Inauguration day is a day to say something heartfelt about the US. So off the top of my head, something like this:
This is a special day to be American. This day is an end to our President’s first term, but also the beginning of something new for America. We stand together, united, with pride in our President and in solidarity with our troops overseas. Today: what a perfect day to reflect on what makes us proud to be American. God bless.
That’s out of the way. Now let me propose something outlandish (and more me). Maybe Inauguration Day could be an occasion for us to get pissed because we have stars in our eyes, and in our ears, and bugs in our brains, and they are on parade today. This is Inauguration Day: there are two inauguration balls, a plethora of embarrassing performances (Kelly Clarkson? Beyonce? Really?) and a fucking parade with floats. Do you remember the last time you attended a parade with floats? YOU WERE IN HIGH SCHOOL. But presumably there is a demand for entertainment of this kind, or it wouldn’t be included in an event attended and watched worldwide, so congratulations to us. We collectively possess the attention span of a high school freshman in British Literature class. I mean, maybe we learned a great deal more building a float than we ever did in class, but that’s because we are all programmed for flashy colors and glitter. Knowledge bores us. Again I should say, I am so proud to be part of this country. I get really pissed at myself mostly. I write and think I’m doing something to force people to care, to think, but I’m not. I just end up offending, but that’s because we are all buried with guilt. Writing, literature, poems, sagas, plays… these have been the mediums of communication for some of the most brilliant minds, who were desperately trying to tell us something.
Today, trying to desperately tell you something means there is no other choice but to write to you. You tell me one other place you could maybe hold a sign and not be told to leave within twenty minutes by law enforcement. Actually, just tell me something I can say that will get you so angry you will retaliate not against your welfare neighbors, but against a life that creates a need for welfare. Or how I can get you to refuse to work in the fast food or retail industry, so when I refuse to work at McDonald’s, they can’t just find someone else who will. Tell me where idealists can contemplate a future where things are different and not be called domestic terrorists for threatening the way of life now. In light of this, I’m still free for the most part to write whatever I want, uncensored, on this here blog. Still monitored, but yes, but it’s a beautiful thing, really. Soooooooooooooooooo wake up, wake up, wake up. Or finally, when you decide you can’t put up with it anymore, Beyonce will be president. Or Mitt Romney. Sorry, but we paid them all the money, and that’s what we need now.
“But we can’t do anything to stop it Jami. We have jobs and mouths to feed.” Then maybe the pursuit of the THREE needs we all share as living organisms… THREE… just three (shelter, food, water) should not be a trap to keep us complacent. I do deserve food that isn’t owned by Walmart, or Tops, or Wegmans, or if that’s not possible, sufficient land to grow my own. If you argue I don’t deserve this, then I don’t deserve to live. And if buying food from these “distributors” is the viable option instead of just deserving to eat, then you are arguing I deserve to live only if I work. This is a basic extension to the argument of working for a living, taken to its ultimate endpoint (requiring logic). We have computers manufacturing our goods and speaking to us as if they are human, but we refuse to use technology to feed the world.
We like inauguration days with performers, entertainers, and parades, because these things don’t make us feel. I’M TRYING TO MAKE YOU FEEL. No black kid in Africa dies if we don’t have to work 50 years just to feed ourselves. I feel what you feel every day, you just don’t voice it. Maybe you don’t know how. Maybe your feeling is broken. But your instinct is not. Things are bad. Things are getting worse. When we cannot go anywhere outside our homes without either trespassing or buying something (leaving our house to go to some other box), there is a serious issue we should be attending to. I like going out to eat (I’m not totally pessimistic), but I am unfulfilled that that’s basically all I can do legally to get out of the house. When WalMart owns a realty group, we need to be concerned. When your neighbor walks into a canal to drown because she got diagnosed with cancer, something is wrong!!!! Because the cancer itself is not a death sentence, but relying on insurance companies is. But your relatives and friends work for insurance companies, as do mine. They don’t kill people! No, that’s the genius of the working man. We have to be the middle man for these companies. We don’t even know who they are, and while we “make a living,” they control access to health care. That’s not give and take, that’s being hustled. Like a hoe to a pimp.
The scariest part of me telling you to care, to be emotional and angry, promote change? I’m scared. Because we have no avenues left to pursue. Freedom of speech? Freedom of assembly? These are unknown concepts. And no Patriot Act or president took them away, we are to blame. We gave these away by fearing. If there is a terrorist next door and you want them gone, then there must be executive power for someone to enter homes and remove terrorists. Well jeez, anything to make me feel safe. So there that goes. What did you expect to happen? And we wanted, and wanted, and wanted more and more and more. Now we have commercial properties everywhere to give us our wants! “But we have freedom of speech in the public, not private sector. For instance, you can stand in a field with an offensive sign, just not at Target.” Well, no. Remember: private property, or trespassing. There is no public land left. You know that because any place that looks relatively free is not. You can walk your dog at a state park, but try to stage a protest there. And the Target has a fleet of corporate security.
The insides may be rotted and corrupt, but it’s okay, the outside is pretty. Now would be a good time to brush up on why we even have corporate structures like Target and Wal-Mart when we can all agree they are detrimental to our communities and lives. Here’s a quote you may like to consider about the psychology of our buying habits, from the father of advertising and PR:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
This is why we both accept Wal-Mart into our lives and communities and hate it vehemently. We don’t even determine what we want to buy for the most part, it is subliminal and permits room on the shelf to include Olay, Pantene, Aussie, Herbal Essences and Head & Shoulders as “choices,” but they are the same product from the same company (the “small number of persons,” in Bernay’s words).
If you can think about these aspects of our society every day and feel nothing, just work, and live, and work, and live, then at least consider that this is exactly what you are supposed to be doing. Do you not complain about the things around you because you don’t want to be seen as the person who always complains? The broken record? The hypocrite? This is fear. You still have these emotions and they aren’t going away. Start complaining, start talking. Start writing! Start sharing. Complain about Inaugural frivolities because you know they are wrong. That is where this discussion started (if you can remember), and that’s where it needs to begin. Today.
Goldie lives in a tank in the kitchen. He has shelter, water, and food. But he doesn’t have the freedom to move. His scenery may change from time to time, like the purple plastic leaf instead of the pink one, but it’s the same. It’s not real, it’s not the ocean.. but at the end of the day, he’s alive… right?
Jami Write 