Riding the American Dream
Oct. 14th, 2001 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueI found the American Dream at a gas station on the Kansas turnpike -- a converted yellow schoolbus holding a dunebuggy, two motorbikes, and a perfect blonde girl-child. I saw the dream again in Oklahoma, eating bananas on a dirt road through cornfields and silos, dust hanging in a haze behind passing pickups. A third time, I caught the tail of it on I-35, hanging my head out the back window to stare at the sunset through whipping blond bangs, then later begging Val to pull over and let me see the milky way.
For someone who wants to leave the country, I sure spend a lot of time chasing the American Dream.
But I don't live in America. There isn't much of an America anymore, not in the way I need it to exist. I understand rationally that we're a very progressive country, and that every year we take baby steps toward better race and gender relations, but it's not enough. It's the hypocrisy I can't take, being told all the time that my rights should be abridged while waving a flag and singing about the land of the free.
Val tries to tell me that it's just a natural phase -- we had liberal administrations for a while, and now we're going through the conservative backlash. That cyclicality is all well and good, but I'm tired of waiting. Every year of my life -- 21 years -- has been spent slipping backwards under the pull of the religious right. People may say the Clinton administration was liberal, but that's bullshit. They were only liberal compared to people like Nixon, and their agenda was mostly blocked by a conservative congress. The fact that centrists were mistaken for bleeding-heart liberals just goes to show my point.
America has abdicated its responsibility to me, and I feel betrayed. Talk about free-market economics all you will, but when you allow corporations to dictate social policy, you get efficiency, not equity, and you disregard externalities. Look at HMOs: it's almost impossible to get health insurance unless you're employed full time by a corporation. Your life is not valuable and will not be protected if you are an artist, a craftsman, a farmer, self-employed. . . What happened to the things I was promised by Thomas Jefferson?
I love computers, but sometimes I think I was born into the wrong generation. No, then again, if I'd been born into the 60s I'd have watched my friends sell out and I'd hate them for it. People today have already sold out, or if they're my generation they never had anything to sell -- they were never enfranchised. We were never told we could go out and change the world; we were told to maintain the status quo, protect it from falling apart, stop extinctions where we could. So we hold onto stupid things because that's all we have and "if we're not part of the solution, we're part of the problem."
Yeah, and we all know what the "Final Solution" is.
Don't take it seriously when I talk in these generalities, because I talk a lot of shit. What right to I have to say what society should or should not be like? It's my own psychosis -- I was born with the feeling that something important had been taken from me (Sleeping Beauty) and I was raised in ways that confirmed it. And I'm angry -- I'm so angry -- and I don't even know what it is they took, just that they stole it and my entire life has been trying to come to terms with that, to gentle myself with art and reason and music and religion and philosophy but it's not enough because all I have to do is look over my shoulder and I see the hole.
As Ailei says, it's textbook, really, but that doesn't make it any less painful.
When I talk about travelling, that's what I'm looking for, but I know I won't find it, so maybe "running from" is a better term -- running from the hole. And when I talk about love, it's because people say it fills you -- that's why I look for people so different from me -- to fill the gaps, to learn from. But it doesn't work that way, and it's wrong to expect it to.
The most damning thing is that I'm basically existentialist, with a good measure of absurdism thrown in (along with a touch of mystical realism,) and so it has to be my fault. We are responsible for our own existence. I must want it to be this way -- that romantic ideal. And while on the one hand that means I can be happy knowing that this must be my choice and I must like it, it also means I'm doomed to failure because I clearly don't want to be whole, to be settled, and if I do find comfort (god no! selling out!) then I have betrayed that ideal.
I should not be allowed to think this much.
I am happy. I am.
I'm disgusted with myself for spouting all this bullshit, only I can't tell which half is the bullshit.
Maybe I have to be different because then it's not my fault.
Who told me that it was? I never believed in original sin.
I'm so damn melancholy so much of the time, and I don't know why anyone puts up with me. Maybe it's because I'm so good at hiding it, like an emotional bullemic. Maybe it makes it worse that they don't notice, or maybe it's better. I don't know. I hate being treated like a cripple. I didn't put up with being talked down to or excluded even as a child. Regardless, that is why I look for a Bingley, whether it is Brian Elerding or Chelsea Snider or Rory or somebody else just so they'll be happy and optomistic and content all the time and I can love them so much that it'll be enough. But that's not fair -- that's not fair to them and I know that and I don't want to be that person. Don't want to force anyone to be happy all the time, to be the caretaker. The easy answer is to just be more like them, like Kermit the Frog, but it's not easy being green and he's fictional and I've already discussed why I fail at that.
God bless Turtle and Valancy; they're talking a lot to help distract me from thinking but I'm too good at blocking them out -- too many years of REL. And they're smart enough to know that I think by speaking so they don't involve me. Not smart enough to take away my notebook, though. I think I'll ask Turtle not to let me have it.
[minutes later, written on a paper napkin]
I like children at least -- some children. I hate it when people idealize them, and hope that's not what I'm doing. I think that whole "innocent perfect wholesome" thing is patronizing (and okay, they are children, but they're people, damnit). It's just that they haven't aquired the bullshit prejudices known as "common sense" and anything could happen. No limit.
Of course, some kids I hate. Some kids are like one-dimensional versions of their parents, or caricatures of themselves.
I certainly prefer children's books. They deal with real problems, not crap like dating and national security.
