A dark time

Everybody wants a box of chocolates,
and a long-stemmed rose.
-- Leonard Cohen

In some dark corner of my mind I constantly wonder when this whole fucking world will collapse.

I see a bundle of rags laying in the gutter with his filthy jacket and cracked teeth and no hope left because he's been abandoned by everything that passes for good and righteous in this wilderness of brutality. He can't even get a buck for a sandwich because a pack of disgusting weasels in slick suits have spent decades convincing the public that he is a lazy man -- a man who clearly deserves to be discarded. They know this because he's in the gutter.

Meanwhile, the shop on the corner is dealing out guns -- instruments of death, when you cut right down to it -- wholesale to anybody with the capacity to sign on the dotted line. Protect your family from the criminals, they say. It's your American freedom, they say. It's your American duty, they say. But who will protect your family from the law-abiding, freedom-loving madman who bought a gun the day before? Maybe he's the kind of guy who walks into a college classroom and spreads chaos around like a wildfire. Maybe he's the kind of guy who sheds blood, and nobody saw it coming. In a free world, nobody ever does.

Freedom. Just the sound of it brings shaking rapture to politicians, so consumed by power and fear and paralyzing evil. We shudder with ecstasy at the very mention of its hallowed syllables. The word itself evokes a sense of relief -- it slides off the tongue so easily. It tastes so sweet, like chocolate.

It's just too bad that the idea of liberty is a mask pulled over our eyes to hide the ugly truth that we're not free at all. We're not free to feel safe in our own classrooms from rabid, law-abiding, gun-toting psychopaths. We're not free from the powers of the government to spy on our every movement, especially those who speak out -- those practicing that old staple, freedom of speech. We're not even free enough to choose which foreign country to rape of its precious, nonrenewable resources. But we don't worry about all that because at least we can buy a gun. And so it goes.

American freedom is great. American freedom is that fantastic, bright beacon of hope that shines so brilliantly that we go blind.

American freedom is killing us.