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"Awesome." Inspiring or expressing a mixed emotion of reverence, respect, and wonder. It is a word that has lost its meaning through slang use. Once we would apply such a label only to larger-than-life events, the magnificence of nature, or an occurrence that shook the very pillars of our beliefs. Now, we use it to describe the cheeseburger we had for lunch, the formulaic romantic comedy we saw last week, or the daily Sports Center highlight reel.
With such watered-down meaning how does one convey the "awesomeness" of the night sky in the country compared to the latest Mountain Dew commercial? Really awesome? Totally awesome? It's a shame a word suffers such misuse and abuse that the concept it conveys loses its power.
The Bush administration has been doing more than its fair share to dull down the American lexicon. Terms like "freedom" have fallen victim to misuse, their meanings muddled and their concepts confused.
"Freedom" once had an edge to it. It was something inherent, yet intangible--a defining quality of the American spirit that the world both admired and envied. But images of the Boston Tea Party, Vietnam protests, women's suffrage, and Civil Rights marches have given way to the Orwellian "freedom with restrictions" of the Bush-Ashcroft police state. The free-thought and civil disobedience that was our birthright has given way to little American flags and the Patriot Act.
When we are told ad nauseam that we are fighting for "freedom" in Iraq, but all we've accomplished is an increase in violence, suffering, and lowered the quality of life, then "freedom" has lost it's gilt. When we jail people with neither evidence nor trial, then freedom becomes a lie. And when we amend our Constitution to segregate and belittle a group of people, then freedom becomes a joke.
Yet the administration continues to do ill all in the name of "freedom"--and I fear the world has a decidedly lower opinion of our particular brand.
The same applies to "terrorism." Remember when terror (aka, "terra") was, well, terrifying? Nowadays, the daily terror status color alert runs on the news ticker along with the day's weather. We're being desensitized to the very real threats of terrorism by false alarms and a constant bombardment of political fear-mongering. It's astounding that protesters, Democrats, the ACLU, Janet Jackson, and even the National Education Association seem fit to be painted as terrorists with the administration's broad brush, while the hunt for bin Laden is an afterthought. We will never forget the tragedy of September 11th, but nearly 3 years of imagined threats and ambiguous warnings have taken its toll. A word that was reserved for horrific acts has become ubiquitous.
It's time for us to take back our country and not let the neocons define our way of life. The American people need to stand up and vote their consciences, and not their fears. It's a shame, but we need to cleanse our notions of freedom and recalibrate what we consider terrorism versus merely troubling. We need to take back the White House and change not only the tone but also the meaning, the substance, of what comes out of Washington.
That would be really totally awesome.
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