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The Backbone of America
I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 today, and if you don't want to hear my reactions please do scroll right on by. I won't be angry. But I didn't want to put this into a neat little link, like censoring myself. I want it out there like all my other feelings, because I think I owe it to myself.
Today, I really realized for the first time who really is the Backbone of America. My people.
The people who are the worst off, who live in the most run-down places without the money to care properly for their children, the people who are unemployed, who have to work three jobs to scrape by, the people in rural America are the ones who are first to jump in a war effort. The people who America has handed the shortest end of the stick, because the rich want to stay rich, get richer, while the poor are left to starve, those are the ones who want to defend America. America, where they work their fingers to the bone to survive so that the fat cats on top can keep raking in the money. Those are my people, they come from where I come from.
Those scenes in that movie, showing those homes that are too small, run down, falling apart, barely sufficent, it was like looking at a movie about home. It is my home, my aunt's, my uncle's, my grandfathers, my friends. I live there, in the backbone of America. I live in an area where the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, and every other damn thing set up tables in my high school cafeteria every week and recruited students. Because those kids are from small houses with too many children and not enough to eat, live on barely subsisting farms, live the kind of live that makes the Military into a very viable, if not the only option for them to get anywhere in life. I live there. I come from the places where the soldiers are coming from. My cousin, with his little baby girl, my friend, who could go so far in college but can't afford it without the Army's help, my uncle, my nephew and neice, my brothers, my sister, my cousins, my friends, we are all those people. The people who raised me, the people I grew up with, surrounded by them, they have a love and a loyalty that knows no bounds because money does not factor in. They work 10 or 14 hour days at jobs they hate so that they can have money to survive, and they gladly do it for those they love, but money means nothing to them but food and the happiness of their children. It is nothing to them. Not like those that rule this country, those that control us, the Backbone, to whom money is everything, and only with money comes love and loyalty. In a perfect world, the Backbone would be in control, would be the ones to say whether this country should go to war. The Backbone should be able to say "No, our children will not die in this war, we will not fight it" but the government uses manipulation, fear, twisting of facts to control us, to make us think the cause is righteous. To send those citizens of the spine of our society out to kill people just like them over what? Money. It is not okay. And I want to scream, but I know that I really can't change anything, not right now and not just me, because these ideas are the VERY BASIS of how our country EXISTS, and they cannot be changed overnight. But god, do I wish there was something I could do to change it and to protect my people.
Breathe out.
Today, I really realized for the first time who really is the Backbone of America. My people.
The people who are the worst off, who live in the most run-down places without the money to care properly for their children, the people who are unemployed, who have to work three jobs to scrape by, the people in rural America are the ones who are first to jump in a war effort. The people who America has handed the shortest end of the stick, because the rich want to stay rich, get richer, while the poor are left to starve, those are the ones who want to defend America. America, where they work their fingers to the bone to survive so that the fat cats on top can keep raking in the money. Those are my people, they come from where I come from.
Those scenes in that movie, showing those homes that are too small, run down, falling apart, barely sufficent, it was like looking at a movie about home. It is my home, my aunt's, my uncle's, my grandfathers, my friends. I live there, in the backbone of America. I live in an area where the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, and every other damn thing set up tables in my high school cafeteria every week and recruited students. Because those kids are from small houses with too many children and not enough to eat, live on barely subsisting farms, live the kind of live that makes the Military into a very viable, if not the only option for them to get anywhere in life. I live there. I come from the places where the soldiers are coming from. My cousin, with his little baby girl, my friend, who could go so far in college but can't afford it without the Army's help, my uncle, my nephew and neice, my brothers, my sister, my cousins, my friends, we are all those people. The people who raised me, the people I grew up with, surrounded by them, they have a love and a loyalty that knows no bounds because money does not factor in. They work 10 or 14 hour days at jobs they hate so that they can have money to survive, and they gladly do it for those they love, but money means nothing to them but food and the happiness of their children. It is nothing to them. Not like those that rule this country, those that control us, the Backbone, to whom money is everything, and only with money comes love and loyalty. In a perfect world, the Backbone would be in control, would be the ones to say whether this country should go to war. The Backbone should be able to say "No, our children will not die in this war, we will not fight it" but the government uses manipulation, fear, twisting of facts to control us, to make us think the cause is righteous. To send those citizens of the spine of our society out to kill people just like them over what? Money. It is not okay. And I want to scream, but I know that I really can't change anything, not right now and not just me, because these ideas are the VERY BASIS of how our country EXISTS, and they cannot be changed overnight. But god, do I wish there was something I could do to change it and to protect my people.
Breathe out.
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