I’m afraid to close my eyes sometimes. As soon as my lids fold over, and everything becomes dark, the memory becomes clear and painfully vivid. I see war. I see automatics held by stuttering hands, I see lost lives caused by blood-lusting adversaries in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, I see the sweat of hard labor, and tears marking the earth with reciprocal feelings of sadness, indignation, lost homes, jobs, closure of factories, moving of jobs from America to other nations, the fight and continuous squabble between the democrats and republicans and the seeming harrow regret of not being able to truly serve the constituencies that elected them into office. When I close my eyes and think deep in my mind, I can’t help to see the phrase “What’s given me most pain of all dogs I’ve been a victim are those whose slow eyes gaze at me, in love”. Ronald Wallace put these words in his poem “Dogs.”

You see when I close my eyes, and I’m flushed with the memory of these negative perspectives of what is becoming of America , not only do I see that point of view, I also see what we, as a nation, are failing to do. Now, it seems we are failing to rise to expectations and give back what has been given to us, and commit larceny towards our nation’s trust. I close my eyes and I see innocent bystanders suffer from every vicious blow that’s been thrown at our economy. I see the less fortunate become even more unfortunate at what seems to be the downfall of America -a recession of all time high of 10% unemployment rate. And yet we, the people, especially the people who can supply for themselves, even if it does mean cutting back a few, gloat and act as if they’ve contributed the most, therefore they owe nothing in term of helping our nation in these hard economic time. As a 9th grader not able to understand all that goes on in our nation and especially among the elected, my question then is, Are We Now in an Era of Hypocritical Unitization? Does not the United States of America, the Land of the free and the Home of the Brave mean anything anymore to those elected to represent the people? One would honestly hope that it does!

We’re all for saying “United we stand, divided we fall” but when it comes in terms of doing it and following through, we sit back and let others pull the chains, and haul loads of effort and perseverance into fighting for our country. We criticize Barak Obama and other leaders of our country’s actions, but what have we done? What have we said to at least try to help things? I’m not putting the blame on everyone because there is that small amount of people who spend there whole lives helping other people as the case is now in Haiti. But there is also that majority of lazy people who think negative words and lazy actions will fix things. And I understand that you may not know how to help, but I guarantee if you googled help programs/groups or agencies you will be connected with an organization almost instantly.

In a way, we have all been the victim at some point, and we’ve all been that beaten dog that gazes up in love at the people we look up to the most. I think, ‘til everyone realizes what we have been doing to degrade our country, we can never come together to help bring back the reputation we - America once had.

What I’m trying to say is this, in the midst of the most hard economy times, let America not become a selfish nation that she has never been before. Let us not be known now as the nation whose citizens care about their actions only when the damage has been done and we’re struck with the pain of the people we’ve been a victim of, whose slow eyes gaze up at us, in love.

Rather, let us Americans, Democrats, Republicans and independents once again - be known as proactive citizens as in the days of President Franklin D. Roosevelt who said that as Americans, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself and work together in both the Congress, Senate and the President’s office and rescue the people whose slow eyes gaze up at us, in love as well as for the general good of all Americans. And like President John F. Kennedy, let us not at this critical time ask what our country can do for us but rather, lets ask in these hard economic times, what we as a people, can do for our nation and gallantly march on and rescue our beloved America from the “dog” of economic down turns. And yes, I believe, we can do this for the general good of all if we set aside hypocrisy while serving our nation.