Runnin' Rum

You what this country needs? You don't? Well, I'll tell you.
   We some good old-fashioned civil disobedience.
   There's a grand tradition of American defiance of authority, hell, it's how our founding fathers started the whole mess in the first place. You got your tax rebellions, your revolutionary wars, your fights against slavery, for women's suffrage, for civil rights, against the Vietnam war, etc. etc. etc. The list just goes on.
   Lately, though, we seem to have become a nation of whiny bitches.
   Yes, I mean you. And me, too. And your neighbor, and the guy across the street. And for sure the corrupt politicians and evil corporate overlords. Nobody wants to take a stand about anything, and it's kind of pissing me off. Where are the suffragettes? Where are the civil rights workers? Where are the rum runners?
   Yup, I count those guys in the list. Running rum - which gave us NASCAR - started during Prohibition, that well-meaning but ultimately misguided attempt at legislating morality. People weren't going to stop drinking alcohol, especially since they'd been doing it for millennia, but they couldn't buy liquor any longer.
   That's when modern invention met ancient beverage. Enterprising young men who had automobiles, which had only recently been mass-produced, put homemade liquor in the trunk and let supply meet demand. Sure, it was mostly a mercantile transaction, but it was defiance of authority in the grand American tradition.
   I think the problem nowadays is that too many people are comfortable. We got it pretty good, all things considered, and any dissatisfaction we feel with our lives isn't so bad that we're compelled to think about the reasons why or to do anything to change our situation. We guard what little we have instead of thinking of the larger picture of inequity and institutionalized greed that we could help eliminate. So the filthy rich get filthier, our air and water become more polluted, and people who would have starved to death had they been born in a third world country find themselves elected to be our government representatives. And you and I sit on our couches watching TV and getting fatter.
   Makes me want to load some bathtub gin into my truck and drive into the hills to avoid the revenuers.