Liberty

“Those that would give up their liberty for security, deserve neither liberty or security.” Benjamin Franklin

I am going to Disney World in October to see a close family member get married. It should be a joyous event and I should be looking forward to enjoying a wonderful vacation with my family in the “happiest place on earth.” Instead , every time I think about the trip, I get knots in my stomach when I remember that I will have to fly.

The first time I flew to Disney, land, at the time, I was 4 years old. There was a malfunction with the landing gear, and we ended up having to crash land . We sat in the airport for 6 hours before getting a new plane to take us. When we landed in LAX, the power was out.

I have flown a number of times since and the heights never bothered me. The fear of crashing never bothered me. I flew for the first time, by myself, when I was 15 and it never bothered me. I loved flying. I flew once since 9/11, in 2004, and while the removal of the shoes was annoying, and the sitting in the airport twiddling my thumbs for the required 2 hours before my flight was annoying, I still managed to enjoy myself.  Now, I dread it.

I dread that the only way I can get on a plane, to enjoy a trip to Disney World, is if I either subject myself and my family to radiation or molestation.

People were outraged about this when it was first implemented and those of you reading this are probably thinking I am a day late and a dollar short with this commentary, but that’s kind of the whole point. People WERE outraged, and now, somehow, they aren’t. Maybe the public outcry has been silenced because of the concerns over the economy or maybe the whittling away of entitlements or income disparity or health care access or the GOP Primary battles or maybe even Anthony Weiner’s penis. Maybe it’s because “we the people” are scared of the terrorists.

Who are these terrorists? What do they do? Well, from my understanding, they hate us and they want us dead. So what? We won’t be able to end the “War on Terror” until we eradicate all the hatred from the world? Seriously?  What do these terrorists do, exactly? They kill people and they sodomize people and they take away freedoms. Radiation kills people too. Inappropriate touching is the same thing we warn our children about when they are young, and now we are supposed to tell them it’s okay as long as government officials do it? I thought the legal system in this country was based upon the premise that a citizen is innocent until proven guilty. Why is it then, that every single person that passes through an airport security check is being treated as though they could be a criminal? How is that freedom?

How is it that we live in a civilized country, in the year 2011, and the only way to travel, to expand our minds, to embrace different cultures, is to either get exposed to radiation or allow someone to degrade us to the point of allowing a stranger to literally probe our bodies? How is it that those are the only two options? How DO I explain to my children that it’s okay for a stranger to touch them? How do I explain to them when they are older, that I allowed them to be exposed to radiation? Isn’t it my job as a parent to protect my children from harm? I grow my own food to avoid harmful chemicals. I slop ‘em up with sunscreen to prevent skin cancer. How do I stand by and watch my children get violated or poisoned and smile to make them think it’s okay?

How do frequent travelers do it? Honestly, I would love to know how people can go through their daily lives NOT being outraged, every single day, about these atrocities. There’s that old analogy that if you put a frog in boiling water, it will jump out, but if you put it in cold water and slowly bring it to a boil, the frog will die. Are people really just accepting that this is how things are now? Because of some abstract terrorist threat?  We’ve seen freedoms removed from people throughout history. We saw Mubarak shut Egyptian internet service down during the “peaceful protests”  and we were outraged. We see the oppression, the removal of freedoms in Libya, and we are on the verge of going into their country to fight against the oppressive regime. And why? Because we are outraged. Yet, we continue to lose rights and freedoms in this country every single day, and instead of questioning our government and its practices, we blindly accept them, for the sake of freedom.

Accountability?

I have two preschoolers. We generally try to stay away from electronic media, as a family, whenever possible.  Well, that’s not totally accurate. The kids enjoy the online educational games made available for free and our Friday nights are generally reserved for a kid-friendly movie. We never use it as a babysitter, any programming viewed by our children is also viewed along with at least one adult. We discuss the movies, we learn from their messages and we compare and contrast to the real, nonfiction world.

Most of the movies we select teach messages of sharing and caring and true love and fighting for what is right. There’s a clear good character and a clear evil character or force. They are stories of overcoming the odds  and of good triumphing over evil.

I must say, the socio-political addict that I tend to be has found quite a favorite in the Disney-Pixar imaginings in Wall-E. [Eventual spoiler alert!]

Wall-E is about an adorable little robot whose job it is to package garbage into little cubes. The humans have produced so much garbage that the planet is no longer sustainable for human life. The only company left on the whole planet, Buy ‘N Large, decides it makes more sense to allow their “customers” (the human population) to go on a space luxury cruise until the planet is again clean enough for human habitation.

The movie is fraught with symbolism and almost hauntingly appropriate for our current times.

There is the obvious environmental message that overproduction and over consumption will ruin our environment.

There’s the economic message that we are, as a society, so consumed by the almighty dollar that as long as something is advertised the right way, we will listen and we will buy.

There’s the political message that, one day, there will be a corporation so big that it will engulf all others and dictate everything we do as a society, and we might just be lazy enough to listen. On the space cruise, 700 years later, everyone rides in a hover round. Robots attend to every need, including the education of the children, the morning shave, the climate control, even the brushing of teeth. Humans don’t even eat solid food anymore, all meals are served in cups. It has gotten to the point, where the bone mass has decreased so much that people cannot pick themselves up when they fall. 

