In a car accident, everything happens in slow motion. You see it coming and you can’t stop the outcome. As time slows, the anticipation of devastation and destruction intensifies. Adrenaline courses through your veins but it won’t help you escape your destiny. Sweaty, shaky, heart pounding, you know you’re losing control. The blood rushing to your brain brings a clarity that is terrifying.
Then it’s morning. You wake up bleary-eyed in a state of disbelief postmortem. You survived but your country is the casualty. For the first time in your life you sense what it must've been like for Native Americans. Disenfranchised, displaced, dismissed, attacked and invaded, unable to survive without the resources that belong to them.
This is America? Your ancestors tried to warn you but you succumbed to the veneer of material comfort, or the lack thereof, believing in the fantasy of the American Dream. Your so-called democracy was used against you, your media complicit. Never before have you witnessed the free fall as your institutions dismantled The Land of the Free.
All the DREAMers who must hide in the light of day and move from place to place to evade capture and deportation. If the behavior indicators of the TSA don’t spot them, sending money back home makes you a moving target. Impoverishment our new export. Child bearers will be denied care, contraception and abortion with the destruction of Planned Parenthood. Some forced to abandon their children in the streets. Married queers will live in dread fear of annulment and the resurgence of hate crimes against friends and family. Muslims will be profiled, discriminated against and accused of extremism as they're victimized by their xenophobic neighbors and their own community. Women must accept sexism and misogyny so evident in the outcome of this election as standard operating procedure. While the working class has been lulled into a state of amnesia about who and what is responsible for their poverty, all minorities, each and every one are sinking slowly in the quicksand of fascism, racism and hate with This Land is Our Land, the hue and cry of White Anglo Saxon America.
As with all great loss we suffer anger and grief, untethered and disoriented. We live in fear of instability and uncertainty, acutely aware of our mortality. A citizen without a country is like a planet without gravity. We float unable to grab onto anything and look down over the dark abyss. How can we possibly lift ourselves out of a nightmare that never ends?
Please, oh please, wake me up.
Then it’s morning. You wake up bleary-eyed in a state of disbelief postmortem. You survived but your country is the casualty. For the first time in your life you sense what it must've been like for Native Americans. Disenfranchised, displaced, dismissed, attacked and invaded, unable to survive without the resources that belong to them.
This is America? Your ancestors tried to warn you but you succumbed to the veneer of material comfort, or the lack thereof, believing in the fantasy of the American Dream. Your so-called democracy was used against you, your media complicit. Never before have you witnessed the free fall as your institutions dismantled The Land of the Free.
All the DREAMers who must hide in the light of day and move from place to place to evade capture and deportation. If the behavior indicators of the TSA don’t spot them, sending money back home makes you a moving target. Impoverishment our new export. Child bearers will be denied care, contraception and abortion with the destruction of Planned Parenthood. Some forced to abandon their children in the streets. Married queers will live in dread fear of annulment and the resurgence of hate crimes against friends and family. Muslims will be profiled, discriminated against and accused of extremism as they're victimized by their xenophobic neighbors and their own community. Women must accept sexism and misogyny so evident in the outcome of this election as standard operating procedure. While the working class has been lulled into a state of amnesia about who and what is responsible for their poverty, all minorities, each and every one are sinking slowly in the quicksand of fascism, racism and hate with This Land is Our Land, the hue and cry of White Anglo Saxon America.
As with all great loss we suffer anger and grief, untethered and disoriented. We live in fear of instability and uncertainty, acutely aware of our mortality. A citizen without a country is like a planet without gravity. We float unable to grab onto anything and look down over the dark abyss. How can we possibly lift ourselves out of a nightmare that never ends?
Please, oh please, wake me up.
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