The Killing of Idealism
Donna Williams
August 10, 2006
People got busy
Electronica ate time
We got eaten up by subliminal advertising, streamlining and labels
Till individuality wasn’t a given, it was a flag wave.
We got services and rights and stopped having to be so creative to survive
We got one-size-fits-all heroes and stopped imagining anything more heroic than a turned around baseball cap, pointing finger and size six skeleton body.
We raged against politically incorrect bigotry and then legitimized a politically correct version, greedily, for ourselves.
We competitively co-opted every one and everything that could ‘reflect well’ and labeled it part of ‘our team’.
We turned our backs on the third world, imagining the number one and the number three were worlds apart until we lived in a vaccuum.
We used ‘terrorist’ like ‘communist’ to legitimise propaganda, take sides and no longer see we were all citizens of one world.
We watched death for entertainment with pie and chips as robotic drones killed ’strangers’ and only ‘fools’ cried in their living rooms over those who weren’t in ‘our family’.
We walked past strangers certain all were killers, rapists and burglars (some were but most weren’t) and shut our doors tightly to protect what was ours against the foreign foreign them we never met playing in the street and never waved hi to when we were four.
We made corporations God and worshipped Nike with a Pepsi challice in our hand and a dead battery hen in the other stuck in a white sugar bun, feeling delicious.
We watched reality TV as reality itself was no longer real.
Somewhere in there, alienation became normal, sought after, and we began to kill idealism.
Donna Williams *)
autistic author, artist and screenwriter.
www.donnawilliams.net
Electronica ate time
We got eaten up by subliminal advertising, streamlining and labels
Till individuality wasn’t a given, it was a flag wave.
We got services and rights and stopped having to be so creative to survive
We got one-size-fits-all heroes and stopped imagining anything more heroic than a turned around baseball cap, pointing finger and size six skeleton body.
We raged against politically incorrect bigotry and then legitimized a politically correct version, greedily, for ourselves.
We competitively co-opted every one and everything that could ‘reflect well’ and labeled it part of ‘our team’.
We turned our backs on the third world, imagining the number one and the number three were worlds apart until we lived in a vaccuum.
We used ‘terrorist’ like ‘communist’ to legitimise propaganda, take sides and no longer see we were all citizens of one world.
We watched death for entertainment with pie and chips as robotic drones killed ’strangers’ and only ‘fools’ cried in their living rooms over those who weren’t in ‘our family’.
We walked past strangers certain all were killers, rapists and burglars (some were but most weren’t) and shut our doors tightly to protect what was ours against the foreign foreign them we never met playing in the street and never waved hi to when we were four.
We made corporations God and worshipped Nike with a Pepsi challice in our hand and a dead battery hen in the other stuck in a white sugar bun, feeling delicious.
We watched reality TV as reality itself was no longer real.
Somewhere in there, alienation became normal, sought after, and we began to kill idealism.
Donna Williams *)
autistic author, artist and screenwriter.
www.donnawilliams.net
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