Americans are not stupid. Despite what some people believe, Americans are not “muppets” who just hang around the mall, waiting to be told how to look, what to wear, what to say, what to buy; hapless victims of whatever force du jour spends the most money to get their attention. And, by in large, Americans know what is wrong with this country.
Despite what the 24/7-info-tainment-news juggernaut might suggest, most Americans really just want to get on with their lives, and laugh and love and hear their baby’s first spoken word and eat a hot dog at the baseball (here, you may substitute your favorite sport and favorite choice of junk food) game.
But Americans are also a hearty lot. They feel comfortable at the helm of their lives and personal destiny. They prefer to be self sufficient, to get ahead of their bills, and hopefully, to eventually retire knowing that they gave the kids a good start in life.
No American parent wants her children to know eviction notices, bill collectors, pink slips, bankrupting illness, or even the challenge of how to put food on the table or gas up the car to get to work.
Americans know (as most have experienced first hand) that the challenges faced by their own family are both microcosmic and symptomatic of the challenges that our nation faces as a whole.
Yet Americans have all kinds of great ideas about how to meet these challenges. Historically, we once took those ideas and sent them to Washington via our elected officials, where they were chopped and mashed and mixed and stirred and salted and cooked over a medium heat for hours, if not weeks, by way too many cooks, into a hearty stew of sorts. The final product usually ended up tasting roughly like a composite of many easily recognizable American-made recipes for making things better on the whole for everybody. And it was good.
As I may have mentioned, Americans are not stupid. Hungry, maybe, but not stupid. They have noticed that both their own family affairs and national matters once under their general control (or controlled through their elected representatives), are falling more and more outside their control and into the hands of a very few whose agenda does not require or desire input from American families at all.
Americans notice that it now takes both adults in the household working outside the home to buy the same goods and services that their parents had provided with only one adult working outside the home.
Americans notice that there is no longer mutual loyalty between employer and employee. Gone are the days when it was possible for an individual to work 35 hard years for the same company and retire with a decent pension and health benefits.
Americans now are very aware of insecurity in the jobs market that has not been seen since the 1920’s.
American parents do not enjoy seeing their children, with a mortgage’s worth of educational debt, being reduced to a band of gypsies, having to constantly pick up stakes, and move from one at-will-contract-piece-work-temp-job to another.
Many American empty nests have returned to full houses. American parents know their kids are not lazy or losers as some pundits have said, just overwhelmed by events far beyond their control. They played by the rules and somebody moved the goal posts to Mumbai.
And all Americans know that the cooks in Washington have added an “r” to their job description and are indeed cooking something, but not a dish made from the ideas of Americans, or designed to help Americans fulfill the promises made to themselves or to their children. And we can’t help but notice that the brew stinks to high heaven of graft, nepotism, and general corruption.
Who are they cooking for? Here, American opinions differ. Some believe that they are simply cooking up meth for hegemonic corporate wealth, while others believe that they are serving up king’s dishes only to the monolithic master that is big government. But what is the bottom line to my gastronomical analogy?
Simply put, Americans don’t give a damn who these criminal cookers are cooking for, but these c[r]ooks need to start cooking stew for Americans again. Americans are sick and tired of handing over kitchen privileges to smooth talking chefs de cuisine who promise a fancy meal but deliver an empty belly.
Americans need roads without sinkholes and bridges that bridge and schools that actually train our kids to compete in a global market. Yes, we ARE smart enough to know that the world is spinning faster and we are falling behind.
Americans need water that is safe to drink and air that is fit to breath and food that is actually food and not some agribusiness lab experiment designed to enhance corporate profits by use of chemically-laced garbage.
Americans really, really don’t need to be told what they must do in their back yards, whom they must love, and which God, if any, they must believe in. Not by the government, not by the corporations, not by the churches. You work for us, your highnesses. You want our vote? You want our business? You want our devotion? Okay, start earning it again. We are done carrying your water for you.
Stop giving away the farm and start dancing with the date that brung ya (and we don’t mean the tramp who did you on the sly in the parking lot) or you are in for a real American-style rude awakening, complete with the proverbial tar and feathers and a very real one-way trip outta town.
Americans know full well that this next election will have both sides clambering to spend more than two billion dollars to try and make us behave like lemmings at the cliff, and we know that the dubious wisdom of most of those billion-dollar-bumper-sticker-bromides will not be fit to line a litter box.
And Americans are smart enough to know who is paying for all the swill slung our way and what tastier, more filling, American dishes could be baked with all that dough. Because, as I said, Americans are not stupid, just hungry.
Americans are definitely long overdue for their stew and expect it now. They deserve it. They worked and sweated and voted and paid taxes and fought and died for that stew. They don’t want caviar, and they don’t want pink slime either. Just a decent stew will do.
J. Brandeis Sperandeo
