Alice Dunbar-Nelson once wrote, “The American public does not want to be uplifted, ennobled—it wants to be amused.”
A poet, journalist, teacher, and political activist, Alice belonged to the first generation born free in the South after the Civil War. She helped shape the Harlem Renaissance and understood, with unsettling clarity, the forces shaping American consciousness. From where I stand, she was a visionary. And I often wonder what she would think if she were here today.
Who doesn’t want to escape? You work all day at a job that drains more than it gives, for a boss who doesn’t recognize your brilliance. You come home too tired to cook, so you toss something lifeless into the microwave or reach for ice cream to soothe that ineffable hunger nothing seems to touch. Even when you know the darker truths—the consolidation of our food system, the patenting of life forms, the quiet march toward corporate control of nourishment itself—facing it all can feel too daunting.
A recent New York Times report noted that Americans now spend more on entertainment than on gasoline, household furnishings, or clothing. The Twentieth Century Fund estimates that total recreation spending reaches around forty billion dollars a year. I suspect that’s conservative. We are, as Alice suggested, on an amusement ride—and many have no intention of getting off. And perhaps that’s convenient for the small handful of men who benefit from a population too entertained to resist. I contemplate this as I tear myself away from a recorded episode of American Idol. I’m not immune to the pull. But I refuse to go quietly.
William Engdahl’s Seeds of Destruction details how four Anglo-American agribusiness giants seek global dominance by patenting genetically modified life forms. Their aim: control the world’s food supply—and, by extension, our lives. Government subsidies for industrial agriculture in North America, Western Europe, and East Asia exceed a billion dollars a day. A billion. And I can assure you the organic farmer isn’t the one cashing those checks. Why not? Inquiring minds—including mine—want to know.
I’ve ordered Engdahl’s book, eager to see whether his findings echo what I discovered during my ten years in Washington. History has a way of whispering warnings, and I’m drawn to the voices of those who saw the machinery of power more clearly than most.
President Woodrow Wilson, reflecting on the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, confessed:
“I am a most unhappy man; I have unwittingly ruined my country… A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit… We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world.”
Thomas Jefferson warned, long before Wilson:
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency… their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
Sometimes, the weight of these truths makes me want to drown myself in “fun.” But the fun eventually feels shallow. Empty. What should I be doing with my time? What do any of us have the energy to do? Most Americans work long hours for too little pay, too undernourished to complain, let alone to fight for change. And that emptiness inside—the one no entertainment or processed food can satisfy—grows louder.
Entertainment occasionally reveals more truth than it intends. In House of Cards, an irate citizen is handcuffed to a light pole, screaming into the void. Francis Underwood approaches and says, “Nobody can hear you, nobody cares about you, nothing will come of your screaming.” Fiction, yes—but fiction with teeth.
Our children are waking up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. And the question remains: who has the power to take the issuing power from the banks and restore it to the people? Kennedy spoke of doing so. His voice was loud. And look what it cost him. No president since has dared to touch the subject. And me? I’m just another sound bite lost in the static.
So I step away from the static.
I leave technology behind and disappear into the woods, where the creaking of trees and the soft shuffle of animals remind me what real nourishment feels like. There, I can breathe again. There, I can satisfy that ineffable hunger. In the meantime, I make choices—small, responsible choices that shape the quality of my life. What a luxury it is to choose how I spend my time. I don’t take that lightly. Isn’t that what we all want? To do what we want, when we want?
Eating locally and organically whenever possible keeps my body strong enough to pursue the things that matter. Hugging a tree—yes, I’m proudly a tree hugger—grounds me in a way no entertainment ever could. Leaning against a trunk, arms open, eyes closed, I breathe as the tree breathes: one long, slow, 24‑hour breath. In that moment, my power returns. My compassion returns. My clarity returns.
It’s the little choices we make every day that shape the world we live in. Choices that feed both body and soul are rare in this static-filled age. But they exist. And they matter.
Alice Dunbar-Nelson understood the seduction of amusement—and the danger of it. She saw how easily a nation could be lulled into complacency. Yet she also believed in the power of individual agency, of art, of truth-telling.
If she were here today, I think she’d recognize the landscape. I think she’d recognize the hunger. And I think she’d tell us that stepping out of the static—into the woods, into nourishment, into awareness—is not an escape.
It’s resistance.
Happy Static-Free Trails.
