Catchphrases

We reduce everything to pop in this country. Everything has to have a catchy nickname, some way to trivialize it and make everybody think they are cool when they say it.
Sexually transmitted diseases are STD's. Prescribed medicine is called meds. I hate it when people say "Gotta take my meds." Like they are proud of it.
The one I hate the most is 9/11. The worst disaster, the worst attack, this country has ever faced occurred on September 11, 2001. Reduced to a phrase that has become meaningless because people throw it around like a brand name.
Iced tea and Skittles. That's what keeps popping up when people talk about Trayvon Martin.
This one I don't mind. Because it illustrates perfectly the innocence of this boy in contrast to the vicious racial stupidity and violence of the "man" who gunned him down.
It hammers home the fact that in 2012 in The United States of America, a black boy, a black man, a black woman can be gunned down for the color of their skin and no other reason. And the cops can look the other way, the gunman can avoid arrest.
We have come a long way since 1964.
Let me get basic here. Why do we have to hate? Why can't we look at other human beings and realize that we are all in the same goddamn boat?
We all have families, we all have jobs, we all have friends. We are all struggling to make something beautiful and meaningful out of this gift called life. We are all fighting against a system that is stacked against us; a system rigged to keep us poor and weak.
I think hate is misplaced anger. Most people hate their lives and feel helpless about it so they decide to hate other people. I do it all the time. I carry a box of booze out to a princess in a Mercedes and I automatically don't like her. Because I want a Mercedes. It's ridiculous.
But when you intensify your misplaced anger to the level of racial hatred or blind hatred of a group of people or a specific religion, you have made life harder for all of us.
Isn't survival a hard enough challenge without having to deal with intense, unthinking, blind hatred on top of that?
I will never understand it.
We are all human beings with no understanding of why we are here or where we are going. Trying to find happiness, how ever that is defined. We all feel. That should be enough.
It disgusts me that it isn't.