Outside of society

It’s just weeks past the 42nd anniversary of the day Martin Luther King Jr. was shot as I sit here writing this.

Barely four years since Hunter S. Thompson checked out. And yet, everything they stood for, and everything they spoke out against, seem to have come back full force.

Arizona is enforcing legislation that’s almost too far right for Tom Tancredo, which is no small feat in and of itself. The state has created legislation to attempt to increase the police power to check and require people to have identification and proof of residency on them at all times.

Birthers in that state have also been able to infect the legislature, creating legislation directed at the current president.

Oklahoma has decided that too much government is a terrible thing, except when it comes to a woman’s body, in which case the most invasive procedures are not only legal, but also essential.

The closest thing to a counterculture today is a pair of cartoonists who didn’t show a picture of the prophet of an ancient religion. (No not that one, the other one. No, not that one either. They don’t believe he’s actually the son...never mind) An entire nation reacts in disgust when a Jewish convert to Islam speaks so horribly, yet seems entirely comfortable with denying a girl access to her senior prom because she wanted to wear pants.

It took a presidential order merely to allow same sex partners hospital visitation rights.

We now live in a world where the “idealism” of Ayn Rand is considered as much a lofty ideal as John Lennon’s “Imagine” was.

As though there isn’t enough self-absorbed, greedy capitalism in the world. That’s the dream, though, isn’t it? To never have to give a penny that may potentially help that deadbeat next door.

“I may be a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”

The most listened to political “newsmen” view themselves as modern day Doremus Jessups when they share more in common with Chicken Little.

Leading an entire populace into fringe hysteria isn’t informing the citizenry, and these people care for nothing but their own bottom end.

In a society in which no one questions the status quo, in which complacency and apathy are the true drugs of choice, is it a surprise we’re a society of middle management, more concerned with material possessions and employment than being good people?

As Thompson wrote over 30 years ago, “we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”

We don’t have to settle for such a mundane life, though.

Don’t settle for a life where you end up sitting around with a bunch of fat, middle-aged gossips eating Awesome Blossoms; there’s a better world out there. A world without violent gods and without right-wing screaming heads, where people still live and pursue the ideals of King.

For me, the only way to find it is to strap my three dogs in with me on a motorcycle and ride.


E-mail: mrstraw@indiana.edu