This Is Not My Beautiful Country
There was a time in my youth when Nixon was evil incarnate, a time when I honestly expected tanks to roll down the street and marshal law to be declared, a time when hair past your collar would be grounds for imprisonment or worse.
I am older now and supposedly wiser and I’d take old Tricky Dick back in a heartbeat. Jumpin’ Jackboots, Batman, there’s a plague loose across the land. Is this really America, the land of the free, home of the brave or have I, in my advancing addled state, fallen through some interdimensional crack into another reality?
First Dude? Are we seriously involved in an election where one side has picked a running mate who claims she’s proud to be a hockey mom and her husband refers to himself as First Dude? I swear, if I wrote a novel based around two such characters and circumstances, I’d be the laughing stock of every agent I sent it to. I could wallpaper a mansion with the rejection slips I’d garner. I mean, this scenario is beyond the pale of fiction. Stephen King couldn’t write this and get it published.
$750,000,000,000 to bail out a bunch of greedy, filthy rich, conscienceless, immoral assholes? People are losing their homes. The bridges in this country are falling apart. The roads are in severe disrepair. Our schools are hovels. Our children are being left way way way behind the rest of the world but lordy lordy can they take a test. We don’t have to jump on a plane and fly to Africa or South America to see a Third World country. All we need to do is walk out our door because that’s what we’re becoming. And I think those greedy, filthy rich, conscienceless, immoral assholes like that idea just fine.
$3,000,000,000,000 to blow up a country that was no threat to us just to kill a guy we supported when we thought we could use him. How many men and women, Iraqi and American, British and French and those from whatever other country foolish enough to involve themselves in Bush’s Folly, have died so Bush’s greedy, filthy rich, conscienceless, immoral asshole friends could line their pockets with weapon sales, reconstruction and oil money. And how many enemies have we made in the process. Bush’s Folly was perhaps the greatest incentive to join a terrorist organization ever inflicted on the world. We are going to be hated, HATED!, for a long, long time by people who have every right in the world to hate us. Way to go on winning those hearts and minds, W!
And where the fuck is the media when Johnny comes home in a body bag? Where is the media period? Bunch of fucking wimps. Freedom of the press my ass. We haven’t had freedom of the press since the Vietnam war. The powers that be learned a valuable lesson back then. Dumb down America, keep everyone scared and use the advertising dollar to effectively circumvent the First Amendment.
But there is a far bigger loss. Pogo said it, long ago, and it holds true today: We have met the enemy and he is us. Collectively we have more than enough anger and more than enough clout to bring these greedy, filthy rich, conscienceless, immoral assholes to their knees. But do we do anything about it? Do we take to the streets? Burn down the house? Refuse to buy their overpriced wares. Refuse to buy into lie after lie after bloody lie? No, we keep filling up our tanks and cheer when they scream ‘drill, baby, drill’ like that’s going to solve anything. Hate to break it to ya but if they started drilling today we wouldn’t see that crude make it to the pump for at least 10 years and by that time 4 bucks a gallon is going to seem really cheap. And here’s another little tid-bit for you to consider: We be running out of oil. Period. Gone. Nada. No more sticky goop.
We buy their genetically altered food, their hormone ridden milk, their overpriced goods and services, pay outrageous taxes and get nothing, NOTHING, in return. Our jobs are far from stable and if we get laid off we get squat, regardless of how conscientious we may have been. Some CEO totally screws a company, hundreds, thousands lose their jobs and he walks away with mega-millions in his pocket. We buy the politicos’ bullshit and vote for them only to be butt-fucked again and again and when the time comes round again for more lies, we buy into those all over again.
What the Fuck is wrong with this country and why is no one rising up to smite the greedy, filthy rich, conscienceless, immoral assholes that are running it into the ground.
This is definitely NOT my beautiful country.
