‘Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country’ Inaugural address of John F. Kennedy, Friday 20 January 1961.

JFK probably believed it.

In ‘Ammo, Smokes & Debbie Cakes’ the concept of patriotism is the main theme. When the idea that loving your country is interchangeable with and confusingly inextricably linked with loving your government, then in my mind, there is a problem.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with loving your country and taking pride in your flag - so long as the idea of disagreeing with your government; because of how you are treated, is not interpreted as hating your country.

When a guy in a checkout line who has just been laid-off from his factory job, has no health insurance, no savings and no higher education, because he is a victim of circumstances which prevail as a result of government policies (either openly or by stealth), and he thinks he’ll be just fine because he has enough money left for ‘Ammo, Smokes & Debbie Cakes’, then we really do have a problem. This is compounded and made even worse when he himself regards anyone who questions the system of government in the land of the free as anti-American.

When Trailer parks were being built in the 50s and 60s and given names like ‘Shady Pines’ and ‘Valley View’, they were pitched as affordable and decent alternative housing with a built-in ‘community feel’. Cut-to a couple of decades later and we see that splendid isolation has resulted in your community being cut loose from the rest of society. If a criminal deviant who can’t be housed within 5 miles of a school happens to need to be ‘placed’ - then guess what? - Your ‘community park’ in the middle of nowhere will do just fine. (Antioch anyone?)

Put simply, the thread here is ‘choice’. Choice depends on the freedom to choose,and if you are shackled with debt, then you don’t have the freedom to choose. People in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t vote; if they did, there might be a revolutionary change. The government (your government) doesn’t want this to happen, so they must keep these people hopeless and pessimistic by control. 

This control is exercised through fear or demoralisation. An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.

So - if you believe it's okay to leave school, because you can’t afford to go to college; if you believe its okay to work 2 jobs at minimum wage instead of working 1 decently paid job; if you believe its okay that you have little or no rights while employed and at the end of your working life you may have to sell your home (if you are lucky enough to have one) to pay for your medical bills - because your health is in poor shape after years of cheap convenience food and bad working conditions - after all of this, if you believe it’s unpatriotic to question your government, then you are truly a success story for ‘the man’. The greatest smoke and mirrors trick of all time has been pulled off. 

The subjects in the series of drawings are ‘next-door’ girls - they also happen to be a product of this confidence trick. Their opportunities, options and choices are limited - not through any fault of their own. They are products of their environment as created by their elected government. You live in a free country you’re told. Your country exports its brand of democracy all over the world ‘for a small fee’. Of course,
it is ‘branded’ - because it isn’t really true to the definition of democracy when you examine its roots.

‘It all began with democracy. Before we had the vote, all the power was in the hands of rich people. If you had money, you could get health care, education, look after yourself when you were old. What democracy did was to give the poor the vote. It moved power from the market place to the polling station; from the wallet to the ballot.’ Tony Benn 2007.

Sound familiar? No, I didn’t think so. And so we come full circle - 
government versus country.

Ask not what you can do for your government, but what your government can (and should) do for you.

After all, you put them there.

Artist's note:
Choosing to do line drawings of the girls is to convey the feeling of transparency that the girls have no solidity. In the eyes of society, they are temporary and disposable. They are of scant worth or note; they come from the forgotten edges of life. The fact that they are victims of circumstance and birth, counts little or nothing in the eyes of those who are fortunate enough not to find themselves in the same position. They can be looked through without fears of guilt by those on the outside. The colours reflect the grey skies of today’s life. The pale pink echoes the frosting on so many donuts and cakes, laced with artificial chemicals to keep their consumer feeling sated and satisfied temporally while simultaneously poisoning their bodies and lives with cancer and false hope.