[written a few minutes later on another napkin]
Music is medication.
I especially listen to things I can sing along with, because then I can trick my brain into turning off.
[written a few minutes later on the back of a gum wrapper]
Sometimes my entire day consists of distracting myself. What a waste.
For someone who wants to leave the country, I sure spend a lot of time chasing the American Dream.
But I don't live in America. There isn't much of an America anymore, not in the way I need it to exist. I understand rationally that we're a very progressive country, and that every year we take baby steps toward better race and gender relations, but it's not enough. It's the hypocrisy I can't take, being told all the time that my rights should be abridged while waving a flag and singing about the land of the free.
Val tries to tell me that it's just a natural phase -- we had liberal administrations for a while, and now we're going through the conservative backlash. That cyclicality is all well and good, but I'm tired of waiting. Every year of my life -- 21 years -- has been spent slipping backwards under the pull of the religious right. People may say the Clinton administration was liberal, but that's bullshit. They were only liberal compared to people like Nixon, and their agenda was mostly blocked by a conservative congress. The fact that centrists were mistaken for bleeding-heart liberals just goes to show my point.
America has abdicated its responsibility to me, and I feel betrayed. Talk about free-market economics all you will, but when you allow corporations to dictate social policy, you get efficiency, not equity, and you disregard externalities. Look at HMOs: it's almost impossible to get health insurance unless you're employed full time by a corporation. Your life is not valuable and will not be protected if you are an artist, a craftsman, a farmer, self-employed. . . What happened to the things I was promised by Thomas Jefferson?
I love computers, but sometimes I think I was born into the wrong generation. No, then again, if I'd been born into the 60s I'd have watched my friends sell out and I'd hate them for it. People today have already sold out, or if they're my generation they never had anything to sell -- they were never enfranchised. We were never told we could go out and change the world; we were told to maintain the status quo, protect it from falling apart, stop extinctions where we could. So we hold onto stupid things because that's all we have and "if we're not part of the solution, we're part of the problem."
Yeah, and we all know what the "Final Solution" is.
Don't take it seriously when I talk in these generalities, because I talk a lot of shit. What right to I have to say what society should or should not be like? It's my own psychosis -- I was born with the feeling that something important had been taken from me (Sleeping Beauty) and I was raised in ways that confirmed it. And I'm angry -- I'm so angry -- and I don't even know what it is they took, just that they stole it and my entire life has been trying to come to terms with that, to gentle myself with art and reason and music and religion and philosophy but it's not enough because all I have to do is look over my shoulder and I see the hole.
As Ailei says, it's textbook, really, but that doesn't make it any less painful.
When I talk about travelling, that's what I'm looking for, but I know I won't find it, so maybe "running from" is a better term -- running from the hole. And when I talk about love, it's because people say it fills you -- that's why I look for people so different from me -- to fill the gaps, to learn from. But it doesn't work that way, and it's wrong to expect it to.
The most damning thing is that I'm basically existentialist, with a good measure of absurdism thrown in (along with a touch of mystical realism,) and so it has to be my fault. We are responsible for our own existence. I must want it to be this way -- that romantic ideal. And while on the one hand that means I can be happy knowing that this must be my choice and I must like it, it also means I'm doomed to failure because I clearly don't want to be whole, to be settled, and if I do find comfort (god no! selling out!) then I have betrayed that ideal.
I should not be allowed to think this much.
I am happy. I am.
I'm disgusted with myself for spouting all this bullshit, only I can't tell which half is the bullshit.
Maybe I have to be different because then it's not my fault.
Who told me that it was? I never believed in original sin.
I'm so damn melancholy so much of the time, and I don't know why anyone puts up with me. Maybe it's because I'm so good at hiding it, like an emotional bullemic. Maybe it makes it worse that they don't notice, or maybe it's better. I don't know. I hate being treated like a cripple. I didn't put up with being talked down to or excluded even as a child. Regardless, that is why I look for a Bingley, whether it is Brian Elerding or Chelsea Snider or Rory or somebody else just so they'll be happy and optomistic and content all the time and I can love them so much that it'll be enough. But that's not fair -- that's not fair to them and I know that and I don't want to be that person. Don't want to force anyone to be happy all the time, to be the caretaker. The easy answer is to just be more like them, like Kermit the Frog, but it's not easy being green and he's fictional and I've already discussed why I fail at that.
God bless Turtle and Valancy; they're talking a lot to help distract me from thinking but I'm too good at blocking them out -- too many years of REL. And they're smart enough to know that I think by speaking so they don't involve me. Not smart enough to take away my notebook, though. I think I'll ask Turtle not to let me have it.
[minutes later, written on a paper napkin]
I like children at least -- some children. I hate it when people idealize them, and hope that's not what I'm doing. I think that whole "innocent perfect wholesome" thing is patronizing (and okay, they are children, but they're people, damnit). It's just that they haven't aquired the bullshit prejudices known as "common sense" and anything could happen. No limit.
Of course, some kids I hate. Some kids are like one-dimensional versions of their parents, or caricatures of themselves.
I certainly prefer children's books. They deal with real problems, not crap like dating and national security.
[written a few minutes later on another napkin]
Music is medication.
I especially listen to things I can sing along with, because then I can trick my brain into turning off.
[written a few minutes later on the back of a gum wrapper]
Sometimes my entire day consists of distracting myself. What a waste.
