Butt Naked In the Wilderness

I live in a weird and decadent culture. (For those friends abroad) I live in the U.S.A.

Tonight I watched a TV show that is called something like “Survival-Butt Naked in the Wilderness”.

It is meant to titillate the viewers into watching Americans naked in the woods and jungles. Butts, breasts and crotches blurred out, understand this is America and evidently we couldn’t handle that sort of stuff.

It is the most simple common denominator in our society.

Hoping to see some flesh and watching them search for something to eat, It is the essence of our gratuitous society.

I watched fifteen minutes maybe twenty minutes. It must get great ratings by the TV network, people watch enamored and transfixed.

By watching this show I am pushed farther from this predacious and vicarious society.

My head swims as I think of the stories that my immigrant friends have told me in their quietest moments.

In the dark shadows of the night when they felt safe enough to tell me their inner most nightmares. Nightmares that were real and not made for television.

They too have survival stories and they were not filmed by some high paid television crew. A production company hoping to “Hit it Big! In their ratings”.

Those production companies chose not to feature my friends that fled from Communists that were maniacally killing most everyone in their way.

They chose not to feature my friends that were fleeing on elephant back as they lost children along the way. Fleeing so fast that they didn’t have time to bury their children.

This is my America, all boiled down into one made for prime time television show.

A show that is not too long, because our national attention span and vocabulary is that of a fourth grader.

We watch transfixed as our poor (rich) white friends suffer mosquito bites, perhaps a tick or a leach and then they go hungry for a few days.

We suffer with them as they try to survive the tropical jungles and deserts. White people, enduring deprivation for a few days, oh the humanity.

All the while we cheer at the building of a wall to keep the real victims fleeing for their lives, far away from our white neighborhoods and communities.

We cheer the TV show and revile the real victims.

Ray Hubbard said it best; “America the beautiful, we’re grinning with sharp teeth, we’re pretty on the surface and rotten underneath.” BK See Less