de-punked

Is it a shift of opinion or the sharpening of age, the dissolution of the idealism once held dear, the deepening of a spiritual understanding of the darkness of the human heart.

It's hard for me to be thrilled about change when the more history I read, the more I see, it seems like a constant cycle of rise and fall rise and fall, just a new face in charge who talks a good game sometimes while the same games of power are played. Nothing new under the sun as long as this sun lights the earth and keeps it in inertia. Those who lust for power will say what they need to say and trample who they need to trample.

I've been going through old newspaper clippings at work, seeing that the same Powers That Be that rob us now were doing so as long as I've been alive if not longer, or carrying on the proud tradition of sweet talk and stealing in a suit, knowing that name recognition and party line go a long way to further rank incompetence.

I don't know where I fit on the spectrum anymore as I can't believe in either party line. You can talk all you want about saving babies or helping those in poverty, but since neither vote or donate big money to political campaigns, you don't care that much. We talk about cutting the budget, but no one wants to touch the amount of money we use to fight how many wars, how many proxy wars, how many people on the other side of the world that get killed to make us feel safer and secure. I don't believe anything's secure in this world, but then again I live in the almost-hood and divine intervention so I don't lose sleep over terrorists or much else unless I hear gunfire down the street and it wakes me up. That's kind of different.

I heard a song by Sublime on the radio on the way home from work that reminded me of parties in college and everyone singing the line about killing cops even though we were all way too young to really understand riots in Los Angeles or Rodney King. Riot on the streets, a teen-age riot, a riot of my own, and so on so romanticized. Nowell's singing about looting a store for its furniture, stealing guitars and sound equipment because the cops suck. Ironic that the the protesters in Egypt look at the Londoners acting a fool and asking why everyone's setting fires and stealing stuff if it's really about the unfairness. One man's greed enacted in a time of opportunism comes from the same root as the corporations one rails against.

The logic here is ridiculous, and I think about all the struggling store owners who lose when things like this happen, especially in communities of immigrants who often get hit the hardest because suddenly xenophobia has an outlet. If you're going to fight capitalism, there's other battles that don't hurt the average schmuck nearly as much.

As the threads of an already dysfunctional society unravel, the glamour of the masses rising up is replaced with a sense of something not quite acquiescence or fear, maybe a deeper suspicion of the motivations of not just the Powers That Be, but the people on the streets as well. Watching the way that fights break out in the middle of the street over nothing, seeing the melee on St. Patrick's Day, and knowing that this is nothing, since there are no weapons, no guns shot or clubs pounding either by the police or the rest of the people. I don't try to find a moral high ground, I just try to get through the mess to a place of peace.

I don't know what the answer is, but I don't like the answers that I'm being given. To do nothing is easy to do and often wrong, but often how good or beneficial is it to do something just because it's something to do?