harley, and NOT like the motorcycle

This restless era, this time of leisure pleasantries within our great nation are at a pivotal crossroad. And America soon faces another growing pang, a well deserved plight forged from feared misconceptions. For we have delighted in an extended honeymoon, seventy years worth to be clear, in which we've become aware of ourselves as a people, to rightly loosen our strongholds over racism, civil liberties, and moral freedoms, and yet to harbor other contemptible vices such as greedy superficialities, worldly lusts, and forgotten chilvaries; leaving us free to become a nation of damnable beasts, spurned onward by our own passions of capitalistic wantonness. And we now the posterity of other great times prior have misplaced our zeal and daydreams in that of a dying ideology, one in which all people can catapult themselves into their own sustaining glories. It is but a fading reality in retrospect of all these impending crises.

And with that reckoning weighing down upon all present generations despite their diverse beliefs, has myself, a writer, in an unknown and perilous time debating the truth to be found in all of this, and whether change truly will arrive come election day, or any other day for that matter. Our government may have failed us in some certain measure, but I assure you the blame is ours, "the people", to contend against and reconcile together in unity. For in spite of your political stance, your religious convictions (if any), or your demographic...this deficit of heart, soul, and monies has fallen heavily and with such brevity that no one will escape unscathed. Our current system, once esteemed for its universality, once praised for its perpetual gains, or at the very least for its resilience, now lays prey to its own profiteers.

The task of repair need not be left solely to that of the upper echelon. They do not live our lives, they do not burn in quiet desolation as many citizens have somehow accepted and found contentment within- their fortunes being in living modestly and within their humble means. Nor do these lawgivers and now "economist laymen" know how to properly administer to a nation so driven by prosperity, so consumed by the misunderstood "American Dream".

No, we are freely governed, and thus freely held in contempt over our own negligence. You may wish to blame this blunder on bygone times of surplus and consumerism, and you'd not be completely wrong in doing so. Though I'd much rather know that it's an intrinsic part of being an American to spend and ultimately live as freely and unabashedly as I might choose to strive towards. And in that ideology our America has lost itself. It has blossomed into this wonderful land; ever pursuing genuine happiness. A place where all who are lost and in dire straits can fight against the odds and "win BIG" (whatever winning means to you respectively).

All the while, we as a nation, being blessed and freed together have misplaced, or even possibly forgotten, that people are inherently born to prevail together (or in our present state; to fail together), and that it's in shared aims and means that this world truly thrives, not in each doing their own as they please.

With this said, I offer no reasonable solutions for our current desperation. I cannot suggest a means to an end, when sadly our end as a nation has long ceased to be unified. We've grown in such a way that our morals dictate our spending habits, and our gains and losses are so varied because of the diversity in lifestyles (each individually led) and this nonconformity we've all sought to experience.

Inasmuch we are grieving together, we must also prepare and learn that the greatest resolve will come after an overall reconstruction of ideologies and happy pursuits befall the people as One. When we realize sooner or later, all this will soon be gone (for everything is fleeting), and the things left to endure will be the stuff of war and tyranny more so than of lavish luxuries. The sun has set on our golden era of limitless bounds, for we now know there this a ceiling to our spending and earning, and there is a finite choice to be made within our misguided infinite possibilities; a transience that we must accept and somehow adore into our next progression as a nation (whoever wishes to stay "forever young", stays naive and the feelings of innocence leaves in its place simple ignorance).

We are a people of open wounds, we bleach our souls in hopes that they will stay unblemished in sight of others (such as the figurative- Keeping up with the Jones'), we have become cold and somewhat pedantic, for we think our rights and choices noble in spite of their differences and destinations. I can only hope and pray that we will continue as centuries past, and fight together to fortify our freedoms, but also that we may come to the sound understanding and acknowledgment that it's better to thrive together in uniformed happiness, than to perish in our lone vanities.

"Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows, Less on exterior things than most suppose."
- William Cowper