So we're 230 years old now, but as a nation, are we adults yet? When compared to our closest relatives in Europe solely by age, the United States is practically an infant. But, giving ourselves a little credit, we have grown rather quickly.
Like the earliest early blooming boy in junior high school, we've grown into our britches rather quickly overcoming severe growing pains like the Civil War and slavery. As pre-teens, we were forced to act like adults in WWI and WWII. Outstanding behavior in both let us graduate from Junior High and pushed us into High School.
As clumsy, awkward freshman, we stumbled a bit through the Korean War, but by Vietnam, our parents started noticing some severed behavioral problems. As soon as we awarded our driver's license at 16, things got worse. We started drinking and smoking and hanging out with the 'wrong crowd': the GOP. Watergate, the Iran-Contra Affair and The Gulf War put on us on the path of the juvenile delinquent. And now with the new Iraq War, Plamegate and stolen elections, we're in Juvy Hall.
We will ever get out? Or will we be moved from one foster home to another, lost in a tangle of bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to treat our social diseases and psychological conditions? The rest of the world doesn't want to hang out with us. They've abandoned us. And when we turn 17 - the age of consent - we'll be dumped back into the cruel, religiously intolerant, FLAT world the we recreated.
At this point in time, I don't have much hope. Maybe it's my cynical nature, but it seems that we're caught in a strange, backward spiral headed back to world that our ancestors escaped from.
Jews are being threatened AGAIN. Nationalism is vogue once more. Our president claims to speak to god, and people believe him. He also thinks he's on a Crusade. Religious 'leaders' are pushing their way into the political arena, further blurring the division between church and state. These same self-righteous 'leaders' - the self-proclaimed possessors of morality - also have their own scandals to deal with.
The pile of bullshit just keeps getting deeper, and there will come a time when we will have to choose. We're already knee-deep and getting dirtier, so will we hose it off? Or will we continue to act like swine and roll in it?
Have we come full-circle? Will we have to once again flee the same religious oppression that we came to this land to escape?
It sure seems like we're headed in that direction.
Like the earliest early blooming boy in junior high school, we've grown into our britches rather quickly overcoming severe growing pains like the Civil War and slavery. As pre-teens, we were forced to act like adults in WWI and WWII. Outstanding behavior in both let us graduate from Junior High and pushed us into High School.
As clumsy, awkward freshman, we stumbled a bit through the Korean War, but by Vietnam, our parents started noticing some severed behavioral problems. As soon as we awarded our driver's license at 16, things got worse. We started drinking and smoking and hanging out with the 'wrong crowd': the GOP. Watergate, the Iran-Contra Affair and The Gulf War put on us on the path of the juvenile delinquent. And now with the new Iraq War, Plamegate and stolen elections, we're in Juvy Hall.
We will ever get out? Or will we be moved from one foster home to another, lost in a tangle of bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to treat our social diseases and psychological conditions? The rest of the world doesn't want to hang out with us. They've abandoned us. And when we turn 17 - the age of consent - we'll be dumped back into the cruel, religiously intolerant, FLAT world the we recreated.
At this point in time, I don't have much hope. Maybe it's my cynical nature, but it seems that we're caught in a strange, backward spiral headed back to world that our ancestors escaped from.
Jews are being threatened AGAIN. Nationalism is vogue once more. Our president claims to speak to god, and people believe him. He also thinks he's on a Crusade. Religious 'leaders' are pushing their way into the political arena, further blurring the division between church and state. These same self-righteous 'leaders' - the self-proclaimed possessors of morality - also have their own scandals to deal with.
The pile of bullshit just keeps getting deeper, and there will come a time when we will have to choose. We're already knee-deep and getting dirtier, so will we hose it off? Or will we continue to act like swine and roll in it?
Have we come full-circle? Will we have to once again flee the same religious oppression that we came to this land to escape?
It sure seems like we're headed in that direction.