Past Subterfuge, Into Responsibility

The more practical knowledge and clarity you possess,

the more obvious this country's state of distress becomes.

No, I don't mean the financial dire straits.

I don't even mean the divisive political climate.

Nor the over-reliance on religion.

I'm speaking of the faulty moral compass of so many;

a country of bottoming-out standards

and immediacy over quality.

We have become a nation of duplicity,

complicity, bottom lines, and "whatever it

takes."

We bash others and obsess over their actions

and covertly commit those same actions,

ever-pretending and caustically protesting,

slyly smiling at pulling the wool over the public's eyes.

We revel in double standards and are

consumed by illusion and rhetoric while

neglecting reality and actuality.

We strive for decadence and consumption

and avoid consequence and exposure.

The emphasis has become to appear legitimate

in public while doing any old illegal, immoral,

contradictory maneuver in private.

A classic well-loved line called for

"Truth, Justice, and the American Way,"

but the mirror held up to our modern society

shows "Fraud, Justification, and Any-Old-Way"

being a much more astute 'standard.'

Con-artistry and denial are the national pass-times.

America,

posturing and defiant,

only concerned with dominance--not correctness,

this adolescent among nations,

petulantly pouting and foot-stomping our way

into getting what we want.

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