The (pseudo)politics of America

I'm in high school. I spend my days reading textbooks and essays about the past. Every era in history has been compartmentalized, especially American history. The country, as a whole, has had a theme for every generation. For some its the era of revolution. For others, civil rights or peace, love, & understanding.

However, once you get into a few of the more recent decades, things get foggy. It's hard to figure out what the future will think of you when you don't know how successful or unsuccessful your political strivings will be.

So here we stand, at what seems to be a pivotal moment in history, a moment in which the post Cold War America still needs to be entirely defined. And yet we stand here with our hands in our pants and our eyes shut tight.

The circumstances demand revolutionary resolve, yet we're more worried about the outcome of Dancing With The Stars and Britany's newest accident. We're sipping our lattes and guzzling our gas while the world flings itself ever forward in the name of progress.

And the circumstances aren't kind, either. China is tip-toeing into first place, which could cement totalitarianism as the defining government of this planet. Millions are dying all over the world from preventable causes, and here we are, investing in our own private game of paintball in Iraq.

I know, I know, you've heard this before. It's just another silly liberal complaining about things he doesn't understand. Fine. Well, here's my problem: no one ever understands!

When Americans feel passionate about an issue, understood or not, they still make loud noises. They protest and complain and rally and amass themselves and demand to be heard.

That doesn't happen anymore. There hasn't been a protest worth going to in four years here in New York City, and there's nothing on the agenda. There are no buses shipping out to Pennsylvania to throw our weights behind our respective candidates. Even the most passionate political thinkers seemed stunned.

It's like they're living in suspended animation. They wait for the next primary, then the next, then the next. Then there's an election, and hey, maybe our guy wins, then we do it all again in 4 years.

THAT'S NOT HOW IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE!

We're supposed to be shaking the fence of the White House, we're supposed to be holding sit-ins and walk-outs and causing a general disruption, instead, we're all waiting, distracting ourselves with our coffee and our cars and our gadgets.

So I know you care about your country, and I know you'd be willing to show it. I also know the country's being hijacked by the current administration. So where's the disconnect? Why aren't people in the streets? What's unbalancing the equation? I want to know! We need to fix it, lest we become the new British Empire, under the rule of the all-powerful, all-knowing People's Republic of China.