10 July 2015
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through
–David Bowie
Like giving birth and puberty, social changes hurt like crap. My country is laid out on a slab, being sliced and diced while the world looks on with riveted bemusement. They need not bring knives and forks to the table—we’ll do it ourselves with sawed-off shotguns and words.
Welcome to 2015, and the Divided States of ‘Murica.
Haven’t we been here before, in 1861 and 1965?
Those who bear down and resist the inevitable, dragging out change though you know it must come, you think you’re so clever, sharing pithy memes that show a white flag and blame butthurt individuals for our sad state of affairs. “We stand for nothing. We don’t want to offend you.” Excuse me? What a cop-out. This nation was founded 239 years ago on revolutionary ideas, and today we look like total idiots. We stand for nothing?
Hypocrisy.
The United States invented the freaking concept of standing up for human rights. We wrote the handbook on equality and called it our Constitution. Unfortunately, due to mankind’s reluctance to walk the good walk, it has taken more than two centuries to translate that ideal into something that’s real. This process has threatened to rip us apart on many occasions, but in all cases the ripping was instigated by those who would hinder true forward motion.
Yes, I said that. In every last case.
Equality for everyone means voting rights for all genders and colors. It means the right to unite in a partnership with whomever a person may love. It means expecting fair treatment in all business establishments. It means the right not to have one’s own government shoving the symbol of enslavement in our faces each day. This country bloody stood for this stuff, right from the start. That we should have to have even the briefest conversations, let alone heated debate, about the value of this versus that human right is unconscionable beyond my imagining. It’s shameful and embarrassing and makes me feel sick.
So sick, that when I see people blithely posting a thoughtless meme on the interwebs I want to reach through the ether and call them a traitor. White flag, my ass. It bleeds red, white, and blue. It stands for the freedoms our forefathers encoded. It stands for the rivers of blood this nation has shed to prove we are worthy of living those words. We have not surrendered. No concessions were given, except for the centuries we have put up with your baseless claims against women and homosexuals and blacks. WE, I contend, were the ones who fought on while you all sat back on your privileged laurels, waving your handkerchiefs like little white flags in the halls of mewling legislatures.
Offense taken, my ass. The only ones offended and calling vile names are the ones whose lily white lives are endangered by the footsteps of progress. By the raising of voices demanding this nation put its money where its mouth is. By the songs of those lamenting the innocents slain while minding their own business. These downtrodden pilgrims, the ones who truly have the right to claim offense, have by and large kept their dignity in the face of manifest hatred.
So go ahead and raise your so-called white flag. Weep for your losses. Lower your Confederate banners and bake your cakes for “those queers.” Console yourselves with your assault rifles nuzzled close to your chests. You’re losing, bit by bit, you false lovers of liberty. All you’ve got in reserve is your determination to make this nation look like schmucks to the rest of the world. Spit on your children—they won’t listen to you.
We’re going through changes.
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