History has many lessons to teach us. One of these lessons is that when a nation becomes apathetic to the dangerous or unjust trends within in it, it will soon fall. Whether it falls from inside corruption or from outside domination or both, it will fall.
We are at that place now in America and we have a choice. We can either continue on our apathetic path or wake up and save our country from the fate many before us have suffered. Yes we ourselves are more of a threat to our treasured way of life than any foreign terrorists will ever be.
We can now watch carnage and death on our TV screens and barely be affected by it. We can make all manner of excuses why it was right for our government to deny prisoners the right to trial and to torture, yes TORTURE, them. We can turn our backs on the plight of the poor in our own country, while our government and private organizations send billions of dollars to other countries to ease their suffering. We can stand by unmoved while children and elders die of hunger in America and our veterans who can no longer totally support themselves are ignored, demeaned and made to beg for the benefits this country owes them.
Celebrities of TV and movies, recording artists, sport figures and wall street executives make billions, while teachers, policemen, soldiers, firemen and other public servants make a pittance they can barely live on and laboring men and women can't even find honest work to support themselves and their families. This country is turned upside down and no one seems to be willing to admit it and change it.
We spend about 12 billion or more a month to run our two wars while education funds are constantly being cut and our infrastructure of roads, bridges and public transportation are so dangerously antiquated they are a disaster waiting to happen.
Why are we apathetic? Is it because the rich have what they want and they are not really interested in the plight of those who are struggling just to survive? Unless they can draw attention to themselves with their humanitarian efforts in big benefit performances or overseas missions they hardly raise a finger to help their own countrymen.
And then there are the poor who have struggled so long, have they simply given up the struggle and accepted the status quo? We are all to blame for apathy. Oh yes we may see the problems but maybe we feel like they are just too big for us to find a way to make a difference. Even when we write to our congressmen and senators we usually are ignored or receive a form letter and we know our concerns have fallen on deaf ears, or most likely never reached the ears they were intended for.
It is a disgrace that the financial burden of this nation has been placed on the backs of the middle class who can no longer carry it while the wealthy employ unfair tax advantages and pay less taxes than the working class poor. The Revolutionary war was fought for less oppression than we are experiencing today!
I don’t know the answer but I do know unless we do something to turn the tide this country is on a downward slide to annihilation. Concern is good, prayer is good but action is now necessary, the voice of the people must be heard or everything we hold dear is going to slip further away as we become an easy target for those more diligent in their efforts and dedicated to their cause then we.
It reminds me of a story I heard where a little boy was sick and in pain and someone said to him that Jesus loved him and would help him. The little boy said he knew he would but sometimes he needed a Jesus with skin on. Sometimes we need to do something tangible to bring about change.
It’s time to find ways to make our voices heard, not just in elections, but in whatever way it takes to shake ourselves from apathy and inaction. If the civil rights leaders in the 1960’s had simply sat back and sadly shook their heads at the prejudice and injustice of the times, the times would still be here. There would be segregated schools, bathrooms, water fountains, buses, restaurants. There would be colleges a black person could not attend, political offices they would never hold and professional fields they could only practice among their own race. The civil rights movement had to put hands and feet, voices and pens to work in the fight for equality and if we want to keep America and the dream alive we will have to do the same.
"APATHY AND ANNIHILATION"
5 Comments
L. G. Figgins said...
Amen to this write, La Belle! While the rich get richer with tax breaks and shelters, the middle-class(what there is left of the middle-class)is bearing the burden and the poor are being deprived of what little cushion they have. As a nation we will be judged on how we treat the most vulnerable of our citizens.
Since 9/11 we have been paralyzed by fear, which has been used as a tool of control. We have stood by while one-by-one our rights have disappeared.
We wanted a Daddy to take care of us. In a country by and for the people which was instituted in the beginning as a protest against a King and oppression, this is insane irony.
Felix LeRoy Perry said...
Very strong statements and points well made. It's too bad the rebel hippies of the sixties who were willing to be arrested, lay down and die, get beaten and scream their lungs out didn't pass the torch somehow on to the next generation.
Fee
The Bear Paw said...
Hi La Belle, You say it right! A dumb-downed society, which is the tactic that Hitler used. Kind of scary. If people would become of one mind, not just talk the talk, but walk the walk, like many years ago when people became of one mind and had a tax revolt... and won. Thank you for sharing this... needs to be said, heard, and acted on...
In Spirit,
Bear
6/10/2009 5:06:28 AM
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Georg E Mateos said...
I think that America as been poisoned with a kind of nerve poison that only allows them to feel only a emotion when watching Terminator or a Cadillac Preacher.
America is dormant, insensitive, and that hope ship for her as sailed.
Now only remains to sink or swim.
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