political sharks
-by grace
i remember standing in the parking lot of the church i attended as a kid, and hearing “well, reagan has his finger on the button!” and being quite fucking afraid that reagan would accidentally fall asleep and blow russia and the rest of the world to hell. that was the first moment that i thought “there is something great big out there...it’s bigger than my family, it’s bigger than everyone that i know, and it has the capacity to be insane…..” now, i am sure my little seven year old brain was a little bit more disjointed than that, but it boiled down to: there is something going on in the world, we should talk about it, argue about it, try our damndest to fix it. i am still that seven year old kid, with that seven year old mind-set, but my execution of solving the problems has changed. i have been waiting my whole life for other people to come up with the answer to the ails of society: hunger, crime, classism, racism, hatred….i have been waiting for the revolution to happen outside of me, and honestly, i just don’t think that is true anymore.
growing up on the american dream is a mind-fuck. if i tried as hard as i can i can make it up out of where i am, and if i don’t make it to the highrise in the good side of town i just didn’t try hard enough. i never once stopped to ask myself if i wanted anything other than what they showed me in 30 minute burst of sit-com laughter sponsored by mickey-d’s. i did as my parents had done-got a shit job, that i could make pretty good money at, and waited for the recognition of my ethic by some guy who didn’t work nearly as hard as me and tried to grab my ass. i clocked in and busted it everyday for decades, but i never made it. and when i finally had time to sit down and breathe the problems had not changed, they hadn’t even gotten better. i wasn’t going to ever get out of my circumstances, and neither was anyone around me. we were on the american dream racetrack-everyone going real fast to turn left but get nowhere.
maybe it’s nihilistic, but i no longer give a shit who’s finger is hovering over the button...to me it’s pretty sick to think that we still have a button, actually several buttons, that can blow every human being off the face of what we call home a hundred times over. we have technology that can see what the surface of mars looks like, but we still have people who have no food. we have entire cities that have been abandoned, but there are thousands of people sleeping in the streets. we have twitter wars about who is more oppressed. we have all of this wonderfully, almost absurd amount of information, and yet no one has found a way to have some real, open dialogue that involves 75% more listening than talking.
i honestly don’t give any fucks-0 fucks-as to who the president of the united states is going to be. i think i am more affected by professional women’s bowling association than who the president is. i think the system is broken, and i haven’t seen any change in my community due to the president. i feel like it’s a matter of who the better liar is, and since i don’t spend my time stroking the ego of known liars, why should i participate in making sure the best liars gets some pretty awesome perks?
i do believe in people. i think that taking competition out of livelihood would bring out the best in humanity. every person can live to the best of their potential if given the opportunity to do so. so instead of wasting my time arguing which pompous asshole is better than the next, i will take my opportunity to make some awesome bean and rice burritos and deliver them to some friends i haven’t met yet or have a conversation with someone who comes from an entirely different upbringing than myself or maybe just take a nap.