So much for a day off! 6:50AM S woke me only somewhat inadvertently as he searched frantically for the car keys. I was enlisted to help and another half hour passed. When he found them and left, I got back in bed, but my mother followed me and got all clingy and whiny like a little kid. Then the phone rang. It was S. He wanted to tell me the oh so hilarious crude joke his boss made about his forgetfulness. By this time I knew I was not going to be able to go back to sleep for some time. So here I am, groggy, tired, only a few sips of coffee in my system, and SO MUCH TO DO. So much I want to do. So much I have to do, quite contrary to my desires.
Two interesting things happened yesterday. I ran into a friend I've been meaning to get together with for a long time. I almost never run into people I know because I never leave my bloody house. The other interesting thing that happened was that I got a letter from my new pen friend, C. I thought I had frightened her off with my overtly forthright nature. Apparently it only made her more interested in being my friend! I take that as a good sign. She's a fellow artist and craft enthusiast and we have other things in common, too. Its so nice to find someone I can relate to, someone who has similar neuroses and struggles. Sometimes I think I am a freak and all alone, but come on, there are 7 billion people in the world... how unique can I possibly be? The universe has arranged for me to encounter this kindred soul at this time. It's so nice. She's about 7 years younger than I am so I feel a strange mentor-ship is forming. Reading about her life reminds me of that painful period in my early 20s, one I would not want to revisit if given the chance, unless perhaps with the knowledge and experience I now have, I could do things differently. But I wouldn't have amassed such knowledge and experience without going through all I did.
Meanwhile, the United States is falling apart. The empire is contracting and collapsing in on itself. It's hard being young here right now. The future is uncertain, aside from the ominous signs of decline and deterioration of the American Way. Things just keep on getting worse and worse... and worse even than you thought possible. My generation will not experience even a fraction of the kind of freedom and prosperity our parents did. Life has always been a struggle, but I think our way of life will be so dissimilar to that of our parents that it's almost like being born into a totally different world. The diminished opportunities, the worthlessness of our public education system, serfdom to our corporate overlords, a changing global climate, dwindling natural resources, and, seemingly, a decrease in the general sanity and good will of our fellow human beings, all paint a frightening picture of our future here and in this era.
Global collapse. Fun times were had by all. We will make it if we are resourceful and imaginative and stick together. When clean water, gasoline, and food shortages strike, and wars break out over resources, how many people will manage to hold on to their humanity and integrity? I would venture a hope that compassion and goodness would endure, but I've been so disappointed in my fellow man over the last decade or so, that I know better. There will be very few, like me, who will cling mercilessly to such romantic ideals, who value the sanctity of the spirit above all else, including survival. Maybe we will die out quickly, or, if we can find one another, perhaps our spirit of camaraderie will help us thrive. All I know is, based on my experience and observation, most people will resort to brutality and the law of the jungle as soon as the veneer of civilization so much as cracks. It wont be long now. And it's painful to watch.
The problem with Democracy is that when the population is uninformed, say by corporate media, and uneducated, say by a sham of an educational system, including the corporate-owned University / higher education in this country, and deceived, as they are by so many interests these days, they aren't fit to govern themselves. Take the so-called Tea Party for example. Most of the people who consider themselves members don't appear to know the first thing about government and how it really works. They have all sorts of really damaging ideas about how the country should be run, and they are, of course, being manipulated by some very shady, very wealthy, very powerful interests who have co-opted their ignorance and wield it as a weapon against progress and recovery. It's sickening to watch, and it's going to be one of the last gasps of the American Empire, all this flailing and frothing at the mouth. A zombie army.
Over the last 20 years, the Pentagon and Military Industrial Complex have had a fucking field day. Like a gigantic tick, bloated, glutting itself on the life-blood of our tax dollars. The Bush administration was so unskilled at politics that they had to resort to the laziest and nastiest of tricks... fear-mongering. That, they did thoroughly, and well. But people are growing inured to the constant jolts of terror they are being force-fed. We've been at war for more than 10 years, two grotesquely costly and useless wars, while the nation continues to thrash blindly around trying to squash a bee that stung it in a tender spot, our society, culture, and prosperity rotting out from under us. Pretty soon there wont be much to protect from so-called "evil-doers" anymore. For God's sake, the country is virtually bankrupt.
Unemployment is over 9 percent AT LEAST. People are being thrown out of their homes. Property owners have seen the value of their assets decrease by more than 30 percent. Crashing stocks have wiped out nest eggs and retirement funds, and as I write this, the safety-nets of state and federal services are being dismantled. With no national health care system or national insurance coverage, people are going without medical care, without prescription medications, and dying as a result of corporate greed. The wealth of our nation is in the hands of the top 1 percent, with the other 99 percent of us left to divvy up the remaining spoils, essentially slaves and serfs at this point. The income inequality in this country is so top-heavy right now that there is no doubt that it will completely implode soon. And what is going to stop this madness? The idiotic and short-sighted policies espoused by the Tea Party? I think not. Will a reasonably competent media step in to ask the tough questions, investigate the problems, and communicate them to the masses before it's too late? not bloody likely. Are the corporations who are designed only to produce profit at any cost to the basic moral tenets of human life, who own and run our government, going to wake up one day and stop being shark-like, greed-driven, money-eating, people-eating machines? Highly doubtful.
No, now all that is left to do is watch and wait for the inevitable. But it is still painful. Even if you choose to avert your eyes. And that is especially true for the young, who look at all this and despair for their futures, for the lives they might have had, for the unrealized potential they know they will never bring to fruition in such an environment, for the confusion stemming from trying to reconcile everything they've been brought up to believe about America, and the sickening reality of it. We also have to deal with the dismemberment of traditional communities and social groupings. We are more isolated from one another than any generation has ever been. The enormity of the land and population of the United States lends itself naturally to a pervasive sense of anonymity. Destruction of our traditional agrarian way of life has people scattered to the winds, living in homes that are a world unto themselves, separated and cut off from neighbors and the community by a combination of fear, secular values, and the lack of any unifying national culture and heritage, (aside from Star Wars) which is in part due simply to the diversity and youth of the nation. see, America isn't so much a melting pot as it is a heterogeneous combination. It's more like a ball pit than a melting pot. One way to avoid exacerbating the social cleavages in such a diverse nation is to simply avoid your neighbors. We don't tend to have overt clashes between different religious, ethnic, and cultural groups in this country, not because we are "enlightened" or "tolerant" as a society, but because we lead lives of isolation from one another. It's not as if we acknowledge and accept each others' differences, which would lead to a more cohesive community, we just tend to erect enough space around ourselves to comfortably ignore them.
That's how it's done.
That particular state of affairs keeps us from fighting one another but it also keeps us from cooperating effectively to take care of the needs of our community and our nation at large.
Basically what I'm trying to say is, we're all fucked. The End.
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