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Watching Cheney's adventures in the
fantasy of last night was a chilling experience that should never be forgotten.
The choreography of that outpouring of pure fascism was as masterful in its
design, as it was ominous in its implications. When he said: "The
commander-in-chief's first responsibility was to support our troops in
combat" and the audience cheered - and it all became too clear. The
president's first responsibility, he happens to also be the commander-in-chief;
is to the constitution and the protection of the people of this nation. Bush
failed in both duties, and that's why we had the two wars. Now because of
Cheney-Bush failures they are demanding to be elected-having lost the first
attempt by 500,000 votes. Imagine how they will continue to violate the oath of
office, and seal that devil's bargain they began with, if they get another shot.
This takes one back to how it came to
be that this nation lost its way, among ourselves, as well as among those in the
remaining community of nations.
In the 1950's America began to more
than experiment with censorship-in the McCarthy hearings we made censorship a
major part of everyday life, and that was just for starters. Blacklists were
introduced, books were banned, authors and screenwriters were banished or
condemned, and very few bothered about this contradiction between the laws and
protections all of us supposedly enjoyed, and the fear motivated actions, that
were being taken against any who were not terrified by life.
It was after all the time of the Red
Menace, (the terror of that time) and we were being spoon fed a mega- potion of
terror and fear. Eventually reason prevailed and the country seemed to awaken,
but the damage had been done. The American public had accepted at some level
that censorship was good. Being blindfolded, gagged, and deafened was not only
now permitted (in the name of good vs. evil), but in some cases was now
considered necessary. The dictates of fear were in again full and ugly flower.
Some results of that revelation
produced the film ratings boards that taught us all - that sex was bad and
violence should be shown. The censors also decided that no film should be
permitted to portray the bad guys as ever being able to succeed. Here began our
unreal view of what real life is really like. There were more subtle censorships
as well, and these too have continued to grow year by year until we now have a
country that believes that there is a right way and a wrong way to view the
world, and everything in that world-absolutely.
Some casualties of this new certainty
have been the loss of imagination and individuality; and the near unanimity of
opinion, both political and private, about what is right and what is wrong with
anything we think or say or do. The danger here was that our initial strength as
a people came from the diversity of ideas and the individuality of our people
and that through consensus, not blackmail, we were able to have a nation that
was not easily led, because our differences mattered in the grand scheme of
things.
From those differences came ingenuity,
creativity, originality, industry and enterprise-all the powerful things that
built this nation and lit the torch of freedom. That burst of light in a world
still starving in the ashes of the bankrupt remnants of our feudal past became
the ideal that many looked to for their own redemption from tyranny.
When most here began to fail to
question, failed to face the big and meaningful moments in their lives (life and
death and most of what lies between), many then began to look for guidance in
books and rules and other peoples dreams that were not their own. This led
people to look for jobs, in the way that animals might respond to a figurative
Pavlovian experiment. "Anything will do, so long as there's a
paycheck" - and to hell with whatever it was that we might have wanted to
do, to earn a living, or to use our skills to enrich our lives. This played a
huge part in the loss of our society, and the sapping of our choices as well as
our ability to personally survive amid the nightmares.
But there is something else that has
quietly shadowed all we say we want. There is within a great many Americans a
latent yearning for some kind of Monarchy, some kind of feudal dependence upon a
patriarchy that is repellant to free and independent thought. This seems to
emanate from that fear of the world that is born of indecision, as it seeks
protections from even life itself. But there can be no protection for the
individual within an artificial net of fantasies and lies. Enter the one-size
fits all dominance of the New World Order. Exit, any real chance to live your
life, or to expect any real return on your efforts at being someone who has a
chance to be all that you can be-no longer!
We have marginalized death, as though
it is somehow not a necessary part of life. We have seemingly chosen to believe
that we can regulate the world and even nature to suit our every whim and
imagined need, no matter how large or small. To facilitate our newfound dreams
of wealth, we have elevated math and science to unreal expectations, while
trying to crush the arts and anything at all that might have to do with feelings
as unnecessary, and totally beside the point in being. In this new equation
there is no time for political thought, or emotional attachments-because our
real spirit died as well.
We seem to have only one religion now,
and that is money. To obtain more of it, we appear to be willing to do anything
at all, so long as there is a profit in the end-and in that process we have
forgotten that there is far more to this life than simply money, and whatever
that can bring. These changes did not happen accidentally. The commercial world
designed this, for those who profit directly from the things we buy and sell
each day. The alteration in our national consciousness has taken a long time to
create itself, but we are now upon that threshold, where change is again
required, if there is to be any possibility for survival at all.
When one looks at what we've done over
the last four years in the world and to it; there is a huge disconnect between
what we say we want for ourselves and what we are forcing onto so many millions
of others. Politicians here pay lip service to leadership, but their record of
achievements contains not a single accomplishment. All their dreams of any
tomorrow are dependent upon the continued slaughter of other people and the
theft of much that is not ours-just to keep our way of life. The words our
politicians use no longer contain reality, or any truth, so they can have no
meaning in the world-yet Americans seem to hang on every syllable as though they
dripped with truth.
The truth is, that our goals are
covered in the blood and broken dreams of millions of people that did not
deserve their death or disfigurement-certainly not for any multinational
corporation's bottom line. But that's exactly what is happening, because we seem
to have buried our consciousness along with most of our collective private
thoughts, just because trillions are at stake.
There was another America, once upon a
time. The one we're living in now exists somewhere in the Twilight Zone-this is
not part of any reality that most ever imagined anyone would live to see. The
one true thing about being nothing but a lab rat on this commercial wheel of
corporate power - is that the faster one runs upon the wheel, the more helpless
one becomes. Whereas, if one simply slows down until the wheel stops, then the
one can step out of the wheel. Without the efforts of the lab rats, the entire
machine will have to stop. Have you wondered what such a world might look like
then?
End of Part Two
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