migblog

i'm sitting here in seat sixteen-a of alaska airlines flight three-thirty-nine, en route to oakland international airport after having passed through two security checks at john wayne international airport. i have a clear view of wings and a partial mountain range riding the flatness of the southern central valley. the plane's only half full, and it's not too bad, considering i had to wake up at around seven o'clock this morning.

i never really realized how ridiculous this whole thing was until i had to step aside to the booth where they hold you for "additional screenings": for another ten minutes, they sit you down, make you take of shoes and belts, search your stuff, another round of "spread your legs about shoulder width and have your arms out and extended please" with the tsa administrators.

what fear. what fear our government has instilled in us.

and if you don't like it, they call you unpatriotic. how hypocritical, considering everything going wrong is thanks to the big companies that control the everyday minutiae of the stock market, the government, the media, and the very places you come to work for. corporations sell themselves, and in doing so, are ingrates when it comes to appreciating the middleman.

imagine that about one and a half trillion dollars in deficit will be paid by our generation. that's a thousand billion, my friends, one trillion that we will be toiling half our lives to get this country out of the rut that it's in.

imagine the work force in thirty years, when many might not have even received a high school diploma thanks to seemingly interminable budget cuts concerning the education and social welfare of today's children. how, then, would they be able to pay off that deficit?

imagine the united states, in trouble, looking for allies in a few years, when all it has are three friends in the united nations. the united nations used to mean something, a place where everyone was on equal footing, whether you were a third world country or a city-state or even communist. what has this administration done to respect that party? declare war on iraq, despite the outcries of diplomats and ambassadors to give the inspectors more time.

not that the inspectors needed time to inspect the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. there were lies upon lies generated by this government that saddam was building this and hiding that, having "nucular" power and exercising it to some questionable use. it's not enough that this country was already starting to become a police state; no, they had to police the entire world.

and what good does it do? nothing. two and a half years now, we've been trying to catch osama, and he's still out there in his raggedy outfit outwitting the smartest and outliving the healthiest. saddam, we caught in a rat hole, but who's to say that the government will be fair to him, too? in a very deliberate violation of the geneva convention, we haven't even let international inspectors to examine the state of our prisoners of war. and that's the nicest part about it.

sure, two and a half years ago, we were all shocked by the craziness that ensued on black tuesday. everyone was affected, me not excluded, and everyone lost something that day. but we all grew as people, we all grew as a nation, and we all grew knowing that our country will bounce back.

now we grow, and realize that our country is mere politics and conservative agendas. what once were the guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness now all translate into "the preservation of life at all costs and no to abortion," "liberty to express oneself at the free speech zone and only at the free speech zone," and "happiness in god without separation of church and state."

much more issues abound, but there is one underlying thing in all this: we, as a nation, know better. we've been involved in too many things that we don't like, and sure, we support whatever the government does, but there comes a point where we just have to say "enough" and take the country in a direction that we envision to be better, one where we don't fear government agencies, one where we are free to express who we are, without censure or threat, one where the people matter and the people count.

i'm getting off my soapbox. you already know that you need to vote, you already know all the stuff tha goes on because of the news and this information revolution. you already know this, and if yuo don't, thank your government.

i'll be in oakland in approximately twenty minutes. that ginger ale sure helps out in this flight.

i'm out.

posted by Open Source Food @ 11:17 AM