The headline from the Toledo Blade read:
“After Las Vegas,
Escapism is Gone”
The final paragraph purports to describe what many Americans
are feeling after this latest gun-toting massacre:
“We mourn, also, our
lost innocence and the impossibility of escaping foreign terror, domestic
terror, or politics, even for an hour or two. There is no respite and no haven.
There is no longer any place safe and apart where we can escape the cares and
troubles of this world.”
Well, folks, if escapism is dead, Americans killed it.
And what are those troubles and cares that Americans wish to
escape, anyway?
Maybe it’s that they work 50-60 hours a week or more; or are
forced to work 2-3 jobs just to live; or the specter of being laid off from a
job you’ve had for most of your adult life – and just before you planned to
retire.
Maybe it’s the ridiculous cost of child care.
Maybe it’s the ridiculous cost of health care.
Maybe it’s that they still haven’t recovered from the
financial meltdown of 2008, and wonder if their lives will ever be the same.
I suspect, however, that far too many Americans place the
blame for their problems elsewhere.
They blame their problems on the powerless.
African-Americans represent 13 to 14 percent of the U.S.
population. Yet somehow small groups of largely peaceful black protesters, who
are simply asking that bad cops stop murdering innocent people in their
communities, are a problem so big that we need militarized police.
The police are NOT judge, jury and executioner. The vast
majority of African-Americans who have been murdered by bad cops in the last
several years did not commit a crime at all, and even those who did (selling
cigarettes on a street corner, for example) were unarmed. Yet Dylan Roof, a
white man who murdered black people in a church in South Carolina, gets
politely hauled away in handcuffs and taken to Burger King before going to
jail.
In a recent conversation with the mother of one of my
long-time friends, the first thing she mentioned as a solution to our “problems”
was more policing. We cannot police our way out of extreme income inequality,
homelessness and gun violence. And one of the reasons for that is that they are
all connected. You only need look at the countries which are ranked as the
happiest – and, ironically, the best for business – that are practically the
opposite of the U.S. in how they approach policing to see that more and
militarized policing is a recipe for disaster.
There are 3 million Muslims in the United States – a tiny 1
percent of the population. They are represented in the U.S. Congress in about
the same number. They also represent the same percentage of the gun violence in
this country. Yet somehow millions of Americans believe that Islamic terrorism
is a huge problem in the U.S. and that Sharia Law will soon be imposed by 1
percent of the population.
Donald Trump tells us that Mexican “rapists and murderers”
are streaming over our southern border. But according to Business Insider,
Mexican immigrants contribute 4 percent to the GDP. Yet somehow the tiny
percentage of illegal immigrants that commit crimes is a problem large enough
to cripple the U.S. economy by making many in the Latino communities in the U.S.
live in fear of deportation, regardless of their immigration status.
Donald Trump and the Congress want to cut programs for the
poor such as Food Stamps. Meanwhile, in 2015 hedge funds lost money, but 25
hedge fund managers still took home 11.62 billion; and according to Forbes.com,
100 billion of the Federal budget goes to corporate subsidies. But when Food
Stamps are cut, not only do individuals and families suffer, but the small
businesses that they frequent suffer too.
When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, the first entity that
was secured in Baghdad was the Ministry of Oil; in a ravaged Baghdad in the aftermath,
it remains untouched today. If the U.S. can’t own up to it, the rest of the
world understands that the Iraq war is a war for oil. Yet according to the U.S.
Department of Energy, America is now a net exporter of refined petroleum
products. If one of your “troubles” is that your son or daughter is over in the
Middle East as part of our military, maybe you need to ask yourself why that
troubles you.
A country that projects violence all over the world can’t
expect to escape the consequences. Of course, you can go on believing that
somehow the United States, the richest country in the history of the world and possessed
of the most powerful military ever known to mankind, is the victim; or that you
are the victim of terrible circumstances brought on by your powerless fellow
citizens. You’re welcome to, but don’t be surprised when absolutely nothing
changes or improves; and you go on feeling insecure, anxious and unsafe. The
easiest prediction I ever made was that Donald Trump could never make America
great again; because he and his minions in Congress want you to believe that
all your problems are caused by powerless people.
Actor Samuel L. Jackson was quoted as saying, after yet another mass shooting a few years ago: "Some people don't value life enough." True. But if that's the case, how is it that America has so many more of these people, far more per capita than any country we would want to be compared with?
Actor Samuel L. Jackson was quoted as saying, after yet another mass shooting a few years ago: "Some people don't value life enough." True. But if that's the case, how is it that America has so many more of these people, far more per capita than any country we would want to be compared with?
Maybe the problem is that too many Americans think that these mass murderers are simply lone-wolves, and that all these problems are individual problems.
Maybe the problem is a country trying to escape problems of their own making, foreign and domestic.
Maybe it’s time you started fighting for a world where escapism isn’t necessary.
Maybe the problem is a country trying to escape problems of their own making, foreign and domestic.
Maybe it’s time you started fighting for a world where escapism isn’t necessary.
References
After Las Vegas,
escapism is gone - The Blade. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.toledoblade.com/Editorials/2017/10/04/Escapism-is-gone.html
US Crude Oil
Production Surpasses Net Imports | Department of Energy. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://energy.gov/maps/us-crude-oil-production-surpasses-net-imports
Why the war in
Iraq was fought for Big Oil - CNN. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html
Bandow, D. (2012, August 20). Where to cut the federal budget? Start by killing corporate welfare. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/dougbandow/2012/08/20/where-to-cut-the-federal-budget-start-by-killing-corporate-welfare/#74cd771b6d7f
For Top 25 Hedge Fund Managers, a Difficult 2014 Still Paid Well - The New York Times. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/business/dealbook/top-25-hedge-fund-managers-took-bad-14-all-the-way-to-the-bank.html
