In 1883, the
American poet Emma Lazarus wrote "The New Colossus" for an art
auction aimed at funding construction of the pedestal of the Statue of
Liberty. Twenty years later her sonnet was engraved on a bronze plaque and
mounted inside the pedestal's lower level. Since then her words have been used
many times, mostly by politicians (JFK and Obama to name a couple) looking for
soaring rhetoric to describe the glories of life in these United States,
particularly the second stanza which reads:
“Give
me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Maybe
we should move the Statue of Liberty from New York Harbor since, let's be
honest, it ain't working here, considering all the homeless in every American city. I for one have been a tempest-tossed huddled mass yearning to
be free for most of my adult life, and looking around I see I have plenty of
company.
News
flash: None of us are free! We are constantly fed lies by the media, and
I don't just mean Brian Williams I mean all of them. And by our politicians
like Hillary Clinton who claimed she dodged sniper fire in Bosnia but oops it
was just a young girl who kissed her. And by large corporations like Samsung
with their exploding cell phones and VW with their phony emissions controls. We
mustn't leave out Donald Trump who claims the latest allegations of his sexual
misconduct by a reporter from People magazine couldn't have happened
because they were in a "very public area with people all around," when
it actually took place in a private bedroom and nobody was a
witness.
Then
there's the idea cooked up by a series of politicians way back in the early
1900s, including Herbert Hoover and continuing up through Obama, with a lot of
help along the way from the National Association of Realtors, that signing on
to a lifetime of mortgage payments and getting stuck in one place for your
whole life constitutes "The American Dream," along with a full-time
job for your entire productive years with weekends off for good behavior. The
final piece of the happiness pie according to those people behind the curtain
controlling the messages we, the huddled masses, receive is that marriage and
family are necessary for true happiness. (Just ask the Menendez brothers about
that one since you can't ask their parents.)
No
wonder antidepressant prescriptions are up, along with addictions to drugs and
alcohol: We are all the huddled masses. The antidote: Put down the cell phone,
turn off the TV and grab a book (or two or three) on Buddhism and meditation.
Join a yoga class, go for a run, walk outside and breathe the fresh air. Try
thinking for yourself for a few days and soon enough you'll stop huddling and
stand up straight.
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