Taking a brief departure from questioning religion for a moment, I wanted to take a moment to spew some hate. No, really. I may just hate you. Do you care? Maybe not. Maybe you’re apathetic, and that is why I hate you.
Now I realize that “hate” is quite a strong word. In a society that is constantly trying to be politically correct, non-offensive and totally conforming to the whims of everyone, I realize that this may not be a welcome post. Guess what? I don’t care.
Most of this is geared toward my fellow Americans. Well, at least we call ourselves Americans. If Franklin, Madison or Washington could see what America has become today, I doubt that they would be pleased.
Apathy. It is killing us, both figuratively and literally. Don’t believe me? With all of the crap going on in the world today, it was you that made Dancing With the Stars the highest rated program recently. That drivel? Are you serious? You people have nothing better to do that sit on your obese asses and watch that crap?
Hey you. Yeah, you. The 350 pound guy scarfing down your triple Whopper and King size fries. Before you wash down that 2,500 calorie “snack” with your keg of soda, ask yourself a question. How much fatter can you get before you look in the mirror and think to yourself, “God! I am disgusting!” Never. You know why? Because you have succumb to apathy. That and you’re to damn lazy to do something about it. (Yes, I know that SOME people have medical conditions. Not most.)
And you. The woman reading this who is always complaining about the state of politics in government today. Instead of watching mind numbing, thoughtless reality TV, have you ever thought of getting involved in the process? Democrat, republican, independent…I don’t give a crap. Just do SOMETHING other than complain about it. Put down your freakin’ PS3 controller and write your congressman or senator. Better yet, help out on the campaign trail for the candidate that best supports what you would like to see. If you are not willing to do something other than complain, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Yeah, there are people that I despise. Apathy is worse than cancer. It is contagious. And it’s killing us all. Isn’t it about time that you did something rather than watched something?
I stopped being mad at the apathists a while back. When I considered how we got here, it actually makes perfect sense. At least from my perspective. You see, I’m a Baby Boomer. And more often than not, I’m apathetic too. I have to fight myself to stay involved. Although I don’t scarf down Quarter Pounders, nor weigh 350 pounds. Because that’s just self-destructive. But apathy is like a societal form of depression. And their isn’t enough Prozac to cure it.
If you look at the current generational divide(s) in the country its not surprising that many have disconnected themselves from the process. Boomers as a group are the most pampered generation in the country’s history. The Boomer’s parents had suffered from the fear and loss that came out of the Depression. So they made damn certain that their children would not be without. Would not suffer a similar fate. The result: a privileged generation who wants what they want, and they want it now.
Later, these same Boomers took to the streets protesting the lie of “civil rights” that existed then. For blacks, women and gays. They fought against the idea of war as economic stimulus. The fight continues, but what have we really accomplished? These same Boomers now vote for Repukes and they stand in churches on Sunday, singing “Bringing In The Sheaves” instead of “Give Peace A Chance.”
Then came the criminals like Nixon. Unlike the past Repuke criminals who’ve adorned the WH, Nixon brought the nation to the brink. And it hasn’t been the same since. So now, even when people vote it doesn’t seem to matter. Because the people whom they vote for end up doing the opposite of what they want them to do. Why? Because they’re the whores of the corporations. So the income gap has only widened year after year. And instead of fighting for unions, we help politicians weaken them. We all hope to one day achieve economic independence and to do that, the system must remain the same as it is. So to insure this, we listen and agree with politicians like Bill Clinton and his NAFTA initiatives. And we allow laws to be passed whose result is factories shutting down. High wages are lost. No benefits for workers. Leaving only poorly paid jobs in the service industry. If we’re lucky.
And racial relations have grown more intense and divided. Black males are incarcerated at 5 times the rate of whites. In the past the system of legal segregation and social ostracism kept everyone in their places. Now we build prisons to accomplish this. And we’ve added new minorities to vilify, like Mexicans and anyone wearing a turban. All men are created equal? Indeed.
Then there are the women. They’re still paid less than their male counterparts. And they now have the prospect of a male-domineering society telling them what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. Marriage, a institution that once provided a place of security, is now a crap shoot. The elements of the paradigm of society may have shifted, but not the biology. So women are left to pick up the baggage of failed marriages more than anyone, along with the kids. And they’re all the poorer for it.
