An Army of Millions: Inauguration

This is slightly belated, but I am going to try to write something anyway because things like this need to be documented.

We woke up a little later than we had meant to, perhaps betraying the single major flaw of a generation: we try to care, we try to make it to the front lines of history, but as often as not, sleeping in seems equally as attractive. So, we woke up a little later than our already later than necessary planned departure, hopped a bus and made our way to the mall. The streets of capital hill were all blocked off by large tour buses in order to create channels of pedestrian activity. Thousands of people filled the streets. We looked like zombies converging on a boarded up town, aliens responding to the call of the mother ship. And, as strange as it might seem, in many ways, we were.

Most of the 1.8 million or so people who marched on the mall that day to see a symbol of hope become a real decision-making world leader have been living half lives (zombies) or eccentric lives of political dissidents and minorities. We have been either building lives outside of society or refusing to live for the past eight years, and for a person of my age (22) that pretty much qualifies as eternity.

So, what now?

How does an army of millions, an army of zombies and aliens, become an active, informed citizenry? How do we cope with the fact that the establishment is giving us less and less reason to rail against it? Perhaps more importantly, the zombie masses must ask themselves how to stop complaining and start acting. It seems, right now anyway, that insulting the powers that be is a counterproductive move. Let's face it, we are in way too much shit to get ourselves out of this one. Really. So, what we need is for the man in the big white house and all of his little neighbors in the building on the hill to get together and bail us out. But, see, this is where things get all touch and go again.

We hate establishment. We hate society. We hate the media and government jobs. We hate it all. But in this, our most desperate moment, the symbol of hope, our messiah, if you will, insists that joining the evil forces of capitalism and government into one pretty little package is our only hope.

I mean, if it comes down to it, I'll join some WPA inspired government initiative.

Hell, I need the money and, as we all know, money comes before morals in this great country.