Striped Tulip

Striped Tulip, originally uploaded by unohuu.

why can't we all live together? what happened to the ideals of our youth? we were going to change the world and in fact, time will look back and see that we did. we started the environmental movement and now we drive monster SUVs. we started talking about sustainable growth and now we have monster yards that require tons of petroleum based fertilizers to keep green. we talked about saving the whales and we gulp caviar and shrimp and scallops and sushi as if we might never eat again. we preached love and now avidly practice hate - we hate all those people who are not us - irrespective of who we are. we immersed ourselves in diversity and now we enclose ourselves in gated and policed communities because we are xenophobic. we embraced differences and now we abhor the different. we were tolerant of others; now we eschew all that does not fit into our neat little packaged sound bites.

would that we could be like the animals that we believe we are so very superior to. flowers and bugs and turtles and squirrels. this morning i saw road crew picking up deer that had been killed on the highway . i cried a short tear for those deer. i got to work and there were issues about saving children that were so very important. i called APS in that far away place where my mother lives. they hardly had time to take the report. this from a society that promised to respect elders and love children and place our values back in the heart of our constitution.

it just is not happening the way we planned. we have become the corrupt and morally bankrupt fathers and mothers that we so despised. we have sold out our souls for pension plans and stock options. we laughed while we were doing it. forget all those banal promises. forget that we preached brotherly love and helped our sisters escape the tyranny of chauvinism. what have we wrought?

that poor Indian sitting on the horse was shedding tears for what had become of a land he loved. we now have casinos in place of Native ideals. we have gambling fever. we have gross acquisition syndrome. we raid family assets because we think we are owed something. we penalize those who have saved and reward those who have frittered away money. we can't distinguish between the poor and the lazy. the ignorant and the indifferent the mentally ill and personality challenged the this and the that.

we have politicians who are afraid to make the tough choices - people over property and corporations. education over pork spending. rantings over rights.

how much time do you think we have left? maybe it is already too late.!