The United States of Dystopia

His last post was religious, and now he’s talking politics?! Who is this guy and what has he done with Russ Viola?!
Well, what can I say? The fourth of July just passed, an american religious extremist commits the largest mass shooting in U.S. history, I just attended the funeral of an old friend, inexcusable police brutality against civilians, a sniper of police officers in Dallas (multiple dead), and protests have broken out in many towns in America. So I figured a rant about our current state of affairs in the land of the (not-so) free and the home of the (marginally) brave, was in order.

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For your edification and amusement, I’ll get the ball rolling with celebratory Fourth of July pic. Here we see presidential hopeful Donald Trump being burned in effigy in Mexico.

trump_effigy

You don’t need a play-by-play of what’s been going on these last few weeks across the country. If you’ve been awake, turned on the tv or checked the FBook even once…you’ve seen the chaos. The proverbial pot that is bubbling, its lid stuttering out a frenetic S.O.S.

Here we have a photo that’s gone viral of a protester in Baton Rouge and the ‘Black Clad Storm Troopers’ as they’ve been called.

All she needs is a daisy to slip into the barrel of one of their guns.

All she needs is a daisy to slip into the barrel of one of their guns.

Did our parents feel like this during Woodstock and Vietnam?

Are the feelings I’m having right now, age/generation related? I mean to say, am I just a couple of years away from being that old guy yelling, “Get off my lawn! Damn kids!”

By saying this is ‘just the battle of our age‘ I don’t mean to belittle the battle itself. I’m just wondering if every generation goes through some sort of similar growing pains on a societal level, and if so, shouldn’t we look to those that went before us for guidance?

How did our mothers and fathers handle these economic, societal and racial clashes?

…or did they handle them at all?

Did they actually DO something to mitigate tensions during and through the civil rights movement? Or did they just sublimate the racism and hatred and pass that hatred on to their children? On to us…
Am I wrong here? Maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe the emancipation proclamation, civil rights movement and other acts that our forefathers took for equality WERE mitigation steps and we looked at them as answers, or a cure all. These legal constructs leveled to playing field, so to speak, but they did not erase racism.

I’m stuck here, people. I just don’t have the words to express how crazy I feel this country, our society has gotten. Technological and artistic achievements are beginning to pale against the darkening tumultuous sky up ahead.
I find I have more questions than answers these days. I’ve become un-moored, adrift in a sea whose sky I used to think I could navigate through.

I’m truly at a loss…

When I feel like this…I turn to Rumi. So I guess I’ll leave you with this:

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
-Rumi

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