By nature, I am a very naive person. I'd love to say that I'm not as trusting or gullible as a 5-year-old child but, mostly, that is absolutely not true. It's one of my very best, and very worst, qualities. I am consistently wide-eyed and curious, and I am also stupid as fuck. I will buy anything you attempt to sell me, especially if it seems nice and looks pretty.
I am a hopeless romantic. I believe in love and peace and hippies and I'm convinced that dance movies can save the WORLD! (I'm totally serious here.) More than once, I have envisioned that old school '70s Coke commercial, "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony", with everybody holding hands across the globe and smiling and laughing and braiding each others' hair. I'm a socialist. I just want everybody to be OK! That is my mantra.
So then, in the course of the last two years, how did I go from this:
American Prayer
Dave Stewart
This is my American Prayer
This is my American Prayer
This is the time to finish what you started
And this is no time to dream
This is the room
We can turn off the dark tonight
Maybe then we might see
American Prayer
American Prayer
And this is the ground
That keeps our feet from getting wet
And this is the sky over our head
And what you see depends on where you stand
And how you jump will tell you where you're gonna land
American Prayer
American Prayer
My oh my
Couldn't get much higher
Lets not kick out the darkness
Make the light brighter
And these are the hands
What are we gonna build with them?
This is the church you can't see
Give me your tired, your poor and huddled masses
You know they're yearning to breathe free
This is my American Prayer
American Prayer
American Prayer
When you get to the top of the mountain
Will you tell me what you see
If you get to the top of the mountain
Remember me
To THIS!
Only
Nine Inch Nails
I'm becoming less defined as days go by
Fading away
And well you might say
I'm losing focus
Kinda drifting into the abstract in terms of how I see myself
Sometimes I think I can see right through myself
Sometimes I can see right through myself
Less concerned about fitting into the world
Your world that is
Cause it doesn't really matter anymore
(no it doesn't really matter anymore)
No it doesn't really matter anymore
None of this really matters anymore
Yes, I am alone but then again I always was
As far back as I can tell
I think maybe it's because
Because you were never really real to begin with
I just made you up to hurt myself
I just made you up to hurt myself, yeah
And I just made you up to hurt myself
And it worked.
Yes it did!
[Chorus:]
There is no you
There is only me
There is no you
There is only me
There is no fucking you
There is only me
There is no fucking you
There is only me
Only
Well the tiniest little dot caught my eye and it turned out to be a scab
And I had this funny feeling like I just knew it's something bad
I just couldn't leave it alone, I kept picking at the scab
It was a doorway trying to seal itself shut
But I climbed through
Now I am somewhere I am not supposed to be,
and I can see things I know I really shouldn't see
And now I know why, now, now, now I know why
Things aren't as pretty
On the inside
[Chorus]
Only
The middle class, the working class, and the dirt poor in this country are being left to mow their motherfucking lawns while millionaires and billionaires and zillionaires steal our money, our benefits, our livelihoods, and our happiness. And then see fit to rub it in our faces, as if they expect to fully get away with it.
And they have.
I just never thought that Barack Obama was in on it before. I mean, at least, not fully. I thought he was a generally good man and an inexperienced politician who was learning the ropes and tripping up as he went along, and I kept hoping and praying for him to be the kind of transformational leader that the United States needed, at a very dark and inopportune moment in her history.
Because I know the man is smarter than this, is better than this. Barack Obama is no dummy.
America on the decline. America fucked senseless by 30 years of corporate rule and the slow degradation of laws meant to protect the general public from harm and from becoming an aristocracy.
We needed a true leader. And we got a wimp. We got a guy who caves before there is any goddamned reason to. It is enough to make me want to spit nails directly into my feet.
I hate being suckered. I hate it when goodwill is squandered, opportunities lost, hope and trust broken. And that's what Barack Obama has done to me and to everyone else like me, who needs surgery, who needs a job, who needs a roof over his or her head. The man employed Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and that was the end of it. We were screwed from the get-go.
And I am so goddamned pissed right now about Honduras, and the pay freeze for federal employees, and Wall Street getting away with their crimes that I may finally be ready to give up my affiliation with the Democratic Party, period.
THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING! SOMEONE WAKE ME UP!
We are perched over the abyss, and we are falling. And there is no safety net below.