UNITED WE STAND...

I came to a startling realization today. I realized what a cold and awful place this is. Then again, I guess I have always known... We have all seen it, even those of us tucked away in our sheltered niches, but in some naive portion of my being I desperately wanted it to be untrue. I wanted this asylum we dwell within eight hours a day, five days a week, to be a fair place. My ignorance I assume. I mean, is there really life after high school? I have been here a long while and I have listened to them spoon feed the "conform, be like the huddled masses, and everything will be fine" shpeel far too many times. Here we are, in the "Heartland of Nowhere", and do they intend on us becoming one of the elite members of society? Hell no! They expect us to fall into their polluted ways and earn minimum wage at a meaningless job until we die. Everything of theirs is polluted. Their teachers, their government, their environment. All of it is dying.

As teens, we see what is wrong with school, with religion, with politics, but no one cares. We are mocked because of our beliefs, because of our appearances and our age, but are we ever looked at for what really matters? When people look at me, I know they don't see what I think or feel, what I know to be true. Just what their shallow eyes allow them to percieve. They see someone who is different, who is not like them, and they condemn me for it.

So we are the refugees. We hide from others, maybe even behind others, but we are all outsiders. Most of us are outsiders among outsiders, cowering behind facades we know aren't true. Like me, and this newsletter, and this alias. If you were to see me you would not think I was an anarchist set on letting free knowledge and justice reign in this institution we are forced to attend. You wouldn't even think I had a free thought in my head. Just another mindless teenager who wishes nothing more than to conform to the masses, blend into the background and be left alone. I sit in the back of classrooms, hidden among the others who are like me, all afraid of confronting what we know is unjust. Teachers preaching hypocritical bull shit, over paid hall monitors telling us where to be, when, and for what cause, and all the others that tell us to conform to their beliefs or suffer the consequences... Fuck them. Fuck them all...

How ironic, is it not? ...that twenty, thirty years ago, the people we see beating us daily with their "system" are the same individuals who were fighting against it then? Maybe it is just me, but all I see are people getting butt fucked by the system. The teachers and administrators, once ambitious and energetic people who wanted to see something great become of their students, sold out. They shrugged us off as secondary concern to the all mighty dollar. They pretend to slave away for hours a day, when all they do is read magazines, bitch to us about how awful our generation is and get paid a miniscule amount while doing a miniscule amount of work. Interesting how that works...

And what do we, the students, recieve in return? Absolutely nothing but scorn and bitterness. Our society evolves at such a miraculous rate that even our youngest teachers, let alone those who are in a position to change our surroundings, don't know what it is like to walk the halls. Things aren't going to get better because of polititcians or the general public electing fundage for us. They have already shown their concern. Whare it begins is with us. WE decide what kind of environment we are surrounded with, what kind of politics we CHOOSE to be governed by and who are the people who govern us! Until we can unite as a whole, casting aside all our imagined differences and classifications: "Males", "Females", "Hicks", "Blacks", "White Trash", "Hippies", "Homosexuals", "Stoners", "Athiests", "Skaters", "Jews", "Preppies", "Geeks", "Christians", "Hispanics" and "Nerds", we will never get anything accomplished. When you cast aside all the imagined slights, we are all tethered together by a common, unbreakable bond. We are all floating in the same boat. Try not to rock it while your on board.

++Stryfe++
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