Posted in response to the good Major in a certain infamous diary..
I'm posting the entire rant plus below the fold because I just wrote it in one long stream-of-consciousness in one of That Diary's discussions..
Feel free to tag, and I hope that this is as enjoyable to read as it was to write...
Let's start by adequately funding our schools.
Let's insulate the federal education system from religious influence and from corporate sponsorships.
Let's raise our children to be self-empowered confident thinkers, immune to the flashy sales techniques used to protect the Man Behind The Curtain.
(When each person can govern themself justly, we will have no need for governments - now THAT's a revolution!!)
Let's enable our future generations to choose elected leaders based on merit because they're too savvy to be bullied and terrorized into voting for authoritarians.
Let's reign in the corporations who let oil tankers leak all over Alaska for 18 years and tell the public and government to get fucked, the corporations who make sex so cheap and empty that no matter how much you chase it it's never good enough, the corporations who preach that food doesn't have to be healthy as long as it's cheap and convenient and supersized, the corporations who care nothing for our neighborhoods and drop big-boxes out of the sky and crush our small businesses and local individuality, the corporations who have usurped the Constitutional protections away from our citizens (I could go on...)
Let's do something to fix the medical industry so that our lower and middle class families don't have to risk bankruptcy to afford insurance to prevent CERTAIN bankruptcy in case of a medical disaster.
Let's also enable those families, perhaps by regulating corporate profits or by federally subsidizing lower wages, something, anything, so that parents can spend proper time with their children instead of plugging them into the TV to be babysat while working 2 jobs, and let's also empower our increasingly younger parents by offering free child psychology classes so that they know how, why, and when to discipline and guide their children into productive and responsible citizens, credits to their country, jealous of environmental sancity and guardians of human rights in all countries.
The revolution starts now, it started yesterday, it will start again tomorrow. It starts in every person who decides that they cannot sit on their (my) ass any longer and who realizes that the revolution can never truly be lost as long as the bastards can't keep them from smiling and enjoying life.
Neoconservatives, facsists, war pigs, whatever you want to call them- they win by intimidating us into building boxes around ourselves. By making each of us feel as if we are alone and weird and powerless and useless.
You're fat. Here's your box.
You're non-heterosexual. Here's your box.
You stutter. Here's your box.
You're a woman. Here's your box.
You're shy. Here's your box.
You're dyslexic. Here's your box.
You're not an enthusiastic member of the right religion. Here's your box.
Your parents are divorced and you'll never be good enough. Here's your box.
You have a minor drug problem that will cost you several decades of your life behind bars. Here's your box.
You have an easily treatable mental disorder, too bad federal funding was cut. Here's your box.
You're blind or deaf. Here's your box.
You received a substandard underfunded education and part of you knows that you should be smarter. Here's your box.
You're not White. Here's your box.
You're too young for your opinion to matter. Here's your box.
You're too old to be relevant or useful anymore and we don't care if you "don't want to get on the cart." Here's your box.
An entire nation of pariahs, unless we join their side? The revolution starts again, and we are legion...