First, I have a confession to share. I have been thinking about doing a story around that question for a couple of days, but I didn’t want to start writing about it yet and I still don’t. Yes, I know the obvious question is, “So, schmuck, why are you writing now?”
I want to stay in the confessional mode for a little while longer. I gotta be honest, the writing hasn’t flowed recently, not that it ever did. For reasons I happily can’t explain, erasing my own words feels like a crime against me. It may be hard to understand, but this little stunt kind of obligates me to come back to the next paragraph. Right before I go, I want you to know I have really been thinking how to answer that simple question.
I will keep coming back to this during the week. It is just too much to deal with in a single sitting. I guess I could start by saying, if I did a Rip Van Winkle and woke up after a years’ long sleep, I really wouldn’t know what country I was in. These days, I wake up each morning and simply can’t believe where I am, because it truly makes no sense.
Sure, I could do the scholarly thing and lay out the scenario that got us into this other worldly shit show. I could write about the flaws in the capitalist system and the stealth like rise of the uber class. Another would be the flaws in the human condition that predispose us to greed and selfishness. Understanding where we are and how we got here doesn’t do a fucken thing to ameliorate this sinking emptiness, deep in the pit of my stomach.
I certainly don’t consider myself naive, because none of this surprises me. However, there is a huge difference between understanding and experiencing. Ultimately, what always matters most is how we feel, not what we think. I know my writing about this global cluster fuck has always been about tracing its historical roots. However, it feels like standing right in the middle of an emotional hurricane. I can’t seem to find any shelter from it.
This game plan of the Right has been years in the making. I am not sure when men, it is always men, realized they could plunder this mesmerizing piece of precious geography. I guess the initial draw here was the freedom of expression, distancing oneself from greedy oppression. A system was created here to avoid the accumulation of power into too, few hands. A huge mistake was to think civility was the path to the future. I don’t think they ever envisioned a true tyrant, or a tyrant class, hijacking the ship of state.
Again, I find myself wandering off into the reasons for this massive breakdown, where man’s humanity toward man got buried in the wallets of greed and the abuse of power. I have written about 500 words so far and it just doesn’t feel like I’ve come close to sharing how I feel. As naive as it may sound, I really thought we were better than this. No, I’d never qualify as an optimist, but I honestly didn’t believe we could be so cruel to each other. Our little babies are starving and that scumbag is building an obscene arena on the grounds of our capital, not to mention paving over the Rose Garden and lacquering every surface, every where, with gold plating. This prick makes Nero look like an amateur.
Anger and deep sadness crisscross my soul, that sacred internal haven of mine. Yes, it does feel like an invasion, one that out spooks my worst nightmares about our future on this planet. Can anyone explain Israel to me? The news, if you can call it that, coming out of that part of the world can’t possibly be true. The reason why is simple. The level of cruelty is so awful, it seems unbelievable and that is what I mean. All Israel knows how to do is kill and it is a kind of killing that is so fucken insane, it doesn’t even seem real. It is these same motherfuckers that hide behind the Holocaust, affording them some bizarre right to kill just the way Hitler did. The crime for them is being Arab, simply being Arab. Let me also set the record straight. There is a huge difference between being a Jew and an Israeli!
You know what I want to know? Where are all those first world, elitist, snob countries when it comes to not only being silent about that genocide, but profiting from it? I actually thought when Trump decided to shit on all of Europe, they might come into their own, as a force to be reckoned with. This illness is global, making any one life more important than another. Is it money that gives you the right to devalue a human life?
I have to interrupt myself yet again. Don’t ask me why, but when I finished the above paragraph, I didn’t know where to go when I came back to the page. Before I hit the save button, I typed “women”. I know I am up to my ass in what is, but what if women were in charge of global politics? A real wily woman can make mincemeat out of any guy. It is no contest. Boys have been running the show for thousands of years and it has taken this long for their handiwork to finally desecrate this temple called earth, along with so many of her inhabitants. Personally, I don’t have a single, fucken problem handing it to over to the ladies.
I had better get back on track, except I can’t find it. It is so easy to get lost, because the totality of this mess is unfathomable. What the hell are you and I supposed to do? In some ways, I feel like I crawled out from under a rock to write this story. America is being disassembled right before our eyes. It is already completely unrecognizable to me and it keeps sinking lower and lower.
The true challenge for people like me and many, many of you is to not keep sinking along side the American Empire. If I spend these last years of my life in mourning for what was, I will have forfeited all of the incredible gifts my life has afforded me and for what? It is that question that got me to start crawling out of this dark hole I dug for myself, so I could see you.
Now, if I was simply writing for my own benefit, I don’t think I would have made it through a single story. You and I are living in the same world and there is no way I am alone in all this. We have each other and knowing you are out there means the world to me.
Thank you.
LISTEN TO IT HERE:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1292459/episodes/19303416-excuse-me-has-anyone-seen-america