Requiem For An American Dream (1/2)
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Sadly enough I don't think the average American would be able to tell you where that passionate and inspiring bit of poetry comes from. Hard to believe, considering it's inscribed on the base of what is probably our most meaningful and easily recognized national monument. Each year thousands of Americans visit the Statue of Liberty, stand in its shadow and read this poem. Then they go home, no different then when they came. That's what is truly depressing about such a vast part of today's society...these words meaning absolutely nothing. They no longer strike people as the fundamental CORE of what makes America great, or as the guiding ideology of our country. America has forgotten what it means to be American. Our country has forgotten that we are ALL ultimately descended from a motley, hodge-podge collection of rejects from other countries...if you really want to be honest about it. Rejects who for the most part, didn't look alike, didn't talk alike, didn't think alike, didn't pray alike; and really didn't have much in common at all. And yet there was always one thing they DID have in common. They all shared that same enduring dream of a country where everyone was welcome, everyone was equal and everyone was free. That was the country our ancestors founded, and that is the country that America has fought and struggled to become ever since. Why then today, does it seem like the country as a whole has lost sight of the idea?? Why is the income gap between families worse then it ever has been? Why are racism and ethnic discrimination still alive and well in this, the country of equality? The answer is simple really. America has finally come full circle. The majority of our country now fears and despises the very thing that made it great: diversity. How else do you explain the fact that the majority of the politicians we elect now have goals like,
---Making it harder to immigrate to our country
---Cutting taxes for the wealthiest 10% of the population and not the rest
---Giving Christianity a privileged place in our courts and political system
---Eliminating laws designed to help minorities gain equality
---Allowing massive corporations to dominate markets
---Denying basic rights to gay and lesbian couples
Is this really the kind of country we want to live in?? A country where everyone is a clone of everyone else, and the only thinking allowed, is the thinking approved by the people in power??? To me, this sounds a frightening amount like Orwell's 1984, and even more terrifyingly like the origins of totalitarianism and a dictatorship. And yet somehow the American spirit endures...we hope.
END PART 1/2
Sadly enough I don't think the average American would be able to tell you where that passionate and inspiring bit of poetry comes from. Hard to believe, considering it's inscribed on the base of what is probably our most meaningful and easily recognized national monument. Each year thousands of Americans visit the Statue of Liberty, stand in its shadow and read this poem. Then they go home, no different then when they came. That's what is truly depressing about such a vast part of today's society...these words meaning absolutely nothing. They no longer strike people as the fundamental CORE of what makes America great, or as the guiding ideology of our country. America has forgotten what it means to be American. Our country has forgotten that we are ALL ultimately descended from a motley, hodge-podge collection of rejects from other countries...if you really want to be honest about it. Rejects who for the most part, didn't look alike, didn't talk alike, didn't think alike, didn't pray alike; and really didn't have much in common at all. And yet there was always one thing they DID have in common. They all shared that same enduring dream of a country where everyone was welcome, everyone was equal and everyone was free. That was the country our ancestors founded, and that is the country that America has fought and struggled to become ever since. Why then today, does it seem like the country as a whole has lost sight of the idea?? Why is the income gap between families worse then it ever has been? Why are racism and ethnic discrimination still alive and well in this, the country of equality? The answer is simple really. America has finally come full circle. The majority of our country now fears and despises the very thing that made it great: diversity. How else do you explain the fact that the majority of the politicians we elect now have goals like,
---Making it harder to immigrate to our country
---Cutting taxes for the wealthiest 10% of the population and not the rest
---Giving Christianity a privileged place in our courts and political system
---Eliminating laws designed to help minorities gain equality
---Allowing massive corporations to dominate markets
---Denying basic rights to gay and lesbian couples
Is this really the kind of country we want to live in?? A country where everyone is a clone of everyone else, and the only thinking allowed, is the thinking approved by the people in power??? To me, this sounds a frightening amount like Orwell's 1984, and even more terrifyingly like the origins of totalitarianism and a dictatorship. And yet somehow the American spirit endures...we hope.
END PART 1/2
posted by CarpeDM | 7:36 PM
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