AMERICA: LOVE IT, LEAVE IT, OR STICK AROUND AND MAKE IT BETTER

America, love it or leave it, is a sentiment that echoes from past decades.

The silent generation decided to speak up, finally, when their kids grew hair and talked about what America meant to them.

Hippies decided to try and make it better by going to the country, going organic, macrobiotic, and talking it up.

“Clean air,” they said to go along with, “clean water.”

Some of them were met with, “you’re too young to understand, son, get back in line.”

Tell a twenty one year old what to do and brace for a response.

One of the most telling moments in history is the push to make America better. Better air to breath, better water to drink. Better food to eat.

By the numbers, this is what better means. If you’re reading this in Chicago, or Ashburn Virginia, get to work.

BETTER AIR

From the looks of things like science, better air quality means fewer pollutants in the atmosphere. Notice how I’m not saying ‘climate change,’ or ‘global warming?’ That’s an air thing, but also a buzz word for deniers to use.

So I won’t use it and avoid the whole denier schtick, like the authority man who explained it to me in his own narrow view. To him only one was real, the other was an excuse to make noise about.

If you need an update on why clean air is important, contact an asthmatic or someone with allergies. Ask them how they feel about clean air. Again, notice I’m not talking about lung cancer, or asbestos. Regular people have breathing issues not associated with fatal disease, or lifestyle, or job.

Clean air is a universal goal, and if not universal, an American goal. We all know this, but somehow forget in the fervor of the current day rollback of coal regulations. Black lung doesn’t go away because someone tells it to, or gives it another name.

Calling for cleaner air for all isn’t calling for medicare for all, or a basic allowance for all. Clean air is pretty straight forward unless you own a stake in a proven environment polluting industry, then it’s a money question and how much to pay, and who to pay, to keep it rolling.

BETTER WATER

Here in Portland Oregon the city drained an entire reservoir after catching a man peeing on video. One pisser and they pulled the plug on thirty eight million gallons of what’s called great water.

Flint Michigan would have loved water so pure.

Unless Prince became the God of Water after he died, purple tap water can’t be good. The man who wrote Purple Rain wouldn’t go for that, and neither would you. If you have clean water it’s hard to imagine the phobia that grows with bad water.

How important is clean water?

Important enough to get arrested for.

BETTER FOOD

If you moved on by now, I don’t blame you any more than I blame anyone for not signing up on the boomerpdx blog, or not following @davidgillaspie on twitter, or facebook. Normal people don’t blame others for the choices they make.

Since I’m normal, I don’t blame anyone for not helping this poor writer increase an author platform for the book I’m writing to get published.

Conversely, I don’t blame anyone for their food choices. When my weight climbed above two fifty I didn’t need strangers telling me I was fat, should stop eating and drinking enough for three, or that I alone was causing a food shortage in the third world.

As a fat man I had all the reminders I needed. They came from looking in a mirror. ‘Who’s the fat guy?’ I’d wonder walking past full length windows.

I was a fat man who ate well, not a cheeseburger gulper, French fry muncher, or soda swigger. I was a beer drinking fan of local brew, but at one time limited it to Beck’s Bier. I drank Becks so often that the store where I bought it stopped carrying it when I got hpv16 throat cancer and could barely eat or drink anything.

And lost a good sixty to seventy pounds as a result with the help of chemo and radiation. Not a diet to recommend, but I do weigh a steady 215 two years later.

In this instance I call for better food to give kids a head start. Proper nutrition begins with truth in labeling, but no one says which pesticides, poisons, and plastics come with each mouthful. And no one wants to know, at least not enough to change things faster.

THE AMERICA PROBLEM

Too often adults forget their influence on younger people. When leaders start speaking in the voices of influencers to prop up profits, who suffers?

When a kid hears an adult telling things they know to be untrue, what’s the next step?

A manager once explained it when I told him a department head was screwing up.

“Forget about it,” he said. “The more they fuck up, the more room we have to do other things while they fix it.”

You’ve heard something similar?

It’s all good until you find yourself getting called out to fix things you didn’t break.

Setting an example for the youth is a bigger deal when the people who ought to be engaged don’t care.

So be a good citizen and stand up for America. Act to find a way to better air, better water, and better food.

You deserve it, and so do millions of people you’ve never met. That’s the America we know and love.