Maybe I spoke too soon...

My last post was about America finally coming to terms with homosexuality. Then today, I read that Obama is getting ready to extend benefits for gay partners of Federal employees, but not full health coverage. Is he just pandering? Trying to be moderate? He promised the whole world to America, which was ridiculous, and surely we know he can't come through on all of it, but why stop short of full health coverage?

That pisses me off. I don't even blame Obama, necessarily. I know campaigning is just a massive marketing scheme--target your demographics, and market appropriately. And his campaign was the most successful marketing scheme I have ever seen or heard in my life.

I know he inherited a clusterfuck of a situation from Bush. He has a lot of shit to change, and there's so much going on in the world and in America that maybe this is going to get pushed to the wayside, but I can't be satisfied with only partial equality. I mean, it's great that he's doing something to push for gay rights, but at the same time... kind of reminds me of Jim Crow laws. Separate and (not really) equal.

Know what else pisses me off? I think the Patriot Act is still, at least partially, in place. The NSA still can monitor people's phone calls and e-mails without warrants, and do so on a broad scale, more broadly than we were previously led to believe. I'm not so naive to think that spying and secret government agencies are doing this shit and will always do this shit, but... you'd think he might put some restrictions on it. Maybe not, maybe I'm just idealistic about it... like so many things, or was. I'd also like to see him remove the ban on openly gay members of the military. Gay people can get killed in Iraq and Afghanistan just as easily as straight people. Okay, that's not helping my case any, but really... It's not like gay men are going to rape the straight men in the showers. It's not like the lesbians are going to hit on all the straight servicewomen. And if something does spring up, so what? That sounds like a recipe for an excellent battle buddy relationship. In fact, that was what the ancient Greeks thought--they encouraged homosexuality (within certain limitations, to be fair) for their soldiers because it made them work together and fight harder for each other. And let's face it, the Greeks were onto a lot of things...

Get on the bandwagon, already!

So, despite the strength of the right wing nutjobs out there, gay rights has definitely made some strides. Even Iowa has legalized it, and though Iowans are notoriously political, I would gauge them as being moderate to conservative socially. It might be fine for gays to get married, but not if it's their kid...

Just like with the Civil Rights Movement, a cultural ideology cannot be changed simply because the law books are edited. Even now, there are plenty of gays shaking and huddling in their respective closets. Clearly, if states are legalizing gay marriages, if even the government is starting to see that being gay is not a mental illness or a perversion, then we must be far enough along as a nation in our beliefs that it's not a totally ridiculous idea that gays are, you know, normal. Homosexuality... It just is. Always has been. Always will be.

I could say all sorts of shit about why gay marriage should be legalized, why gay people should enjoy equal rights with straights, but I won't bother. To me, it's self-evident. But goddamn, people. I know a girl in the military who has got a friend lined up to marry (a man, obviously) in case she ever comes under scrutiny from the Army about being gay. It has been her dream to be in the army since she was a little kid, but in order to realize that dream, she may have to marry a man already who has a girlfriend. If you think gays marrying gays is going to ruin the sanctity of marriage, how about that? Some poor girl has to marry someone she will never love just so she can serve her country? Now that, to me, lacks respect for the institution of marriage (and not that I think the institution of marriage is all that great, but that's neither here nor there), as well as for both parties. Why should she have to take that lie to such lengths? She was telling me about another person she knows in the army who did just that--married a friend of hers to get the inquirers off her back. So she could keep her job and her livelihood.

More personally, one of my oldest and best friends is getting married this fall to a guy she's dated since high school. That sounds almost romantic, except I didn't mention the fact that she cheated on him for almost a whole year with my best friend, who is a girl. And I have never known the enfianced friend of mine to be happier than when she was pursuing her life on her own terms with another woman. But, as is true in the lives of so many gays, her family and friends were horrified when she told them and put intense and incessant pressure on her to go back to her boyfriend. Now, they'll be tying the knot in November.

