The Loss of the American Voice

 Verbally I am constipated, but language flows like music.  It is driven by emotion.  Both can be articulated conservatively without passion, and the results can be effective.  Do they have the same effect,  cognitive versus affective?  I am a product of both processes, but using feeling as your impetus is challenging.  It can be dangerous, because when you expose affective activity, nefarious players may enter the game.  Life is a consistent battle warding off evil.  The conundrum of art or merely expressive communication is that it flourishes with feeling.  Feeling not always is available.  More so since the Trump presidency, the appearance of sincere feeling or appropriate sentiment has become a commodity and weapon of the Right.  It may be the most heinous breach of benevolence in our lifetimes.  It is this with which we are contending in our now struggling democracy.  In the search for goodness America has faltered.  Our Capital violently was attacked.  Our regulatory agencies have been compromised rendering our geography a mine field of lethal obstacles.  A deadly pathogen killed millions.  If one looks, it would appear foreign ownership of American interests has contributed to this decline.  What has made America great are our expressions of the American voice to which we have become deaf and blind.  History plays a vital role defining and reinforcing these attributes, and the recent misinformation campaign has dealt a stark blow to American consciousness.  Misinformation is "Newspeak," and the culprit is "Big Brother."  George Orwell's novel, "1984," predicts it perfectly.  Communist and fascist behaviors have infiltrated America.  Many won't recognize it, but it is a severe loss of personal freedom.  We may be free to go where please and speak our minds, but society ignores us.  We must submit to their rules and concepts.  This hierarchy is covert and subtle, but it is concrete.  It is similar to the politics of the social ladder, but now those controlling the purse strings are evil.  They are not benevolent.  There is good deep in the human soul, and it has been quashed since the 2016 Presidency.  Evil masquerades as good, and evil only can manifest itself in human form.  If our instincts become confused, we are vulnerable.  We must discard our feelings and adopt a streamlined cognitive plan to survive, leaving us empty.  That feeling or expression, that affective voice of America has suffered.  We don't ouselves, and it is because our creative and artistic voices have been muted.  Film, television, and music have been our blood vessels carrying the rich nutrients of humanity to America.  (and eventually abroad)  Covid hindered our creative efforts showing us an unsettling retrospective of the Dark Ages.  We have been reduced to surviving, and our souls are not quenched.  Taylor Swift is providing an invaluable service for America.  A decade ago pop stars, pop culture, and counter culture were mainstream in America.  A suffocating blanket of Trump has stifled America with a smelly, stodgy, anachronistic mindset.  The empowerment of the wealthy, government deregulation, and limiting of social programs to those in need were the key constructs of Ronald Reagan's premeditated presidential agenda.  He was run by a group of California elites with a specific national goal in mind.  Neoliberalism was the result, but it was called "Reaganomics."  As a counter to stagflation of the 1970's, the economic reforms of 1980's appeared productive to me as a young adult.  While often thought of us self-indulgent, I saw forty percent of the wealthy's income siphoned back into their businesses.  This policy created Donald Trump, because prior to Ronald Reagan the tax rate on the rich was above seventy percent.  The money of the affluent was funding the federal government and their war in Viet Nam.  Film, music, and fashion burgeoned in the 80's, and while costs may have been high to the consumer America flourished as an artistic and expressive body.  Do we want to see our blockbuster movies?  Do we want MTV?  Do we want interesting alternative music?  Do we want fashionable clothing?  Yes, and it is absent today.  We don't want to live in the trenches, where we have been since Covid.  For goodness to prevail, we must eliminate the scourge.  That scourge is Donald Trump.