Just Another Frog in the Pot

In 1961, President Kennedy galvanized a nation by admonishing Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Yet, in the 40 years since Kennedy’s speech, how far has America truly come in its citizenry approaching democracy? Voter turnout is at an all time low, community commitment sparse, and apathy breeding.

Issues that once had citizens storming city hall and lighting up the phones of their legislatures now barely flicker a moment of indignation.

Americans have become so euthanized to the burdens placed upon them that they merely grunt when a new weight is added to their back and drudge onward.

Like a frog in a pot that sits placidly by as the temperature increases, so have we become indifferent to the abuse of democracy.

Why apathy is so widespread does not matter. What does matter is it allows a select few to grab the opportunity to mandate society; people who will capitalize on our indifference and distraction for their own personal gain.

It amazes me that we berate the abused woman for remaining with her attacker, and say nothing while government and big business slowly tightens its fist on our neck.

I often wonder why America is not up in arms declaring revolution. We need a revolution to return America to the common man, the middle class, and the ones most burdened.

Sadly, there is no one in America today that stands for the common man.

Unions have become ineffective in insuring Americans retain their jobs and receive just compensation.

We court business from a position of weakness that allows them to treat employees like a one-night stand.

While the middle-class’s jobs are outsourced, CEOs take home millions annually in compensation, claiming that this somehow is good for the stockholders.

Additionally, we provide immense benefits for the poor and even illegal immigrants that we deny our hardest blue-collar workers.

America has abandoned its middle class and yet we do NOTHING!

This is not about race, ethnicity, or any of the other prejudices of the past. This is America forsaking its greatest population as a whole.

For as the wealthy grow fat on the sweat of our labor, and we pay more for services to the under-privileged, it is the common man and the middle class that is left to boil in the pot.

It is time to wake up America. The water is so hot it is dimpling our flesh, and yet we refuse to fight.

This is not a democracy if we allow the elite to rule the majority and not use our voice. It is time to say “no more.” Time to jump out of the pot. Time to take back America and create a country that is truly for the people.

Stop asking what your country is doing for you, for what it is doing is turning up the heat.

To save our country, to save democracy, we must ask what we can do and do it.

— Monica Ellington is a student in Dr. Gabriel Bach’s government class.