It's getting harder all the time to counsel patience, to urge a happy-medium approach, to advise letting wisdom -- not more folly -- be the quiet adult in the room, not while our reality-thrashed inner child strains to be let loose, screaming wild, left shredding the whole house.
We can totter down this road again, but the trip's pretty worthless. Scenery's not changed much, last 20 or 30 years. Road's still strewn with broken bodies, littered with burnt dreams, stacked high with jagged-edged splinters and shards of busted hope, spirit shot from the skies.
Our hearts and our heads are meeting all along this road, more of us all the time, right here -- at the corner of Low Road and High, dazed and scattered, a few bleeding real badly, wondering what it was that has happened, what kind of storm blows through and does that.
Nope, no clues from our leaders -- although, must say, they're all looking fine and quite dapper. Meanwhile, here we all are, stuck in the crapper.
Maybe our karma has looped back like a snake on us, bit us clean through. Somewhere, someplace safe, some alleged people are cooing, "Couldn't happen to me, but it could happen to you."
So, this is our payback, could be, what we all get, for backing such bastards and bullies so long -- showering them in gold, to go make trouble all over this green world, to make red death in our names, under our flag, with these colors we say we hold dear.
Maybe, maybe not. Could be just greed, run wild with hypocrisy, struck dumb and stuffed in its own juices. Or, maybe, something much simpler: that we all took a nap, snoozing soundly, then, all of a sudden, we woke up real fast, to the sounds of gnawing and crunching -- woken up too quick, taken over, overrun with fat rats.
You might think this is old hat, that no America you know is anything like that.
Well, it's a shame to disappoint you, but, this is old hat.
Worse still? This old hat's filled up with pity, soaked in sorrow clean up to the brim, and, we're all saddened to have to bring you this news -- but, hey, look around. This is the real state we're all in.
If you're all cozied up with convenient caches of cash, then, you're probably still saying, "No, no, everything's fine!" or, maybe, "This is not like all that!"
Meanwhile, 43 percent -- almost half -- of all Americans are now within one financial shock of sliding headlong into poverty inside of three months of that shock, losing a job or falling down, sick.
Here's more news for you -- and hold onto that hat -- that's on top of the millions of people already there, long huddled up in that shack.
If you're not all snow-blinded from really big numbers, rip into this one: 22 percent of kids in this country have been left -- dared, even, to survive -- in poverty, with that number always going up and up, here, in the greatest country in the world.
Now, then, here are four kids, all under 18. Which one do you want to go to bed hungry tonight? Just speak up or point. Happens every day in this country, in the former breadbasket to this world, every single time the sun dips and slips down.
Yes. 17 million. That's the number. Every day, and, especially, all night.
Medical care's got to be better, you say? Nope, "not all better" here. One out of three kids went without help, '95-'96. That was 23 million children, then, over there, with no care, kids who got sick. Think things have gotten better since then?
Nah -- the numbers keep climbing, soaring, up and away -- see, they got nothing, they ain't got no dough.
Wave 'bye-'bye, kids! Look at them -- and us -- away, we all go!
Children under 18, kids on our shores, young humans who call this place home. Adults-in-training, if you like, in a critical phase of their lives, needing the best -- to learn, grow, eat, rest, and all the rest. What sort of adults are we growing -- care to ask about that?
Well, come to think of it, if they survive that long, we should probably add, fast. Their only crime, these kids, is they dared to be born, were brave and showed up, while we were flat taken over, overrun with fat rats.
You know the picture's wider yet, even wilder, for any adults in the view.
You may be one of them yourself, soon -- you may be knowing quite a few.
When it happens, just you say, "No, no, everything's fine!"
You can even add, if you like, "Shoo! Go away! Can't be me! I already got mine!"