And now our elected officials seek to carve into the greatest human rights document ever created, laws that legitimize discrimination and hatred for a specific group of people that the religious folks don’t like. And religion itself has taken a position of importance and regularity within the national political dialogue. There aren’t many candidates who will run for office on a position of the separation of church and state. Because that’s political suicide.
All the institutions that once served us in the past, have now been brought under the control of corporate interest. Of course its always been this way in truth, but its now more blatant and pervasive. Education was once the critical element available that promised a means of escape from the servitude resulting from the disparities found in the worse parts of our society. But now Johnny can’t even read at a 5th grade level. We went from being given a headstart, to being left behind.
Then came 911. And people asked (mostly silently to themselves) why do they hate us so? Its because we represent an element that has only taken, taken and taken from them, and given little or nothing in return. When the past empires lost their grip on their “possessions” after WWII, these newly independent nations sought self-determination. But the problem is, they were then and now, mostly ignorant. And they lived, then and now, in societies that are vestiges from the middle ages where religion and royalty still dominates their world. They seek a return to this because its all that they know. . Yet another fairy tale.
They champion these stories of their greatness and ultimate supremacy because THEY HAVE NO other story. That’s what education does, it allows dreams to become reality. And in the absence of education their dreams have become our nightmare.
And behind all of this, comes the Gen-Xers and their younger counterparts who are told that there is NO social security for you. That war is an everyday reality. That companies have no responsibility and pollute at will, steal from your retirement fund, and can fire you at the drop of a hat. Or after finding a better investment for their investor’s money. And the Fatcats get the huge salaries and bonuses no matter whether they’re any good or not. They’re told in fact that they’ll have to forego any kind of security in their lives and that they have to give it up for their grandparents, because the politicians have embezzled their retirement money from the Social Security lockbox. They’ve grown up watching their parents and grandparents flip-flop from being radicals into sycophants of Bush, and the Religious-Right. Haters, who are fearful of the very freedom they espoused in their youth, and which they now wish to tamp-down and suppress.
For many of these young people, they grew up in a virtual world of VCRs, CDs, DVDs, video games and computers. Experiencing real life today, is now a novelty. Few can even cook for themselves. They are completely tied into the system and see no way of breaking free of it. There are no new communes. No hippies. No Steven Gaskin with his self-sufficiency farms. And few protest these current conditions, and when some do they’re immediately crushed by the “authorities.” For national security reasons. And so they’ve taken a page from their forebears and now live in a world of self-interest. Which is why they could justify voting for a guy like Ralph Nadar (another Boomer), all the while knowing he had no chance. So they, along with the Religious-Right gave us George W. Bush to complete this idiotic cycle of apathy.
So why not apathy after this kind of history? Apathy comes in and settles down. It makes itself at home as a part of our daily lives. It becomes a regular feature of our national character. Until it becomes “who we are.” So maybe people aren’t so much apathetic, as the fact that apathy is just the “new normal.” :-|
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Darque said,
November 30, 2007 @ 1:11 amLighting fires under asses is always hard. Ask those Founding Fathers - back when they were drafting the Declaration of Independence and trying to beat up Redcoats, they’d be lucky if one in five colonists were on their side. An Imperial army was intent on breaking them, they were wanted criminals, and they put it all on the line - money, property, their very lives - for the chance to have real freedom.
Here we are now, the most heavily armed nation in the world, so terrified of threats both real and imaginary that our leaders sacrifice our liberty for merely the suggestion of security, and what is the response from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave? We click the channel. We go shopping. We put up a flag and say how patriotic we are. Why bother, when we are presented no alternative?
If those Founding Fathers could rise from their graves tonight, they would take one look at the corruption in our government and vow to fight again. And then they would take one look at the nearly total disinterest of the populace, even from people with so much to lose, and they would climb right back into their graves out of embarrassment.
Yes, there are those who have done their best. I was there, one of the protesters that carried a sign condemning a war in Iraq, before “shock and awe” and “spiderholes.” And support has indeed steadily increased, and now thousands echo the sentiment: our government failed us on 9/11/01 and has only found new ways to fail us every day since.
Thousands of voices - in a nation of three hundred million people, thousands care enough about the world around them to do something. Is “Dancing With The Stars” really that good, folks? We stand at a tipping point in history, and momentum is pushing us into frightening territory. What’s the excuse for not noticing? Or worse, for not caring?