Current Events

Current events are dogging me. I feel like the world is more chaotic than usual- that no one wants to capitulate to present concerns, but instead addresses the disquiet in radical non sequiturs.

The solution to our economic turmoil seems to be to defund planned parenthood. The bombing of Libya seems no longer to count as a form of hostility. To hold terrorism in check, a 95 year old wheelchair bound woman has to remove her diaper going through TSA. A viable candidate for president these days is a former housewife who was called to politics by god and whose ultimate goal is to criminalize blasphemy and bring this country into her faith by eliminating taxes.

All the while a new civil rights movement has come to the surface. Marriage is defined and redefined, like rolling tides. Meanwhile another civil rights movement is fading away. Women in headscarves can't work at Abercrombie and Fitch. Serena Williams is booed off the court, with some people asking for the "other knuckle-walker" to get out of tennis, too.

Somewhere far away, two wars linger on, and more seem to be brewing. But our sense of them diminishes over a decade. The only knowledge of them that we seem to have is a dwindling budget, and soldiers who come home with physical and emotional wounds.

It is weird, because I feel like the reactionary and undisciplined response to our own discomfort, to our perception of fading security and stability, is to become worse people. The face of a nation I once knew is undergoing a radical change. It is too confusing to make sense of and too easy to make fun of. And while we're all laughing at how ridiculous it all is, the ground is falling out from under us.