The air in the early morning is crisp and even as the sun warms the day, there is a chill in the air telling of things to come. It was a hot summer, as I reflect from a deployed location, the sun reflecting off of a desert landscape is blinding white and the aired climate whips hot dust filled wind into everything that you own. We watched the media coverage of the worlds escalating trials from a far, recognizing events from all over the world as places we had collectively been not so long ago. I’ve always been excited and renewed by the coolness of the days of Autumn, there’s nothing like an extended isolation from society to put it all in perspective. The Outsiders looking in.
I came to realize my societies dependence almost 8 years ago as I walked to the beach one evening in the low country of the deep south. As the sun set in the western sky, the blue illumination from the living room LED T.V.’s of the houses I walked by were unmistakable, casting an ominous glow outside of their windows and onto the empty street. House after house I walked by, blue illumination with no signs of life from within, and then I realized that Dancing with the Stars was broadcasting. My countrymen have become hopelessly distracted, detached and utterly dependent. Football season is a spectacle to behold, and nowhere is our distraction more evident than during my beloved fall. Men and ever growing numbers of women flock to television sets, with open computers to check stats, with determination and hubris unmatched. A colleague brought my attention to a co-worker whom thousands of miles away, his wife held a phone up to the television so he could watch his beloved team on game day, “now that’s a real woman”, my colleague commented as I walked away baffled. Of all the violence, of all the hypocrisy and crooked dealings at the most top levels of power, my countrymen seem devoid of passion lest it be for a beloved sports team.
As the heat and carelessness of the summer fade away into the record books, the brisk air brings realization to the further divide of my country. Not 5 minutes from where I first discovered the beauty of the changing of the seasons, mass rioters destroy and victimize those they see as their oppressors. The blue illumination from the television further divides as the media, biased by lack of diversity and ownership, spreads information spun to augment the ideals of those that pay them, and to them the administration that abets them. The most discouraging thing about all of this is that the masses are too distracted to see it, too obstructed from plain view are the nefarious dealings that have been afoot for far too long in the highest places of power, but a glimmer of hope shines through.
This election year will be looked back upon as a pivotal point in American history for reasons that fork into two different fates from there on out. The irony of this race for highest elected official of the free world is not lost on the wise. Listen to the candidacy wafting from the blue illumination as it fills your living room. The left meticulously crafting and subtly cloaking the meaning of her words to ensure that your assumptions to look behind the cloak of Oz are nothing more than the idle concerns of the conspiracy theorist, and that the way forward is the continued destruction of intolerable western morals and the blatantly offensive nuclear family. The right tapping into the dying heart of American virtue but only as a plea to emotion, with no plan, no substance, only veiled promises from the czar of a monetary empire of himself.
At no point in American history has the govern been so out of touch with the governed, and at no point in American history has it been so blatantly obvious. The cynical humor in the irony does not escape me–the new pariah, student of history, philosophy, science and reason with crippling debt ensuring years of indentured servitude to boot! Like Black Elk who attempted to rally the natives against violent invasion, I fear it’s a losing battle. The new sensation of the chill on my skin in the morning air reminds my innate that change is in the season, and so a season of change is upon us. As this election year plays out, stand up and look out your window outside of the blue glow from your television, the power is in you “for the people and by the people.” Wake up.
