Wikification
From dKosopedia
Stir-Fry My World, The Hermit Said
As I look about the planet, I find myself wondering what the hell is going on. I was born in 1970, a grandson of the Greatest Generation⎯caught in a flux, between the gaps, sanding through an hourglass. Our parents came from that generation, spoiled by being children whose parents fought for the life they have. How many are turning in their graves at the adulation of prostitutes we now worship? There is some serious shit going on in this world that we have never before had the ability to see so completely, so quickly. We are living in a country, paid for by the lives of that great generation, and what have we to show for it? Child porn like Clay Aiken and Britney, a war that no one seems to understand or care much about or question, and a lazy, highly medicated, uninspired, uncaring youth.
How is it that we have enabled ourselves to become so shrouded by pressing global issues? We interact with our computers, allowing Microsoft to think for us. Our television has become infiltrated by a so-called reality that is anything but, tabloid generators referred to as news, and commercials in between that let us know if we’re stupid enough, we’ll be quite happy with the snake oil they’re peddling. We will buy anything tossed our way having free, new, reduced, improved, or any other such nonsense attached to its sales pitch. Is it the fault of those doing the tossing or those who lap it up like a dog scarfing down scraps dropped from the dinner table? Republicans are hawking their way through debates while democrats whimper and apologize, and journalists forget to question while we let them. Totalitarians fortify their means of survival. Bishops apologize for their obfuscation of their cohorts raping of children. The pleading for tolerance hides maniacs preaching death and using God to do so. The ozone is depleting. Icebergs are melting. Jingoists are jingoing. Hawks are hawking. Doves are shot. The system doesn’t work, so paying attention is like shoving your hand into a needlestack to snatch a straw of hay. Our country, and indeed the world, has been taken over by extremists; the middle⎯vast majority⎯has little voice. And the new generation whose job it will be to clean up this mess and have that voice is hormone-fed fed and drugged by their parents and themselves to numb their mind and prepare it for Clay and Brittney. Who can pay attention to the system with all that disarray?
How has it come to this? What the hell is going on? We have a larger population than ever in earth’s history, each group groping for its placement, and each with the ability to find out nearly anything through the click of a mouse. We find ourselves creating and exacerbating problems that will be up to our children to fix or from which they will suffer. Why are we so afraid of confronting our own demons so that our children won’t have to face all of Satan’s lair? It seems we sit by and watch everything unfold and make no attempts to understand, let alone do something. Thinking. Why do we loathe it so? Is it the info-saturation that has caused this neglect of reality? With all that is going on and all the abilities we now have to find the details, we simply must look at the big picture to regroup and think clearly. There are too many details concerning too many crises the world over to think: war, famine, disease, dishonesty, catastrophes, corruption (each having thousands of subcategories and a multitude of details, all of which are a mouse click away from our viewscreen). There is too much crap.
Picking a protest seems futile at this point. War protest in the 60s was threatening, as it should have been, while now its seems an amusement to those whose ears protests are meant to reach. Protests are brushed off by the simple condescending gesture of a politician. There is anger, but no fury, no decisive acknowledgement for the voices once fought with dogs and jail time. No line of protesters mopped up by fire hoses or tear gas. One must look at the whole enchilada. Take a look at the headlines and relax with the misbalanced stories. How have we let things go so far as to cease our questioning and allow those few doing so to be threatened with imprisonment? Is there so much going on that we are confused enough to toss our hands into the air with exasperation and accept it without question?
Our country preaches religious freedom and tolerance while bombastically practicing right-winged Christian fundamentalism. We find it hard to accept other peoples of the world whose constitutions are based solely on religious interpretation while actively seeking or inactively allowing the Bible to guide our own. It is this grand illusionary hypocrisy which is hindering our world from truly considering humanity. How have we let our children grow with such ignorance? How do we argue the schooling of faith without science to our children? It is these freedom preachers with their single-minded view who are halting progress, these arrogant fools who give true followers of faith a bad name. How can one claim patriotism while preaching that which is in direct opposition to the ideology behind our nation’s founding?
Let’s look at the headlines: We are in a war that no one understood the reason for in the first place. Most of us walk about without a thought concerning the fact that we are at war. We have a corrupt, half-indicted administration and the public is, well, okay with that. Mother Nature manifested her fury this season, and many in the scientific community are saying it is worsening because of what we are doing to the planet. Our resources are going toward battles and not helping one another as we have seen by way of FEMA and their mishaps. The rest of the world hates us more than ever, and we don’t seem to care enough because, hell, it’s not cum stain on a blouse.
At our nation’s founding, tens of thousands of people would come to hear a debate between candidates. They would watch for four or five hours until they understood the candidates thoroughly, got the points that were made, and were swayed in the direction which intellectually soothed them the most. This is how our country brought leaders to power. What do we have now? Sound bytes. Major issues wholly unaddressed. Some negative attributes twisted into a hair from a lie about the other candidate. Is this allowing us to choose our own candidate? Nothing is even said about our haphazard electoral process. We’re sort of okay with all that, too, just as long as we don’t have to pay too much attention.
We cannot allow our information to come from tabloidists, since they have been bombasting an unbalanced load of non-questioning crap over the airwaves for far too long. We allow folks who are unbalanced to call themselves balanced. While humanity is being tested in ways never before imagined and witnessed, it is these unpinionated, flapping heads on whom we rely for our information. It is solely up to us to find our own information or make the demand for journalism to return and actually pay attention. The few that have done their job have so often been cut out of the loop lately; this practice has also been allowed without question. Our press corps has allowed an administration more secretive than any since the Nixon administration. It would seem our only real journalist left is a slapstick, tongue-in-cheek comedian named Jon Stewart.
What will it take for folks to actually pay attention? It is only a great humbling, something that causes us to suffer so much that we are forced to change or⎯forget what borders protect you, forget whatever your faith has taught, forget family values⎯we’re replaced by cockroaches. Will we have to be faced by the Malthusian Principal in action to open our eyes? Europe lost a third of their kinsmen until they realized that living in their own excrement wasn’t such a bad thing to stop. It is a simple concept: if smashing your face with a hammer hurts, stop smashing yourself in the face with a hammer. But we have now come to a time when we actually listen to those who tell us it’s not really a hammer. That pillow doesn’t really hurt, does it.? We’ll no, my friendly bombast, it is not a pillow, it’s a hammer; and yes, you are smashing your face with it. I can tell because you are smashing your face with a hammer. We would come together if aliens landed and wiped most of us out. We would pay attention if God made himself known on Entertainment Tonight and set us straight. We would pay attention if those things we let slide came up and bit us on the ass and wiped out a third of mankind. Is two guys having sex really a more important concept to face than war, fear mongering, and climate change? How long will we hunt for distractions from these herds of elephants in our living rooms.
Even that Great Generation waited until we had matters brought to our own shores before we got involved with a war to end the reign of a madman. The parallel to today has been drawn by the 9/11 enthusiasts, but we live in a world where exactly who that madman is is in question. Before we were thanked for our involvement, while now, we are feared, disliked, despised even. So where do we go from here while our leaders lead without question? Another simple concept: start to question, start to think. After all, no matter what happens it will happen to the people who are ultimately responsible for everything—us.
