America is dead and I want to be too

I am 41 years old and no longer want to live. I’m in America and have watched my country change and move in a direction I no longer feel is safe for artists, thinkers, creative people or intellectuals. In fact it reminds me of Germany. Nazi Germany.

Here are the things you might think are normal if you are under age 40.

News on TV around the clock 24 hours a day every day

News reporters telling you on television a celebrity should accept Jesus Christ as their savior

“Free Speech Zones”

Being herded and made to wait for security to check you and your belongings before you can board a plane

Having to remove your shoes before boarding a plane and put your belongings in a plastic container for armed individuals to examine

Cyberstalking and cyberbullies

The internet

All songs on the radio sounding the same

All shows on television looking the same

Sex everywhere, all the time, 24/7

Children being told what sexuality is and that they should choose – NOW

All female pop singers dressing and dancing like nightclub strippers

All black men dressing, looking, speaking and acting like thugs

Men of all races shaving their heads and getting tattoos to look like they have been in prison, even when they have not been

Women being tough, wearing boyish clothing and roaming in gangs of groups looking for lone girls to target and harass

Gunshots and murders every day, sometimes every hour

Everyone is Christian and everyone is part of a church somewhere, or pressured to become part of one

Politicians talking about God all the time

Church insinuating itself into everything political

Corporations insinuating themselves into anything the church has not gotten into first

Americans going hungry and losing their homes at record rates

Everybody fat, depressed and tired

All songs on the radio use Auto Tune and all female singers use melisma (as many notes as possible and showing off note prowess instead of just singing the song as a simple melody – that is called melisma – Google it)

No one to meet, nowhere to go, nothing to do

Politicians telling outrageous gigantic lies and the news only reports the Democratic ones and tells audience the Republican ones did not happen

Children shooting children in public schools

Children behaving promiscuously and dressing/talking in a highly sexual manner

The only jobs are in retail or waitressing – all the other jobs have been sent overseas so non Americans can have them

Strangers reading your comments on the internet because real people are too stressed with their own lives to hear the pain of another human being close to them

This is not the way America used to be. The entire world hates us now and there is nowhere safe for those of us who remember how it once was, to flee to. Nobody likes Americans. No one wants us. In the old times, if you were in Africa, Europe, Asia, and wanted a better life, you could emigrate to America. WHERE DO AMERICANS EMIGRATE TO? No one likes us and we are welcome nowhere.

I am an American from the First America, the true America, that died during the late 1980’s. I remember these things: do you?

News was limited to once a day at 6:00 and was 30 minutes long – that was it, and we were fully informed by that 30 minutes of everything we needed to know going on in the world that day.

Brit Hume telling Tiger Woods to become a Christian would have resulted in Hume being fired by 6 o’clock that evening by his one boss who owned the network – and you would later find out that boss was a Christian but knew where the line was between journalism and Not Journalism

Freedom of Assembly as it is written in the Constitution of the United States of America – the idea of a “Free Speech Zone” was 100% ABSOLUTELY UNTHINKABLE because there it is in the Constitution – we Americans have the right to peaceably assemble ANYWHERE ANYTIME WE F-ING WANT TO

Your friends and family could walk with you to your jet boarding gate, hug and kiss you goodbye right in front of the jet, watch you get on it, then you could see them waving goodbye at you through the terminal’s glass windows because THERE WAS NO CRAZY SECURITY – GETTING ON A JET WAS EASY AND FAST WITH NO HASSLE

You could carry anything on a plane and we were friends with the Arabs – getting on a plane was fun and took maybe 10 minutes

There was no internet so cyberstalkers and cyberbullies were the lurking freaks hiding in libraries and on the edges of society, because to do their business out in the open might get them hurt very badly by their target or friends of their target – and by police

THERE WAS NO INTERNET SO YOU HAD TO GO OUTSIDE TO FIND SOMETHING INTERESTING TO LOOK AT

Radio stations were full of variety and interesting DJs added spice between the songs

TV was different and interesting and had variety and people on it had talent

Sex was hinted at, not shown – EVER – except in X rated theaters in the bad side of town

Children were not considered sexual beings and everyone – no matter what their orientation – agreed that children were “hands off” and not to be included in any sexual discussion or education

Female singers were fully dressed, and anyone who went around looking skank soon got a reputation and didn’t sell as many records anymore

Black guys came in all sorts and types – nice fellows, not so nice fellows, street fellas, suburban fellas, quiet types, hellraisers, in-between – just like every other color of fellow. There was no One Type [ghetto thug] all black men had to conform to, to fit in – and black music was better then, too. I’m black, so I am ok to say this.

