First Off

I've been told that every generation has a great freakout. That every couple of years people start crying "DOOM!" and running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I realize that this is true. Every generation thinks that it is worse off than any that came before it. Boo-fucking-hoo for us right? We've got running water, electricity, the internet, the printing press, radio, television, motherfucking Hollywood and shit. We've got central heating and air, indoor plumbing, hardwood floors and wall-to-wall carpeting. We've got IRAs and 401ks and compound interest oh my. We've got Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, and Starbucks. We've got Neverwinter Nights, Spider-man, and Harry Potter. Hip-hip-hooray!

We've also got a political and economic structure that's corrupt and rotten to the core. We've got hundreds of thousands of people working at less than a living wage. We've got the television to tell us that it's all OK, that we're all OK, that we can all own Acuras that will pick up the intercom at our house, and tell us exactly where on earth we are. We can all make ourselves look like the folks in the Smirnoff Ice commercials, and then eat McDonald's to celebrate. We've got a war that is ripping away our personal freedoms as quickly as it kills innocent folk whose only crime amounts to something along the lines of having never had a Frappacino and a Big Mac. And not allowing our biggest corporations to run rampant drilling for oil on foreign soil in order to fatten their already enormously overinflated pockets. The most powerful man on earth is a drug-addled bigotted money-hungry nepotistic idiot puppet-prince. We're living the nightmares of conspiracy theorists, and we aren't paranoid enough to care anymore.

We are fucking apathetic, ignorant, docile apes. We care more about who J-LO IS FUCKING THAN WE CARE ABOUT THE STATE OF OUR NATION, POSSIBLY THE GREATEST FUCKING NATION EVER KNOWN TO MAN. We could care less about the raping of our innocence and the theft of our well-being. Obviously, because we haven't done a thing about it. WE HAVEN'T DONE A FUCKING THING BUT TO BEND OVER AND POLITELY ASK FOR MAYBE JUST A BIT MORE LUBRICATION. We haven't so much as squeaked out a request for a reach-around, let alone massive, all-encompassing social and political reform.

Because if we did, then something might actually happen. And that change would break our fragile psyche, so change be damned. Because one person can not make a difference, so I'm not going to try because no one else is. I like where I am. I won't be affected. I'll be dead before the worst of it could start. We could end up wasting the best part of our lives railing against the unjust brick wall that's not going to move, anyway. So we'll self-hypnotize into a state of zen-like calm and even ecstasy as we lose everything that our forefathers lived and died for. Because we like things the way that they are. WE LIKE TAKING IT UP THE ASS! LET IT BE KNOWN THAT WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ARE SO DELUDED AND LULLED INTO OUR FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY THAT WE NOW LOVE THE BRUTAL TORTURE THAT OUR WAY OF LIFE IS UNDERGOING, AND THAT WE AREN'T GOING TO DO A FUCKING THING ABOUT IT.

Because if we did, we might have to work for it or something. And that's not the american way, dammit.

--Ian
scared shitless, witless, clueless, useless, tight-lipped, tight-fisted, tight-assed, half-assed, ass-licking, money-grabbing, ego-jabbing, sniveling, grovelling, moaning, groaning

posted by Ian Quinn  : 6/28/2002 07:30:00 PM