RCL #1

I’m not entirely too sure on how to write out this blog considering it is supposed to be 1000+ words about my opinion on the state of civic life in the United States. I’ll just start somewhere and let my mind go as I type so I apologize if it isn’t well organized.

I think a good place to start is to first start with what has happened recently and talk about how we have gotten here. As of late, the internet and Wallstreet are at war over Gamestop’s stock. That really puts it all into perspective. I don’t think civic life in America really matters anymore. Being civic in the United States is pretty easy. Most people in this country work their jobs, have their families, help their neighbours, and vote. That’s all you really need to be civic in this country. Does being “civic” include helping your fellow man? If that’s the case I think most Americans do that to the best of their ability. If it’s relating to being a citizen, most Americans are doing what American citizens “should” be doing thus making them civic. To me though that’s not really enough because being civic in this country is easy. I would say the vast majority of Americans are “civic” because they follow the main-stream ideology of being a neo-conservative or neo-liberal and follow their own party’s guidelines. To me being civic is understanding a problem and trying to fix it. Let me clarify because I know the majority of people that would read this would assume they are already doing that. To me being civic isn’t being some spineless Biden supporter. It doesn’t mean being a Trump supporter either but what most people don’t understand is that Biden is apart of the problem, he’s not the solution to it. There are so many young Americans who chant things like Black Lives Matter or All Cops Are Bastards and think that they’re some American Che Guevara or Vladimir Lenin when in reality they’re just as blissfully ignorant as the “white supremacists” that they’re so adamantly against.

I should probably clarify the points I made. Most people in this country either don’t realize there is a problem, or think the problem in this country is racism, or transphobia, or sexism, or xenophobia,  or whatever the new ism against some marginalized group is on the news at the current moment. Saying that you’re against racism, or sexism, or whatever label is just virtue signalling. It is so abundantly clear these days that those ideas are bad that saying you’re against them is 99% of the time virtue signalling. It doesn’t make you civic (in my eyes at least) to throw your fist in the air and say that you don’t like racism. Ok, so what? Me neither. The real problem in this country is money. We live in a capitalist economy. Capitalism is guided by self-betterment and improvement, no one disputes that. Conservatives will say it to make their point and their opposition will say it to make theirs. So naturally, this pursuit for money will penetrate all areas of our life and unfortunately it has. It’s gotten to the point that I described in the introduction of the blog. The internet, or more specifically, Reddit, is at war with Wallstreet, over Gamestop’s stocks. That is our reality.

In 2011 Occupy Wallstreet was the big deal on the news. Americans are getting sick and tired of all of the debt and dead-end jobs and poor benefits and recession and inflation and getting poorer while the rich get richer and all of their other woes. The movement ends and the news takes a drastic change in what they show to the masses.

Zach Goldberg on Twitter: "Original NYT Racism graph was actually an undercount. The search was generated with racism in quotations (and quotations should only be used when connecting two words). Here's the

So either Americans got more racist practically overnight or the headlines are being manipulated. I’d like to think its the latter because A. the first option sounds ridiculous, and B. I think America is a good country full of good people. If it isn’t abundantly clear to what I’m trying to say, I think those that are in power are trying to divide the country by means other than class so that we forget about what the real problems are in this country. I mean if you just think about it for longer than five minutes it all really makes sense.

Under the assigment directions it gives us the option to write about if we are burnt out with American political discourse, I guess you could say that this is what burnt out looks like. I don’t think the climate is particularly depressing or anythingand thats why I’m burnt out, and trust me I know depressing, my family lived in Russia during the collapse of the Soviet Union. This isn’t all that sad and at points it is amuzing. Corona virus and the recession are of course not funny, but Reddit going at it with Wallstreet sure is. Anyways, I’m burnt out not because of all the bad news but because Americans are not talking about what needs to be talked about. One side doesn’t realize theres a problem and the other side is so full of itself that it attacks everything for a cause that isn’t even all that right. I’m of course talking about the Republicans and the Democrats. What’s ironic is the Republicans are closer to the truth then the “woke” Democrats. The Republicans, the party of capitalism, is closer to a socialist revolution then the left-leaning Democrats. People are so out of touch with each other nowadays that they don’t realize that they are helping the people they should be fighting by fighting the people they should be helping.

I think to be a civic American you have to be willing to sacrifice for a beneficial cause. It may be surprising to hear but what so many Americans have labeled as the opposite of American ideals, to me, is a civic duty of being an American. I think that the people that stormed the Capitol Building had every right to. Our government doesn’t listen to us anymore and no longer does it represent the people. It says in our constitution that the people have the right to form a more perfect union and I truly believe that’s what was in the minds of the men and women who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. I think the sooner the common American realizes this, the sooner things will begin to change in this country.

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