once upon a….

The following post is by MYRLN, a non-blogger who is Kalilily’s guest writer every Monday.
ONCE UPON A…..
We should pay as much attention to our falling nation as we do to autumn leaves.
As our country sinks slowly in the west, but — unlike the sun — with no promise of rising again tomorrow, we Americans pretty much sit around sipping a drink of ho-hum. We watch the disappearance being successfully engineered by a barely intelligent president (hell-bent on resuming the Crusades) and a box-brained veep who lives in a closet somewhere and only comes out at night (not really). That such a twosome is successfully dismantling the country is all the more astonishing. How can they be succeeding? Where are the checks and balances? Well…they’ve all failed to do their job because Americans largely haven’t insisted they do so. Like the civically lazy lardasses we’ve become, we’ve simply let go of our country from our grip.
Congress? Hah…corporate tools.
Media? Hah-hah. Also corporate and largely racing to reach tabloid dominance.
Citizen protests? Too much work, and besides, they’d be labeled as terrorism cuz we let this administration define everything in any manner it likes and we buy it — cuz we don’t wanna be unpatriotic.
Okay, then how about that worldwide, 21st century tool, the Internet? Works great for users to reach each other, work up ideas and plans. Unfortunately, it also keeps most indoors, physically isolated from each other. And even 10 million emails to the White House amount to nothing. They’re only a giant-sized Delete button away from extinction. Seven years of stasis supports the truth of that.
In another day and age, with a different kind of mentality with a sense of civic responsibility, the streets would have long ago been clogged with protestors almost every day. Media would have told the government to stuff its lies and evasions and coverage rules and would be hounding every government official trying to hide from the transparency the public is owed; photos of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq would be published daily for our eyes to see and our hearts to wince and our courage to grow. Congressional electees and staffs would have to choose between their corporate masters and saying the truth to a dogged media or to persistent gangs of protesters clogging their every path.
Sound like a fairy tale? Okay, let’s make it one…or at the least the start of one.
Once upon a time, there was a country that built itself on the amazing premise that its governance belonged to the people, not to some king or dictator or pea-brained despot. For a long time, that country flourished under that new approach of liberty and justice. Then one day…
You finish it.

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