...And Justice For All
Image Credit: Album Art - Metallica - …And Justice For All
I’m generally apolitical on social media because of my job. As a director, I am an observer by nature, and I learn through taking in the world. The past few weeks, months, years I’ve been taking it all in. And I’ve learned a lot.
What I have seen unfold in America, this country, our country I find against everything I stand for as a human and a patriot and can no longer remain silent about my own thoughts out of some politically correct attempt to not ruffle any feathers.
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The unjust killing of George Floyd was inexcusable. And if we are to live in America—a supposedly free country—this miscarriage of justice cannot go unaddressed. But not just his death… all of the unjust deaths that preceded it. The fact that a police station had to be burned down for a police department to do the right thing says all you need to know about where we are.
Photo Credit: AP photo/Julio Cortez
During the justified outrage we feel for this murder, I urge everyone to think about all the other great things America is supposed to stand for.
It says in our constitution “a government by the people, for the people.”
If you are paying attention, systemic racism and a crooked justice system is not the only thing that should anger you, even though it needs to be the focus right now.
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I don't know about you, but a President firing on his own people to hold a bible up like an auction item angers me.
The accelerated police brutality during a mostly peaceful protest ironically, about police brutality… angers me.
A mandated lockdown for a foreign virus that was poorly handled by leaders and is crashing an already fragile economy for the second time in my life angers me.
The privatized prison system and mandated arrests and ticket quotas angers me. Locking people up for marijuana possessions and nonviolent drug crimes to make products on slave wages for corporations angers me.
Big business using a small business loan relief program to syphon out cash through a garden hose angers me.
And god knows what else is going on behind closed doors right now.
The systemic corruption of the justice system and the political system has created a Frankenstein monster of an America I was once proud to be a part of. Or maybe it never existed to begin with. But… I want to believe in the American dream.
Creator: Evan Vucci | Credit: AP
Copyright: Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
I was born in 1987. I’m 33 years old. My dad—a man I respect very much—always told me to “work hard, and things will be fine.” After all, he did do that, and his dad did do that. Everything was fine for them so why shouldn't it be for me, right?
So I did that. I started working at 14 years old, illegally under the table, doing every manufacturing and manual labor job you can imagine, and have not stopped working since. Even when I was in college.
In 2009, I graduated from college Magna Cum Laude, proud and ready to look for a job with over $100k in debt, and guess what?
Some rich assholes crashed our economy. And even worse, they walk out the door with our taxpayer money in their pockets. Job market shattered. Dreams of hardworking, taxpaying Americans. Gone forever.
Creator: Gregory Bull | Credit: AP
Copyright: Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
So what did I do? Like a true American, I “pulled myself up from the bootstraps” and busted my ass to create a better life for myself. New opportunity. I didn't want to trade my waking life for just a salary. A salary that for so many Americans, including my father was taken away for the bottom line of the company he was working for. Self employment to me, was freedom. Luckily, I had a skillset I was cultivating from a young age, first in drawing, painting and music. Then in photography, animation and eventually directing film. I could see a path, and was privileged enough to begin executing it.
So I quit my job, and poured myself into a dream. Not out of luxury, out of necessity. And it has not been easy, by any stretch of the imagination. Now I am here, 12 years into that attempt, wondering if this American experiment is working after having the rug pulled out from under me, and all of us from a virus that was poorly handled by our elected leaders.
George Floyd’s death rightfully lit a fire in America, and it burns bright. As the fire burns brighter, I hope it illuminates a lot more than just the systemic racism. Now as its burning, it has filled the air with a thick smoke of anger, sadness, confusion and division. Perpetuated by the President and the media.
Is this the America we want? What happened to taxation without representation? What happened to truth? What happened to liberty? What happened to justice? I’ve lived through two pandemics now, and two crashes of our supposedly strong economy caused by people other than me and you. As an American this angers me.
Photo Credit: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
My great grandparents on both sides of my family came here to escape oppressive governments and now I find myself living in one on the edge of ascension. I now see Americans of all races and backgrounds, observing collectively a government who has done nothing but create laws that benefited the richest of us:
Policies that moved manufacturing overseas and destroyed whole cities like my hometown of Cleveland. A government that created laws for their corporate lobbyist puppet masters that cost Americans their jobs, eviscerated their pensions, created a stock market crash, and a housing crisis.
A government that waged war for 20 years under the lie of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. A coup, orchestrated likely by their corporate overlords of oil and poppy.
A government that used liable laws to prevent the visuals of American soldiers bodies from being shown in the news, so that we could not contextualize what the true cost of war looks like, and all the while tortured terrorists illegally at Guantanamo Bay in secret.
A government that then has the audacity to not adequately care for their service members when they return home from that unjustified war.
A government that will not enact laws that favor any green or clean alternative energy sources because exon mobile and other oil companies pay them to shape laws in their favor.
A government that used the fear of terrorism to create an Orwellian infrastructure to control information and spy on its own people through their electronic devices, and lied about it.
A government that gave tax breaks to billionaires and protected criminals like Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America while persecuting patriots like Edward Snowden, during a time most Americans were out of work, or lost their homes because of the actions of those banks.
The same Americans that believe in separation of church and state, observing a sitting president firing tear gas on his own people to pose awkwardly with a bible like a “Good Christian”, moments after escalating national tensions and threatening to use the might of the greatest military force on the planet against his own people.
The same Americans that were horrified by the Kent State shootings, and Civil Rights police brutality of the past watching the almost near Gestapo like police force dispatched to our streets the past weeks... and some Americans trying to rationalize it by saying “looting is wrong. It’s a crime.”
It’s definitely a crime. But appreciate that anger, and realize sometimes we need to do a controlled burn to expose the vermin in the forest.
Image Source: New York Times
But it’s ok, they gave us a 1200 dollar check once.
You are supposed to work for us. That’s my money, that you stole from my wages to bail out bankers instead of giving us competent healthcare, or fixing our roads, or providing better education, or anything other than the pillaging of the federal reserve and the military grade scaling of the police departments that are supposed to be keeping us safe. It’s unacceptable and it needs to change, or rest assured in true American spirit, these peaceful protests won’t be so peaceful the next time they happen.
And If I don’t pay my taxes out of protest, because I do not approve of how you use my funds, you lock me in a cage? And what recourse do I have? Voting? Corporate puppet on the left, or corporate puppet on the right? What a joke.
“The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
Do you notice any difference between La Cosa Nostra and the US Government these days? Because I am having a hard time telling the difference anymore. Maybe they cracked down on the mob because they were pressing in on their territory.
I don’t have a solution, or an answer or any practical advice here, but you cannot address a problem if you don’t admit there is one. I’m festering with anger, and I’m draining the wound of all emotion. I’m finally putting some of my deeper thoughts out in public to share. Because it needs to be shared.
I want to believe in the American dream, but I’m really having a hard time. Respect for me, will always be earned, never given.
I believe we can do better. We have to do better. I don’t know about you, but I demand the government I was promised. A government for the people.