What will happen to America?

Now I'm asking the questions...

There doesn't seem to be a place for me here. I have felt this for a long time.

I am not white
I am not Christian
I am not rich
I am not conservative
I am not hung up sexually
I am not OK with our love of violence

I am not comfortable in a hypocritical society
...where we promise equal protection under the law - unless you are poor, gay, etc.
...where we say "government for the people", but it really is for the special few
...where we say "government by the people", but only those who will tow the party line

We criticized communist Russia because people had to to be in the "party" to get anything
We criticize the middle east for having religious based government
We accuse Mexico of not caring for its poor
We call the Caribbean nations "Banana Republics" because of their stupid and corrupt governments.

Yes, like everyone else I am reacting to Hurricane Katrina, but for me, it is not the event itself itself as much as it is the incarnation of what I have for a long time believed about the form of "democracy" that we have here. This is not a democracy in the way I learned in 5th grade. We have a form of government that I have never heard of before. It's an oligarchy where the selection criteria to be the ruling class is money. The masses pay taxes (the "ruling party" does not) but are not really given much for that; it makes me think of the use of humans in "The Matrix" - our life force, the work of our hands, powers the social elite.

I am not as radical as the people who say we get nothing, that's not true - I look around me and see roads, and military, and other social programs - but I also see that the bottom rung here is so low and the top rung is so high.

I really believe that it is true that you have to take personal responsibility, but why is it that most of the people who are saying this are people who have never had to take personal responsibility. They are proud of the fact that they have won the socioeconomic race, but most of them practically started at the finish line.

The thing that has shocked me to the core about New Orleans is that it exposed that this is NOT a Republican thing. Where are the Democrats? Where is my party's leadership? This is an American thing. We as Americans have embraced our consumerist culture that measures worth only in terms of buying power. We are coming off of a 10 year orgy of expensive luxury cars and $500,000 houses. We sign our kids up for little league and scouts and private schools while there are other families that live in one bedroom apartments, don't own a washing machine, much less a car, and cannot get an adequate education for their kids.

...And we are OK with that because we can afford these things. To comfort ourselves we have made the words "afford", "deserve" and "earned" into synonyms.

No matter how much money I make, it will never mean that...

I have "earned" the right to ignore human suffering
I "deserve" not to have to consider the suffering of others
I can "afford" to believe that allowing others to suffer for my gain is acceptable

When I was a kid, people used to have bumper stickers that said "If you don't love [picture of a heart] America, get your ass [picture of a donkey] out".

How can you say you love America, if you don't love Americans?...all of them...and want the best for them...regardless whether they believe what you believe, or don't look or act the way you do, or love the gender you think they should, or whether or not you are comfortable with their choices.

So now I am considering that bumper sticker. Maybe I should get my ass out.

There is a part of me that thinks that if you are on a sinking boat, don't just stand there, grab a bucket and start bailing. But, then, it's there a point where you have to throw down the bucket and grab a life vest.

There is some kind of tipping point.

I often think of how much better life was for the Jews that left Germany before the rise of the Reich. How did they know it was time to leave? What was the clue for the people who left Cuba before Castro came to power? You can find the points in history that seem so obvious to us in modern 20/20 hindsight, but I wonder if people will look back on this moment in our history and ask, why didn't the disenfranchised rise up against their unjust "democratically elected" government while they still had the chance?

I can't say that I have anything other than paranoid apocalyptic fears of what will happen, but I really do think something will. Something that will make me full of regret.

We have just shown a very dangerous world that our flank is totally exposed.