A Note On Seriousness (for Kamala Harris and anyone else who might be quietly holding thoughts for 2029)

If America is serious and wants to be treated seriously within itself and the rest of the world (as well as every territory that dwells between those two points) the Country needs to perform a thorough, searching diagnosis of itself. It (the country) needs to identify, for starters, every least common lie, embarrassment, and fastfood-style conspiracy that has seemingly been auto-generated by a certain, obvious demographic whose sole claim to legitimacy is the dull fact that they were born here and our National Contract stipulates we collectively express some form of altruism, however burdened or feeble, towards the young and the new immigrants alike. 

As someone who is the sole descendant of a man who was born in the Philippines to Scotch-Spanish/Filipino parents, I can readily be grouped with either and am at least partly cautious and suspicious of both. 

I am 41 years old, a three-time dropout (once for high school with a GED, the others unimpressive attempts to study psychology, film and journalism)... I don't complain about the ill-spent money and time: they were, ultimately, minor losses, and no other investment that would have been made in their stead would significantly alter where I'm sitting right now. I'd only have drank & smoked the money, or spent it on movie tickets, DVDs, music, or Girls. My education is a product of a natural commitment to my own curiosity, with doors leading to hallways running their own path of fearless, hungry, if somewhat obsessive charges put on me by my own thoughts and environment and an atavistic willingness to pursue. 

I don't mean to sound like a fatalist. I'm not. I do what I can -- pledge what I can, if that can be claimed without sycophantic sanctimoniousness -- to make my actions and words and intentions as close as possible to a simple Buddhist's Path towards Enlightenment with an unfiltered love for Absurdism and virtually every heartful thought expressed by Albert Camus (among anyone else who strives to make art and productive lust and metta bhavana in the world, regardless of their successes or failures towards that glorious, hopeful apogee). 

So when I say America has a dire need for seriousness in late-2024, the person reading this will have some estimation of what I think we should reasonably expect of ourselves, and so far we haven't. 

The easiest problems to look at, if not necessarily immediately confront, are those of firearms, the import and/or production of body-neutering, soul-numbing drugs like fentanyl and heroin and any other influence that empowers Apathy to hold more sway than intelligent concern, and the utterly misguided, smugly racist, and intellectually-backwards way our "democracy" counts votes that plainly isn't on a 1:1 basis. There's certainly enough at our collective disposal to at least begin to slow the rate of things whether they can be severed from our Lives Today or even incrementally eradicated from and by future generations. It's not like some bitter dork is shaking them out of the trees in Florida and Nevada and New Mexico: those weapons are produced by those of illustrious standing who are, unfortunately, exempt from whatever protocol & responsibility that may have safeguarded the lives of men, women & children who have either been injured or outright killed by the bullets of domestic terrorists...and while Donald Trump does His personal best to shit Himself in public at least twice a month in some deranged fear of Mexicans and Rodent Recipes that would cause the average diagnosed ADHD/OCD Schizophrenic to raise their eyebrows in concern.... Trump and His fratboy sidekick won't solve this: They've got a Fine Opportunity to play Martyr in the style of some exquisitely-lettered American Idol fashion while horde after horde patrol the night hills in whaling ships repurposed into new Ford Trucks. Why should they? 

I mean, c'mon, be serious. 

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