Once upon a time here in North America people had the courage to stand up for their rights. The many understood that their rights were all that stood between them and servitude to the few. But things have changed now. The many have allowed themselves to be divided by fear and now seldom have the strength to complain.i'm 63 and much of it has happened in my lifetime. It started decades ago with cutbacks in education funding i think. After World War 2 people here were riding a wave of material success and began to forget the long hard lessons of class warfare passed on to them by generations past. They began to believe themselves entitled to their good fortune by the superiority of the capitialist dream, they lost sight of the real and danced to the banker's beat.
Studying the old knowledge became non-sense in a culture gone insane with the delirius dance of material desire. The public demanded that schools concentrate on the functional not the foundational, on the new knowledge, on the means not the meaning of life. Whirling and twirling we, the sons and daughters of that generation, believed it all. We believed that growth could be endless, we believed that things could only get better. We borrowed on the future when the present began to provide less than our dreams demanded, we mortaged our futures then our children's futures to pay for it all. We forgot the lessons hard learned by our parents and grandparents, we forgot that a penny saved is a penny earned, we forgot that what goes up must come down, now we're starting to remember.
It's getting late, the dance is winding down and many of the dancers have forgotten their way home. So many have lost their good paying jobs, their homes, their dreams of a better life for their kids and grandkids that our streets are filled with the impoverished and hungry. Those still on the dance floor know it's the last dance, they know that if they stop twirling, even for a moment, that they'll be the next one out in the cold. The rich get richer, the impoverished and hungry seldom have the strength to complain.
"Resist much, obey little." -Walt Whitman
