Amazing really, how many ways things can go, but then eventually it still...

Mood: frustrated...

Where are our artists? Where are the poets? Hell where are the Americans? Are we all home watching American Idol? Are we all home hoping to BE American Idol? What has that become?

Nothing is more antithetical to American heritage and culture than the scourge of conservatism. Ours is a nation, by the by, born in revolution and sustained by the sacrifices of forward thinking citizens. Let’s face it this has never been a completely free society. It has also has never been content. Just as some reached and others clawed at the forbidden frontiers of racism, and sexism we allowed ourselves to be conned to the Right, to the slogan, the cheap n’easy. Instead of choice we turned to the wasteland. It was back to the fifties when men were men, TV was TV and beer was well, a dish best served with pot roast and potatoes.

Our future has been squandered on feeding the few who need the least at the grave expense of the vast majority, lulled into the sweet full retreat that became the eighties. Problem still existed that we were a country founded on those damn principles. Those gosh darn framers had it in their mind that it was (God) who infused natural rights into all (men). They had this confounded notion that we (all*) had rights that could be taken away only by the same supreme power. GOVERNMENTS WERE ESTABLISHED AMONG (men) AS THE ONLY EFFECTIVE WAY OF PROTECTING THOSE NATURAL RIGHTS. Further, GOVERNMENT DERIVES ITS JUST AUTHORITY FROM THE “CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED “

Instead we have abandoned our responsibility to ourselves and squandered our futures by being too lazy to remain informed; by not voting; by surrendering to the petty luxuries which feed our lust for immediate gratification. Rather than government protecting our rights with our consent It has become a peddler of fear, and a panderer to our appetites. I mean in a GREAT year—a superbowl of voter turnout we only get 65% even showing up at the polls.

Where are our artists, our poets, our songwriters? Where are the statesmen of dreams? Has their anger and their passion been turned inward or has it just been replaced by reality TV? Why do our poets and artists find themselves trivialized, and marginalized? Why don’t, at least, they cry out in loud unmistakable voices like those of Dylan, and Ginzberg? Why do we allow our community to be sidelined? Is it possible that we been silenced by our own cynicism?

Aw hell. The TV’s only get bigger, and the definition only gets high.

*Please refer, if you will, to paragraph 2

Gots to believe...gots to have the wanna...