[Ed. Note – The author first penned these words on August 24, 2013]
It’s so mindblowingly remarkable how our American society survives by avoiding realities. The middle class, the poor… will give another dollar for a problem to go away for another week. “Mister, we don’t want any trouble.” “Here, take it, it’s all I got.” The dangers and dilemmas of daily existence – real or imaginary, physical or intangible – wind up being like the psychopath menacing a family in a 70s horror movie. “Take my watch, just leave us alone.” Or, rather, “Go pick on the family next door.” Of course, most of us don’t admit to this regular, accepted exercise in cowardice, in avoiding responsibility – not during daylight, and rarely without the exorcising liquor. No, we’re not threatened… we choose to give our money to this man or that man; we approve of this war or that war (as long as its somebody else’s kid fighting it); we don’t mind being stopped and detained and searched and questioned and demeaned and threatened by those we employ; we and our children will gladly wait another day or week or month for medicine and help; we can live with poison in our air and water and food; on and on it goes. As long as we have smart phones and Budweiser and McDonald’s and Starbucks and credit cards and unemployment checks and and Vicodin and Oxy, as long as we have religion to muddy the waters of humanity, as long as we engage in the diversionary divisions of race and sexual preferences and sexual identities, as long as we have poorer neighbors to scapegoat and nebulous, faraway boogeymen to fear – we don’t have to fight the power today, do we?
