American Anger

AmericanAnger

 

Preamble: Nomination Anthem

 

What shall we name the continuity between revolution and empire?

Let us call it American anger.

 

What shall we name the dissonance between our pieties and our policies?

Between institutional ideality and practical reality?

Let us call it American anger.

 

The irony of affirming imprisonment without cause, without recourse,

as necessary to our declared purpose of advancing human rights?

Let us call it American anger.

 

The gap between the rhetoric of liberation and the practice of torture?

Let us call it American anger.

 

What names the contradiction between our reverence for the “stay-at-home mom,”

the woman whose child-rearing is paid for by one man, and our scorn

for the “welfare mother,” whose child-rearing is paid for by the community?

What, if not American anger?

 

How might we speak of the tension between our professed commitment

to “liberty and justice for all” and the fact that the first forty-three persons

elected to the U.S. Presidency were white males?

By speaking of American anger.

 

What would account for U.S. military spending

exceeding that of the next ten nations combined?

What merits the name American anger.

 

For two million viewers, one hundred and twenty million dollars,

all to watch two grown men fight in a ring?  Five hundred million

in gross revenues to watch a few others fight in cages?

American anger, American anger.

 

What do redistricting and voter photo i.d. laws have in common

with constitutional amendments prohibiting gay marriage?

Let us call it American anger.

 

What trait does it figure that among us forty thousand people

buy and sell and breed and train pit bulls used in dogfighting?

Nothing if not American anger.

 

How may we aptly designate the discrepancy between

our claim to collective sainthood — “one nation under God” —

and our assignment of others to an “axis of evil”?

By calling it American anger.

 

H.L. Hix

 

 

 

 

Taken, with permission, from American Anger

H.L. Hix

 


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2 Responses to American Anger

    1. Very nice, it could be updated, but the love the sentiment…..!bravo!

      Comment by Jimmy Keith on 13 June, 2016 at 8:28 am
    2. […] SAMPLE CHAPTER:  https://internationaltimes.it/american-anger/ […]

      Pingback by American Anger – Snowflakes in a Blizzard on 21 November, 2017 at 12:48 pm

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