Should You Stay or Should You Go?

by AJ/Skald

The media machine in America keeps turning out the lies and the bottle-fed masses keep sucking them up. Everywhere else in the world, we're seeing dead civilians. Babies killed by American bombs. Parents and children gunned down by trigger happy marines. Houses destroyed. Hospitals razed. Doctors killed. Nurses killed. This is the full bloody face of America's murderous campaign.

But back home the fat & contented plug into Fox and yell "ditto" as plastic haired commentators tell them how great America is: how free they are, how strong they are, how righteous they are, how religious they are, how generous they are, how wealthy they are. Envy, they are told, is why the rest of the world suddenly despises the United States.

But there's that cliche: If everyone tells you that you are wrong, perhaps you should listen. In personal matters, we recognize the wisdom of this saying. If every one of my friends tells me I'm being an asshole-- there's a good chance they are right.

But Americans plug their ears and keep plugging along. The willful ignorance is simply astounding. From the outside perspective... looking at the country... its almost inconceivable-- how utterly smug and ignorant most Americans are. Is it that they feel too guilty to admit the murderous carnage they are unleashing on brown skinned foreigners? Or is it, as I suspect, that they really don't consider these people to be fully human-- and certainly not as human as upstanding Americans. Some people are more human than others, it seems.

The utterly strange thing about this is that its done with an emotionally retarded amiability. At least the Germans were grim and serious as they went about the work of world domination. But Americans smile and chuckle and backslap as they "support the troops". So long as gas stays cheap, cars stay huge, and McDonalds value meals are readily available--- Americans stay fat and happy. There's simply no penetrating the self-righteious smug.

The sad thing. The thing that angers me... the reason I care, is that I do love things about the States. But those nobler qualities have been extinguished: Self reliance, independence, distrust of authority, an adventurous spirit, a "live and let live" attitude. Its hard to believe that the current nation of bloated SUV drivers once spawned the likes of Thoreau, Whitman, Emerson, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Mother Jones, MLK, Malcolm X, Steinbeck, and Hemingway. Their sober reflection, their defiant independence, their distrust of authority, their exuberant passion for life, and their radical self-reliance are now despised.

The puritans have taken over..... their long arms reaching through the centuries to impose a fanatical brand of religious hypocrisy upon the whole country. Corporate profits and Christian conformity are now the twin pillars of the nation.

At such a time, what are we to do? What are liberty loving, authority hating, self-reliant Hobopoets to do?

Do we stay and get ploughed under? Or do we flee?
I've chosen to flee because Im a selfish bastard. Im not content to wait for some faroff imaginary utopia or revolution. I don't have the stomach for trying to convince ignorant jackasses to open their minds or realize their economic self interest. I'll leave that to activists more commited and patient than I.

I want freedom and ecstacy now. In this life.

And I've found that its much easier to find outside of the United States.