CAN YOU SMELL IT ANYMORE?
I remember the days of yore when I could smell it…it flared my nostrils, got under my nails, in between my toes and even my steel toed shoes had a bounce to them…it was the unbridled spirit of America. The spirit of America was in the atmosphere, the streets and avenues, the stores, the work place and the home front. Individuals gathered in small diners and cafes before going to work in the morning, to discuss the local scene and gossip, the state and national politics. The banter was aggressively light, humor thrown in and everyone asked you who you were going to vote for. Individuals went out their back doors in the morning to their jobs and careers with a dream that they could see on the horizon, knowing that their position in life was appreciated and they would be rewarded at the end of the week with a paycheck.
But the spirit of America, the smell of living and not just existing, is no longer within the boundaries of our country. You have to take a voyage to distant shores to now smell the spirit of a people, a nation. The commitment and frenzy, the electrodes that pierce each citizen to participate in his rightful freedom to vote and have that vote counted, is only a vision now witnessed by those third world countries who are trying to have the democracy that so many politicians here place in their front yards, with for sale signs on it. The last two years I have not had one individual ask me how I was going to vote, what I thought about the political dissension in both parties, or if I had a favorite politician. Politics has become tabu, like the discussions of religion in this nation.
My nation, the dimensions of its judiciary and political realms, have fallen prey to portraits which were once painted 250 years ago on distant shores and lands by individuals who had fallen prey to a King’s rule. The very portraits of a life our forefathers not only lived ,but abandoned , whom fought to rid and free themselves of, at great self-sacrifice and suffering, to forge a nation.
Today in our modern intellect and ideologies, they would not be known as “rebels with a cause”, but as terrorists on self-serving agendas and liberalists with ill-reputed intentions of radicalism and conspiring tyranny. They would have fallen prey to the very judicial and governing bodies which suppressed and enslaved them mentally and physically. They would be immured deep within the man-made walls of our penal systems, abused, tortured and made examples of within the social portraits. Their speech and cause would be silenced by the lethal henchmen and mercenaries of the governing body…for once again our nation has become the epitome of all that we once loathed and feared on distant shores.
Once again our beliefs in a higher power and force are falling under the scrutiny of those who govern and the judicial realms. We are becoming enslaved as productive members of society, merely “share croppers” for those whom are on self-serving agendas. Nothing but a brush stroke in the dark portraits of egotistical empowered journeys within the repetitive history of time.
The Patriot Act, portrayed as a “blanket of comfort and National Security”, is nothing more than a portrait, a canvas covered with man-made paranoia and fear, to suppress the dissension within the citizens of this nation for the direction our country is traveling on. To stifle the very elements within the citizens of this nation that once made it flourish, survive the struggles within life and have worldwide envy for the American dream and our way of life. There was a time on earth when we could point our fingers at other nations and still walk away with dignity and the respect of the world….as an American, one who loves this country very much, it doesn’t feel very good to now have every finger in the world, pointed your way….
With the growing tide of corruption within the government on the Hill, we see a new trendy fashion and fad sweeping America, on all levels of government and within all entities of politics. From down out right bold face lies by top elected administrative and appointed politicians, to our judicial and law enforcement realms. A new craze and fad is sweeping the nation, as citizens rush to gobble up the new psychological “foreplay” on the block.
With large corporate moguls and special interest groups dumping millions of dollars in “wetback” favors and campaigns to sway Washington their way, to the new “power mongers and thugs” within our Federal, State and local political realms, the nation’s roots of morality, ethics and humanity, corrode and dishearten the citizenry of a nation. As law enforcement and intelligent agencies patrol and protect the citizens of a nation, we see an increase in the violation of human right, the U.S. Constitution and the enforcement of laws, through bending and twisting age old policies and ethics.
The citizens of this nation are asked to give up their rights of privacy, morals and ethics for those whom would line their pockets with our sacrifices and sufferings. As those entrenched within the elite social ladder build larger silos to contain their erosive booty, those whom are impoverished and disenfranchised are asked to turn the other cheek and keep plugging the elite social meter.
The moral and ethical conduct portrayed by the nation’s top political figures is having a trickle down effect and conditioning America for a new history book to be written……
“Within the belly of a ship, lies the stench of many journeys. One can not truly enjoy the voyage, unless he is allowed to smell the breeze off the ocean and see the horizon in the light of day.”
“Where Art thou America of mine?”….
I leave as I came, with much love and respect for life….
Lady Gray- Mar. 1st, 2006
