Songwriter
PAUL SIMON
Read more: Simon And Garfunkel – America Lyrics | MetroLyrics

It feels to me like we have lost America. Come on. You know the one – the America we know and love. Of the people, by the people and for the people. What happened to that one?

I believe we have not only let ourselves down but the entire world, as we fumble around for the country we used to know – the one that was a shining example of what might be possible if we all worked together toward the honorable goals we had taken centuries to set.

We seem to have lost our collective minds.

I thought, we all thought, that we knew where we were going. We seemed to be headed, for a minute there, in a positive direction. I thought it was going to be better than it had ever been before – the economy, the environmental issues, the education we could provide to every child, the end of hunger, the improvements in medical research bringing cures and hope….I even thought we were making progress in enlightening people about tolerance of others who are not exactly cookie cutter copies of our supposedly fine selves. There were clues we were making some headway, I swear.

I don’t know what the hell happened, for a second there, when we blinked and became distracted, because it only takes a second, apparently, to lose our grip on what we all wanted to become. We lost our direction and our bearings. We lost our balance and our moral compass. Look what has happened to us. Look what we have settled for in our exhausting struggle to  keep our heads above water and not drown under the weight of doing what is right for all Americans. We are on life support. We seem to have lost our passion.

While our heads were turned, some of our neighbors and friends, people we elected to represent us and advocate for us, have grabbed the reins and taken us careening full speed down a wavering path not of our own choosing. They all know who they are, we are learning who they are and yet they continue to smile…and lie, as if…..

As if we would never figure it out. And I do wonder what has taken us so long. Poor judges of character are we, Yoda would say. Gullible. Easily fooled. AMAZED that someone’s agenda might not be honorable. Unwilling to do our research. Too busy to read excerpts from 6 -10 respectable newspapers and journalists a day to uncover the ugly truths about those we so willingly threw our votes toward. I have been guilty of not being as informed as I should be – but recently I have learned the hard way that I need to grow up and inform myself about such things. It takes time. REAL NEWS happens at lightening speed now and if you miss a day you miss volumes of information. I can no longer express my opinions based upon hope. I have to hold myself to a higher standard of knowledge so that I can limit my discussions about what is actually happening to America to those discussions where my fellow conversationalists are actually informed about the issues and not basing their shallow pronouncements on what they thought they knew 2 months ago.