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A Wind My Words Can Ride On

Tuesday, June 25, 2013 | 0 Comment(s)

Jon Gosselin now lives in the woods.  Yes, that Jon Gosselin.  He lives in the woods as in, he used to live in an apartment but the paparazzi found him there and  things got bad enough for him that now he lives in an undisclosed location in the friggin woods.  A man who became "famous" for having 8 children has been driven to campfire living and child-support payments.  While he is suing his ex, Kate, to get their children off the continuing reality show "Kate Plus 8," he wouldn't mind appearing on "Dancing with the Stars" in the future.  He lives in the woods.
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The Supreme Court made the decision today to throw out working legislation that was put in place to combat the myriad of obstacles that have been put in front of minority voters over the years.  In the dissenting opinion, Justice Ginsberg actually said that by revoking this piece of the Voter Rights Act we are dooming ourselves to repeat history.
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My gay friends have been stuck watching the Live SCOTUSBlog (not that it isn't an amazing site!), just to find out the schedule of the Supreme Court proceedings and decisions.  With this information they then get to tune back into this one live blog to find if their country has decided whether or not they deserve equal rights, or has instead decided to reschedule the announcement of said rights.
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The storms are getting worse.  You have to be seeing this too.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: We are living in the first scene of all of those disaster porn movies where the Earth is destroyed.  We are in those first scenes where everything seems just a little off.  Those early moment when the characters notice they've been having more  monsoons and tsunamis than there used to be.  Hurricanes and tornados have become a seasonal weather pattern in some geographic areas, instead of sporadic occurrences.  And instead of investing in utilities like solar-power to curb this rising tide (pun intended), we have started fracking into our air and water supply in search of "clean natural gas."
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The good news, for me, is that I used to have a fear of what would happened when the sun burns out.  That particular doomsday scenario has been assuaged by the strong belief that while the Earth itself may make it until supernova, I see no possible trajectory where the human race is still living anywhere close to that point in "future history."
I realize that this is some pretty grim stuff, but I promise I'm not writing about it to bum you out.  These four vignettes are really just the tip of the iceberg.  It seems that similarly apocalyptic news reports are being released daily.  The United States is searching for the "spy" Edward Snowden, while conveniently sidestepping the irony attached to the fact that what he did was disclose that the United States is spying on its own citizenry.  A leopard was killed in Indiana, while not being native to this . . . um . . . continent.  (No "registered' leopards have been reported missing, whatever the hell that means.)  And don't confuse this leopard with the red panda that went missing in D.C.  Facebook's been giving away our user information for a few years now . . .  Gassings in Syria. Protests in Turkey. Revolt in Brazil.

I'm just writing all this stuff down because it freaks me out in a very real way.   Perhaps not each individual story, but the sum of all their parts.  I am scared by the way America's political landscape is moving.  I am scared watching our nation ignore the obvious warning signs that global warming is not a future problem, but a present present.  I am scared that we will still be busy worshiping the famous and beautiful when the smog rolls in and coats our towns and lungs.  I am scared to what ends the wealthy white lawmakers will go to in order to protect their institutionalized advantage in our ever-growing multi-colored America.

Mostly I'm scared that I'm the only who is experiencing the world like this.  While intellectually I may know that if the Daily Show exists, I must not be totally alone in these feelings, I can't help but feel that I am not the majority.

So I scream to you my reality, at the top of my fingertips' lungs, and I hope to catch a breeze.  A wind that my words can ride on.  My letter to the people, pleading with them to chose whether or not the madness in my mind belongs to me, or is merely the crystal clear reflection of an insane world.

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