America The Beautiful Has Grown Ugly | By Louie Overstreet

BY LOUIE OVERSTREET

In my entire life, I cannot remember being filled with such despair or suffering from an alarming sense that things will not be better in the future.

My generation experienced discrimination on an industrial scale, the civil rights movement, riots (Glenville Shootout in Cleveland in 1968 was only five blocks from Chuck Bremer’s and my apartment), and the Vietnam war protests. However, my sense of optimism never left me; admittedly youth may have also played a part in that I thought I was going to live forever, by being the first person to never grow old.

While I was busy spending all my time looking for Juan Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth, I failed to notice Ms. America was not aging well. In fact, this former beauty has grown old and ugly in far too many ways.

I did a little research to try and discover why this was the case and discovered the following afflictions were probable causes for her now being as ugly as a mule chewing glue.

Over the years, she has burdened herself down with racism and sexism. Thus, the hump on her back makes Quasimodo look like he has perfect posture. Xenophobia and homophobia have caused her face to wrinkle so much that a barrel of Botox cannot stop the sagging.

Arthritis has riddled her with so much hatred that it has crippled her body and soul.

Her tongue has become forked for telling a bunch of lies, big ones at that! She is almost blind now, due to constantly seeing injustice, but failing to do anything about it.

She suffers from a heart condition because of religious bigotry coursing through her veins.

Her mind has become so senile, she can no longer distinguish right from wrong, yet she feels free to decide what laws she will choose to obey or disregard.

While it is true that beauty is only skin deep, it must also be acknowledged that, nowadays, in America ugly is to the bone.