Sanity Plea
(Written March 25, 2003; unpublished, although the San Diego Reader had its chance.)
It has been a long time since I believed in the America that I believed in as a child. I don’t think
that’s growing up, I think it’s sad. I thought that this young, vibrant nation of ours stood for
liberty, justice, and the pursuit of happiness for all of its people. Over the course of my life, I
have been slowly, sometimes painfully reeducated about these assumptions. I’ve cried over the
assassinations of great leaders I wasn’t alive to see, shot dead by minions of a system of power
and greed. I’ve cried over the massacres of natives of this land, killed by men with “yellow”
fever and land lust, zealots for their manifest destiny. I’ve cried thinking of the people who
suffer needlessly from common illness and malnutrition while living in the wealthiest nation the
world has ever known. I am damn tired of crying.
Isn’t this country supposed to stand up for the under dog? To make things right for the weak?
To muzzle the greedy and build up the noble? Aren’t we supposed to be the defenders of peace,
the advocates of justice? That’s what I believed this nation stood for and I am tired of seeing it
all wash away.
Now we are on the brink of fighting a war, in fact like many writers have written in the past few
days, by the time you read this, it may be too late, and I haven’t even tears left to cry; though I
should be bawling like a child. All that’s left in me is a constricted throat, indignation, and a
sense of impotence in that so many bright minds are blithely letting bullies unleash destruction
on the world. And no, I am not talking about Saddam Hussein. In fact, because I have spent my
life getting an education and educating myself by living and working in the world, I have learned
a thing or two about how things really work and I am tired of being lied to.
I have learned that while innocents go hungry and suffer in a depressed economy, our leaders opt
to dump money into the laps of the wealthy so that some scraps can trickle down to feed the
poor. And I hear them call themselves compassionate. I have learned that people can (and do!)
become homeless because they couldn’t cover their medical bills, and this in the richest nation in
the world, where every citizen could easily be covered, but isn’t. Then I hear them called lazy,
people say that they are leeching off of the people who work for a living. (Leeching? I don’t see
them getting fat. Someday we’ll realize that healthcare is a basic human right, and we’ll stop
doling it out to those lucky enough to afford it while withholding it from everyone else.) And
I’ve seen Mexicans break their backs behind the kitchen doors of many fine restaurants, only to
make a third of what the attractive, tanned youth who serve the food they cook do. I am tired of
seeing these things, I am tired of hearing our leaders say that this is just the way it is, and I am
tired of everybody just accepting that life can be that horrible for so many Americans.
We need to wake up. We need to stop patting ourselves on the back for our greatness and calling
ourselves the leaders of the free world while we run roughshod over it in the name of our own
freedoms. Let’s put our six-shooters back in our holsters, open our eyes to the reality of today’s
American nation and today’s world theater. We are a nation that is falling apart, and it’s not
because of the liberal media or welfare mothers or drugs, as the demagogues would have us
believe. No, it’s because we can’t solve every problem with a gun pointed at the bad guys while
we scream out a war cry for freedom. We have to start thinking about how we got here as a
nation, we have to be aware of our history and we have to be aware of the reality of the present.
We can no longer sweep these things under the rug. We are a great nation and we stand for great
things- and just like every great person that I know, we are not perfect. We have done some
horrible things in our past and we are letting some pretty horrible things happen now. Let’s stop
the charade; let’s wake up to our situation and accept these as growing pains. Let’s solve our
problems, and emerge from our nation’s adolescence as a thoughtful, patient, and mature nation
on the world stage.
