An Average American

I’ve laid low, -stepped back from voicing my opinion on the social media outlets over the past few days, because I didn’t want to speak in anger or frustration. I didn’t want to add fuel to the flames of outrage, hate, and destruction which have been all too plentiful of late. But the long-past words of a movie from my day which became a catchphrase pretty much sums it up, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

How on earth did we get here?

As a child growing up in the sixties, I thought we’d done this already and emerged better, stronger, improved, triumphant, and healed. Yet here we are again, at the verge of destroying our nation and destroying each other with vicious, unforgiving words, erupting into murderous violence. Your average white American no more condones police brutality than your average black American condones slaughtering police for payback. Your average American, -regardless of skin color, is a decent, honest, hard-working person. It’s hard to believe that, because we don’t know each other anymore. We’re all Americans, yet we don’t talk to each other because we’ve become so polarized, one pitted against the other for the ‘causes’ we’ve adopted.

This week’s flare up was black vs. white, next week it’ll be gay vs. straight, the week after that progressive vs. conservative. Pick one; -any one. Pick your side so you can be a part of the destruction of the greatest nation the world has ever seen because in fact, it isn’t perfect.

We have never been, nor will we ever be perfect; but we’ve gotten closer than anybody else. America is the greatest nation because we, more than any other country on this planet, have worked together for the greater good despite our differences. We’ve stood up for the downtrodden. We’ve given a home to the homeless; a voice to the voiceless, and a hand to the helpless. Have we always been successful? No, but we’ve always been willing to try. We’re much better reaching out as individuals and independent communities like churches; we have more success when we do it personally, with our own two hands. It gets messed up when the government decides to do it for us; when Washington insiders bargain behind closed doors to give millions of dollars to countries who’d like nothing more than to see us cease to exist, and make welfare a permanent paycheck as opposed to a helping hand to get those down on their luck back on their feet.

In years past, people took pride in a job well done, no matter what that job might be. Now, you’re not worthy of admiration unless you’re a celebrity, athlete, carry the right designer bag, or wear the right tennis shoes. No wonder human life has no worth when a person’s value is determined by their following on Twitter instead of their character.

We are not a people who want to allow systems of wealth and privilege to stamp out the citizenry born into less advantageous circumstances. Though you rarely find them in media outlets, there are millions of people who’ve pulled themselves out of poverty by working hard; -the American dream. They’ve made a good life for themselves and most likely helped others with a hand up along the way. They accomplished their dream not because some government program did it for them, they accomplished it because the government got out of their way.

Those people are however, dying off; slowly but surely. Not as many people are succeeding because the fact of the matter is, we’re no longer a nation that encourages the best in people. It pains me to admit, we tend to encourage the worst. We’ve made it unfashionable to worship God, and instead idolize crass celebrities who demean women, or can’t get their own demons of substance abuse, infidelity, and inflated ego off their backs. Our kids long to be just like them, willing to do whatever it takes for their fifteen minutes of fame, no matter how dehumanizing, posted on YouTube for the world to see.

Many average, decent people have given up. Entrepreneurs who could be providing jobs in their community no longer have the fight it takes to keep their business afloat, and people who used to extend a helping hand quit because they’ve been taken advantage of too often. There’s not much left to give to charity or put in the church offering, because politicians have commandeered more and more of our hard-earned money for purposes that serve no one except themselves. My heart breaks for the generations that follow me; my children and grandchildren. –Your children and grandchildren. I pray they get to witness for themselves the country I did growing up.

I’m worried though, that may not come to pass.

We’ve become followers, not leaders. We rose to greatness when we allowed average people to choose for themselves how they want to live their lives; when a member of the community served on the City Council or Senate floor for a couple of years to speak for his friends and neighbors. When we didn’t have an entire class of professional politicians who serve to collect whatever favors they can accrue from special interest groups when they’re not upping their own salaries and piling on more benefits than the people they are supposed to be working for enjoy. We believe what politician’s want us to believe, what celebrities tell us to believe. Media outlets no longer report the news without bias, they present what they want, how they want; -truth be damned.

