Slurpy said:
Its called fucking waking up. Its scary Bush even has a chance to get reelected, and that that many americans support him and the administration. What are they supporting?Something is definitely wrong with that.
Was that directed at me? If so, do you
really think that true change is going to come simply by way of Bush's ouster? I staunchly disagree. And by that I mean not just "an end to the war in Iraq", but
real change. That's not going to happen no matter whom you'd care to empower imo. Which candidate will end our absolutely useless and lopsided support of Israel? Which candidate will take a stand against corporate malfeasance, against the deleterious effect that the "profit motive" has had on all spheres of life, against the propagation of spurious values via our entertainment media, against the ubiquitous assault on the family, against the shallow and reckless mentality which results from lax educational standards and the devaluation of civics, against the infiltration of our political process by moneyed interests both overt and surreptitious, against the usurpation of our power and prestige as voters by PAC's, against massive military spending which benefits only the military-industrial complex and those who would choose to wield our martial power for their own aggrandizement, against the coarsening of our society's "etiquette", against the abdication of personal responsibility to the courts and their liasons, against our rampant materialism and consumerism, against our covert meddling in other nations' affairs in order to serve our own ends, against unchecked corporate greed and profiteering which heeds no strictures, be they borders or laws. Who will teach our society the value of humility and integrity and justice again, or bring about the conditions where such virtues can be realized in civil life?
Who will even
remotely speak to all of that? Because, unlike what you may believe, this nation's problems are interrelated; the situation in Iraq is but one manifestation of a systemic, endemic infection which has been allowed to go unchallenged for several decades now and has grown more acute as a result. You do yourself a disservice by suggesting that it's merely a matter of changing our figurehead. In short, who will restore a modicum of respectability to this once great nation by espousing a return to
virtue-- diligence, brotherhood, humility, moderation, and empathy-- in the face of the myriad countervailing forces working against such a radical shift? The short answer is that nobody will, and that's the saddest part of the whole situation. It
can be done, but the cost would be great-- no greater than the price we're currently paying for the failures of the past few decades, mind you, but still pretty large. And difficult. A society which loathes true challenges, instead preferring to create frequent "wars" (see: war on terror, war on drugs, war on illiteracy) which can then be fought with mere platitudes, half-measures and counterproductive strategies, will certainly be reticent to embark on such a massive societal upheaval as described above; this is not to say that those aforementioned "wars" shouldn't be fought, necessarily, just that if we took care of the big picture, there likely would be little need to fight them in the first place-- or at least
less of a need. With the proper education and message, I feel that such a course of action can be made palatable to the masses, if not the elite (since they would no longer
be the "elite" if such a society ever came to pass)-- and therein lies the problem.
Instead of true reform, or at least true representation on behalf of
our best interests, we are offered but illusory power and choice-- a traveshamockery (
) of what was intended by our forebears. Ridding our society of its present excesses will, I feel, be the great struggle of my generation-- assuming that my generation ever awakes from their self-induced slumber and actually tries to spur change in their nation. And that's a
big assumption.
I will leave you with a quote from Benjamin Franklin-- no, not the "liberty and temporary safety" one, but one which I feel is both more profound and more relevant to our present circumstance on the whole:
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
I ask you-- who are our masters? Not only the people who may spring to mind, but also the values and ideals, and the institutions which disseminate them to our all-too-eager minds. Therein lies the truest answer to our current problems in my opinion. A dissolute and reprobate people cannot adequately lead their own lives, much less guide the course of nations.
Sorry for the rambling...
