Apr 2014
Seeing guns as a right
means you must have one
to protect yourself
from others just like you
The illusion of opportunity
to make yourself wealthy
by dint of your own effort
when it's all just a lottery
Passing off privilege
as some born vocation
while your downtrodden masses
rot in poverty or prison
Say taxation is theft
to underline your greed
while you live on stolen land
hate those you put in need
Deny health care for all
because you don't need it
it's better they die in pain
than be obliged to the State
Exporting your dystopia
all around the earth
so the rich get richer faster
and the rest increase in dearth
Cynthia Pauline Jones 3/10/2013
means you must have one
to protect yourself
from others just like you
The illusion of opportunity
to make yourself wealthy
by dint of your own effort
when it's all just a lottery
Passing off privilege
as some born vocation
while your downtrodden masses
rot in poverty or prison
Say taxation is theft
to underline your greed
while you live on stolen land
hate those you put in need
Deny health care for all
because you don't need it
it's better they die in pain
than be obliged to the State
Exporting your dystopia
all around the earth
so the rich get richer faster
and the rest increase in dearth
Cynthia Pauline Jones 3/10/2013
This was written after reading in a fairly concentrated period, a number of blogs and articles and trying to make sense of some of the comments written on those.
If you're American and read this, please try to see it as a friendly critique - though not of you personally; as an expression of bafflement on the part of a well meaning outsider, with some of the themes and inherent value judgments that underpin your culture; as a series of questions you might ask yourself about your culture.
Conversations with American friends show that many are just as alarmed and baffled by these aspects as is this outsider.
If you're American and read this, please try to see it as a friendly critique - though not of you personally; as an expression of bafflement on the part of a well meaning outsider, with some of the themes and inherent value judgments that underpin your culture; as a series of questions you might ask yourself about your culture.
Conversations with American friends show that many are just as alarmed and baffled by these aspects as is this outsider.
