Dark days of Christmas

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When I was young oh so long ago while I was still in elementry school we had the compulsery holiday pagents. When I was in 3rd grade I was chosen to be Santa Clause which included having a wife, Mrs. Caluse the experiance left me scarred for years. the years passed like they will and each year would be a diffrent verson of the Christmas story. In my final year of elementry school the theam was to be Christmas around the world. Our part of the pagent was to show a representation of a Christmas in Mexico. Which was ok, so we all were all to dress up in ethnic costumes sing silent night in spanish and then the highlight was the breaking of a piniata and the acompianing mad dash for the candy inside. This was Christmas time after all so It seemed ok at first but when it came time to start rehursing the play I could not bring my self to dive to the floor and grub around on the floor for some penny candy. Being made to hold hands waith Mrs . Clause as a third grader was sort of imbarrising but crawling around on the floor jostling amid 20 other kids greedly fighting for candy was compleatly without dignaty.

Watching the news feeds once again this year as in the last couple of decades, it's clear that Christmas shopping has degenerated into a contact sport. Man talk about a total lack of dignaty, pushing ,grabbing fighting over the latest coolist contrivance offered up for the Holy-daze consumption compatition. When in the same news cycle we are made aware of people around the world struggleing for freedom and in many cases they are merely trying to get some food to feed their famlies. But we on the other hand are a nation of the exceptional, the privlaged and the intitled. We are the greatest consumers on earth. The freeforall that christmas shopping has degenerated into is realy indicitive of the american psyicy. Once again another miserable soul has spent his misguided rage at true innosents a classroom full of children.

Once again we all are shocked and moved to tears stareing at the news feed in utter disbelif that such a thing should come to pass. When upon careful honest refelection is clear that our country breed them. Violent sports are spoon fed to us as children war toys for christmas. A policey of covert drone assination illeagle wars of choice and agression. Movies glorifying our "heros" in the armed forces and law enforcement dominate TV. And on our tv we are reminded 24-7 of the heroic sacrafices our men and woman in uniform are making on our behalf. We are conciderd to forgetful to recall the Jessica Lynch made for tv rescue or the Pat Tillaman frindley fire coverup or the 9-11 fiction. Our moral minders deem it alowable to show violence and blood shed but not the nakid human form or occasional swear word.

The United States government as we now know it has devolved into an athoratarian, fasist leaning expansionist tool of corperate greed. The evadence is all around us any thing you own made by Apple is a really good place to start looking. According to an Apple exeutive reasantly replying to a reporter when asked about the thousands of jobs being sent overseas and that those jobs would go a long way twords helping us out of our current financial downturn His responce was that Apples mission was not to help the US econmey. Well excuse me but this country is what made Apple possible and the faverable tax breaks given to these mulinational corperations. Personaly I will be hard pressed to buy an apple to put in my childs xmas stocking let alone some over priced Apple prouduct.

These guilded agers have managed to recapture the golden days of glory when the robber barons of every stripe ruled and were unaccountable to any one, they have even gotten their lackys on the Supreame Court to grant corperations person hood. Corperations like Apple are utlizing virtual slave labor the reap the huge profits they enjoy. The Milatary Industrial Complex that Dewight Eisenhower warned of has taken ahold in such a way that many in power worry that if Peace is waged their constiuant states will loose valuable goverment contracts. We now have a whole generation of "

consumers" who have never know a time without war or who will be aware of the infringments on their civil rights by an over compancating incressingly athoratarian goverment.

So While we try to find the joy in Cristmas this year given the tragic losses of the last week concider the losses we inflict with our zeal to stamp out Al Quida, Saddam and O sama. The untolled woman and children who are not counted in our body counts unless one of the killed were male and old enough to pick up a rifle. Yet we scramble for that special item that will make us feel whole or satisfied scrambleing and scurrying like a a bunch of kid fighting over that which fell out of a Pinata. Peace on Earth...yeah that will be happinin. :-{/>

Authors Bio:
52 yo Alaskan who is utterly and compleatly asstounded by the last 12 years of the cirqe d' absurde we call our govement in washington. anger and disappointment in the current occupants of the Whitehouse make it really hard to remain focused with a purpose, and not to fall into despair and ambivalence. Oped news offers a nice change, and a different perspective than that of the voices in my head.