay fifty dollars a pop for them. It sucks to have your entire people being massacred and have no one care. It sucks to have a horrible disease wiping out your entire country. It's pretty shitty to starve to death I hear. It's no small thing to watch men slit your parents throats and have to wander the countryside homeless and alone at the age of twelve.
So where was that American "can do" attitude then huh? Where were the massive drives, the motivation to help, the free time dedicated to making life better for others, the money being sent in massive amounts to ease their suffering? Where the fuck was our patriotic band of brothers? I'll tell you where. Voting on who was going to be the winner of "so you think you can dance."
Fucking hypocrites. Something bad happens in our backyard so suddenly it's real? Hey, you might know someone there right? That makes it real. Not like those strangers being slaughtered somewhere else in the world.
We have the money, the resources, and the capability to wipe out all suffering, to end hunger, to cure disease, to feed every child, to give every person a home. But we don't. Because of greed. Because it's not real if it's not flashy, in our backyard, and on the news for two consecutive weeks. Because there's always an us, and always a them, and we only care when it's us.
So take your bright beacon of American spirit and ingenuity and shove it up your ass because I don't buy it. In two weeks people will go back to driving SUV's while we invade other countries and kill innocent civilians to get their oil. They'll go straight back to the gap and stock up on fashionable sweaters and sneakers made by third world children. They'll turn a blind eye to the bruised mother, and the quiet, disturbed girl in the back of the class because what goes on in their home is none of their business.
This is just the play we put on so we can feel better about ourselves tomorrow.