I’ve given up on this community. Few people bother to speak out on issues of the day. This suggests we don’t concern ourselves with subjects that once occupied the minds of America’s founders. People are just too busy trying to keep the mortgage paid to consider larger issues. Besides, there’s a bit of food on the table and a football game on TV, right?

Be satiated, America. Withdraw into the warm cocoon of your most immediate desires and impulses. We’ve pretty much done that. It’s the easy thing to do in a world that has become unwieldy and complex beyond simple understanding. Better to focus on gossip that crosses the screen of our smartphones than to concern ourselves with whether our core interests are being represented accurately by political leadership.

Celebrate your apathy America, it’s the one great attribute of our generation. Politicians know they can count on you not to rock the boat, so they’ll continue to do as they please — or as their monied backers demand. Public consent for the imperial agenda can always be manufactured later. This is how we got where we are today.

This is how republicans came to support Donald Trump, which is roughly equivalent to standing in the middle of a bridge with a cinder block tied to your leg. This is how the conservative runner-up became Ted Cruz, a man who read Dr. Seuss’ children’s book “Green Eggs And Ham” from the Senate floor during a filibuster. Do these people represent your interests?

The situation isn’t much better for democrats, who have turned away from establishment candidate Hillary Clinton after hearing her support President Barack Obama’s unpopular political transition policy for Arab states in the Mideast. Weary of the failures of Bush’s regime change and Obama’s political transition agendas, and hearing basically the same stuff from Hillary regarding the situation in Syria, these Democrats have turned instead to political outsider and democratic socialist Bernie Sanders. This is also equivalent to standing in the middle of a bridge with a cinder block tied to your leg.

Clinton said she would listen to Americans, but if she was truly listening she would remember in 2008 we voted for an end to U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts. Likewise, Trump is too busy stroking his ego and admiring his reflection to hear our concerns.

The answer to these problems won’t be found on Facebook, Twitter, or Fox News, but that’s the current limit of our intellectual capacity. Maybe it’s time to put down the phone and read a book. Perhaps a cook book. Surely there are recipes for the change we wanted but never got with Obama. Surely there are recipes to untie the rope and free ourselves from this cinder block that holds us down and consistently substitutes the establishment’s agenda for our own demands.

Time to put on a pot of coffee and gather around the kitchen table. Politically speaking, we’ve got to get busy living or get busy dying.

Bruce Vandiver
Lula