- I live in a state that has the newest candidates for
President visiting senior centers, restaurants, and people's homes like
manure at a parade.
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- Dressed up or dressed down, to make themselves appear
more homespun and one of the people, most seem to be missing the ache of
the people's hearts, as they rip and tear at one another, piss and moan
over whether we should have gone to war, or who's the most macho amongst
them!
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- What do people, real people not costumed for some event
really want? What do they ache for, what do they care about? Despite the
glowing reports from "expert" public relations hirelings telling
them that the economy is on the upswing, more killing means we're winning,
and laments that medicines should be affordable; they're not buying!
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- They're not buying some dusty moth eaten general, far
from choking desert sands, giving them the low down on liberating people,
finding weapons of mass destruction, nor the made for TV sitcom of finding
the Butcher of Baghdad, the evil of evil found in a "snake hole-spider
hole-rat hole", being pawed over for vermin. They are watching men,
their neighbors, in their forties and fifties; mechanics, farmers, shopkeepers,
and truck drivers being sent off to a forever war. A war that has thus
far expended more than 162 billion people as their neighbors are being
evicted. Billions for private contractors and a privatized army that sees
reservists not being paid, not being properly equipped, nor adequately
fed (except for the chosen few at the plastic turkey event.
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- Billions upon billions building a 'democracy', as the
'democracy' they are supposedly fighting for is being dismantled, brick
by brick, town by town, person by person. They leave town, these middle-age
men, as the politicians take off for exotic vacations or go on a speech
making tour, to make extra thousands. They pass the boarded mills, the
darkened stores, the pulverized infra-structures of their towns and villages
wondering if they'll ever return. And per chance they should, then having
to beg for medical care?
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- TV shows the utter insanity of women at war with their
husbands, sending kisses and hugs home to toddlers! No, these are not the
relatives of politicians nor of the corporate hucksters cleaning up, but
everyday folks. The elites children are doing Europe, spending thousands
at some private club, or on break from the good life. Women in war! Butcher
holler, city ghettos, villages, and rusted mill town, women. Women who
should be home with their babies, not taken captive or shot up in some
ambush by men who were raised to war. Women, who should be reading bedtime
stories, comforting a fevered child, and waiting for their men to return
from work. Women who should be on college campuses realizing their dreams.
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- What do people want? They want politicians representing
their needs, and their concerns, not taking orders from industry lobbyists;
be they the insurance-pharmaceutical-waste-or military industrial complex
etc. hucksters. They want men of the people, not a private club of prima
donnas, seeing to their own lucrative salaries, pensions, and health care.
They want men who are not sold out to this or that special interest, caring
only for the next election or that lobbying job.
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- What do the people want? They want jobs, real jobs. Not
jobs as part time clerks, Wal-Mart drones, nor contractual (no benefit)
jobs for the week or month. They want to take care of their families with
dignity, and not be turned away from a hospital because they can't afford
the hundreds per month in insurance premiums. They want their children
to have the needed medicines in a crisis, and their elderly parents not
having to worry over cutting their medicines in half or not being able
to afford at all. They want votes for the people not for pigs at the trough.
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- They want to be sending their young off to college not
to war. They want to know how you fight terrorism which is like fighting
the fog? They want local and state politicians to protect the health of
their children and environments, and not turning a blind eye to corporate
robber baron swine, coming in and building hog farms, chemical plants,
incinerators, nuclear reactors, and massive waste dumps. They want some
politician who still has a minuscule of testosterone left to stand up and
say; "My constituents are not acceptable risks, not abutters, not
a sub-group. They have names and they have hopes and dreams for their children
and I will not have them written off as collateral damage for greed".
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- What do people want? They want to know that the constitution
still means something. They want to be able to speak out, to protest, to
voice their no, to their jobs and the jobs of their children, being shipped
off to the cheapest labor camps in Third-World countries; without being
clubbed, beaten, and attacked with stun guns and concussion grenades by
mutants in helmets with bullet proof vests, hired by corporate honchos.
They are Pinkertons in new attire!
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- They don't want corporate pigs stealing their water,
minerals, and timber, and despoiling the oceans with their drilling platforms
sucking the life's blood from the earth, and telling fishermen the seas
are now off limits. They don't want giant corporate farms with their genetically
altered Frankenstein food putting small farmers off the land. They don't
want mountain eating machines, approved by the imposter EPA destroying
the mountains of West Virginia. They don't want their children being dumbed
down and zoned out by change agents no longer teachers.
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 What to the people want? Ask them? No,
they won't be found in the fancy eateries of Georgetown, the sumptuous
Congressional dining rooms, nor the obscene health club that you romp in
between votes, nor in some lobbyist's office getting your newest marching
orders. You'll find them in the nation's unemployment offices, in soup
kitchens, in freezing apartments, in shelters, living in their cars or
rushing off to their second or third minimum wage jobs.
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- What do the people want? Not an exotic trip to the Riviera,
a membership to the country club, a mansion, designer duds, cocktail parties,
French dining, the opera or theater circuit; none of these. It's really
quite simple amidst all the empty rhetoric, shouting matches and phony
baloney.
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- All they want is the bang of a screen door. Not some
aluminum Chinese import, but a real wooden screen door. They want vine
covered porches, with rocking chairs and tall pitchers of lemonade. They
want honest officials who are not withered and compromised. They want to
hear the foundry whistle and watch for their dads and husbands at the gate
to the auto plant. They want laughter on a summer's eve, bonfires, singing
and the sound of woodlands calling out the day's end. They want city parks
with caroling, the whisper of the rain on roofs. They want fireflies in
jars on nightstands, school plays and refrigerators covered with special
art.
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- They want young men tinkering on cars, photos of prom
night and the glow of lamp lit streets. They want grandma in her flowered
dress, flour smudged on cheek, putting out the candied yams, the baked
ham and specialty treats. They want the smell of lilac bushes, the rush
of mountain creeks and a waterfall to visit in a distant secret glen. They
want swimming holes with ropes on trees, children playing hide and seek.
They want family games and bedtime stories, poetry and a guitar man. They
want a car that runs, nothing fancy mind you, or a truck for country living,
to get them through the snow and mud.
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- Mothers, many, wish to stay at home and raise their little
ones. They don't want to stick their kids in day care and only see them
off to sleep. Fathers want a living wage. A man needs to know he can provide
for his family. Just enough to pay the bills, feed the children, and maybe
own a plot of land; a place to joy in children seeking four leaf clovers,
just for luck; a place that has a wide front porch with hanging plants
and visiting neighbors.
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- Oh, and most of all, the people want a real screen door.
A door that welcomes the early morning sun, the sound of birds, ducks and
geese and yapping dogs. A wooden door painted green or blue, maybe yellow,
maybe red. A screen door makes a house a home; it says we'll manage come
what may. It welcomes in the sound of rain, the postman's truck, a friend's
approach. And finally in the twilight's hush, it welcome's in the moon's
embrace, splashing stardust on the stairs. That's all the people really
want, a screen door with an echoing slam that shouts, "I'm home".
America just wants to go home.
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