Maybe they were happy once. Maybe they will be happy together. I know what my friend desires more than anything is to have a "normal" family. To have kids. It's hard to give up that dream of hearth and home, especially when giving it up means that you have to live a life that is disdained by many, and unlawful in some parts of this great nation. Nobody I've ever known grew up dreaming of anything else. After all, it's the American Dream: 2.5 kids, a dog, a white picket fence. Gays dream of that too, you know. But then they realize that they have to dream a new life for themselves, because the initial dream is simply not in the cards for them... if they want to live an honest life.

Will she be living a lie? I guess only she can answer that. Those of us who know her best, and who have seen her at her happiest, will grieve at her wedding. We might be the only ones. All of us, of course, want nothing more than for her to be happy. To not have to deal with mental anguish and cognitive dissonance if, in fact, we are right. My biggest fear for her is that she will be one of those forty-somethings who one day, "out of the blue," tells her husband and kids that, what do you know! Mommy's gay! Our family is now emotionally gutted, because I can't stay with your father anymore. I don't want that for anyone. I don't think people should have to live in a country that claims to be so great where they feel forced to live that way.

How long can one live in denial? Maybe we're wrong, maybe she is legitimately bisexual and loves her fiancee as much as she loved my friend. Maybe there is no qualitative difference between being with a woman and a man for her. I hope that's true. I want that to be true as much as she does. But I just can't believe it.

Really, why the fuck is it such a huge sin to be gay? So a woman sleeps with other women, who cares? So a man finds himself falling in love with other men, so? Gay people have to redream their lives, is it so much to ask that their families and friends do the same for them? So you have to recast your young daughter's shadowy faceless specter of a future husband as a woman, so what? So you'll get a son-in-law rather than a daughter-in-law, what's the difference?

I guess I'm angry at her family for not respecting her. And to be fair, I'm angry at her for not being strong enough to say, "Fuck 'em," and live her life for herself. Of course, it's not that easy; if it was, she would have stayed with my friend, or gotten with a nother woman. I'm angry for all the people in the world who don't know anything about homosexuality and don't care to find out. It's easier, after all, to just hate them blindly, than to take the time and effort to get to know somebody who's gay and realize, oh, they're just like me. Everything I deserve, everything I want, they deserve and desire as well. I don't understand what is so difficult to understand about that!

My dad hates me for being gay. I used to live in terror of him finding out, but my terror was superceded by the fact that... it's just true. I am. This is the life I live, this is where I find my happiness. If he can't understand or respect it, then that's his problem. For my friend, it's her family's problem, not hers. Except she's the people-pleaser type and can't seem to put her own needs and desires before theirs. And for countless others, that's true too. As if there isn't enough shit in life to have to deal with...

Okay, so they won. She's "straight" now. She told them she was gay, and now magically she's not? If a child tells her parent she's gay, and then they pressure her to live a straight life and she capitulates, what then, have they set her up for? A life of lies and unhappiness? A life of entrapment? Why would any parent wish that on his or her child? Of course, I'm sure they're ignorant and think people can change (just like they can change their own sexuality). Or they chalk it up to a college phase. They don't want to believe it (it's a lot of work to believe it and accept it, for gays too), and so they don't.

I'm happy that the states are beginning to embrace homosexuals as normal citizens rather than psychological or genetic aberrations. I know that there is no culture that can change overnight. Just because the Civil Rights movement happened didn't mean that most people were sold on the ideas therein. All in all, I guess I'd say America is moving at a pretty good clip, as far as tolerance and acceptance is concerned. At any rate, my generation, which is coming to the fore socially and politically, is much more tolerant than previous generations. The baby boomers, they're the worst ugh. They've still got that wartime mentality going, and while this technically is wartime, the homefront isn't engaged with the wartime effort like they were before. The rhetoric is not the same. The war my generation has been influenced by as a sort of cultural inheritance is Vietnam and now, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan (and probably soon to be Iran and North Korea, fuuuuuck). The homefront sentiments about those two wars were radically different than with WWII. Where people got more conservative after WWII, I think American culture, from Vietnam on, has produced a growing number of liberals. Obviously, the conservatives are still a powerful faction in Amurrica, and they are the focus of many of my half-mad rants, but they are the traditionalists. The ones drawing on previous generations' ideas of the world, and are satisfied that those ideas are legitimate because they came before them.

