I've been reading dailykos for some time now, and I've been following politics and the like for as long as I can remember. Today I was going through some old files and found something I had been working on about a year ago, right around the midterm election. I was going to write my great political statement. Make my mark, have my say, change the world.
I didn't though.
I got busy, I started boring my friends and family with my political "hobby", I thought it would change on it's own. Who knows. I did nothing for all the reasons everyone else dose. And it sat untouched and unfinished since last November. I read it again today and it has more relevance to me now than I think it did when I was writing it. I thought, maybe today should be the day I make that jump, just put out what I started and see what happens. Today's the day I stop being afraid and just act. So here it is, my little way to change the world.
American Manifesto
Here I am.
Angry about the world, angry about the state of things, and angry at the apathy of those around me.
And what am I doing?
I am sitting here.
Thinking, Stewing, Thinking, Reading.
Learning.
Learning.
Learning.
It’s what I’ve been doing with more and more urgency as each year, each day, each hour passes me by. It’s reached a critical mass of sorts for me. I’m not sure if I can make it one more day without grabbing every person I see on the street by their ears and screaming as loud as I can in their face:
CAN’T YOU SEE WHAT’S GOING ON?
One more day without just running through the streets with a banner and a bullhorn. Uncontrollable and inconsolable.
But I am not doing any of those things. And everyday passes in which I contemplate the possibility and consequences of my inaction.
I’m sure there are many reasons, I’m pretty sure none of them are good, and I know all of them are tantamount to excuses. But the one real reason that I think I share in common with most people as outraged as myself;
I am not exactly sure what to do.
And that is the defining point of my generation, of our society and of our current American culture. The society that is cynical towards the government, cynical towards "liberals", cynical about the media and most importantly, cynical about themselves. Unsure of what to do, unsure if anyone will go along, unsure if they will look back and feel regret for their involvement. A fear of radical speak, a fear of action, a fear of retribution. A fear of standing alone, a fear of being knocked down and humiliated. Complacency based on hope, and unwillingness based on laziness. A loss of the power of the individual, a loss of power in the inner working of society.
I’ve always just sat here thinking that "Someone will figure it out what the problem is and fix it". Or that "Things like this tend to just work themselves out" in the social grand scheme of things. The people would never let it happen, civilized society would never let it go too far. In some instances, I think this is true. In some instances I think these things do tend to work themselves out. But I’m worried more and more that this is no longer true.
I’ve spent my entire life living in the technological, corporate filled, detached world that started in the 80’s and hasn’t fully reared its ugly head until more recently. I grew up learning and hearing the same things about our country as I’m sure every other person here. In school every once in a while I learned about our Constitution, about the way the government runs, and to a much smaller extent the way politics run. But I’ve never seen it work the way I was taught. I thought our constitution was beyond hurt, beyond being corrupted, beyond destruction. I know idealistically what my rights are, and I know idealistically how things are supposed to be run. Our ACTUAL Constitution is a liberally progressive set of ideas that empowers the people. Not the government. It’s assumed that the government is over the people’s heads, that it’s grown too much and become too complex for mere mortals to hold to any particular standard.
I’ve been called many things for my views over the years, and more recently it’s become dangerous and ideological responses to my genuine concern. All my internal fears, all my historical understanding, all my common sense is screaming at me. Everyday I look out the window hoping to see the beginnings of a social revolution. Everyday I’m disappointed. More of the same. Wait it out and politics will decide how the drama unfolds in the end. Be patient, let us convince the other professional politicians to agree with logic and rational. I’m horrified at the type of people running this country. I wouldn’t even carry a conversation with the majority of these idiots for fear that it would somehow make me less of a human, less intelligent, and less decent by proxy. I could never wash that damn blood off my hands. I wouldn’t talk to the current president if they paid me (and believe me, I could use the extra money). I hold myself to a higher standard, and you should too. Some of the shit coming out of these people’s mouths is absolutely unacceptable. This is not a gossip column, or a commercial. This is not a "my way or the highway" system. It’s not supposed to be. It shouldn’t be. But it is now.
I’ve been interested in history for as long as I can remember. Every time I stop myself from running through the streets I think of those who stood by and did nothing while watching the rise and fall of a society. In retrospect everyone says "I thought it would work out", "I thought someone else would fix it", "I thought something like this could never happen in my country". I remember these words and I’m terrified that I have become one of those. The bystander who does nothing. The bystander who hopes for change at the hands of other people. I’m tired of being that person. I have a conscious, and it’s been screaming at me for far too long. I always figured someone would rise up and do something. Maybe I should stop assuming that someone else is going to do what I want. Maybe I should do what I want. And what I want is out. Out of this fucking mess, out of this prison, and out of this societal disaster created by those far more powerful than myself.
