Beautiful Graveyard
written 29 May 2006 while the school buses headed home
It has long baffled me that George W. Bush made it into the Oval Office not once but now for two frightening terms. I always assumed that perhaps the God-fearing people of the Bible studded belt MidWest perhaps knew some truth that I didn’t, or felt some passion that was inperceptible from where I sat. I know believe that it is, indeed, rumor, ignorance and a case of the shotgun-and-a-couch-on-the-front-porch syndrome. While conversing with a person who is a superChristian, a two time Bush elector, and living in rural Republican America I discovered their version of “the facts” on the currently hot topic of illegal immigration into the US:
“Those people shouldn’t be allowed to come here and get government checks while they sit on their porches and drink beer all week, waiting for their next government check.” and “There isn’t enough space to let everyone in to America. Just look at China, they have more people than us and they’re all living in poverty, and don’t tell me it’s because we dropped the atomic bomb on them.”
It’s like there’s a virus of ignorance being spread through the masses and only education can stand any chance against it. Sunday TV Preachers scream out how anyone who’s opinions differ from them are sinners and, because they claim to speak in the name of God, their followers take what they’re saying as holy truth and spread it around through bars and grocery store lines and into the minds of their children. When you live in the ass-kicking, pickup truck driving, spitooning back country of farmland America you learn right quick to shut yer mouth and drink yer beer and don’t speak out ’bout nuttin’ what ain’ts right in the eyes o’ freedom. Only the lucky children who move away to live in cities where cultures are diverse, you get to read about history that doesn’t portray slavery as an unfortunate necessary chapter in our country’s past, and your mind is opened up a little that you have the opportunity to look into how things are for yourself, to start forming opinions based on more than some t-shirt that reads “These colors don’t run” or an exhaust-stained bumpersticker that claims you love America all the while you’re throwing trash out the window and fucking up the air your grandkids won’t have the chance to breathe.
Your $0.02
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