Well, we aren't satisfied now. Generation Y is obsessed with choice. I also think irony has become a powerful force in the media, and in existence altogether. WWII, there were good reasons to go. In Vietnam and Iraq, the population was lied to. Horrible things occur in every war, but the lies and the lack of any believable coverup make modern war almost totally unconscienable to later generations. And yet, here we are, in the middle of this clusterfuck. Choking on the irony of it all every day. Sigh. This post got waaaay off track. It was about gays, and now it's about wartime mentality.

In closing, I guess I hope that the rest of America catches on to this growing trend of accepting people who sleep with people of the same sex. And all those who might choose to do things just a little differently than your parents did. Not that big a deal. So simple, so important, and yet so difficult. I guess humans are just impatient, considering the fact that they live such brief lives. Maybe cultural consciousness has never been able to keep up with humans' imagination. Then again, when has reality ever lived up to the standards of dreams?

Sotomayor is an Asian Buddhist?

I heard she was a wise Latina. But those at the National Review surely know better than I do. Here is their caricature depiction of the newly appointed supreme court judge:

If you're going to be racist, at least be accurate. She's of Puerto Rican descent, motherfuckers!

The Democratic Republic of Iran

I think we should be jealous.

After the recent election results, which Moussavi roundly rejected as being fraudulent immediately following the government's official release, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest the farcical election. So far, they show no signs of relenting. Even the higher-ups are looking into it now, specifically, the Guardian Council. Even the Grand Ayatollah has supported a recount, and he's the real powerhouse in Iran, not Ahmadinjad or anyone who fills the post of president there. More than likely, knowing Khameini's history, this is just to buy time, to let the dust settle on the protests. I mean, he can't use military force, or the hope for the Islamist movement becoming the popular sentiment will be ruined (and already, an assertive, progressive, younger middle class is showing itself that it is a force to be reckoned with). Then again, can he afford to let them have their way? The Grand Ayatollah just might find himself looking for a job if they succeed in their ends. Already, he has betrayed a chink in his armor--the supreme leader of Iran, both politically and religiously (is there really ever a separation, anywhere in the world?), has stuttered and stammered on the results of the election. First, he cheered for Iran's "sacred" victory in re-electing Ahmadinejad, was shaking his hand in congratulations before the official three day period was up for closing an election, and now he's saying there should be a partial recount. Moussavi has also rejected this. Who could be behind an electoral coup like that but the grand ayatollah? The man behind the curtain, he's pulling all sorts of strings, and meanwhile, everybody is going crazy about the president. Just like in Amurrica, I suppose.

In talking to my friend, he reminded me that Gore and Kerry, who both lost elections to George W., and more than likely due to corruption and electoral fraud, conceded the victory to the illustrious Bush with hardly more than whimper in protest. When your candidate concedes, what are his supporters supposed to do? I guess that's true: Moussavi's decrying of the election legitimized his supporters' rallying to protest, and that would not have been true in America.

But what is democracy, if not people proactively rising up against government actions that they condemn? Do the democrats just not have that spirit? With the rise in domestic terrorism, we can see that the right wingers, however flawwed their actions may be, are not afraid of standing up for what they believe in (and no, I'm not condoning that crazy ass who shot up the holocaust museum, not by any means, or the dude who shot and killed the abortionist, Dr. Tiller). Nor am I calling for splinter cell vigilante "justice" or "democracy," or whatever you'd want to call it. I'm not calling for anything, actually. Just wondering why the Iranian middle class, a country whose government is one of the most vocally anti-American organizations in the world, and one of the most hated by the American government, is exhibiting democracy better than Americans!

