State of the Union

America's played a trip on my mind, not just lately, but since I started noticing those small cues of our issues.

And issues we have.  Issues of security caused by a sense of fear.  Issues of image, caused by a sense of belonging.  Issues of intellect, caused by a senseless taste.

But where did it all begin?  Our "modern" or at least present times.

The frontier's been paved over for a century, a century before that we finally reached its end.  Progress has partly brought us here.

Booms in population spurred by war have bulked our nation double-over since the 1950s.  Population has partly brought us here.

But despite how much times and appearances change, the back beat currents of humanity remain the same.

For only a half century as destructive as the early 1900's could lead to such calm as the 1950's on.  Yet within those decades themselves, old friends and new fears clinched their iron grasp upon the world around them.  Leaving Atlas, alas, holding aloft our powder keg we call Earth in sheer terror of self-destruction by its inhabited people captivated solely by a dish of fear and loathing garnished by irreconcilable differences between ideas and creeds, big weapons, but weak trigger fingers.  A Cold War indeed.

Yet over the past few decades, American culture has been washed dirty, abash through a relentless drive for image without substance or substance on the rocks.  The remnant current of the counter-culture  in the American mainstream; drug up, tune in, and drop out.

American zeitgeist has shifted to apathy and lethargy, for no longer are we filled with fright and spite.

Sure we've scared of al-Qaeda and bin Laden, but fuck it, they're not across the street, they don't have a stockpile of nukes, we're not gettin' drafted, and they're poor.  Just pass up on the increasingly financial burden of airplane flights for cars and trains again, America on rewind.

Only watch TV that has no news value what-so-ever to avoid the scare-city that has become mainstream media.  Entertainment Kool-aid.

...and fuck reading, right?

Amidst terror, economic fallout, and the coming of the shrewd; Americans have weathered a hurricane decade ringing in the new millennium.  And where do we find ourselves now?  But in the eye of the storm.

Even now, as the body count in Haiti continues to climb, and the rains return to California, a perpetual veil guises the average attention of America.  The audience in Plato's Cave, deer caught in headlights, catatonia con carne.

Ever seen a half-drunk half-baked kid cruising down a rain-swept freeway hauling ass, 80 to 90 plus as if on a clear and dry day at the track?  It's more than luck which guides his wheel, fate for some reason is on the side of the stupid it appears.

But how?...to what charade can we conclude this bizarre circus we find ourselves in?

A mixed bag of sorts.  Individualism on high with acceptance on low.

For years, decades even, Americans the world over have starved their news appetite.  A civilization uninformed of the world around them, yet captivated by the manifestations of their own creations; our worst traits inherited by our Greek relics, fame and gossip...and the sooner the better.

Image on fast-forward with thought on pause.

Reality TV dressed up to play the part.  Faux stars dim-wittedly  shining across our LCD and plasma screens.  A microcosmic zoo of homosapiens, sans sapien.

It's fucking madness, and we need no other word.  Prime example?  Shit anything Reality TV.

Get an anti-social hot-wired hot-head post-teen mad woman from Compton on a show with a slew of up-tight "raised-right" girls from the other side of the Mississippi and what could happen?  Hell, don't even give them keys to the place when they arrive, just stock up the patio bar and leave the side gate unlocked, what could happen?...thanks Bad Girls Club, I put that image of breaking and entering due to alcoholic encouragement to good use!...finally at least.  To show how mad we've become in our heroin-styled chase for entertainment and ratings.

Sure it was funny, but what of us?  Who are we if indulgence in such mindless and occasionally drunken madness caught on camera becomes our week-night line-up?

Voraciously entertained or born to a burrow?

Caught up in the limelight or hidden in the shadows?

Social dichotomy?

Not a bridge to nowhere, just no bridge.  Only the charred remains of the bridge already burnt.