A Culture War

Yes, we in America, the center of everything, have a culture war going on. Hooray for us. It is, certainly, a very strange war, one that seems hesitant to proceed. It is a war waged by default, as a generation of the disillusioned refuse to proceed with the charade, and find open, nasty attempts at punishment for our disrespect.

But we mean no disrespect. We simply do not believe. We do not believe, for instance, that the central question in the abortion debate is the point at which life begins, because we know better. We know because we learned early that allowing abortions means offering an easy way out for promiscuity. We know because we know most of those fundamentalists don't really care about this life anyway, and most certainly don't hold it as sacred.

We do not believe that tolerance is held as a virtue in this culture. We know because we have tried it. We have tried to live and let live, to view the people we come in contact with as equal in their endeavors to run their lives. But it is always the same: if you are not for me you are against me.

We do not believe that drugs are destroying people's lives. We think the drug war is destroying people's lives. We know because many of our friends, persons whom we know would never hurt a soul, are not lawbreakers - hell, are not even greedy - are in jails and prisons right now, apparently because of a technicality in the constitution that allows some people to take away other people's rights if they can get certain judges to say it's ok. This is not an argument to be submitted for verification and debate: this is a simple fact in our minds. If a process takes good people down, there is no other explanation: there is a problem with the process.

We do not believe that we possess any real right to privacy. We know this because those judges have said that just about anyone can look through our windows with high-powered telescopes, can wiretape our phones without a warrant, can search our piss for immoral substances, can search our homes with any excuse they make.

We do not believe that the judicial system is fair. We know this because prosecutors are able to bribe inmates with their freedom for telling a scripted story to a court. We know prosecutors want to do this becuse convictions are good for a political career. These are not secrets.

We have heard nothing but lies. We have heard that hard work is the key, that personal responsibility is the goal, that integrity matters. But we find out that who you sleep with and how you sleep with them is the decisive factor, and that the appeal to personal responsibility is nothing more than the judgemental calling themselves good. How else do you explain good responsible people drinking wine and going to bed, and good responsible people smoking pot and going to jail?

We believe the only thing we can believe in the face of this whole mess. We think there is a prejudicial attempt to beat us down, weed us out, force us through whatever means to live by a moral standard which is irrelevant to living a decent, honest life. We don't understand this prejudice completely, but we can't deny it. We didn't start this thing, but we can't simply believe differently. There is nothing to do but have a culture war.

Bring it on.

March 8, 1999