The American Nightmare

The American Nightmare

I’m beginning to develop a severe case of unbelievabitis… which is a condition one contracts after too many encounters with too many truths. Truths which in turn make one say to themselves over and over again, this is un-freaking-believable.

Un-freaking-believable, un-freaking-believable, un-freaking-believable…
You see mi gente… I’ve acquired a bad case of this disease…

Be forewarned before reading any further into this blog… That by the time you finish reading my words, you too may have contracted this new disease that I’m hopeful will spread to the entire world…

The only cure for unbelievabitis is that you finally awaken out of the mind numbing, brain-dead stupor many of us have remained trapped in since being educated to remain ignorant to the truth for the rest of our lives… in other words, to remain incapable peasants and slaves to the system.

I’ve always felt bad for conspiracy theorists. After all, even if you DID see a UFO, Why on God’s green earth would you ever bother outing yourself? Only to be labeled a lunatic, outcast and shunned by society.

That just never seemed like an attractive option to me, considering we’re all taught to be the most popular in the classroom from the time we roll our little diaper covered asses into nursery school.

The male baby with the biggest bo-bo (pacifier) usually caught the eye of the little lady-baby with the most padding perturbing from her pamper…

Those with no bo-bo’s received no love, thus the birth of the haves and the have-nots.

These days I’m a proud have-not in terms of financial gains… yet even worse, my continuous hunger for self-education has led me right to this point in time when I fear the label “conspiracy theorist” will be placed on me at any moment.

Attack my credibility rather than physically attack me… Or maybe both as one of my Facebook friends, Nigel Clarke, reminded me when responding to my repeated attempts to awaken the masses, “Ivan… you’re already doing it. Just keep in mind, that if you continue to do so, you’ll become a target and then neutralized.”

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere… as soon as someone starts planning my assassination I’ve truly arrived… Or in Biggie’s terms, “You’re nobody until somebody kills you… baby baby……”

Prior to receiving my own awakening about exactly what this country has been designed to do from the very beginning, I looked at people exactly the way they will soon begin to look at me… I looked at them as if they were quacks.

One such quack was George Carlin. Every time I saw this comedian, he was going on and on about how the government and the system were designed to keep us stupid. I thought the guy was insane, antipatriotic, anti-intelligent and anti-everything else…

I myself was too blind to see the truth he was providing me with on a silver platter. I, like most, only wanted to be “entertained,” not “educated” nor reminded of the uglier truths of life…

Think: Being Latino = Bochinche “versus” Urban Latino = Truth!

It’s the reason everyone and their mother will talk about Ricky Martin being gay, but very few will want to dialogue about an education system that has our teens leaving High School at 5th grade reading levels and 3rd grade math levels.

Just yesterday – on my lazy Sunday afternoon, in-between posting information about the passing of Puerto Rico’s greatest Latina Symbol of Freedom, Delores “Lolita” Lebrón (Rest in Peace) and reading Miguel “Mickey” Melendez’s book, “We Took The Streets,” I stopped to view a video posted by Dr. Mark Naison of Fordham University.

I’m sure you can all attest to the fact that when certain people post content, you sit up and pay attention – for me, Dr. Mark is one of those people.

So instead of blowing off the quack George Carlin video titled, “The American Dream,” I watched in astonishment as he spoke intelligently about the problems of education, big corporation, government and every other timely issue I’ve dealt with over the last few months in these blogs…

Seems he was no quack at all – quite the contrary – a very, very intellectual man who was tired of the lies being passed off as truths.

And when he said, “It’s called the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it,” I just about fell out of my chair.

What a classic line… “It’s called the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it…” ~ George Carlin (Rest in Peace).

I’d only add to his statement that with people like elitist moneybags Bloomberg heading up the education system in New York… It’s becoming more like the American nightmare.

I reported on Bloomberg’s educational failures back in February of this year, a full six months ago, right here in a piece titled, “The Mis-education of This Generation.”

I’m glad the mainstream media such as the NY Times and NY Daily News are finally catching up with stories reporting the absolute plummet of education in New York. With numbers showing 86% of students passing math last year compared with 61 % this year… And 77% passing English last year, compared with only 53 % passing this year… it’s no surprise that the dumbing down of American students is in full swing.

God forbid Bloomberg give the underprivileged peasants an education that allows us to compete with his precious offspring. God forbid “we” the peasants become educated enough to question why we’re continuously left behind in the pursuit of success.

So much for “No child left behind,” as these staggering plummets in numbers are proof that we’re actually leaving close to half of our children behind… I think they need to change the tag line to, “Leaving half behind…”

Or in some ghettos U.S.A. – leaving almost all of our children behind…

You would think that Bloomberg would have some great political, prewritten response to answer to such a failure right?

Wrong… His response to these failures in the school system reads as follows:

“Lot’s of kids don’t want to go to college. They want to go off and have a career,” he said. “The last time I checked, Lady Gaga was doing just fine after only one year in college.”

Un-freaking-believable, un-freaking-believable, un-freaking-believable… I have unbelievabitis!

Well now we have the answers people… Your daughters can all be Lady Gaga’s and your sons can all be Justin Bieber’s and we’ll have a happy world of singing, dancing and mindless entertainment to keep us all brain dead for generations to come.

Welcome to my American nightmare…

Can someone please neutralize me already?

I have important discussions I have to get to with Dr. Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and George Carlin…



Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.