Iran's voter turnout was greater than in America. The last stat I read was some 85% of Iranians voted in this election, and even with all the time and effort put into canvassing the whole country and inspiring people to vote, only some 70% of Americans actually voted. So yes, by all means, America should be the posterchild for democracy! We are so good at it, after all... By Iranian law, the Council can veto presidential candidates. In America, you have to be: rich (how else can you afford to campaign effectively? And also, it basically takes money to be a recognizable figure in this country who has any intention of being in a position of power) and ensconced in the system. I used to say white, but Obama kind of confounds that (although, if you're a conspiracy theorist at all, you might say that Obama is the puppet of the World Bank and NAFTA and all those international trade big-wigs, and they played on American guilt for eight years of Bush and knew they could get him into office). Maybe there isn't any official council vetoing candidates, but let's face it, we have a very small pool of people from which to realistically choose our president. That doesn't sound very democratic.

We must remember, though, that like Iran, the president is, more or less, just a figurehead. A paper tiger. Here, it's the house and senate that are the real power in legislature (and don't think that their power comes from simply being popular--most of them are rich, too, and make laws based on what they've sunk their own interests in... most recently, Obama's cabinet members are looking at bills relating to healthcare reform, and what do you know, many of them have shares in huge pharmaceutical companies!). I don't think it's any coincidence that we (and by we, I mean the media and those who consume it) place much more emphasis on the president than on the house and senate. It's a good distraction for the public. It's a good way to keep us complacent. We think, "Oh, we get to vote, we have a choice, we have some control." Not really. Individuals who are not politicians will find that they have very limited choices when it comes to policy decisions, the vast majority of Americans who are not enmeshed in the structure and discourse of the American government. That doesn't sound very much like "the majority rules" philosophy at all.

Indeed, this is directly at odds with the so-called "Amurrican spirit" that we love to celebrate and but largely hate to participate in. Democracy, after all, does not stop after casting a single vote for a figurehead. In theory, it should never stop--American citizens should have two jobs, the one they make money at and support their family with, and the other of being an active participant in their government. Except in this culture, there really isn't much time for a job, the second job of being a citizen, and having a family and a life. Funny how having a family and a life come after the rest of all that... funny, but true to the American philosophy of life--if you aren't producing, you're worthless. That is one of the most important facets of American identity: work. What you can produce, how much money you can make. This often comes at the expense of family and quality time spent pursuing one's personal interests. But anyway, that's not the point.

I am just as guilty of complacency as anybody, I suppose. Americans are complacent. At least, enough of us are complacent that it undermines the smaller proportion of the population who holds onto faith and tries to proactively create change in their world.

My friend said that revolutions are sloppy. That even when successful, trying to get the government back to being organized and functional is difficult. That the results are often short-lived. I think he's probably right. But maybe that's just the price of change. It takes getting used to. Call them growing pains, if you will. Obviously, the 1979 Islamist Revolution in Iran is still echoing in the memories of the older generations of Iranians. And Americans, for that matter. While obviously the political (theocratic?) structure of Iran is not democratic, there is a definite spirit of democracy in its middle classes. They are, perhaps, more outspoken than Americans. Women are enjoying more and more freedoms than they ever have, relative to a country with a conservative, traditionalist government in place anyway. Women, in fact, make up a great number of Moussavi supporters because he is a reformist, and their votes (for all they mattered) might have changed the results of the vote had it not been rigged.

Ironically, at the end of this post, I'm starting to see a lot of parallels between the United States and Iran, particularly in how a country's government can be so radically different than the sentiments of its people. The American spirit does not require an established "democracy" in which to engage a people's government; for all that matter, the American spirit is not really American at all. I'm sure we appropriated that rhetoric during the world wars to bolster morale, but we're starting to see that revolutionary spirit everywhere, and that's a good thing.

