Why Bother? - Democratic Underground

Mythsaje

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Mon Feb-25-08 10:57 PM
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Why Bother?

We were born in a country that by its very existence makes some extraordinary promises to its citizens. "The pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness." Or so we're told. Every couple of years we gather, those of us who bother to pay attention, to cast our votes for the legislative candidate that promises to pursue our goals based on our particular ideology. Every four years we gather to vote for the other half of our legislators, and vote for a particular person to lead the nation and present a public face to the rest of the world on our behalf.

A hundred and forty-odd years ago, some of our ancestors lined up against one another and fought one of the bloodiest, most politically and culturally destructive wars in our history to free the slaves. And, once freed, we turned our backs on them and treated them like animals--particularly smart animals, but animals nonetheless. We forcibly segregated them and allowed the rise of vicious, thoughtless men whose very existence seemed to form around what they hated rather than what they loved. Even today the remnants of the KKK has its admirers.

America has stumbled, and stumbled badly. Not just recently, but several times in its history. It has allowed a select group of powerful people to dominate our financial sector, our media, and our political processes, and allowed them to experiment with methods of dumbing down and keeping the average citizen in the dark. To complicate the laws so far that even lawyers were forced to specialize, because they simply couldn't know everything there was to know.

All our lives we've been lied to and led around by those who had no concern for our best interest, as Americans or as human beings. They've used psychological warfare on us, deliberately splintered us into conflicted factions. We learned to identify ourselves, and our neighbors, based on their social and economic class, the color of their skin, and the country from which their ancestors hailed.

Our own ancestors stood by and watched while the indigenous people were dragged off their land, shoved onto "reservations" on the least desirable land available, and effectively left their to rot. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was originally created specifically to eliminate the native cultures and to see them "normalized" into the population as a whole.

We've been victimized by robber barons, saved by members of the American aristocracy who themselves thought America should be better than that, and had our heroes stolen from us by either crazed gunmen or vast conspiracies powerful enough to disguise their existence.

We've torn up our best farmlands and paved them over, placing warehouses from end to end for miles and miles. We've dumped who knows what manner of toxic leftovers into our seas, lakes, and rivers, and wondered why we sicken and die from ailments unknown until modern times. We consume mass quantities of prescription drugs to deal with our psychological ills, while the causes of them--the disinterest and disdain of those more powerful than ourselves, the little defeats that mark the path of our everyday existence time and time again, and we wonder why our lives torment us.

We collect an ever growing amount of more or less useless junk, wander through the aisles of the supermarket or drug store, staring at an ever increasing number of soaps, shampoos, detergents, and foods containing chemicals we cannot pronounce, much less identify, and think that this somehow represents real and genuine "choice."

Our Presidential candidates are packaged in shiny paper and cheered by the media, until it sees fit to destroy them to make room for the candidate they believe will benefit them more.

We are hemmed in by illusion, fed artificiality, sold graft and corruption, and bathed in toxins we will never understand.

But, despite all of this, there are some who will never bow down, never bow out, who will keep on fighting the powers until their last dying breath. The ones who believe that everyone matters, and that there might be no greater betrayal than remaining silent in the face of what confronts us.

As our seas rise and our islands are pulled under the wave, as our icecaps melt and vast swathes of ocean can no longer support life, we stand and speak out. As tinpot dictators, ours and others, kill millions of innocent people, we STILL speak out, and demand justice.

Give up? Never. Despair? Not us. As long as there is one breath left in us, we will say what needs to be said.

Oh, yeah. It could be better. But, as we know, it could also be worse.

Stand tall.

At this point, the only direction to go is up.

When they say we hate America, the fact is that nothing can be farther from the truth. We love America, and want it to live up to its promise.

That's why we bother.