Have you ever heard that old saying, it was ‘better back in the good old days’?
How hypocrite and stupid is this saying! If you are reading this, if you are a white and straight male, trust me, today’s world is the same as it was before. Maybe a little (slightly?) ‘better’, for those who haven’t been born privileged.
There was a time, my friends, where being black was more difficult than today. And even as of today, it is still awfully difficult for them.
Being homosexual? Back in the ‘good ol’ days’? Let me give you a friendly reminder, it was illegal to be gay in America until 2003.
Being black, or gay, or both, life was about being outcasted. Wait, hold on, more than outcasted, they were lynched, insulted, threatened, and even killed. And you couldn’t ask the law to help. You had to pick up yourself and go on. If they didn’t kill you of course. It’s still going on today…
See, I’m an old, old man now. My job, all along my life, was reporter. Working with prestigious newspapers, doing real investigations. Of course there wasn’t any internet, everything was… slower. But we, reporters, on the ground, behind our typewriter, we were spreading informations, real ones. If you were fake my friend, no newspaper wanted you on board. The news rooms were battlefields.
Hunter S. Thompson, who breaked the codes and the boundaries, Woodward and Bernstein and their detective works pushing Nixon out of the fucking White House, you named it.
Those were the day when journalist, writer, poets were Rockstars along with Jim Morrison, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, The Rolling Stones. It was a revolution.
God, it was as violent as today. Maybe a little less, considering the amount of mass shootings skyrocketing right now.
But ‘back in those good ol’ days’, protest could turns into slaughter. For example, the four of may 1970, when the National Guard killed four students in Ohio while protesting against the war in Vietnam.
This was also the discovery of a new type of horror, serial killers. I won’t mention their names, you probably know some. But let me tell you, today, we do not have serial killers, well there is, but now, schools shootings seems to have taken the place of those monsters.
It’s terrifying. A bunch of people, mostly women, loved serial killers. Now, people admire school shooters. Those are mostly young men, white and with a simple access to gun. They kill as much as serial killer on a shorter period of time. And it’s spreading all over the country. Never ending.
Politics ask for thoughts and prayers, but no laws about restraining or even banning guns. And even if such laws pass, it barely does anything. Because, the NRA got some high profile politicians on theirs paycheck. In my opinion, this is legal bribing… Therefore, it will not end soon. Kids in America go to school like their in a war zone. All this for Freedom… kids pay that American Freedom by dying in classrooms…
Man, America is violence. It begun by the massacre of Native American. We live in a bloodstain soil, in violence in it’s purest form. Something got to change. We thought that a black president would change things drastically. It didn’t. A beautiful symbol of course, a powerful step forward but… nothing have changed.
We all needs a new Martin Luther King, a Robert Kennedy, a Malcom X before is assassination, someone need to help the black community and make the whites understand the tragic situation that the blacks and other minorities are facing. We need someone to gather us, to show us that we can live together and that we being divided and manipulated constantly for political gains… Why? Because a polarized and divided country is easier to govern. Divide and conquer. We should talk about sexism, the meetoo movement, women denouncing the sexual abuse and assault they face in their life. Powerful men who thought they were untouchable had to face justice. Femicids are on a all tome high. The fight need to go on. Equality is far from being reached.
Back in the ‘good ol’ days’c I was in the newsroom when Doctor King died. Same as for the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
I was at the scene of the murder of his younger brother, Bobby.
This was America sacrificing a potential peaceful and brighter future.
Today is better than the past. Come on, let’s not being grumpy, you, old folks dreaming of the past reading this. But it is far, far from being perfect. Because, like I’ve already said before, from the get go, things were already extremely bad. We need to care for each others, to stop being scared of our neighbors. Tolerance, respect, communicate, sharing! We need to be together so bad. Let’s not live in fear, this is not a life to live frightened. Neo-nazism is back in force, we need to face them, block them, and fight to keep our democracy.
I will live this earth soon, for a better place, I hope to at least. But I doubt this world is going in the right direction.
It was just the rambling of an old man. Sometimes, it’s good to hear what they have to say.
So, stand for what’s right, for your rights, for you life.
Jaskiers
Jaskiers 