I'm still wondering why America didn't do this under George Bush. And furthermore, I'm wondering why we don't protest as much as people in Europe seem to do--at least, they get more publicity. Labor strikes, mass protests that encompass more than just pissed off university students... I'm not sure they are all that productive, but at least they voice their opinions when they're pissed off at their leaders. We just grumble to ourselves while watching the news (or yell at the computer screen, in my case). We get drunk and have slurred, pseudointellectual conversations about how we could change the world but never will. We get riled up and then go about the rest of our day, because, well, what else can you do?

Maybe we need a Lysistrata-type rebellion. Women, we should all refuse to have sex with our men until they give us our way. Or withhold labor until they give into our capitulations. Of course none of this will ever happen. I wonder, though... what would happen if even 90% of Americans refused, in a single day, to work or buy anything? The Day the United States Stood Still.

Idle musings, I suppose. My version of complacency--coming up with ideas that could never work. Sigh. This is why I was not a poli sci major.

2 - 720 east second st. - DSM

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David Carradine: Out with a Bang

I have to admit that I usually have great disdain for all those stupid magazines and news sites that focus on celebrity news.  Furthermore, I have disdain for people who consume celebrity news like coffee or beer, like an addiction.  I mean, really...  who gives a flapping fuck what is going on in the lives of all those empty, vain idols?  Do I care if Brad Pitt fucked the nanny behind Angelina Jolie's back (by the way, I only know this because somebody told me)?  I dont' know Brad or Angelina.  I don't know the nanny.  I don't even really care for the movies they tend to star in.  All in all, I'm not bored enough to be interested in this media circus sideshow.  I've got more important things to do, like writing about other celebrities succumbing to autoerotic asphyxiation.  But more on that in a bit.

America worships celebrities.  Imbues them with power and privilege beyond what they deserve.  I don't understand it; quite frankly, it's kind of sick.  There are many more people in the world who are much more deserving of such adulation, and for much better reasons--say, because they are brilliant, or creative geniuses or humanitarians.  I'm sorry, but being attractive and starring in cookie cutter movies that are created because they'll be box office hits (aka they'll make a shit ton of money), and not because they have any artistic merit, is not a valid basis for adoration and worship.  People who are unsure of what they value, people who lack imagination or discrimination in what they consume, those seem to be the people who latch on to these make-believe characters we affectionately call celebrities in this country.  It's kind of pathetic.  Come on, people, at least become irrationally obsessed with people of substance!

Anyway, with that opinion in mind, I'm going to jump on the bandwagon with hundreds of other writers and put my two cents in about David Carradine, best known as Bill from the Kill Bill movies.  I had my suspicions that he was a sexual freak before the more sordid details came out in the news.  Probably because I've been culturally conditioned to expect and believe the most fantastic and dramatic of possibilities.  If it isn't exciting and outrageous, our tiny American attention spans refuse to be captivated.  Reality is never exciting enough, it has to be marketed toward us, embroidered and exaggerated.  We don't want our reality to be real.  That would be boring.  And the enemy of rich Americans is boredom.  I mean, everybody's got to have something to complain about.  In other places, the chief complaint is...  Extreme poverty.  Starvation.  Inadequate health care.  Horrific crimes against humanity.  Despicable human rights violations.  The list goes on.  But we don't live there, that only exists for us in a montage of pictures on the 5 o'clock news.  For us, it's boredom.  And more often than not, we get bored with those pictures anyway.  That is, until the celebrity gossip section comes on!

But back to the point.  I feel bad for Carradine's family.  They are so embarrassed that they've hired Michael Baden (let's hear it for celebrity worship again), the famous pathologist, to perform a second autopsy, because surely he knows better than the other pathologist (the other pathologist doesn't even have his own TV show, can you believe it?  And we believe him?  Ridiculous!).  Celebrities know best, after all.  Carradine's family just doesn't want to believe that he accidentally died from hanging himself during naughty time.  Who would want to believe that about their 72-year-old loved one?  I wouldn't.  I'd probably request a second autopsy, too, especially since the whole world now knows how he died and why.  Thank you, media, for airing out these people's dirty laundry, even on such a solemn occasion as someone's death.  But hey, the American people have a deep psychological need to know the nittiest grittiest personal details of celebrity lives.  The media capitalizes on this again and again, and why not?  It's a symbiotic relationship.  You can't blame the media for anything without blaming the people who consume it.  It's only fair.  And on that note, I have to blame myself, since I too have found myself reading up on this nasty little story.  To save face, I'll add that I first found out about this on BBC news, a "reputable" news source, as far as news sources go.  Supposedly.  I couldn't quite help it, even the Brits were beating me over the head with it.  But anywayyy...

