Consequences

by Gabor Szabo

      It's the beeping metal detector when a child passes through it. It's the random chance that picks you for a full body search – stripping your dignity for safety's sake. It's the dry, stuffy air in the plane cabin. It's in your head as you put on the headphones to block out the other passengers. It's the memory they always force into your mind – the anger you have to always feel. 

      It's in the towers that fell. It's in the mangled steel of your lost innocence. Within the pavement that was once stained with the jumper's blood, in the dirt that forever holds their memory. It's the pile of rubble under his feet as he posed valiantly in the picture. It's was in the campaign slogan plastered everywhere, especially in the reflex part of your brain.

      It's the war we didn't get. It's the Iraqi baby her son accidentally shot. It's the insurgent who lost all hope in everyone, especially himself. It's in the armored Hummvees torn apart by bigger and better improvised explosive devices. It's the coffins draped in the American flag – containing what was once a human being. It's the thousands of mothers, fathers, and siblings who cry for their dead son or daughter - it's the reasons they make up to justify their deaths. It's the anger you feel as you watch the daily casualties - it's the fast food grease stain in the couch you watch TV from. The complacency in which you are fattened, the sugary ignorance that you lick off your lollypop. It's in the love you once had for your country.

      It's in the corporate charter, the means to their profit. The gold they dig with a drill from the dark abyss of our greed. It's the black gunk smeared on the side of the fuel truck. The hot, slick used oil dripping from your car, the stained rag you throw into the trash. It's the gas you burn. It's in the bottle you drink your water from. You smell it when you are stuck behind that ancient Ford spewing out the black acrid smoke. It's the spill that kills the fish around and in it. The plastic bottle that you see from the bridge floating downstream. It's under the streets, spewing from the city into the ocean. It's the warning sign against eating the fish. It's the gigantic tanker freshly filled in Kuwait.

      You hear it on the radio - you see it on the TV. It's his bumbling that you listen to. It's the vibrant colored campaign banners hanging from telephone posts, catching your attention as you drive. It's the new front-runner's promise - the promise they want you to believe. It's the goal you wish to see accomplished. It's in their war for your trust, the answers in the debates tailored to your ears. It's the money that they borrow out of your pocket. It's in your campaign t-shirt's label and imprinted on its front.

      It's the truth you thought you knew. It's the program that reads your emails for terrorist plots without your knowledge. It's the ambiguous announcement at the press conference. The pointless questions asked by the reporters, it's the answers that confuse you even more. It's in the new aircraft carrier that costs 20 times Iran's yearly gross domestic product. It's the Cuban refugee who drowned off the Florida Keyes. It's in the shadows that follow the illegal immigrant worker at night, the landlord that takes most of his daily wage. It's in the green lawn you are privileged to have.   

   

    It's the curtain before your eyes, the information you are fed every minute of every hour of everyday - 365 times a year. The propaganda you are an integral - patriotic part of. The façade of barbed wire borders we built to keep them out. It's the terror you feel – terror, terror everywhere - out to get you and yours! It's the reflection of your individuality slowly fading away in your office window. It's that subtle gloom underlying all your thoughts everyday you wake up. It's in the rhythm as you read this – the beating of your heart. The free will we thought we had –it's in the American dream slowly turning into the American nightmare.