The avalanche of emotion, conjured
by politicians and the media, by way of their countless lies and omissions, has
all but buried the average man’s ability to wade through the depths of
misinformation, or, think rationally about the direction we as a species are
headed. Frankly, it’s starting to scare me. I don’t know how much longer
people will be able to live in this world if the true nature of what’s
transpiring in it is kept from them, either by the media, or their own foolish
desire not to know—to remain ignorant and just not think about it. And that,
ultimately, will be what paves the way for further violations of our civil
liberties; for greater force, used against our ‘enemies’, both foreign and
domestic. It is this compulsion, to ‘save ourselves’ and lie down in the face
of oppression, that will, consequently, see us become oppressed, exploited,
impoverished and desolate. And, if you think this is an overstatement, if you
think the future of the industrialized world is nothing but a bright, sparking
technological wonder in which everyman is a God and every God showers man with
love and forgiveness despite the hubris of our society, and the blissful naivety
that has allowed things to get this bad, then I’m sorry, but you need to wake
the fuck up.
The slow creep of extremism from
the far right has swallowed the fledgling cries of rational minds—silenced
their pleas for progressive causes and legitimate change and, instead, has left
them stunned and frozen in the wake of an ever expanding abyss of hatred and
fear—alienated and ostracized, as if being a moderate intellectual has suddenly
become synonymous with being in a freak show. Journalists are a dying bread.
Instead, pundits plunder our hearts and fill our minds with bullshit more fit
for tabloids than headlines. It’s suffocating us—it’s pulling the air out of
our lungs and the truth out of our hearts. And, now, stranded under the weight
of the avalanche we scream for someone to help us, to make it all better and protect
us from where we find ourselves. But the truth is, only we can pull ourselves
out of the abyss. Only we can stand up and fight for what we’ve taken for
granted for so long. And only we can change the world before we’re buried under
the weight of it.
As always, I retain some semblance
of hope that mankind can recognize the error of its ways before it’s too late
and change the course of history. But I am not so hopeful as to believe that we
will do so before things grow far worse than they already are. I am not so
hopeful as to believe that greed and power will fall broken at the feet of love
and equality. They never will, for they never have. And, despite the luxuries
we enjoy and the brutal past that we have endeavored to leave behind us, we are
no better now than those who have fallen victim to similar fates in the pages
of history. We the people are still we the people, just as those who have seen
fit to assume power parallel infamous dictatorial figures, using the timeless
tactic of emotional avalanche to crush descent and burry their opponents. And
while many have managed to miraculously surface from the cold, dark, depths of
ignorance and fear that would have seen them buried and forgotten, they,
nevertheless, stand on uncertain ground poised to crumble beneath them if they
so much as make a sound.
