I’m twenty five, about to finish college, and here’s what my life looks like: I work roughly thirty-two hours a week, have attended school full-time up until now, and pay rent, utilities, gas, car maintenance, insurance, groceries, and oh yeah, tuition and books. I also manage to fit in money for time with my girlfriend each month. Oh, and I’m doing all of this with keeping myself debt-free. I bust my ass most days of the week, try to exercise as well so as to stay in shape because I'm only going to be enrolled in health-care benefits for so much longer, and I try to maintain a semi-healthy diet. All the while, I try to keep reading more and more about the world, stay informed, and keep in contact with old friends, family, and keep strong ties that I am forming with people now.
But somehow, if I opened my mouth about half of how I feel about society and the world in general, without mentioning any of the above information, I’d be labeled a lazy, socialist, terrorist loving, anti-American, problem. Yes, me, the guy who throws out your fucking fruits and veggies so you can let 1/3 of them rot, is anti-American. Yes, the guy who pays his taxes so an army of his country can stomp up and down other countries in some bullshit parade to ‘spread freedom’ with the use of tanks and bombs while his country’s education system is fucked, as well as his country’s healthcare system that should clearly be converted to single-payer, is anti-American. What a crock of shit. This is not to mention the fact that my tax money goes to supporting our proxy in the Middle East, Israel, who commits UN violations every year against Palestinians, the very people they displaced with no justice. Violation of the UN statutes, one of the many reasons we decided to go into Iraq to begin with (or was it those Weapons we never found in there? Or the fact that Saddam was a dictator - that we put into power? Or the 9/11 involvement they never had, yet we never managed to prove?)
Yes, me, the guy who pays for his living, his schooling, and his personal life and has never asked for federal welfare (though I don't demonize people who may need it), is the lazy, socialist, scum. Is this right? Me, the guy who studies his ass off, reads non-fiction in his spare time to broaden his understanding of the world, and wants to solve problems facing everyday Americans, is anti-American because I don’t succumb to the bullshit idea of maintaining the status-quo because of what some old, 18th century, racist, sexist, classist, and agrarian assholes decided was “right”. Because I don't drape myself in the flag to support policies and oppose ideas I don't fully understand? The Founding Fathers, let alone the dogmatic group that worships them today, are not the be all, end all of political thought and ingenuity. They were wrong about the idea of Black people not being human, they were wrong about women’s roles in society, they were wrong about plenty of other things, so why the fuck does the rest of the Constitution escape similar critique? Why do we fail to put into context the rest of the ideas in that document? This doesn't mean I want to scrap the whole thing, but I don't want to be so sanctimonious to the paper that I can't tell what is clearly an outdated concept.
I'm often told, regardless of whether a person knows some of the facts about my life, that I 'just don't understand fully how the world works'. Typically, I've found that this comes from someone who has never dealt with the world in a way that doesn't shield them from the full effects of their actions. Or it comes from someone so arrogant that doesn't notice how built-in privileges to a system benefit them in ways that are the only life-force to their deluded vision of 'how things work'.
It’s a horseshit ploy formed, perhaps by amazing historical circumstance and chance, to keep elite interests in control of how things filter upwards in a society. It’s maintained because nobody thinks to challenge it. They don’t think to because they haven’t been taught to. And even if one does, they don’t get rewarded for it. In fact, it’s called a “problematic distraction” in the workplace, “killing the vibe” in most social settings, and “preaching to the choir” in academic settings. Thus, society is set up to keep us working, mindlessly chatting in our spare time in hopes of watching fat people ‘dance their asses off’ on cable TV, eating food from chains as a sign of social stature, and buying the newest, coolest gadgets made by someone in someplace we’ll never know using their resources they never see the lions share of profit from. So when does change happen in all of this (Obama voters, don't you dare fool yourself into thinking he's brought it)?
It's going to take more than Obama. It's going to take more than voting. No, I'm not talking ideas of armed revolution or tumult and chaos in the streets. I don't really think it's gotten to that point. But I don't discount the power of peaceful protest in the streets, and I do think that it is an integral part of what it will take to change things. I do think in addition that it's time people started to develop a real sense of self-reflection and tough-love within themselves that can keep a real movement for justice alive and spirited.
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