i've got a feeling that i wanna get out, and i wanna get out, and i've gotta get out

you're not going to find very many people as patriotic as me.

when i was young, right out of school, still trying to figure out who i was, i started playing in bands and travelling. before i turned 21 i'd only been outside of my home state a couple of times, and where i'm from, people are very mistrustful of those who come from or go to other places, and often spoke of places like california or texas or anywhere in the north in tones of extreme derision. so imagine my surprise when, as a young man, i went to these places that i'd only seen in movies or read about in books and i met people who had no reason whatsoever to accept me into their homes, to share their food with me, to give me money to hear me play music in spite of the fact that they had no idea if it was any good. i made a lot of friends, some of whom i still maintain relationships with to this day, and i learned a lot. i learned that i thought i knew what america was, seen through the lenses of teenage angst, that it was all stupid people willing to be controlled by greedy corporations and semi-fascist governments.

i had no idea idea how wrong i was. not until i'd been all over the united states and learned that people everywhere basically all want the same things: they want to have food to eat, a roof over their head, they want someone to love them, and they want to not have to worry all the time. it made me realize that this probably holds true in the world beyond america, and that no one segment of any population, regardless of who they are or where they are from or what color skin they have, none of those people are bad people. they may have their faults, but their lives, their existences, all come down to those four things. i was 22 and sleeping on dirty floors and didn't have a penny to my name and i learned how to be humble and how to accept charity when it's given to you and it gave me a new appreciation for the america i thought i knew. i'd hear songs like "i'm proud to be an american" and i might not like the song, but i'd appreciate the sentiment.

so that's why it makes me really sad to think that america, the america as i've always known it, might be over.

our leaders had a choice to make this week, and it was a crappy choice to have to make: buy up all the toxic mortgage assets being held by america's banks, assets that were born out of years and years of deregulation and willful blindness, or don't. and by not bailing out the banks, americans would go through painful withdrawals after spending so long strung out on the narcotic of cheap, easy money. make no mistake, kids: we brought this on ourselves. we created then fostered then worshipped a culture that is built on spending more than it can afford. we took out home loans and credit cards to buy big screen tv's and cool phones and diamond encrusted watches instead of saving that money and only buying the things we needed and using them until they wore out, the way our grandparents did. the way our great-grandparents did.

then the housing bubble burst. our economy was built on a house of cards, a stack of lies: keep spending. as long as house prices keep going up, banks can keep writing mortgages to people who can't afford them (and who can blame those people? the bank says, "you want to own a house? we can make that happen." why wouldn't you believe them?), selling those mortgages to investors for liquid capital, which can then be loaned to people in the form of credit cards and second mortgages, people who have been taught to buy a bunch of crap they don't need and can't afford, taught to worship at the altar of fast money.

now the politicians had to make a choice: shovel money that this government simply does not have into a plummeting economy, which would be like slapping band-aids onto a sliced femoral artery in the hopes that someday, maybe ten or fifteen years from now, the bleeding will stop. . . or voting to let the banks, and to a larger extent, this economy as we know it, bleed out. voting no on the bailout would be like putting a tourniquet on that same wound- you'll probably lose the leg, you'll have to figure out a way to prop yourself up again, you'd have to relearn how to walk, but eventually you would walk again, maybe in another year or two. you'll go through a lot of pain and anguish, but one day you'll walk again.

so i could almost respect the republicans for turning the bill down even though it would mean an economic downward spiral, the likes of which we have never seen, i could almost respect them if they'd said, "no. enough is enough. we need to learn how to save, we need to learn how to be frugal, we need to stop using debt as currency and go back to sound and sustainable economic principals." but don't get it twisted: that's NOT what they did. the republicans didn't give two shits about you, or me, or the banks, or the families struggling to keep their homes from foreclosing as gas and food and electricity gets exponentially more expensive. they voted the bill down because they did not like the tone the democrats took with them.

and it's this- stupid, bullshit party pride- that is really ruining this country. it's a refusal to see the other side of things and figure out a way to work together. there has been a line drawn in the sand and all of us. . . left, right, whatever, we've been trained to disagree with everything that the other side has to say, and it is killing us. it's killing us because we are so focused on hating the other side and everything they say and everything they stand for that we're willing to accept mediocre leadership on our side, because we are all too willing to vote for whatever guy they put in front of us who isn't one of them.

so when it's time to vote for a new president this november, i've got a choice between a guy who doesn't impress me all that much and a guy who scares the living crap out of me. and i'm told that if i don't vote for the guy who doesn't impress me, then it's really the same as voting for the guy who scares me, and i'm being told that i don't want to vote for the guy who scares me because that would make me one of them. i'd be playing for the other team.

i want to vote for someone who's not afraid to admit that this country is broken. because maybe if we all learned to accept that this country is broken, maybe then we could all learn to fix it. all of us. not democrats, not republicans, everybody. it would be hard for a few years, after the leg gets amputated. we'll wake up in the middle of the night wanting to scratch that foot that isn't there. we'll learn to use crutches or wheelchairs or whatever else is at our disposal and eventually the other limbs would get stronger, and maybe we'll even get one of those spring-loaded artificial legs to replace the one we lost. but eventually we'll walk again, and maybe even run.

i want to believe that's going to happen, but it probably won't. what will probably happen is that we'll just lay on the ground and bleed to death, surrounded by empty boxes of band-aids.

sorry, i know you guys want me to put on my clown shoes and be funny and shit, but i'm not feeling very funny this week.