Along comes Wall-E’s eventual gal, Eva, who finds, despite the dictatorial message being preached to the masses, that life finally is, once again, sustainable on Earth. The establishment, fights come hell or high water to make sure that no one finds out, but the robots fight back. In this fight, the humans learn they are capable of so much more than simply what Buy ’N Large has been telling them. They, quite literally, learn to stand on their own feet again.

As is typical with preschoolers, we have viewed this movie about 50 times since we discovered it and every time the messages within the story blow my mind. First of all, cause it’s a Disney flick, which as I said earlier, typically talks about princess and contains a nice, radio friendly song and has an obvious good character and an obvious evil character. This movie has a LOT more grey area. As a grown up, I would consider the easy enemy to be Buy ’N Large, the corporation that tells the humans that they should just give up doing everything for themselves and let Buy ‘N Large take care of them. What’s so bad about that, you ask? They sat back and became completely dependent on their governing force, which was indeed, the Big Corporation because it was EASY. It was EASY to let Buy ‘N Large provide everything for them. It was EASY to let them dictate the clothes they should wear, the food they should, ahem, drink, the time of day it was, whether or not they could splash in the pool.

It would have been harder for the humans to fight the good fight for their independence by not buying products exclusively from Buy ‘N Large when there were still alternatives. It would have been harder for the humans to re-purpose their garbage and choose products that were not disposable and weren’t composed of toxic chemicals. It would have been harder for the humans to tell Buy ‘N Large, “No, we will stay here, in our home and help clean it!” It would have been harder for the humans to do the research on their own and think for themselves. Pretty big message for a for a cute little kids’ movie.

The Day the Music Died?

Yesterday, a friend of a friend had an “encounter” with the TSA. This innocent traveler eventually arrived at the appropriate destination, which was meant for relaxation and fun, humiliated and disgusted.  Throughout the discussion afterwards about what had happened, my friend and I realized that it had been ages since we had actually heard of an encounter with the TSA that was worthy of the outrage that I had felt upon hearing about the incident yesterday.  Did they just stop happening or did the media just stop reporting it? I understand coverage of jabs between liberals and conservatives and Democrats and the GOP and Trump’s hair and Obama’s birth certificate is surely entertaining, in the way that a one season reality show might be, but what else is going on in the world that actually could shape history?  What have we already forgotten and why?

Then, while thinking about the annoyance of the mainstream media deciding what information we actually DO need to hear and be reminded of, I got to thinking about more substantial forms of expression- ones that have more staying power than simply a headline that sells a newspaper or a lead in that prompts us to “tune in at 6.” I would surely be hard-pressed to find a person out there that doesn’t have an all time favorite movie- one that effected an epiphany and a number of favorite musical artists, that helped shape viewpoints.

There is so much turmoil in the world right now: protests erupting throughout countries once thought to be stable, the economy crumbling, rights being legislated away and essential services being obliterated with the check of a ballot. We’ve seen our share of turmoil in the US over the years, but typically, as well as televised and printed news accounts, we also had songs that rallied and upset and got people to think and develop real opinions about what was happening. During World War II, we had songs like "Remember Pearl Harbor" - Sammy Kaye (1942) and ”Kiss The Boys Goodbye” - Composer: Frank Loesser and Victor Schertzinger - From: Movie "Kiss The Boys Goodbye" (1941). In the 1950’s http://www.fiftiesweb.com/tune5055.htm there was “Sixteen Tons” by  “Tennessee” Ernie Ford, and not much else that would be considered thought provoking, but then again, in the ‘50’s, everyone was pretty much happy. The 1960’s however, made up for that, with the United States’ involvement in Vietnam and the sexual revolution and the loss of our nation‘s innocence. I couldn’t begin to list even a percentage of the songs that were of the times, but shall instead direct you to, of course, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin and countless others who managed to tell their stories and their views in a way that immortalized the strife of the era. The ‘70’s gave us John Lennon's Imagine, which was a breath of fresh air to a war weary world.

The 1980’s gave us groups like Megadeth, with albums like Peace Sells...but Who's Buying? And in the 1990's we had bands like U2 and Rage Against the Machine to bring us socio-political commentary. After the September 11 catastrophe in 2001, a number of songs were released by artists like Toby Keith to commemorate and speak out about the harrowing event and its repercussions.

In the decade following 2000, we continue to have socio-political turmoil. There are military conflicts, poor people, unemployed, environmental concerns, inequality amongst immigrants and  sexual orientation. There’s strife between the classes, distrust of our leaders, conspiracy theories, nuclear crises, ad infinitum- and, no one seems to be singing about any of it. Great music transcends time. When I was growing up in the 1980’s and 1990’s, dusty records found in the attic prompted my own research into the stories the songs from the ‘60’s and ‘70’s told. Even in my young teens, I was developing opinions about the world around me. Before I could drive, I was politically active and by the time I could vote, I was well informed enough to make intelligent choices when I finally got to pull that lever for the first time.

So where have these influential songs gone?  Is it that they won’t sell, or is it that someone doesn’t want them sold? I am not sure if I fall into the “lazy generation” of which so many of my respected elders speak (I DO think I am slightly older,) but when the young folks have Reality TV and Justin Bieber being rammed down their throats, and billionaire business folk buying up educational software companies, and schools failing them, and parents working 2 jobs each, and multi national media moguls deciding what info really should be given to the public, it’s no wonder society has produced a generation that really just doesn’t give a shit. It’s certainly obvious that the representatives that are supposed to protect their interests sure don’t.