dumb

Hey, youth of America!

Remember 9/11? Tomorrow marks the eight year anniversary. Last year my Rhetoric Teacher went around the class and asked us to recall how we felt on that day. I rose my hand and said something about how, well, I didn't know how to feel.

Walking down stairs, half awake, seeing the replay of a plane just collide into a building--I really just dissociated right then and there. I did not know what to think. I felt like an eerie ghost floating in this world of fatal handed Realities. I went to school, and it was a dream, really--all these scared eyes bantering too and fro--we went to the football field, held hands in an enormous circle, and prayed.

It is quite the thing to realize I was 11 years old.

I am nineteen, now. Almost twentyteen.

Still trying to reconcile how to feel.

And I know hindsight is 20/20. And I know it is human nature to convey things happening in the past as much more obvious as they actually are. And I know maybe the American people are a little too exhausted to be outraged--THE ECONOMY!--, but I want to remind everyone that simply not giving a shit about the course of history is only going to cause us to become more and more powerless and fearful of our country.

Merely continuing our day to day lives without the least bit of investigation and questioning to this framework of reality is a concession of our wills and rights as human beings.

Are Americans playing dumb? The greater our ability to influence the world around us, the more empowered and entitled we have felt, and yet in the face of this empowerment we still play dumb to the consequences of our government's actions. We want to be catered to, hence the American public treats its every sector of society as if it were a product to be bought.

Everyone is trying to sell us something, getting us to act based on a simple impulse rather than engage in true discussion making us something more of a Citizen rather than a transistor for capital.

Yesterday, South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson had an emotional outburst during Barrack Obama's address concerning Health Care Reform.

He called Obama a liar.

All the gung-ho evidence that the Bush Administration compelled the American people to go to war in Iraq has now surmounted to be false.

Congressional oversight was one of the crucial ideas of this country meant to ensure the Executive branch was not a dictatorship. It is good to challenge our President. Where was the same indignation when our former president endlessly threatened us with visions of mushroom clouds? Where was it? Where is it now?

He called Obama a liar.

I am tired of turning a scathing blind eye to all these spheres that need society to be engaged in rather than docile morons looking for the appropriate sales pitch to garner a vote. And in our docile contentment, we create a politician who must get as much money as possible to have the most effective advertisement campaign because this populace cannot be trusted to vote for a leader with the best idea.

In a way, this is the government that the American people deserves. We continue to play dumb because we do not allow ourselves to see any semblance of the full picture that our life styles entail.

So, I am going to ask my generation these questions that have been haunting me every day for the longest time.

When are we going seek the truth rather than accept whatever allows us to stay tuned to all these distractions that leave us so goddamn powerless?

Why did we invade Iraq? Why are we, more likely than not, going to send more troops to Afghanistan?

Every day we ignore these questions, shrug the burden of our responsibility to ourselves, and the world, we become, more and more, the liars we malign in our politick.

Why are we playing dumb?