Apologies . . . it's the summer, we just moved into our new house, I'm still driving four hours both ways to graduate school, and my home computer is on the fritz . . . updates will likely be sporadic until late July . . . I know the web needs me, and I'm sorry to seperate you from my genius . . . hello? Is anybody out there? Just as I suspected . . . the world is not ready for me. Go ahead and hate me -- you merely empower my own bitter cynicism. I'm getting a black beret, a tweed jacket, and a mocha latte: soon I will be seen at coffeehouses throughout the south, laconically commenting on the state of world affairs and how it is not my place as an outsider to "engage" it.

Don't you hate those people? Now, I'm pretty much a liberal Democrat (RANT ALERT! RANT ALERT!) but I absolutely despise those people who thrive on their smug ironic commentary. Sure we as a nation (I mean America, not the Democrats) have done despicable, horrible things -- same atrocities, I might add, that every nation has committed -- but I can't stand people who wallow in the pig muck of mistake and guilt. If we are mistaken, help us see it, understand it, and fix it. In my graduate school class (an overview of American literature, this term) there are a number of people who espouse a philosophy centered around the evil that is America . . . every class period I hear how the American Dream is a lie propagated by the powerful, fed by our wanton consumerism, conspired into being by every American citizen; indeed, Marx would be proud, as it is the new opiate of the masses. There is no freedom! they cry. America's insipid class system is destroying us all! they scream. What a terrible place! they moan. We've had an entire class period where various members of my class have decried the Satan masquerading as the American public school system for making them read Mark Twain. I am not kidding. I drive home every night with a headache.

Run for office. Petition your congressman. Get involved in your community efforts. Move. If America is such a horrible place, either do something about it or get out. Before you jump ship for North Korea, however, ask yourself where else in the world you will find the sheer amount of opportunity that exists here in the United States of America. Do some people enjoy greater advantages here? Certainly, and we don't need to kid ourselves that the fight for equality in this country is even halfway over. Think for a moment about that sentence, though: how many other countries around the world struggle with -equality-? How many other governments espouse a commitment to diversity? I can think of at least 17 countries offhand that make assembling en masse to protest the government a crime punishible by jail time or even death (in extreme circumstances.) Here? It's a -right- given us by the first amendment to our Constitution! And we have the gall to say that we are being -OPPRESSED- by the American government, and lied to by the American Dream?

I have a secret dream of my own: you might call it my American Dream. I see seven or eight of my classmates weathering storm, famine, and thirst on a rickety boat for days until finally reaching their freedom by washing ashore on the Cuban coast. Of course I'll not be with them. I've chosen oppression and Mark Twain.