Degeneration X

It stuns me how inane and stupid most of my generation really appears to be. I can see why someone like George W. Bush and the Religious Right can so easily seize control of the country when my own generation, which thrives off MTV and video games, has become desensitized to the reality of war, poverty, sickness and famine. Their addled minds have become manipulated, and they simply don't give a shit what happens to anyone other then themselves.

I suppose it would be easier if I wrote in a series of sound-bites and incomplete thoughts like:

See and feel their repression.
See and feel their fear.
See and feel their hatred.
See and feel their deniability.

Or maybe something more personal like:

I know pain.
I know suffering.
I know insomnia.
I know depression.

Hmm, sounds like poetry, doesn't it? Of course, none of it really matters. It doesn't matter how much or how little I write to express my thoughts. I am expressing them and that's all that matters. Expression of our individual selves is what my generation needs to do more often. How each individual does it is just a matter of style and technique.

The one thing I have always recognized as a writer is that when I get negative feedback, the reader has still read it. As long as someone doesn't show enough intelligence to actually tell me why I should stop writing, or what it is in what I wrote with which they disagree, then I have to believe my writing affected them in some way. At the end of the day any writer will tell you, "I don't care if the reader likes or dislikes what I've written, the fact is they read it and were affected by it!"

I have written and will continue to write controversial stories that most people will likely have to seriously think about before they understand them, but they will make them think. Similarly, when I write something like this blog or tell my own story they will think me wordy, didactic and too opinionated. Good, because most of my Generation X have let their intelligence and free will degenerate through a manipulation of pop culture and mass media by narrow-minded, corporatist and greedy old white men who have seized control of a nation that once gave a damn about individualism and free speech.

As much as I hate and resent the fact that my body is degenerating and that decay can't be stopped no matter how much medicine I take or how many operations I undergo, at least my mind hasn't.

I spent almost 30 years keeping my mouth shut about my disabilities and life with chronic pain. I'm not about to listen to any dipshit who doesn't have enough balls to actually tell me what is about my writing or telling my story that's a lie or not good enough to write, read or be seen. So readers, get ready, because I haven't even gotten started. Bring the feedback on! Negative or positive, I live for the debate! And if you haven't let your mind be degenerated you'll welcome the debate too.