Was hope, and change, a sham?

I just read a great op-ed piece by the venerable Frank Rich over at the NYT, and I can’t help but feel that he’s verbalized something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time; way before hope and change were even in our vocabulary.  Is America so corrupt, that we can never emerge from underneath the corruption?  The more I observe what’s going on in Washington, and the more I try to wrap my head around the decisions that are made by our government, the more I am coming to realize that the shining beacon that was America, is no more.

I don’t blame Barack.  In fact, I think what he wants to do is exactly what the country NEEDS to do to survive.   Unfortunately, his fanciful ideas on what this country needs are just that, ideas, and not very likely to actually make any headway at being implemented any time soon.  Not only is he fighting the right, and his own party, he is also fighting the most wealthy and influential corporations and institutions on the planet.  How do you stand up to people who control the country?  You’d think, in this wonderful country of ours, that these corporations would have to stand up to him, but that’s not how things work.  Our country is now run by power brokers, who manipulate events behind the scenes, and which only come to light after it’s too late to do anything about it.

I often think about how ridiculous the world seems to me.  I may be more enlightened than some, about certain aspects of reality, but I think most people realize that we are all human, we are born, we die, we suffer, and this binds us all together into one fraternity.  I realize that people are prejudiced based on race, and religion, and they also can lose their cool when they find out someone’s been sleeping with their spouse, but I always thought that the institution of government had our best interests at heart.  I thought, that when it came to taking care of the sick, feeding the hungry, and helping the poor, that the government really had our best interest at heart.  But I don’t know how I can believe that anymore, when that really isn’t the case.

If it was the case, we wouldn’t be having violent town hall meetings about giving health care to the people who truly need it.  People wouldn’t be seething with rage at helping out institutions such as Goldman Sachs or Wells Fargo, because they are the pillars of our economy, and beacons of hope for people all over the world.  And yet here we are, conducting these literally insane practices right now, for all the world to see, and no one seems to care.  Sure, people write anonymous emails to congressman’s office threatening violence, but that’s easy.  You can shoot that email off while you’re sipping on your skim latte at Starbucks inbetween checking Facebook and Twitter.  If people cared, we’d see demonstrations like we did in Iran, but they might actually work, because we don’t (yet) live in a totalitarian regime.  If people cared, we’d see email campaigns, websites, viral marketing and op-ed pieces flooding the papers.

But people in America don’t really care.  We’ve become bloated and lazy in this day and age, and so companies like Goldman and Lehman Brothers are able to get away with what they want without having to worry about any accountability.  It’s fun to elect a President, and really get things mobilized, but once he’s there, we wash our hands of it.  I remember people chastising blacks during the election, and subsequently after he won, because some were saying things like “Oh, Barack will take care of me, he’ll give me a house for free now that he’s in office”.  But aren’t the rest of us just as bad as these people?  Aren’t we just waiting for Barack to change how things are done in this country?  Aren’t we just sitting around waiting for him to give the needy the care they deserve, and when it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, the only way we manifest it is by telling the gallup polls that he “isn’t living up to expectations”?

We’ve become lazy.  Fat, and lazy.  Once the economy rebounds, and the housing market improves, people will be sated, and not really care about what goes on in the White House anymore.  Corruption will continue to run rampant, and that’s ok, because we still have our reality TV, our skim milk lattes, and our hybrid vehicles.  The only time we’ll really care, is when the next time the housing bubble bursts, or when the stock market crashes, or God forbid, when the seas rise, or the crops stop growing, or whatever other catastrophe arises.

I have a lot of faith in humanity, and in America, but I feel like we need something terrible to happen to wake us up from this trance that we’re in.   Things truly need to change here, and I believe that change needs to come from we the people, and not from whatever the symbol of the moment is.  Yes we can was about us, not about him.  It’s too bad we’ve already forgotten that.