"I am the eternal optimist though, and I take hope from the election yesterday. I look at the amazing turnout of young voters, and I am hopeful that we have moved from the "Me" generation to the "We" generation; from the generation that, for good reason (Kent State, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, Watergate), believed government could accomplish nothing, to the generation that believes in a leader named Barack Obama. They will look to President Obama, take his words of wisdom to heart, and begin to build a better nation than the one we have now. The generation that heard, during the first election they could vote, and responded to the candidate, "Yes WE can.""?
What happened? The voice of the youth was utterly buried under the hate-filled, frightened screams of their elders, who stormed Town Hall meetings in the summer of 2009. So much for civil discourse. Those marching to those Town Hall meetings had extreme amnesia over what had happened during the prior administration, when we entered 2 unfunded wars, gave tax cuts to the most wealthy, and fed the unending greed of those for who too much was just not enough. Falling rapidly on the heels (or preceding these Town Hall meetings even) came the "Tea Party Movement", and the optimism of our youth (and a lot of adults too!) was sucked into a black hole.
Here's the thing that really fucking annoys me about the Tea Party movement--they do not realize they are being manipulated. It's not far-fetched or crazy to say the people attending the rallies are puppets on a string and they don't even know it. The puppet masters are the Koch Brothers and Dick Armey--an at-the-time lobbyist for DLA Piper, a firm that was doing lobbying work for the pharmaceutical industry during the Health Care debate. Armey is the founder of FreedomWorks, a major organizer/ATM machine/darkness behind every Tea Party rally in this country. Call me crazy, delusional, whatever, but here's the truth: there are those whose wealth allows them to manipulate any of us at any time, and they are always, always 3 steps ahead of us--they have the time and resources to control what happens in this country, and the election of Barack Obama was not good for their agenda. My god, the thought that every American just might be allowed to have health care, and that just might cost them .001% of their wealth, was just too much. So they went out and used a very effective tool in their arsenal: fear. They made people who were already feeling a little vulnerable afraid. Very, very afraid...of losing what they had to "those others". Whisper, out there on the internet, "You're going to lose "[fill in the blank]" to those people," and you're going to get people riled. Throw in a little about the Constitution, and you've got yourself a Tea Party.
These days, I'm feeling sick to my stomach. There's a knife sticking in the place I allow optimism to grow, and it hurts. Here are just a few reasons why:
- I hate it that "we" is rapidly giving way to "me", as in, "I've got my rights, so screw you." ("I've got shitty healthcare provided by my job, and I don't realize I'm one illness from bankruptcy, but I've got it, so screw you." "I've already got my Social Security, so screw you." "I can get married, so screw you." "I can find a doctor any time my teenage daughter, mistress, or girlfriend needs an abortion, AND I can pay for it, so screw you.". "I got my education, so screw you.") Is this how we want the younger generation to think?? Really?? We want them to think they don't have to take care of us in our old age? We want them to think that they can pick and choose what they pay taxes for? We want them to think that it's "all about me"? Really?
- We stand a very good chance of electing to public office people who are unprepared and ignorant; a dangerous combination. The riled Tea Party people voted for some scary people in the primaries, and if we don't vote in the midterm elections, if we don't think it's very important, then these people will be in charge of the future of our country. I'm scared that crazy people are winning--crazy people like Sharron Angle in Nevada, who believes God wants her to run, and once voted against allowing a football team to wear black jerseys because that color was associated with the devil. Christine O'Donnell, who believes abstinence should include masturbation, because if you masturbate, you're lusting after yourself.
- People who deliver news to us, keep our collective memory, who inform us about our world--those who are called "journalists"--are failing us. There isn't news reporting any more, there isn't investigative journalism; there is manipulation of "sound bites", there is slant and slander, and there is a lot of shouting and, at the same time, silencing, of those who should be listened to. We have 24 hour a day news, and yet we're losing the ability to analyze, to push aside the bullshit, to think for ourselves. I read the Letters to the Editor every day, and a majority of the writers are parroting whichever "talking head" they listen to.
- The Republicans in Congress suck--I wish I could think of a better way to put it, but there are no clean words. They vote "NO" ....for everything!!!!!! They hold up bills in committee, they refuse to allow bills to pass to the floor of the Senate (just 1 little man can do that!), they threaten to filibuster (here's a novel idea--LET THEM DO IT! Make them pee into a cup on the floor of the Senate, make them talk for 100000000 hours straight--whatever, just make them do it!), and they basically are proposing the same things they did in 2008--cut taxes for the wealthy, decrease spending (what, they don't say), privatize Social Security (because the Stock Market is just so stable), and deregulate (oh yeah, let's trust Wall Street to police themselves)--policies which 99.9% of economists say will not work, and will only hurt this country more than it's already hurting.
Here's what I wrote at the end of 2008: "When I was a kid, I could trust the adults to take care of things, and as a young adult, I could still trust the real adults to take care of things. But now I'm that adult that kids are trusting to make everything all right, and I'm feeling pretty powerless. I used to be able to focus my worry on one or two major problems facing the country at the moment, but now the major problems are so numerous as to be overwhelming--I don't know what to worry about first." I still feel that way, and I feel so much worse now. WE. ARE. FAILING. OUR. YOUNGER. GENERATION.
- We, the adults, think it's OK to declare "God Hates Fags"....to say "Marriage is between one man and one woman." Anything else is repulsive, sick, and perverted. It's OK to make gay jokes, to tell those gays that they're just wanting "special rights" when they ask for permission to be with their dying loved one. We, the adults, make fun of those who are transgendered. You see, those people just make us uncomfortable, so it's OK to laugh, to point and make comments, to say those people should be shot, because they're just not normal. We adults think that any lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or queer person deserves to be treated like a second class citizen, and damn that bit of the Declaration of Independence that talks about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Is it any surprise that 5 gay children have killed themselves this MONTH? Because other children believed it was OK to bully them? To let hateful comments, just like they've heard at home and in their churches, spew out of their mouths too.
- We, the adults, have decided it's OK take civility in politics down a notch (or ten)--don't agree with the president? Compare him to Hitler, call him the Anti-Christ. Scared about something you don't understand? Call the politicians communists, or socialists. Angry about a vote in Congress? By all means, spit on your Representative, or send her threatening letters--attached to a brick--through the window of her Home Office. Just plain scared? Blame it on the brown people. Is it any surprise our youth have checked out of the political process?
- We, the adults, have decided that our religion belongs in our government. To that end, we are doing everything we can to limit the rights of others to worship their deity. Let's protest against that Muslim community center they want to build in NY City! Or that mosque in Tennessee. Hey! What my church teaches me should be made law! Let's tell women and girls they have to bear their rapists' child, because "God works in ways we don't understand." Better yet, let's make that a law. Is it a surprise that I am scared for my rights, my daughter's rights, and the rights of every other woman in this nation? That my child has decided to live in a country that has a civil government?
- We, the adults, believe that just because our minister says the earth is only 6,000 years old, it must be true. Let's put that in all the text books, so every kid in the U.S. can believe that too! Is it any surprise that our children are falling behind those in other countries when it comes to education?
Hug your loved ones. Make them feel good about themselves. Laugh. Teach kids to laugh. Because they already know how to cry.
