Plausible Accountibility

“Kids These Days”
I could use this cyberly-written space to rally on about technology, lack of respect or discipline currently pervades those coming-of-age right now or about how the modern-day person lacks connection to his fellow; instead I will discuss how we lack connection to our society and through that connection, find ourselves lacking responsibility for it.

In 2001, the United States went to war. The two most major conflicts preceeding the “War[s] on Terror” were WWII and if semantasaurus can be reeled in, Vietnam. The first, we entered late but with gusto. Cans were scrapped, women penciled in their panty-hose and worked in factories while every available soldier went to war, proud to defend all that was right and abolish injustice. We needed no draft and civilians went without to fuel the effort.
The second war I focus on, few really condoned. We were cleaning up France's unjust involvement in a conflict that was not our own, in a place we could not comprehend. Our men, our friends, brothers, lovers and brothers, were being taken and forced to engage in violent, haunting warfare, often against their will. And while monetarily, we did not really go with out, the country and people left over connected and raged and the institutional machine fought as well, a war on US soil. We connected, occasionally through substances, with our world.

The current desert conflicts initiated willfully. We had been attacked and demanded retribution. Corruption and length quickly drained our enthusiasm. And while most of us have been affected directly, we do not aid, nor do we fight, we merely accept this war. Sometimes people die, sometimes we voice our disavowal, but mostly, life proceeds. I cannot explain this apathy, maybe it derives from exaustion, or from the disconnect that technology provides, or even from the transcontinental, transwar connection that it DOES provide. As the sun sets here, we can watch it rise over our loved ones in their bunkers.

In 1929 the Stock Exchange crashed, plummeted...exploded, eroded, completely reversed life in America. The current recession is worse that that financial crisis and while many have struggled to live, most of us continued as if unaffected. Unemployment benefits and social aid—created as the result of the infamous crash—maintained the dull and consuming status quo. And somewhere between war and financial downfall, gas skyrocketed and we still drove.

There has been no whole-sale shanty villages, no counting and hoarding of coffee grounds or sugar or flower. How are we to know that there is crisis if we cannot and do not experience it?


I offer no answers only the dysphoria and surreality that we cannot live if we've no place to live and we cannot claim a place to live if we cannot connect with it's ebbs and flows. We cannot connect with each other if we cannot stand on ground. I do know though, that we will never fix what we cannot be made to feel accountable for or dependent upon.