Gray Skies Ahead

Mr. Obama has been re-elected as the President of the United States of America, and it's too late to talk about all of the superbly wonderful ways that Mittens would've waved a wand over this country and transformed it to the land of ever-flowing cash and rich, white people as your boss as far as the eye can see.

If social media is an indicator of the level of fucked that we are as a "United Nation," then I'd set that dial to, "totally." Concern for one has given way to lots of selfish bickering, finger-pointing,  bible-thumping and conspiracy theories (like, FEMA's putting stickers on your mailboxes and we're all getting put in work camps conspiracies. Oh the humanity!).

It reminds me of a little ditty written by David Gray:

Wishing that something would happen

A change in this place

'cos I'm tearing off the fancy wrapping

Find an empty package

Take for a while

Your trumpet from your lip

Loosen your hold loosen your grip

On your old ways

That have fallen out of step

In a changing time

Hoist a new flag

Hoist a new flag

Angry sun burn down

Judging us all

Guilty of neglect and disrespect

And thinking small

And death by boredom

And death by greed

If we can't stop taking

More than we need

But across the fractured landscape

I see the same things

Tired ideas

Birds without wings

[ Lyrics from: 

And these are just thoughts

Of lack lustre times

I've no interest

In excuses you can find

Like you've had a hard day

Now you're too tired to care

Now you're too tired to care

You've had a hard day

Well across the fractured landscape

I see the same things

Tired ideas broken values

Many with the notion

That to share is to lose

A hollow people bound by a lack

Of imagination and too much looking back

Without the courage to give a new thing a chance

Grounded by this ignorance

(and the cat comes)

We're just,

Birds without wings

We are a nation that has been transformed based upon the notion that, "to share is to lose," even though we grew strong as a nation with government programs like, "The New Deal's" three Rs (Relief, Recovery and Reform) and fiscal conservatism. Nationally, we're paying the middle class less, buy bigger things and putting up with a budget that would tank any household. We want to let the rich pay less taxes, and then we wonder why the deficit is so large.

This reminds me of another, by David Gray:

I beg to differ

To break the chain

To draw a line right through

Tomorrow

And cancel every claim

I've seen reflections

Beneath my skin

And drums beating for battle

In the eyes of children

And turning it over

Right down

Where the eye don't see no colour

Where the war don't make a sound

Ice on the shoulder

Noel

Praise the lord above

And sell sell sell

Oh violent flowers

You fill the screen

Betray your mother

And change your name

So tall and fickle

And blind as snow

Running headfirst for oblivion

Cause you've nowhere else to go

And turning it over

Right down

Where the eye don't see no colour

Where the war don't make a sound

Ice on the shoulder

Noel

Praise the lord above

And sell sell sell

In chill of winter

In dead of night

Each so familiar with the hunger

That they got no appetite

They talk of loving

I hear her say

That as fast as I can give it

He's taking it away

And turning it over

Right down

Where the eye don't see no colour

Where the war don't make a sound

Ice on the shoulder

Noel

Praise the lord above

And sell sell sell

And turning it over

Right down

Where the eye don't see no colour

Where the war don't make a sound

Ice on the shoulder

Noel

Praise the lord above

And sell sell sell

A weeping willow

The desert wind

So many learn to swallow

So few to understand

The deepest longing

This cup of faith

Where to put them in a world

Where no innocence is safe

If we don't, "beg to differ and break the chain," of hatred, greed and intolerance to usher in a new way to comprise, then we're all as doomed as the red-dotted mailbox dweller.