Just talk about it…..

America has become her own sin.

Two wars.  One for no reason at all and another who’s reason is lost.

The richest country in the world can’t pay for itself, but she she can still afford to send her children to die and kill.

While her people can’t find work.

There are five people hoping for every job available.

I know a woman who’s childhood friend is days or hours from dying.  Cancer.  She has two sons in college and no father.  She tells me she can’t afford to pay attention.  I get it.  But she is it.  It’s not me.  It’s her.  She is gorgeous.  She’s tough, but she doesn’t know who or what the speaker of the house is.  She should, but she doesn’t care.  She’s not at all concerned that a dickhead like Boehner might be in charge and how that will impact her life and her ability to keep her boys in school as well as maybe her own health insurance.

She is it though.  It’s not just the youth vote, it’s the vanishing middle class.  If they don’t engage, it’s all over but the shouting.

Life can be bullshit but that doesn’t stop a single one of us.  Humans never stop pushing and pulling.  We can’t help it.  Men are dicks and women are bitches.  We are all so foul.  Dirty.  polluted.   Infected.

The disconnect widens and deepens because regular Americans believe they have no hope of making a difference.

It’s hard to blame them.

Ask yourself what you want.  Think about what happens if you get it.  If you win, who loses?

Say for example you get a high paying job with a military industrial contractor.  You feed your kids.  Your wife drives a Volvo and you speed around in an Audi.  The Mexican gardeners get paid.  Your parents are proud.  At the end of the day, you kill brown people for a living.  People like you.  People just like you.  Your neighbors and business associates share their holidays and their children’s birthday parties with you.

Or, you drive a beat to shit Honda and people like you.  People just like you.  You have parties at your house with a cake from Costco and you get your prescriptions from Walmart.  You hate that redneck Republican in the next cubicle but he’s a nice guy and he makes one helluva bean dip.

Where are we?  Who are we and what have we become?

The worst of us host events where the Koran will be burned.  The worst among us seek to prevent a community center being built on private property in the city of New York despite the obvious provisions and express intent of the very first and arguably most important amendment to our constitution.  The same idiots  think our president is some secret Muslim Socialist out to destroy America.  The willfully ignorant and the chronic, untreatable and stupid.  I cannot begin to describe how I loathe such people.  My disgust is profound and complete.

My disdain robs me of my own breath.  If you’re reading this and you merely flirt with any of these concepts, fuck you in the neck.

I understand that America has it’s life to live.  I get that you need to get through the day.  I understand that most you have children and families.  But you still are the most privileged, spoiled people on the planet.  Black or white, brown or callow.  Maybe we don’t deserve our largess.  So be it.  Keep tolerating this shit.  Maintain that straight face.  Look away.  Let the rich get richer and the poor get poorer while the middle class evaporates into the ether.  By the time you cannot possibly afford tuition for your kids, by the time you get cancer from the chemical company dumping glowing shit in your water supply because of deregulation, by the time you can barely drive a road or over a bridge in your fossil fueled car because of it’s egregious disrepair, by that time it will be too goddamn late.

Your earth will be too hot, you government will only pay for the wealthy to be protected from you because you want to storm their gates while your gums bleed and your teeth are loosening in their sockets and your pockets are full of BBQ sauce.

That time is today.  We are here.  It is now.  Or vote Republican………….

Drinks for my friends.

5 Responses to “Just talk about it…..”

  • gary:

    Excellent Michael! People need to get engaged in what is happening in the world, not just their own. Love your blog!

  • Michael Douglass:

    Exactly! Thanks.

  • Pamela Veselinovic:

    I completely agree and this eats at my soul on a daily basis. Here in Mississippi, I am surrounded by religious rednecks who seriously hate democrats, even though they can’t spell “democrat” or understand the difference between the parties. The good news is that most of them don’t vote at all. The dumbest, poorest people vote Republican because their church told them to. Democrats are “baby killers,” who have abortions, and encourage others to do it too. Democrats are non-Christians who want to take away your guns and do away with the master white race. If you’re black, democrats are the ones who want to stop sending the bag of toys the church gives you at Christmas. Votes are purchased for bags of toys. Haley Barbour is Santa Claus! But we expect this from Mississippi. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s America now. Not just Mississippi.

    • Michael Douglass:

      It’s just that it is a matter of civic duty and patriotic responsibility to get informed. Man, I just spent a year in Nevada and it’s almost as bad. It does appear to be getting worse. Pretty fucking sad.

  • Michael,

    It’s quite refreshing to find someone who can express my feelings so well; minus the strong language.

    It’s true that most people in America are un-informed and just don’t know what’s going on. They blindly stumbled through 8 years of a blind president who dragged us into the mud in every which way. Now they have a president who has actually got a brain on his shoulders and has done some amazing things against great odds and they just don’t get it.

    One thing I’ve discovered about most Americans, especially those on the Right; they consider themselves better than those in the third world countries we have attacked. Their children are more precious, their own lives more important than those who we have slaughtered to accomplish our mission. And believe me; our mission is clear; take control of the oil and secure the future of large oil companies and to prosper the military industry in this country.

    Americans have become blinded by their own prejudice. They’ve been told that either the Mexicans, the Muslims, the Gays, or one group or another is a threat to them. That the Mexicans are taking all their great jobs, the Muslims are all planning on attacking them, and the Gays are going to destroy the very moral fiber of America.

    They’ve been told that the liberals are trying to change the country into a socialist government and that they want to take all their precious money and give it to the poor. Think about it; where has the wealth actually gone? The bum on the street hasn’t suddenly bought a new Mercedes? The welfare mom living in the projects hasn’t suddenly had a huge raise on her measley welfare check. No, money has been sucked out of the middle class and everyone else, and given to the very wealthy. This has been happening since the Reagan Administration; since the beginning of “Trickle Down Economics” The idea being that if you lower the taxes of the richest people and large corporations, that they will be so kind to provide more jobs, or in other words; they’ll allow more crumbs to fall from their table.

    This policy is one of the biggest lies told to the American people and half of them actually believe that if they support that policy, they’ll also join the ranks of the very wealthy. What an illusion; better than any illusion that Cris Angel has ever performed and he’s a great magician.

    This distribution of wealth increased a great deal during the Bush years, with huge tax cuts to the wealthiest and cuts in capitol gains tax which basically benefit the rich. We have all been robbed of the security of our Social Security, thanks to those huge tax cuts and Republicans in Congress would have us continue this thievery. This has been their only real agenda and will continue if they take control of Congress again.

    Democrats have been wimps and they need to stand up for what they have done since they’ve had control of Congress. They’ve done some good things as far as I’m concerned, and that with the “Party of No” trying to stand in their way on every turn.

    They need to take control of the message and get it through everyone’s head what will happen if they allow Republicans to win this next election by default. Otherwise; count on a Congress again trying to impeach our president because they think he may not be born in America, or because he’s trying to change our government into a socialist government; etc. Whatever they can come up with because they hate this guy. The very idea of a black man sitting in THEIR White House just does not set well with these latent bigots.

    I for one will do my part to be sure that Americans know what is the real facts. I hope we can count on you and your readers to do the same.

    fidlerten

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