The Land of Pretenders

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

America has become a land of pretenders.  Most Americans decided long ago to quit caring and became pretenders, they became happy idiots in happy idiot land. They decided to struggle for the legal tender, to become part of the machine, to exist in their consumer homes on their consumer streets in their consumer towns, sitting on their consumer asses on their consumer couches, watching their consumer tv’s, where the ads take aim, and lay their claim, to the heart and the soul of the spender.

They decided to believe in whatever may lie, in those things that money can buy. They decided to do whatever they’re told to do, to buy whatever they’re told to buy, to watch whatever they’re told to watch, to fight whoever they’re told to fight, to consume and consume and then consume some more until they die and consume a six foot deep hole in the ground.        

Are you there?

Say a prayer, for the pretenders.

Who started out so young and strong . . .

Only to surrender:

For generations, tens of millions of Americans graduated from high school, got a job to pay their rent, and went to work each day, for ten years, for twenty years, for thirty, forty years or more, pretending every day that it had some meaning.  They pretended cheating each other for legal tender was the American Dream, they pretended cheating their way in and out of marriages would finally bring them happiness with the pretender they were meant to pretend with, they pretended the slaughter in Vietnam was patriotic, they pretended it was Morning in America, they pretended a Thousand Points of Light wasn’t bullshit, they pretended Rush Limbaugh wasn’t a psychopath, they pretended a born again uniter not divider lying asshole won the presidency fair and square by stealing it on national television every day for 30 days.        

And when each evening rolled around, they came home from work and laid their bodies down, too tired to think, too tired to dream of a better world, too tired to care about anything but making it through another work week, so they could get another paycheck, so they could go on consuming themselves through life like every other pretender on the Happy Idiot Expressway to Nowhere:

They started out young and strong, but they surrendered.  They let the ships carrying their dreams sail away, and stayed behind in happy idiot land, where nationwide happy idiocy seemed normal to them because the happy idiots on tv told them it was normal, and the happy idiots in the GOP told them it was normal, and the happy idiot evangelicals in their megachurches told them megahappy idiocy was the way to megahappy Heaven.      

We haven’t surrendered, even though we know what became of the changes we waited for love to bring. Those changes were buried here with a murdered President:

And here with his murdered brother:

And here with with a murdered Seeker of Equality for all people:

Were the lives of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening?

No.  Their lives were a preview of a greater awakening.

Be the change you wish to see in the world, and then say a prayer for the pretenders.  

Better yet, talk to a pretender, and then talk to another one, and then another one.  Ask them if they want their children to be pretenders too, while the ships bearing their dreams sail out of sight, while wars for oil go on and on, while corporate exploiters exploit with impunity and the lying politicians lie with impunity and NSA spies spy with impunity and the whole world goes to hell because everyone in power is pretending it isn’t.  

Ask the pretenders to join us.  We’re tearing at the evil in this world with all our might, but there aren’t enough of us.  

Yet.

But there will be.

We can change this world, we have to change it, so someday, when the morning light finally comes streaming in at the dawn of peace for humanity, every boy can find himself a girl who can show him what laughter means, and they’ll fill in the missing colors in each other’s paint-by-number dreams, and no one will surrender their hopes because they’re told to, and no one will hate because they’re told to, and no one will fight because they’re told to, and no one will kill because they’re told to, and the world will live in peace because enough Americans in 2008 became the change they wished to see in the world.