by Nickolas Butler
I tell you now that on the teevee yesterday there was a woman
talking about america being ripe for a revolution and she was
talking to a group of people call themselves the tea party. But
the truth of the matter is that most people don’t have no notion
of revolution. The word, it conjures up in them good feelings
about george washington and samuel adams and paul revere,
but you go ask people in guatemala what revolution looks like.
ask someone in chechnya. It aint just talk. It is people getting
killed. People losing their homes and their land and their farms.
Land mines and bombs and automatic weapons. I shook my
fist at the teevee, because I don’t need america getting torn apart
like that in my lifetime. I can point a finger to a gravestone in
gettysburg and show you my distant kin. America saved the world
seventy years ago, and now we got people saying that things are
so bad we need a revolution. I tell you what it is, plain and simple.
A bunch of goddamn greedy people who don’t want to pay their
taxes. We ain’t talking about a king or an emperor. We talking
about sidewalks and atomic bombs. We talking about highways
and bridges. School-houses and hospitals.
Nickolas Butler's writings have appeared in: The Progressive, Wisconsin State Journal, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Madison Magazine, Roast, and Fresh Cup. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his family.
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