I’ve been told I’m equal, I’ve been told I’m free and I’ve been told I’m prosperous. I feel none of these things. I do not feel equal, I do not feel free, and I do not feel prosperous. I feel that I’m placed below the wealthy, political and corporate, I feel my liberties being signed away and stifled by everyone around me, and I feel poor and hungry. I feel anger, I feel sadness and I feel fear. None of these were what I was expecting from my "Great Nation" when I was growing up. I wanted to make the dream my own. I wanted to go to school, pull myself out of poverty through education and gain myself a place in the world. What I have is debt. What I have is an education that still has to tell me evolution is a scientific fact and not an attack on religion. What I have is an insignificant amount of power over my place in this world.
What I do have though is a voice, I have a forum for that voice, and I have the right to say it. Whatever little recognition, no matter if only one person listens to me. I do have a chance to change things on whatever scale that might be. And I might as well try.
With every passing day I feel something growing in the collective that wasn’t there in my lifetime before. A hunger, an anger and frustration, and the cynic within growing. Maybe I’m not alone in all this. The internet has become a powerful tool. More powerful than most people realize. The free exchange of information between the people is of great significance in a society. Information. Unfiltered and uninterrupted. You find your facts and you draw your own conclusions. It’s amazing. For me the internet has revolutionized the way I learn, the way I educate myself and the way I live. When I question, I find an answer. If I disagree with the answer, I learn more. Sometimes I find there is no answer, just a million more questions.
There’s been a backlash against the academic in society lately, a cultural stupidity that is shameful and difficult to tolerate. The mentally stupid are more easily led, they are less questioning of your motives and they are happy with being complacent. Complacency is the biggest enemy for any society. When you are complacent you can be pushed around, told what to do and pushed back into place again with no concern for your wellbeing or happiness. The beginning of any great dictatorship is to attack the intellectual community. It happened famously in World War II, but it is happening right now in Iraq and it’s happened throughout all of history. We give him too much credit sometimes. Hitler that is. Book burning was not his idea, oppression of the intellectuals was not his idea, sterilization of the poor and undesirables was not his idea. He just embraced new technology and industrialized the process for the modern age. Georbells, the grandfather of propaganda. The assembly line version of systematic brain washing for the industrial civilizations. The path to ultimate power has been refined throughout the ages by more generations than I think most of us realize. Power struggles have shaped human existence. The power of the few over the many is not a concept. It is a highly guarded goal of those people who desire the worship of many. The main driving force to maintaining that power is to oppress the voice of the people. Informed and educated people are very hard to silence. They are hard to lead and are a danger to the ruling class. They always have been. And they always will be. They ask too many questions.
I know not everyone in this country has actually let themselves become uneducated. I know that there is still; somewhere out there, those of you who just get it. The internet is your breeding ground. Your ultimate source of power. All the information you could ever hope to have is literally at your fingertips. For the first time in history those that want to learn have infinite resources from which to pull. There has never been something like this available to the people before. When books first went into print it allowed a civilization to change at a fundamental level. This is our printing press. This is our way to educate the poor, this is our way to connect with those who are far away but similar in thought. This is a time when the civilization becomes that much more educated, that much more informed and that much more powerful. The banning of Wikipedia in China is not something to be taken lightly, and it’s not just that funny website that all the kids talk about these days. Wikipedia is in effect the people’s account of history. It is a central collection of all the information that the common people hold. And it is accessible and up for questioning by everyone in the country regardless of their class, race or religion. That is power. That is important.
Banning searches for the word women, but not woman in Iran is a method to keep masses of people from having a common ground to stand on. Woman is not a threat, women are a threat. A person is not a threat, people are a threat. Propaganda in some respects has created the means to end it. The tools and methods used to send messages to the people is now being used by the people. The most effective way to communicate ideas and knowledge is now available to the masses to inform each other. Strength in numbers my friend.
Ever wonder why there aren’t riots everyday at prisons?
Power.
Power is held and the masses are complacent. They feel hopeless, so they are hopeless. They feel no power, so they are not empowered. They feel that they do not matter, so they don’t matter.
Obviously some order needs to be maintained, but are we the prisoners or the people? We are not prisoners of our freedom. We are not prisoners of our liberties. We have not been sentenced to a regulated and controlled life. We have committed no crime and broken no laws. Yet we are held in submission as if we are the danger, and we ourselves are the problem. That if we question a riot might ensue, if we protest we are endangering ourselves, if we talk loud enough other people might agree.
I feel as if I’m watching History unfold. I see where it’s going, where it ends, why it happens. I’m screaming inside for someone to move the path, to alter the course and keep this train wreck from careening off the cliff. I’m almost hoping some other more wise and powerful source will come liberate our country from the mess it’s become and keep it from derailing with no effort on my part. Much as I’m sure we saw ourselves to the people in Iraq. We were going to swoop in there and be the big brother who had all the answers, all the solutions and who could make anything better no matter how horrible the situation with no effort on the part of the common citizens of Iraq. Wham! Bam! Saddam is gone, take down that statue! Move this here. Alright. Now here’s your democracy. Go!