This has happened because we’ve forgotten it’s not about them, America; it’s about us, -you and me, -average Americans.

We’re not celebrities. We’re not famous. We’re not professional athletes. We’re not academic elitists. We’re not people allowed access to thousand-dollar-a-plate political fundraisers, and we don’t have the President’s ear because we can sing, dance, or throw a ball. We’re your next door neighbor, the clerk at the store where you shop, your kid’s high school math teacher.

America was designed to work for us, -the boring, every day, average people; not the exclusive upper class, and not the government. We vote in our leaders, and we vote them out. It’s not only a right; it’s a privilege and a responsibility, but we don’t like looking at it that way, because it means we have to share in the guilt of what we’ve become; -what we’ve allowed ourselves to become.

I refuse to believe we are gullible enough to vote the way our favorite singer or actor tells us to because we’re too lazy or stupid to investigate and understand the issues ourselves. I refuse to believe an entire generation blindly and mindlessly believes whatever garbage some college professor spews without engaging their own mind to examine it for truth and/or bias. I refuse to believe we actually have become the mindless cattle Madison Avenue and our elected officials seem to think we are. Yet sadly, recent evidence reflects otherwise.

We average Americans have a voice, but we only use it at BBQ’s, in carpool lines at school, around the water cooler, and in our church foyers; -places we consider ‘safe’. We don’t speak up in the public forum, because we run the risk of being called bigots, racists, and small-minded if we do. It’s a telling commentary on your cause when you have to publically name call people into humiliated submission.

I am an average American. I am NOT a bigot, and I’m sick to death of the self-elected elitist regime telling me I am. Your average American is neither a bigot, thug, homophobe, cop-killer, racist, criminal, nor dirty cop; so why have we allowed a small group of elitists to label us as such? We come from a myriad of backgrounds, experiences, economic status and races. Average Americans are good people. That fact has been proven true time and time again when tragedy strikes in the form of natural disaster or man-made terror; -like when a police officer shields a Dallas protestor from gunfire with his own body, and when a Black Lives Matter activist lays flowers in front of the Dallas Police Department Headquarters to honor the fallen. Average American’s are decent people who look out for those they love; they’re people of faith, people with compassion for others.

The average American is not a journalist, celebrity, or ‘expert’; we are the voice of reason. We don’t have our finger on the pulse of the country; –we are its heartbeat.

Why then, are we letting our voice go unheard, America?

It’s time to show each other and the world who we truly are. Not through violence and hate, but through a shared commitment to recognize our shortcomings and fix them. We’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again. We can however, only do it TOGETHER; -refusing to be torn apart, alienated from our fellow American’s because we’ve limited ourselves to only those people we’ve labeled safe; -the ones like us. If we want to heal our land, we need to open an honest, meaningful dialogue that includes listening as well as talking to people who cross the lines of race, religion, and political affiliation. The majority of American citizens who profess to be Christian need to step up, -reaching out to people in love, emulating Christ as we are called to. We need to sit-down and talk reasonably with one another, committed to finding solutions instead of spewing sound bits for the six-o’clock news.

Where exactly should this diplomatic summit take place?

Your town, my town, our community; -our home.

We process what we learn together, gleaning solutions that work. We stop throwing money and effort at programs that aren’t effective. We keep hammering it out until our issues are resolved and call upon our elected officials to adhere to the will of the people because that’s how America works. If they don’t, we fire them, plain and simple. If you and I failed to perform our job to our boss’s satisfaction, we’d lose it. It’s time the arrogant elected officials whose fat, lazy behind’s occupy cushy leather chairs in Washington, State Capitols, and City Hall’s across the country meet the same requirement; -every last one of them. We can no longer be complacent in holding them accountable.

Who’s with me?

 

 

 

 

Photo via Visual hunt

Photo via <a href=”https://visualhunt.com/”>Visual hunt</a>