Accep-tense

The town I live in recently launched a GoFundMe campaign to help repair a waterfall damaged by last summer’s flooding. Ten miles up the road, it’s not uncommon to see one of the LED billboards advertising yet another person with a medical emergency who needs the community to come together for a benefit or raffle or event in order to, you know, live. Now, I could easily spin this into a yarn about how we need to tax the rich and get the money back to the small towns to pay for the basic needs of food, water, and shelter, along with public works like fixing roads, repairing damages from climate change, and so on… but you’ve heard that from me before. Several times. Probably too many.

So let’s take a different look at the situation. Instead of focusing on the how (soaking the rich because they don’t need a yacht to park their other, smaller yacht inside) let’s focus on the why. Why do we, in the small towns and the working class and the day-to-day grind that makes this country function, simply put up with this hot garbage that the rich and connected force on us? Why do we continue to dig into our own quickly-emptying pockets to pay for things that should be covered by government projects or government programs, while the billionaires continue to get even more breaks to hoard their money like that dragon in the Hobbit movies? Why do we roll over and say, “Here’s the other side of my face for you to stomp on?”

We’ve just come to accept things that are, pardon my language, bonkers. We just accept that you need to choose between insulin and rent. We just accept that our food is crammed full of flavor chemicals and extenders. We just accept that the cops in Mayberry now carry Narcan, instead of wondering why so many people are getting hooked on prescription painkillers while the painkiller companies see record profits. As someone who has lived in small towns most of my life, and hated living in the city for the 10 years I did, I think it’s about time the rural areas started working together to demand better treatment.

You and I probably won’t agree on everything, and I get that, and that’s fine. But, at the end of the day, we really have to start looking at the basics of the situation and having the guts to turn to each other, together, and say, “This ain’t working right.” Stop listening to the billionaires who tell you to just work harder while they make a thousand dollars a minute It’s impossible for us all to be Jeff Bezos, and in the long term your odds at replacing him aren’t the best, I’m sad to say. Instead of trying to make sure we step on each other to get the one seat at the top, how about we just get more seats, even if they’re not made of gold? 

You can probably look at your neighbor and, for some of you, tell yourself you legitimately deserve more than they do, but there should be no instance where you should feel comfortable saying, “Yes, I believe they should die so I can get more.” We should not accept this situation where we have starving, but also throw away good food, where we have private jets but Flint is still in a water crisis, where people are eating bagels and pizza covered in literal gold but people die because they can’t afford medicine that is marked up 1,000%. Folks in Fillmore County, in Bluff Country, in Greater Minnesota, in every area in the country and the world that isn’t a gated community for the .01%, should be demanding that we aren’t going to put up with this anymore, not because we shouldn’t have to, but because we don’t have to. We have the food, water, healthcare and most of all, the money to make everyone thrive, and if it means a few less golden pizzas being eaten, I’m all for it, no matter what other disagreements we may have. When it’s all over, damn it, we’re both still human beings.