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Take Your Pick or Make a Choice
NMB, Florida November 11, 2001 A.H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published Now and
Then. Opinions Pro or Con Are Welcome.
TAKE YOUR PICK OR MAKE YOUR CHOICE
You may not have noticed that Americans have been having a terrible time
digesting the huge amount of crow they have had to swallow since that
terrible day exactly two months ago. Having to deal with the fact that we
muffed one of the glittering gems of democracy, the last "free" presidential
election, Americans have discovered they may actually be "AMERIKA", the
fabulously oppressive capitalistic state running roughshod over all the
simple peoples of the earth. Americans have also found out that we may have
Silicon Valley and Phi Beta Kappa's all over the place but these have not
prevented us from getting slimed by ghostly suicides. These "terrorists" who
are heroes to others use their dead fingers to point out the crimes for
which they punished us. Our pathetically average leaders have not bought us
salvation. They have brought us war.
Some of our pundits of the past labeled us for our sins. They called us
the children of "Uncle Sap" instead of the canny Yankee, Uncle Sam, dressed
up in top hat, goatee and striped pants. We have been called a new
species - "Boobus Americanus". It has been pointed out that the American
Gothic picture of agricultural man and wife with pitchfork makes us into
rubes, hicks or uncommonly common rural geeks. Our ordinary citizens have
been called "Average". These are pictured as Archie Bunker or comic strip
cartoon grotesques, the descendants of the "Flintstones" or the current
favorite, the "Simpsons." Our Captains of Industry are correctly labeled
Robber Barons. The Rich, those of the Jet Set, are seen in sharp contrast
to the "mud" people. Our smart or brilliant mutants have been called
double-domes, eggheads or prototypes for the Professor-Doktor Frankenstein
who foists golems or monsters on us in their search for the still elusive
"Philosopher's Stone".
We have no choice at the moment to pick out the version of ourselves that
we would like to be seen by the rest of the world that hates us. They have
rummaged through our own self-portraits and have skewered us as clowns and
have burned us in effigy along with the flag that so many of us flap to
tatters on cheap plastic posts fixed to our car windows. Take your pick.
What is the picture of us that you want the rest of the world to see?
Carol's Evaluation: Carol declines to evaluate this. She wants me to make
nice instead of seeing things as they are.
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