President Obama will be giving his State of the Union Address shortly, and this young writer has decided it's time to knock some dust off the type-writer. It was around this time two years ago I watched as the first African American president was inaugurated into the White House. It was an exciting time, one which promised change from the eight year reign of George W. Bush, a man driven into the Oval Office by his own religious convictions, and decades of political rule by oil-soaked relatives.
What I've seen since isn't a change from the corrupt corporate politics of the past, but instead, a crash course with the reality of what our country is becoming, a watered-down promise that has only faded alongside whispers of potential from a rich history. There are unsettling feelings about the future, but what do you expect from someone born at the turn of a century, speculated as a doomed generation, susceptible only to televisions and the promise of Armageddon.
I confronted my own death and the prospect of an afterlife some time ago, and it was a period of mental growth, as opposed to the destruction easily handed out in pill-form to countless other searching souls. Though I came out of the experience a deeper being, I found myself spat out into the core of a society riddled with fateful gloom. Facing my own death was nothing compared to the difficult task of witnessing what I perceive as the death of Democracy and individual freedom...quite possibly the death of the American civilization.
While reading through my copies of "Ken Magazine", a publication from the late thirties, I've learned political banter hasn't changed much over time, though we have had ages to learn and grow. The disheartening sense comes from the faint pulse of the average American citizen. I am surrounded by an attitude that everything worth happening has already occurred, and the progress of humanity has hit a wall, only to be replaced by the very real phenomena of a transformation into something more sinister, where every thing and person has a number attached to it, with little gripes from the faces of those who were born for something greater.
I've always been searching for that something, though the feeling has no name or distinction. I haven't found it in love or violence, two factors that seem to elucidate this reality. It wasn't found in my own writing, or my time spent working on campaigns in New York. The prominent title and feeling of self-importance only took me so far, and Obama has only further proven this feeling cannot be subsided by empty promises of sweeping reform.
While African Americans celebrated the accomplishment of having representation of their culture in the White House, I found this too is a farce, I still have yet to see a President or any politician for that matter that represents "me" or anyone who has ever grown through struggle. Sure, every slick suit-and-tie attributes their success to generations of poor immigrants and broken households, but all I see are a select few with millions or billions in the bank, and a keen sense of self-importance I myself found somewhat repulsive. I do not see Obama's grandfather losing his house of forty years, I do not see Obama as a broken man who's aspiring only to be a writer (a promise of more poverty to come), nor do I see his children being sent to foreign lands with the promise of coming out a man, only to find folded flags and unquestioned nationalism pushed by unfamiliar talking heads. I see instead, a generation of soldiers being used for political rhetoric they will never quite understand.
It is a time where calling an economy and government controlled by outsourcing billionaires "fascist" makes you a communist, and to denounce communist ideologies such as government run healthcare and education only makes you a right-wing lunatic with poor education. As major banks receive bailouts to uphold public consumer debt while taking money from tax dollars of the indebted, I continue to type, though I cannot find or hear my own voice in a time where any passionate words basted in honesty fall on deaf or severed ears. I am to the masses and two-party system, someone who doesn't "get it", though I have studied American political History in my free time since second grade, and received a degree in the realm of both politics and history, only to work in what I'm convinced, is the most corrupt political party in the country, the New York City Democratic Party.
Maybe I will "get it" when Obama lies with a cocky grin to those who put so much faith into his words, or perhaps when he tells a truly divided nation, "our union is strong". Perhaps it will take more time for me to "get it", like when the Department of Homeland Security dwarfs every other government bureaucracy in size, and turns it's iron sights on any opinionated youth looking to make real change through an assumed 1st amendment right. The red flag has been raised, it is used to hang those on stand-by, who hope without action for a brighter future. The signs are here, the beginning stages of this presidency are eerily similar to the technological and scientific totalitarian leaders of the past. I am watching tearful Democrats cheer on what I see as a reincarnate to Stalin's "Great Purge", or Hitler's psychosis of the youth.
This is not all directed solely towards Obama, the most arrogant and engineered politician I have ever seen, but instead to a land where political ideologies have shareholders and sub-prime loans. Mussolini, a rather infamous fascist once said, "Fascism should be called corporatism, because it is a merger of the state and corporate interests". I'll take his word for it, then apply that to a place where failed companies are bolstered by the government, and billion dollar industries betray the soil they were nursed upon by sending jobs overseas, so 3rd world peoples can be exploited for a nickle a week. Nike sells pairs of shoes for over a hundred-dollars, pays less than a dollar to make the product, then turn around and gives hundreds of millions to Lebron James, a millionaire already from his profession, and a God among those with no interest in reality, who wish they could play the game of basketball only half as well.
As sponsors like Lebron win titles and royalties, the rest of us lose both our dignity and morality, this coming from a young binge-drinker who hasn't seen the inside of a church in years, and even then only attended on the strings of a girl who confused his moral structure.
The newspaper is dying, only to be replaced by corporate media websites, stocked with stories of celebrities, brought to you by Advil. The book reading public has died off, replaced only by the teenage sagas of werewolves and vampires, with the literary richness of condom instructions. For this aspiring writer who feels a desperate need to be heard, it is not a happy prospect. I don't care for fame or money or notoriety, but only pray that I can put my thoughts on the table, as I believe unlike so many others, I have the intent of enriching the national conversation and helping people understand why they are so fucked. Not fucked in the literal sense, as this natural occurrence needs no explanation, but fucked in a strangling sense, like when a Boa fucks the curious and completely unaware mouse which was raised only to be eaten alive.
I see oil-prices sky-rocketing and causing a chain reaction throughout the economy, I see "For Sale" signs becoming more prominent than mailboxes in front yards, and youth who live for a fix, or self-inflicted pain from tattoos and piercings, At least when they get this "work done" they are inflicting the pain on themselves... perhaps it is the last shred of control our children feel they have in this world. While the dollar falls, and our legislators spew tax-dollars overseas, countries arm themselves and hide agendas behind the desks of diplomatic spies. Everything is a lie, from global policies to the neighbor's marriage, and the lepers of America would rather wear make-up than treat their illness.
So I look forward to Obama's upcoming speech, where he will tell a neurotic land to lay down it's right to bear arms, because another lone lunatic in Loughner has affected a whole nation. I look forward to hearing Obama push Internet censorship because sharp critiques of global fascism have brought the truth closer to home than ever before. I look forward to the other pertinent issues he will discuss, only adding fuel to the domestic fire. These men have perfected the art of divide and conquer politics, Bush and Obama have both turned our aggression so inward between political lines, that the shady deals and deceitful words they harbor go unnoticed by most, whom are too busy clubbing each other to death.
At least one is safe to assume the freedom of opinion on his type-writer from the 1970's, before IBM began monitoring web activity, and Alltel turned private conversations into information buffets for intelligence agencies around the world. At least for now, one is safe to assume thoughts and ideas still have a glimmer of hope against the dehumanizing technocrats who wish to transform man into a Godless beast of burden, so empty beards can spread ripples across the seven seas on million dollar yachts, joking of the bastardization of mankind they created, as if the world is nothing more than a game of chess among "civilized" gentlemen.
