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published December 8, 2005
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| Issue:
6.11 |
Happy Burden Day |
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| It starts with Thanksgiving and what’s wrong with you, ingrate?
From now till the end of the year you will be admonished to be thankful for all
your blessings, no matter what. Truly this can be a most burdensome time for so
many and yet, standing two feet deep in muddy ,polluted water you look up and
say that it could have been worse, you’re still alive. But it could have been
better. In the aftermath of the hurricane, there were leaks in the dike, which
the powers that be might have prevented, and you might be snug in your back
yard, maybe sipping Juleps or plain old lemonade. Just think, you might still
even have a roof over your head like so many folks elsewhere in these United
States. But no bitching or moaning, that’s not the American way. Some government
agency has broken its promises of support, and mainly money, but no one wants to
hear you whine. It could have been worse. How so? Well it could have happened to
us and that’s lots worse. Probably not, but you know our people have been through hell and back over the past decades and we just kept on going. We didn’t raise a fuss when our President refused to acknowledge the desperate situation in which our relatives in Germany and Poland and France found themselves, by offering to provide shelter in the USA. We just said that we were grateful we were still alive and what a blessing that we were born right over here. Thank you, thank you and amen. Thirty thousand people laid off by some major corporation. Well heck, they were lucky to have jobs at all in this economy and despite all the cutbacks in social services, the government hasn’t put one little grubby finger on Unemployment Insurance and what a blessing that is. Maybe people will have to shop a little less but hey, we spend too much anyway at this time of year. The food carts in the market won’t be overflowing but there’s too much obesity in this country right now and it’s not like people are being reduced to going through garbage cans. We still have our health and we better have, because Medicaid has become a shrinking violet. This is the land of the free and the home of our brave legislators who have just voted themselves a raise, but they must deserve it. We should be thankful for the time and energy they put into keeping us all safe, except for the recesses which seem to pop up on their calendars what seems like every other month. But they imply that theirs is a thankless job and you sometimes wonder why they do everything but stand on their heads to keep it or take it away from someone else. What about this stupid war that no one seems to want, including the people we’re supposedly liberating? It’s not rocket science to be grateful that there’s no one from your family fighting over there. Ask the Bushes. They’ll agree, but it’s hard to be a parent and not feel the heartache for other parents who have a missing place at the table and have to defend America in its current idiocy, so that the lives which have been taken have not been lost in vain. If I were one of them I’d be standing alongside Cindy in front of the President’s gate and I would not be grateful - I would be soooo pis—ed! You’re lucky to be an American, I’ve been told, where even a total wonk can get to be a supreme court justice. You should be thankful that you can say whatever you want and not be thrown in the pokey or maybe even worse. But that’s where I balk at being grateful. Too many people are saying that its’ un-American to criticize your leaders or anything that they do. Man, that’s a real burden. These guys have been voted into office- no one died and made them king. In fact we have enabled them with pensions and health plans and they’ll never have to scrounge around in their twilight years, figuring which medical condition to attend to and which pills they can do without. So I propose that next year we have a Burden day, a day when we can all complain guilt free and instead of looking down at those who have less and counting our blessings, we can look up and say that its’ just not fair. The next time someone says that it could be worse, remind them that we could make it better. Amen to that. |
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