taking a small break from the happy picture uploading and story time, i have a bone to pick.

now i am the first to admit that this is not necessarily my area of expertise, but i scan the headlines of papers from all over the world, i scroll through blogs from all over the world, i talk to people from all over the world, and it scares me. the state of the world, and more specifically of the US right at this minute, scares me.

it's home, i love being an American, i never have loved being an American or really understood what it meant until i was so far away from home that it mattered. i am choosing to keep my accent, to make a distinction between my government and my country while i am here because i love my home. but i don't love a lot of what i hear about reports from home, and god knows that the worst face of the government comes out at election time. it reminds me of junior high, honestly, all of the kids in a peacock contest strutting around while scrambling furiously to lie cheat, or steal their way into power with lipstick still intact and not a hair out of place. and i can't help but feel that this is a symptom.

blame what you will, the modernist literature I've been exposed to, my current study of dictatorships, being young and a liberal, whatever, but all of this going on, the automated phone call scams, voting booth malfunctions, officials covering up recent trials, whatever, all of this seems to me to be symptoms of things going very wrong on a scale that surpasses my state vs your state, my country vs your country, our hemisphere against theirs. Sheer numbers of overpopulation, not enough living space, stubborn unwillingness to put money behind looking for alternative solutions to world energy, the fact that with as much beautiful land in the world that will support god knows how many mouths, children are dying of malnutrition and neglect and people are killing each other over what god you pray to, dosn't it seem like the horrible symptoms of a worldwide disease to anyone else? wake up world, we are all dying slowly, time to save ourselves, if only we can go about it little step, by little step

and on a tangent (i swear by the way that despite this somewhat critical looks at life the universe and everything, i really am quite happy and loving life at the moment, i mean, i get to fly through the air propelled by myself and a trampoline four days a week and have amazing gay boys who sing rent with me...life is good!)
what is is about us, our current culture, that makes us so incredibly phobic of expressing strong emotion? i feel like it is a widespread phenomena that has taken root in my own age as destructive sarcasm. now, i have nothing in particular against sarcasm, the Irish i have found can razz each other to death and keep it light, friendly, no one leaves with that sour taste in their mouth or feeling crushed, you aren't discouraged from loving whatever it is that you love....unless it happens to be a person of the same sex, but that's a whole different story. what is it exactly that makes us shy away from the expression of strong emotion in ourselves and others outside of a certain shallow few socially acceptable topic (ie boys and how cute they are, puppies and children and how cute they are, and sports teams...sometimes the fall line of clothing) yes, I'm oversimplifying, but not as much as one might think. to paraphrase DH Lawrence (yes, i know I've been doing a lot of that, but he had specific ideas that resonate with me at this moment) my friends would never think of letting me sit upon some sharp object, would keep me from harms way if i was to try and jump from something tall, but would ridicule and cut me down mercilessly if I expressed a profound emotion toward an ideal.

now that hit close to home. aside from a select few (i love you fabulous few by the way) when expressing an interest in something outside of the norm, or something that packs a punch, be it the incredibly fascinating process of procreating all the way through (the human body is so cool) to politics and what is wrong with the world, to how incredibly excited you are about creating a novel, or finishing the most amazing literary experience of your life, anything that dips below the surface is taboo. you just. don't. talk about it, not seriously. you can bitch and protest a little, and then apathy kicks in, this well, i guess we have to muddle on through, or worse an attitude of nothing that WE can do, when that is anything but the point. no, we don't have a lot of power now, but look at the third reich (not my usual site for inspiration, but run with me a minute) it hinged upon the youth in large. it started in the schools, in teaching a whole new way of thinking, and the tide of mass hysteria (which i am not advocating) that propelled change was with the youth. because kids grow up. because kids don't stay kids, like Les Miserables says " never kick a dog because he's just a pup, you'd better run for cover when the pup grows up." so don't give me that bullshit about kids our age not mattering. we are one of the most underrepresented demographics in the country and we could be making the biggest changes. so care for gods sake, care and care about the people around you enough that they can trust you with their passion. because a soul and a country without passion gets us to where we are today and worse, and I'm not going to settle on a dystopia.