Why Are We So Unhappy?

Every once in awhile an e-mail forward pops into my box that I actually read. Such is one making the rounds about something Jay Leno allegedly wrote.

In it he asked why we're such an unhappy lot in this country when we have so much compared to others. He speaks of abundant electricity and running water and more food in one store than the country of Darfur sees in a year. He does not address how government policies are causing prices of these commodities to rise beyond the incomes of many.

He talks of how we can drive from state to state without showing identification papers. He does not comment on how we are subjected to intrusive searches at airports, no longer can eat with real utensils and cannot take with us necessary toiletries except in quantities so minute they are useless.

He speaks of how law enforcement and other public safety officials are ready at our beck and call to protect us. He does not describe the increase in crime, gangs and the shortages of these public safety officials due to budget shortfalls.

He also does not discuss how many of our jobs are going overseas, how a senior citizen is hard pressed to find a doctor because of cuts in medicare reimbursements and how our social services are over taxed paying for those who cross our borders illegally.

He speaks of our religious freedoms. He does not speak of how the Christian right tries to impose their values on the rest of us by trying to kidnap the political process.

He blames the media for propagating fear and negativity because it sells. If I never read another paper nor watch another newscast, the erosion of my ability to maintain the lifestyle Hub and I worked for all our lives is slowly slipping away from us. The media isn't telling me this. This is fact.

Shame on us because we have so much more than others? That's the reality of who we are and where we live. America. That's what being blessed to live in America has always been about. Remember? The land of opportunity.

It's eroding right under our noses and it isn't the doing of the media. It's the taking us into a war of an administrations' making and spending billions of our dollars that could have been better spent on our own people.

It's the eroding of our civil rights in the name of keeping us safe. It's a situation the people have no ownership in. We didn't ask for the war, we don't want the war, we don't take any pleasure in the fact the world has little respect left for us, we take no pleasure in the suffering we've brought to the people of so many other nations.

Wait. We haven't brought these things on anybody; not even ourselves. It is the few at the top who've deemed themselves superior to we citizens in determining what's best for the country. This was not a part of their campaign rhetoric.

It is also not the media.

This is why we're so unhappy.