THEM
[THEY]

"We Sleep, They Live"

They've been at odds with us, with you, since the beginning.
Emotionally they are hate, anger, despair, hopelessness.
Physically they are often in the guise of police, murderers,
racists, bullies and dictators. They have infiltrated all levels
of the hierarchical pyramid they've created. At the lower levels
they appear as the crack dealer who sells drugs to children
and guns down their mothers. They appear as the mechanic who
lies to their customers to make a larger profit. As we move
up the scale they appear as the policemen who have little
regard for the laws it is their duty to uphold, the policemen who
throw away their morality to uphold unjust laws. We see them in
the soldier who takes advantage of the innocent natives, as
the politician who makes selfish decisions that negatively affect
the rest of us. They are in the laws that strangle our right to
say what we want, that destroy our right to change what we
believe to be wrong. They run the corporations responsible
for child labor, mass consumption and animal torture.
They fund the wars for mass human sacrifice, they train the
cops to intimidate, they are a concept, a virus, infecting humanity.
They often reside closer than you think, right inside your own head.
Greed, violence, excess, apathy, the virus makes these aspects of
us grow to monstrous sizes. We can fight them first off, by
being mindful that we ourselves our responsible just as much as
anyone else. When we play by their rules, we allow the virus to infect
our ideas and actions. Participating in discrimination,
wasteful behavior, violence, and censorship strengthens them,
makes you them. Look around, you see them in McDonalds and Wal-Mart.
You see their slogans on nike billboards, you feel the virus
growing stronger when you watch the news. If we don't start fixing
the problem by first focusing on ourselves, they will always haunt us.
The next place to act would be your community, any sign of them
needs to be dealt with, be it murder, corrupt police, crooked businesses,
or politicians passing laws that crush our rights. We have to fight
consumerism, racism, hierarchy, propaganda, and fear, because those are
their greatest weapons. Only once we're able to change ourselves
to be willing to do something, to help others, to stop THEM,
will we notice a change. This might take a decade, this might take
a century, but we've got to do something before the virus
becomes unstoppable.