Where's our Bob Dylan?
On the path to war with Iraqi neighbors, executive power to become absolute law when the slightest sickness gets out of hand, the government taking away right after right, lies and deception from the highest grounds... Where is the dissent? A couple dozen people lighting candles silently in front of the white house. A group of baby boomers camping outside a Texas ranch. A rally composed of old hippies reliving their protest days. Most of the current protestors are the same ones who did it back in the sixties. Only now they have no single voice.
Where is my generation in this battle? It is after all our future that this administration is selling to their creditors. Why can't we get pissed off about this? Why can't we demand control of our own future? Are the current politicians that great of salespeople that so many Gen-X'ers are convinced that our indentured servitude to the Chinese 30 years down the line is in our best interest?
What about the canceling of funding for higher education? I can't believe that the American people will be able to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps without having intelligent people to guide them. During the sixties the government was assisting students pursuing higher education because they understood that America wasn't only competing for world resources we were also competing for the best and brightest. That's what saved us throughout the seventies and eighties when manufacturing jobs left and during the nineties' recession. Our scientific and technological advancement carried us forward, but now we are starting to slow down and the objections to the policies impeding our advancement rarely rise above a whisper.
Has this generation, raised by MTV, Sesame Street in the child care stockyards, learned to ignore the troubles and just focus on the good time? Have we all grown complacent? We have been taught through stranger danger, DARE, and other McGruff Crime Dog programs not to trust each other, to isolate ourselves and not take risks. And those that do take risks are grouped like cattle into bars and clubs, dancing and gyrating to tribal rhythms that excite the body and silence the mind. Concern is not popular and activism is too melodramatic.
But that is just in the urban setting, what about rural America? There the risk takers are increasingly turning to meth to satisfy the edge craving. The others get so tied up with religion that they're bound for life to be pawns, only putting their stamp of approval upon the great cross. How can they be convinced to change when they would need to change from their living mediums to God? We don't only have to battle social and political ideologies we also have to fight the religious devotion.
There are, however, people speaking out. Bloggers expose the insidious plotting of people in power. People in coffee houses calling for action. Poets in spotlights denouncing the villains. They get people riled up and genuinely wanting things to change, but then the audience leaves the poetry bars or coffee houses, and logs off their computers and goes to sleep with no intention of making an effort.
And why should they? They have to make enough money to purchase music, books, videos, designer furniture, take trips to Europe, pay the mortgage on their downtown condo and save some income to an IRA to make up for no future to social security. Even the most frugal must work hard to avoid financial pitfalls. And if an individual doesn't want to work long hours for those goals, then their spouses, partners or parents expect them to and out of a conditioned sense of duty they oblige.
The defiance of the sixties and seventies was accomplished by having the rich and poor bind together on common issues. They had a pointless war, they had oppression from the older generation... We have the same. So why can't we speak as loudly as they did?
Sex! They had an incentive to go it on their own. The sexual revolution coinciding with the other protests allowed the young people to indulge while they challenged the order of things. They had the older generation forcing sexual repression binding them together against a common opponent, we have an older generation more understanding about sexual desires. Now all a person has to do is visit a bar or club on the weekends and free love is available with no strings attached, but its not exactly free.
Instead of outside influences restricting sexual freedom, we are bound by the laws of attraction. A person must have resources to be appealing; money, a flashy car, good clothes, jewelry, etc... Otherwise a person must be beautiful; membership at a gym, alluring attire, quality cosmetics, expensive hair-do, etc... Both keys to attaining sex brings with them an incurred cost which demands longer hours at work or indentured servitude to creditors. With no time to spend lamenting about global issues we're forced to trust those in power and simply go on with our increasingly quickening day.
People have this blind trust that things will eventually work out for the best without the need of their assistance. But that is exactly what these wolves in Washington, these thieves in skyscrapers and the pharisees in the pulpit want from the masses; a blind faith in a fortunate end. There needs to be a great number of people willing to take a risk, willing to take a stand, willing to say "count me in".
Where is my generation in this battle? It is after all our future that this administration is selling to their creditors. Why can't we get pissed off about this? Why can't we demand control of our own future? Are the current politicians that great of salespeople that so many Gen-X'ers are convinced that our indentured servitude to the Chinese 30 years down the line is in our best interest?
What about the canceling of funding for higher education? I can't believe that the American people will be able to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps without having intelligent people to guide them. During the sixties the government was assisting students pursuing higher education because they understood that America wasn't only competing for world resources we were also competing for the best and brightest. That's what saved us throughout the seventies and eighties when manufacturing jobs left and during the nineties' recession. Our scientific and technological advancement carried us forward, but now we are starting to slow down and the objections to the policies impeding our advancement rarely rise above a whisper.
Has this generation, raised by MTV, Sesame Street in the child care stockyards, learned to ignore the troubles and just focus on the good time? Have we all grown complacent? We have been taught through stranger danger, DARE, and other McGruff Crime Dog programs not to trust each other, to isolate ourselves and not take risks. And those that do take risks are grouped like cattle into bars and clubs, dancing and gyrating to tribal rhythms that excite the body and silence the mind. Concern is not popular and activism is too melodramatic.
But that is just in the urban setting, what about rural America? There the risk takers are increasingly turning to meth to satisfy the edge craving. The others get so tied up with religion that they're bound for life to be pawns, only putting their stamp of approval upon the great cross. How can they be convinced to change when they would need to change from their living mediums to God? We don't only have to battle social and political ideologies we also have to fight the religious devotion.
There are, however, people speaking out. Bloggers expose the insidious plotting of people in power. People in coffee houses calling for action. Poets in spotlights denouncing the villains. They get people riled up and genuinely wanting things to change, but then the audience leaves the poetry bars or coffee houses, and logs off their computers and goes to sleep with no intention of making an effort.
And why should they? They have to make enough money to purchase music, books, videos, designer furniture, take trips to Europe, pay the mortgage on their downtown condo and save some income to an IRA to make up for no future to social security. Even the most frugal must work hard to avoid financial pitfalls. And if an individual doesn't want to work long hours for those goals, then their spouses, partners or parents expect them to and out of a conditioned sense of duty they oblige.
The defiance of the sixties and seventies was accomplished by having the rich and poor bind together on common issues. They had a pointless war, they had oppression from the older generation... We have the same. So why can't we speak as loudly as they did?
Sex! They had an incentive to go it on their own. The sexual revolution coinciding with the other protests allowed the young people to indulge while they challenged the order of things. They had the older generation forcing sexual repression binding them together against a common opponent, we have an older generation more understanding about sexual desires. Now all a person has to do is visit a bar or club on the weekends and free love is available with no strings attached, but its not exactly free.
Instead of outside influences restricting sexual freedom, we are bound by the laws of attraction. A person must have resources to be appealing; money, a flashy car, good clothes, jewelry, etc... Otherwise a person must be beautiful; membership at a gym, alluring attire, quality cosmetics, expensive hair-do, etc... Both keys to attaining sex brings with them an incurred cost which demands longer hours at work or indentured servitude to creditors. With no time to spend lamenting about global issues we're forced to trust those in power and simply go on with our increasingly quickening day.
People have this blind trust that things will eventually work out for the best without the need of their assistance. But that is exactly what these wolves in Washington, these thieves in skyscrapers and the pharisees in the pulpit want from the masses; a blind faith in a fortunate end. There needs to be a great number of people willing to take a risk, willing to take a stand, willing to say "count me in".
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