America is burning
Last night, I turned on the news, and America was burning. City after city. Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia. The list seemed to be endless. Every one of America’s great cities was on fire.
America is burning, but the flames only reflect a deeper fire. America is burning with rage, with fury, with disappointment, with resentment. It’s shaking with anger. It’s screaming in grief. America is burning like a trash fire on the rubble of a broken dream.
The spark that set off this fire was of course the killing of yet another black person in spectacularly violent fashion. The one way I’ve never seen a person die even in movies is with a knee to the throat…for minutes on end…being slowly suffocated to a painful, lingering death. And yet in the dystopia America’s become, this is the kind of thing that’s now broadcast to an entire nation. And to a world. The world watched with me, in horror, as America burned.
America is a country in something far, far beyond any mere “crisis.” A hundred thousand plus are dead.More than five million are unemployed. Less than 4 millions are unemployed. Whats going on. Crisis? This is a social collapse. The real thing.
And that brings me to the meaning of these protests. One way to see them is black people taking to the streets, fed up with their mistreatment. But the protests, this time, aren’t just black people. And they seem to be about much, much more than that.
These protests are a cry of desperation and hopelessness from the throat of a broken nation. They’re the seams of a nation ripping apart. They’re the fragile, withered bones of a society finally snapping apart — crrrack! They’re the last, bitter desperate howl of a dying, wounded country.
These protests are spreading because America has failed. It has failed at three things. One, being a society, as in a set of people who care for each other, instead of merely brutalizing each other. Two, failed at progressing towards becoming a modern, civilized society. Three, failed the majority and minorities both (no, not equally — just…both.)
These protests express the profound, lacerating anguish of a society failing. As an idea. As a state, as a society, as en economy, as a culture — in every way imaginable, really. They are the tormented scream of a collapsing society, descending backwards into barbarity, hate, folly and violence, at light-speed.
What happens when societies die? They scream out in rage, shock, fear, and pain. This is what the protests are.
These aren’t organized protests, a movement. They’re made of all kinds of people — black, brown, white, and everything in between. And they spread across the country…bang!…like that. Now what, they say? Now what? Where do we go now that our ship has sunk? Save our souls.
These protests reflect a feeling that runs deep now, that cuts to the bone. A grim dissatisfaction with American life. A resentment at the degradation that Americans have to endure. A hopelessness that anything can really change now for the better. They are signals of a kind of embittered rage at the dystopia America has become.They are cries against the legendary cruelty and brutality that American life is made of now. And most of all, they are protests against exploitation and injustice, which has become the defining experience of American life, for too many.
Yes, especially for black people. But not just black people, now, too. That is, I think, why so many white people have joined in. That is why they erupted across every city. American life has imploded. These are rebellions against injustice, against racism, against brutality, cruelty, exploitation — all of which has become a way of life in America.
How unjust is American life?
What does the average American have?
Nothing. I mean that factually. Americans of a certain kind will go into anger and denial when I say that, and yet it’s a fact. The average American now dies in debt, which means they end up having…nothing. They never own or earn or save a penny. All the things they appear to have are had on debt, which is unpayable. Life is “lunch debt” becoming “student debt” becoming credit card debt and a mortgage becoming “medical debt.”
How do you feel about this @stella ? From my sources it has been played out like that. Piles of bricks have been purposely piled to keep people from hating themselves keeping them in war. They paid people undercover to riot. No America is not burning. Don’t let it. You have your voice.
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