That’s what eventually led to the circumstances that allowed Hitler to gain power. After World War I we left Germany with a huge mess and a Constitution. It fell apart from the inside out. Hitler was elected into the Chancellorship, the democracy that we (the Allies) left them with, because it was weak, and because they didn’t know what to do with it. Not because he was the smartest man alive, but because he knew how to work a broken system. When a government breaks down it’s always the craziest guy who eventually takes power. When there is a chance of real power up for grabs there are those who will fight with every last breath to get that power. The strongest of those is the winner, and in a competition for power the motives are almost always based in madness. An ability to manipulate, lie, cheat, steal and kill without conscious better than your closest competitor and your closest enemies is the only way to win. The idea that we can even "spread" democracy is ludicrous. It’s a natural progression of a society, not a "present" we can just give to random people. We’re giving them Tolstoy and they can’t even read yet. Then we blame them later when we find they’ve burned the books to heat their homes. Not everyone is secretly longing to be just like us. Especially now.
America is a great idea, and a great country. But it’s become what we all have hated, what the rest of the world fears and what has been feeding the pit growing inside my stomach for far too long. The idea has turned into an ideology. It’s strayed so far from any semblance of itself that we have become participants in an ideology that is force fed to us every chance we get. In every corporate run media outlet, in every dollar we spend, in every commercial we see. It’s slow and it’s deliberate. Maybe not in the sense that a meeting was held on how to permeate the consciousness of every person it comes into contact with, but a slow, effective over many years and shareholder meeting later, deliberate. An ideology that is based also on extreme nationalism, that we are somehow better than "them". That there even is a "them". That we are the best and the brightest and nothing could possibly compare. An ideology based on fear, and fear of each other. Fear of the person that could be lurking in your own neighborhood, that guy sitting right next to you, or the person that may look just like you. It separates us, and keeps the masses from coming together. It keeps them from challenging the governing body. An ideology based on money, power and religious fervor.
Which brings me to civil disobedience.
Do you think that if thousands of people took to the streets to teach the government a lesson that it is necessarily a bad thing? Hold those responsible who have done you wrong. Argue with those you’ve elected. Talk, scream, yell at the top of your lungs. It’s gone too far. It’s time for this to stop. Use your power to keep your government in check. It’s not a novel idea you know, and it’s shaped our nations history since the day it was born. People own this government in the most literal sense. We pay for it, we invest in it, we fight in wars for it. Hell, we fucking created it. The government in America is an agreed upon way to ensure our rights as humans are protected. It’s not a building, or a piece of paper, or that guy at the podium, or the president. It’s an idea and a strategy to keep the masses of people safe from injustice. And it goes away if you do not participate in it. If you do not make your voices heard. If you are easily ignored and silenced. It all goes away.
I know what you’re thinking. I know how radical and out of context or out of line that all sounds. How dangerous those words and ideas are. But why are they dangerous? Who does it hurt and what could possibly happen? Does the government get angry and kill us? Would we as a nation really allow that? Will other people kill us? What if they do? Is the loss of our government worth fighting for? Is the voice that you have worth silencing? Maybe it is. I don’t know you. For all I know, you disagree with me on everything I’ve written so far.
Strength in numbers. If we are divided, then we are not strong. If our interests are bought and sold by corporate decisions based on profit, we are being used. If we are told that our questions and our logic is radical and unpatriotic, we are being silenced.
Well, I’m tired of being weak, used and silenced. I’m tired of being told the system is too far out of reach for me, that I don’t matter.
I am not a radical person, I am not a liberal, I am not a conservative, I am not a Democrat and I am not a Republican. I am a voice, I am a historical perspective, and I am tired. I’m not sure what needs to happen, and I am not sure how to stop the foreseeable. I am sure that I can write what I am thinking and why I am thinking. I am sure that I want change, I am sure that I want to see this government of mine get it right and I am sure as hell willing to do something about it.
I am willing to put as much effort into this as I can, with as much logic and relevance as possible. I want to make my point and my perspective as clear as humanly possible. I want to spread the word and I want to stop this absolute madness that has been creeping into the collective consciousness for years now. I don’t want to look back and know that I did nothing. I don’t want to continue sitting here, hoping for the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t want to watch history unfold without my at least trying.
Put your own name on this and send it to your family, disprove my arguments, talk about it. Add your two cents, hate it, love it, burn it, immortalize it. I’m willing to say what I think and put it out there with the small chance that I will be heard by someone who agrees, or someone who wants to make a difference, or someone who feels the same way I do. You never know what one person can do until they try.
And what I want can’t be done alone.
If I see you marching past my house, I promise I will join you.