People love it.  They love hearing shit like this about their gods.  It makes them feel connected to them, I suppose.  Or like their divine idols are human after all.  And not just human, but sexually deviant humans, the best kind.  It either validates their own tendency toward the kinky, or allows them some sort of catharsis by virtue of not being into bondage and asphyxiation.  And of course, by being alive.

We love this story because it's darkly sexual.  It's CSI come to life, and there's nothing cooler than when real life resembles fiction.  In fact, reality is at its most real when it seems fake.  I mean, look at Reality TV!  Isn't that what life is supposed to look like?  Okay, I've confused myself.  I don't know the difference between reality and TV anymore.  Wait, I've confused myself with hundreds of thousands of Americans.  Dammit.  New paragraph.

What I really wanted to say was...  the family is embarrassed, but I think they should actually be very happy for David Carradine.  He went out doing something he loved.  He died the way Shakespeare meant it when he wrote about "dying."  That is, to orgasm.  I don't know about you, but I can think of way worse ways to die.  Fire.  Drowning.  Car accidents.  Cancer.  Aids.  The list goes on.  At the risk of sounding irreverent, I would say that I, too, hope to die in mid-orgasm.  In fact, I'm not sure it could get any better, unless I died saving somebody's life or something.  Alas, the likelihood of such a pleasurable death is slim, since I don't choke myself during naughty time.  But you never know.  

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

The End of an Era

Why am I writing?

Because the bubble of my youthful idealism just burst.

I just graduated from college with an admittedly unmarketable degree in literature. It took me longer than it should have to do it, in large part because I was still clinging to all the things my generation heard as kids: that you can do or be anything you want, and never to settle for less.

Well, you can. That is true, I suppose. They failed to mention that you'd have to do a lot of other shit first, distasteful shit, worthless shit, meaningless crap. Only if you're extremely lucky will you have the privilege of working at a job that you like and feel connected to. We should have known better, but we were raised in a fantasy world. Ours is a generation of applause. Do you remember, back in school, how every time you gave a report or shared something in class, people clapped for you? Even if it was shitty? Remember when failing was okay, as long as you tried?

It seems stupid now, that we ever believed in any of this. But there's no sense in feeling sheepish about being a kid, about being innocent (or is it ignorant?). My generation has a sense of entitlement and expectation that seems to have been lacking in previous generations. Then again, maybe this is just a sympton of being a middle class American of Generation Y. Maybe it's just the desperate desires of the bourgeoise to be something they aren't: that is, rich.

When I got into college and felt the pressure to decide the rest of my life according to what major I would pick, I refused to be pragmatic. I decided to study English, literature, something I loved and valued as a source of enrichment. I knew then, as I know now even more keenly, that there was no money to be made in that field. I could teach, and that's about it, unless I was lucky enough and brilliant enough to make it as a writer (maybe luck is more important in this equation--there are a lot of stupid people writing stupid shit and making lots of money out there). But I wanted to be cultured, I suppose. I place(d) great value on art of all genres and forms, and consider(ed) creativity to be the greatest testament to the human race. Genius, after all, shows itself in art.

But you know what I've figured out? Those who have historically studied the arts--studied literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, philosophy--they could afford to study these things because they were rich. They didn't have to study something that would score them a job afterward. They didn't need vocational education because they came from money, and that sort of money takes care of itself. Art is an extravagance. Gone are the days when art and daily, material life were indissoluble.

