Every one of us, as Americans, had to learn about the Declaration of Independence in order to graduate from high school. Almost everyone promptly forgot about what it says, and a lot of others depend on those people forgetting what it means in order to hold sway over them. This is not going to be a history lesson but a complaint. The part of this document that I want to focus on is the following:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Even if you forgot about every other goddam thing in the Declaration, you at least remember the part about "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." No matter how stupid Americans can be--and that is astoundingly stupid sometimes--they can't possibly forget this part. And while they can quote it, I guarantee they don't think about what it means.
Let's pass by the "men" part. I'll be charitable and say they probably meant "humanity" and not a specific gender. I mean, they didn't, but that's not what I want to talk about. And we'll dismiss the idea of a Creator for the time being, too. Yes, a lot of the Founding Fathers were Christian, but that's not what I want to talk about, either.
Those proud goddam loudmouthed Americans who scream about how great America is (or will be again should a certain lump of shit be reelected) don't really mean that. They just want to keep America for themselves and fuck everyone who doesn't agree with them. The pursuit of happiness is only for them, not anyone they disagree with.
We're getting warmer, but we're still not to my focus yet. I know you're expecting me to bring up Nic Cage and National Treasure, but I'm not going to do that. (Probably.)
We'll skip all the people whose pursuit of happiness is on so many ballots now to be outlawed. You know my feelings on this. If your pursuit of happiness means getting an abortion, I'm in favor of you. If your pursuit of happiness means that you're a gender you weren't born into (or not a gender at all) and you don't want to identify that way, then I'm in favor of you. If your pursuit of happiness means that you want to perform in drag shows, then I'm in favor of you. Anyone who says you're wrong are butting their noses into your business, and I guarantee if you butted your nose into theirs, they would fucking go ballistic.
But my focus goes even deeper than that. Because our system is fundamentally built to restrict the pursuit of happiness to a very exclusive club of people in this country, and as George Carlin once said, "You ain't in it."
The way the system works is, regular people are kept at the mercy of the few people who actually do control the government. Not the politicians. The oligarchs. They're why banks are buying up rental properties and jacking up the prices so the poors can never live there. 'Cause fuck the poors. They have you locked into dead end jobs to scrape by a living just meager enough to keep you alive and coming to work and not enough to let you enjoy yourself. Do you ever wonder why so many people become addicts? IT'S BECAUSE DRUGS WORK. At least up to a point. People are a lot more willing to blow any disposable income on booze and lose themselves in it rather than stopping for a second and thinking about how the system is rigged against them.
I work a sales job. Sales people are always going to be needed. But what about, for example, customer service? I remember a time when customer service didn't exist. If you bought a lemon, you bought a fucking lemon. Better buy from someone else next time. Something not working like you thought? Good luck deciphering the instruction booklet. Maybe you don't need a stove, after all. You can always light a fire in your backyard and cook over that, right? But now that we have customer service, everyone is somehow even more miserable. Everyone who calls into customer service is having a horrible day, and everyone who takes those calls is having a horrible day. And for what? Is this the pursuit of happiness?
Do you know why inflation is fucking crazy right now? Why people are struggling to get by while corporations are reporting record profits? It's because those corporations are continually jacking up the prices and Americans aren't critically thinking about why they're paying for shit.
The good news is, it can't go on forever. It may even reach critical mass within our lifetimes. There will be a breaking point, and then we're going to have a depression so crippling it'll make the Great Depression look like the abundant 'Fifties. And people on the news will scratch their heads and wonder how that happened. What could it have possibly been?
So I have an idea as to what we can do. The Declaration isn't legally binding. It's just a letter to the world stating that the 13 colonies want to be recognized as an independent country. And also, fuck King George III and the nation he rode in on.
HOWEVER! It is false advertising, and what can you do when it comes to false advertising?
You sue. I'm pretty sure a good case can be made that America is not living up to its promise of a pursuit of happiness. One person doing this could accomplish nothing, but a class action lawsuit? Perhaps the biggest the nation has ever seen?
That might move the needle.
Maybe when we can throw off the fetters of this oligarchy that masquerades as a democracy, we can then work on revising and editing the Constitution until it actually makes sense for people not living in 1787. I'm not going to hold my breath, but it's good to have a plan.
After all, you may consider the Founding Fathers as sacred, themselves. They're not, but if you view them as such, then perhaps you feel the need to expound their beliefs. If that's the case, you missed a spot. Thomas Jefferson once said, "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched." That wasn't before the US Constitution was written. That was a few decades after.
Let's rewrite it. But first, let's actually pursue happiness for a change.
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