America.
Birthed by violent rebellion, it embarked on its new life ennobled by democratic ideals.
However, over the years that life has been impacted by forces who fear democracy's promise. For generations, the nation has relived its traumatic wresting from Mother England and, having been so negatively impacted, mutated to the point where it finds little motivation to action other than a defensive one.
It's as if the country has aged into an overworked adult, maladjusted through heady years of adulation and affluence, and now older, out of shape, feeling its mortality and in need of psychoanalysis (or at least a reasonably priced juicer); a jittery, paranoid xenophobe who only acts charitably if spurred by the promise of profit or the threat of violence.
In other words, what the hell happened to America's conscience?
Even with classic rules of civil engagement having been stripped away, you'd think fundamental decency would kick in now and then, if only out of a desire to do something occasionally novel. But such impulses are considered antiquated, naive and, hence, forgotten.
Obviously, there are individuals and substantial communities who neither fit these descriptions nor honor these impulses. The hard working, the humble, the curious, the creative---those qualities may very well more accurately depict the majority of Americans, whose own common sense rejects the path those in power seem to be forcing the country to tread. They don't feel the need to trumpet these facets, because it's not in their character to do so.
But as the bully media and their loudly partisan political and corporate enablers would have it, America should be something other, and the institutions the country has so long depended on for guidance have all been subsumed by the cynical shift in sensibility. Religion, politics, media---all have become slick facades, barely concealing their true intent.
Ah, religion.
Since many of those in the God Business have made a mockery of their company's once catchy slogans and by-laws having, for example, brutally molested young members of its flock and doing little in the way of prevention, a circumstance which has taken on the air a lamented but routine side effect (like those spoken in rapid bursts at the tail end of a pharmaceutical ad), the brand just doesn't have the credibility it once bore. And yet, the blindly faithful cling to the promise of salvation such institutions continue to advertise, regardless of their bastardization by corrupt forces.
And the media?
Gone are the PSA's and editorials aired during it's more innocent, less overwhelmingly intrusive days, which touted common courtesy or thrift, urged national or community service, encouraged caring and courtesy. And along with the disappearance of those modestly produced, corny nudges toward conscientious behavior, so seemingly has the behavior itself taken a powder. The phrase "good deed for the day" is invariably said with snark and seconded with scorn by comically out-of-touch nerds. To be charitable, merciful, just -- or to be nice -- is a lame duck meme.
Politics?
There's little to add here that hasn't been said or isn't collectively felt. But given its crucial necessity, how could the very mechanism upon which democracy depends become so scornfully ineffectual? It's like allowing the marrow from which our life's blood is manufactured to become an object of scorn, our beating heart a barely tolerable blight. And while from its inception the political process has been referred to with knowing cynicism there was also inherent respect for what it could accomplish -- had to accomplish -- from the minds of dedicated, responsible, conscientious agents.
As religion and media provide less and less refuge from the reality of society's inequities, and business and government eschew any regulation which might prevent exploitation of people or resources at the expense of profit, there seems to be an exponential increase in the isolation of people from engaging in real-life interaction with the other members of their species; the consequential succor outlined in the rules of basic human interaction (i.e., love thy neighbor, blessed are the meek, be kind to animals, etc.) is becoming as quaint and forgotten as the typewriter, the dial phone and milk crates full of record albums.
The problem is, and always has been, the terminally reductive fact that there's money to be made, and absolute shitloads of the stuff when fear and loathing is injected into a porous populace, whose bellies are empty but who have forgotten what they are hungry for. Hence, they clamber like fish in a tank for whatever flakes of faux-food are flicked.
But they're hungry for what corporate controlled media, profiteering religion and a hopelessly gummed-up bureaucracy of a government cannot -- despite their promises -- provide:
Civility.
And the truth about how to behave while we are here, which religion, government and those old, corny PSA's would occasionally remind us ain't for very long.
If our current incarnation of interactive culture has inadvertently proven with its steady inducement to consume all manner of reckless, feckless, or toothless products, we and our cherished institutions are all, sadly, disposable.
And yet.
And yet, though not in vogue, never advertised, rarely personified or trumpeted, there are those who take the different approach, who see the beauty within each waking moment, appreciate the finite time we have to luxuriate in the senses, avail themselves of the diverse history humans have created and imagine a future of cooperative enterprise in which people interact with respect and civility. They teach and learn, passing on the harmony as well as the dissonance, understanding that one cannot exist without the other -- for long, that is.
As with someone who has reached this time of life, it's time now for America to come to grips with its reality, one which stemmed from the storied, violent birth which necessitated bold and brave action in its early days, the genuine potency and authority of its mid years, and most difficultly perhaps, the arrogance and paranoia -- the fruits of unregulated ambition, unchecked greed and diminution of conscience -- which mark the later years. Where America is and we all are today.
Maybe some therapy and a reasonably priced juicer?