Young men who shaved their heads and got tattoos to look like prisoners would be whacked the H out of at home by their old man and put in the military to see what shaved heads are like – this soon corrected the problem

Girls who dressed like gang members and tried to act like boys harassing other girls were ostracized and chased from whatever school they tried it in. Watch West Side Story and notice the character of “Anybodys”. NOTE HOW THE OTHER CHARACTERS ALL TREAT THAT CHARACTER. That’s how it was before 1980, and other girls were safe from that kind of female because society understood what to do in response – and did it

Gunshots were rare and murders were seldom. That is why the Tate/Manson murders were so sensationalized – nothing like that had ever been seen in America before – now they happen every week.

Religion was considered personal and private – to urge someone to join or be part of this or that one WAS A MAJOR BREACH OF SOCIAL ETIQUETTE IN AMERICA

The name of God was taken seriously and in a political speech was kind of like dropping a nuclear bomb – something done only when circumstances were dire. So: Politicians seldom mentioned His name then. Now you hear it every day, and the masses cheer and are not disturbed by this. Compare how many times JFK mentioned God to how often Bush and Obama – and Palin – do it.

Churches did not have television studios and evangelists begging for money – churches were simply that: churches – where you went to get baptized, get married, get buried, and pray on Sunday. Now it appears chuch is Big Business, and government and news like it that way – ladies and gentlemen, Google “Fascism” and see if any of what you read there fits what I just described

Corporations were called “companies” and were not always taking over each other and merging – Pan Am was Pan Am, Coke was Coke, IBM was IBM, and they minded their own business and stayed out of each other’s and yours – can you imagine that? Well that’s how it was before 1990

Americans always had food and seldom lost homes – the government provided emergency foods in a pinch, and it was easy to bounce back from a bad time

There were always fat people in the world, but fewer then – most people were slim and healthy, and we had abundant energy to go out and do things – and smoking was legal then, so what changed?

Songs on the radio were actual songs with melodies: James Taylor, Jim Croce, Carol King, Karen Carpenter, Minnie Ripperton, Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand, Al Green, you name it – music was music then. Then along came MTV and musicians were required to look like models, not musicians. Music died soon after

There was always somewhere to go, something to do, and someone to do it with. Roller rinks, bowling lanes, radio contests, great movies at the movie house, amusement parks, the local bar which was well-lit and friendly like in “Cheers”, the park to fly a kite – America was sunlit and full of possibilities then, and Americans wanted to enjoy them together

The news media was objective and independent and tattled on both Republicans and Democrats because of something that was once called “journalistic integrity”. Yes, that existed in America once

Children did not get access to guns. Period. We had no interest in guns and were kind of scared of them. You might be fascinated by the look, but you DID NOT TOUCH. Today children load guns and shoot their siblings fully aware the whole time of what they are doing, and doing it “to see how killing feels because Dexter on TV makes it look fun”.

Children were children. A child who dressed or talked sexually got his or her mouth slapped then washed out with soap and water, and then the parent would be pointed out in public and shunned for being that lax. Today it’s celebrated, and single moms whine they are too “overwhelmed” to stop it. Well, not quite “overwhelmed” enough to close our legs, now, are we? And I am a woman saying this.

America was an industrial nation – we created, built and exported things. There were SO MANY JOBS. So many. You only did retail or waitressing when you were a teen or in college and needed immediate experience. Jobs stayed in America – the thought of shipping jobs overseas would have made people LAUGH

Family members were close by and supported each other with love, and your coworkers and friends were close second. Life felt like belonging. Today it feels like surviving.

So times are different now.

All you people under age 25 wanting to kill yourselves, I feel for you, because the previous generation has left you little to live for. But be thankful you are not as bad off as those of us 35-45, because we remember how things were before The Change. America is just as dark and despairing as the Soviet Union was before the wall fell – our lives have become something Josef Stalin would have been very happy to see. To think Capitalism became the same servitude, suffering and drudgery as we Americans were told Communism was. We were all fed a lie and had no suspicion. The clock was ticking on our freedom and happiness and we didn’t see or hear it.

The happiness is gone now and I miss it. And there is nothing I as one person can do to change it, to turn the clock back. All I see is more of the same ahead: the nightmare of 24/7 news, sex everywhere, no jobs, no safety, no freedom, no happiness, violence around every corner, starvation and homelessness as my once beautiful country sinks under the bloodshed.

This is why I am suicidal today.

Tell me one good reason anyone over age 34 should want to live.