Well, I'm not rich. In fact, I'm poor. I came from an upper middleclass background, so this is a new frontier for me. I do think that poor people know things that people with money do not or cannot know. So this new economic status is educational for me. Particularly, I'm learning about the middle class, whose culture is hegemonic--well, for me anyway, who hasn't really strayed far from middle America. It's so pervasive on TV, on the radio, in books, in magazines, on the internet, that it's hard to see the trees for the forest.

I definitely saw this in college. I went to a fairly big state university. Very few people were there to get an education; most people attended because they wanted to make money. College was a means to an end for them, it was not an end in itself. Maybe that sort of idealism is nothing more than the rhetoric of the rich, which has been handed down to all Americans, whether it's remotely attainable for the majority or not. Or of the artist, whose very being relies on pushing boundaries and violating the norm. But artists tend to suffer greatly for their transgression of social norms; rich people would suffer, except they are insulated from suffering by money.

And if I had to classify the majority of students at the university, I would say that they were largely middle class people with middle class ambitions. This caused me a lot of distress when I was in school. I wondered why people didn't value the classes that challenged their values, their cultural indoctrination, hegemony. Why weren't more people questioning what they were doing, the mechanisms of the "real world?" Because they weren't there for that reason, I discovered to my chagrin. They were there because they were chasing money.

I used to condemn that. I used to have contempt for those people. But now that I'm out of college, I cant' be so judgmental. I was hypocritical to judge them, because I was being supported by proud capitalists, i.e., my parents. And not just capitalists, but funeral directors, whom many people would condemn for profiting off of the death of their loved ones. I have judged my parents for a lot of things, but not for that, I realize. There are some things for which you can't get paid enough. and I think being a funeral director (particularly a funeral director who services a small community) falls into that category. But that's not the point, I suppose.

The point is, I have no choice anymore but to be pragmatic. I don't judge myself for that, and I'm no longer standing on my hypocritical pedestal and judging others (well, not as much anyway). I still think that the American condition largely results in people being distracted or dissuaded from considering certain aspects of existence. Americans are largely addicts--addicted to work, to exercise, to food, to drugs (caffeine and psych meds, particularly), to alcohol, to TV, to the internet, to their phones, to anything that will take their minds off of the absurdity and meaninglessness of so much of human congress. And even more than that, to distract themselves from realizing their own mortality.

There's nothing more Americans hate than to be faced with the fact that they will have to die one day. The "granola democrats" only eat foods that are certified organic, because the marketing execs have convinced them that anything else will give them cancer. People take pills for all sorts of made-ailments that are nothing more than human nature throwing a wrench in the cogs of the American machine. Being human, after all, isn't very efficient, and few crimes are worse than inefficiency in this country.

Why is it so difficult for us to realize that humans are programmed to self-destruct? It isn't the corporations that are killing us, or the processed food, or what have you... it's LIFE. Everything has to die. I suppose this fact is scary because it makes so much of what we do every day, so much of what we care about, meaningless. It's absurdity, not death, that terrifies people. It's far scarier to think that everything one does in life is meaningless, than to imagine one's imminent death.

Well, as for me, despite the absurdity, there are still meaningful choices to be made. Even if my idealism has gotten a little less radical, even if I've traded some of it for pragmatism, there is still hope for happiness. I can still find something satisfying in making my own choices, even if they are choices about work and money and spending.

I guess I've finally confronted my own material desires within myself, rather than pretending to be above them. I don't want to be poor; I don't want to be rich, either. "Privilege is a headache that you don't know you don't have" (Ani DiFranco). I have enough philosophical headaches as it is. Constantly worrying about money and debts and credit and what have you is something I'd rather avoid, so I can have time to worry about my soul. That seems to be a more worthy source of worry. I guess.

Well, this was my first post, so I guess I won't be too hard on myself for the fact that it's really disjointed and rambly. What can you do. I enjoyed it at any rate. Maybe someone out there in the universe will stumble upon it and find something even remotely enjoyable in it.

Maybe.