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"It Looks like Freedom - but it feels like Death."
Leonard Cohen
It’s been said that everything is different now, but not everything has
changed. Nature continues, with some serious new twists, but nonetheless it
continues. So it is with people: our lives have been drastically affected, and
there are cracks within the systems, but: "that’s how the light gets
in." There are constants in the chaos that we cannot escape, in both the
world and in ourselves. Truth and trust and the consequences of our failures to
shoulder our responsibilities are only some of the timeless interactions that
are now under siege. How we deal with our choices about these age-old concepts
is what will determine the future.
This didn’t begin with GWB, it goes all the way back to when people left
the nomadic way of life for the more settled ways of the agrarian revolution. To
make that change, people began to claim parts of the land for themselves, first
as individuals, then as city-states, and finally as nations. To enable these
changes, nature was cast as the enemy, and with that alteration, people lost
interest in the global balance. That’s what has allowed us, to ignore, the
real balances needed to maintain a healthy and viable world.
Many think that the USA has always been a place of freedom and democracy for
most of us. This was the concept in the Declaration of Independence, and to a
lesser degree in the Constitution. But it was only a thin veneer to cover the
lustful face of power that lived beneath the finery in those words. Noble
concepts are still possible; but they have yet to be fulfilled. Despite the
underlying greed and hypocrisy the ideals are still there, waiting to be tried:
whispering their promise of a better life; if only more people could hear and
understand that ancient siren call, perhaps there could be real change.
www.cabinetmagazine.org/
Mount Rushmore is the embodiment of "Manifest Destiny" and with the
carving of four American Presidents into the granite mountain face of "Six
Grandfathers," the Black Hills of South Dakota were desecrated. These were
images of those who oversaw the slaughter of their tribes, and then staked their
claim in that stone of their own sacred mountain, over those from whom this
country was stolen.
We speak of the founding of this nation in freedom and democracy, without
remembering how we came to inhabit the entire continent. The rest of our history
was built on this pattern, mostly on far distant shores, but always in answer to
the same hungers that drove the extermination of the original (50 million)
people of this land. That kind of power, thus acquired, never willingly gives up
its position. If this is to change, then those who want to alter the way that
power is used must take power back.
When the Cold War ended, the world didn’t even pause. Nothing changed and
everything should have: because very soon that golden moment for global peace
was lost. What happened instead was that the ugly human thirst for power and
control became engorged again with its ancient lust for more and more and more.
The USA is now two countries, the living and the dead. Those who want only
"more:" are waging a war-on-the-world and they will pay any price,
with other people’s lives and treasure, to obtain what they seek. The tyrants
have used many separations to keep us from seeing the truth of the above, but
crunch time is coming, and there is no time anymore for the little diversions
between people. This is about the survival of the species. The fear and horror
created so far will soon become self-canceling, once people realize that
"terror" is nothing but a shell, for the theft they seek to mask. When
the walls of secrecy are breached—then the truth will be clear.
The dream of democracy and freedom is not even a pitted path, it is something
that must be forged by each person through the wilderness of their own lives and
it must be won anew by each of us. We have allowed others to picture our
freedoms as some kind of interstate freeway system of rights, without
responsibilities—and nothing could be more misleading. The supposed "
safety and security" that we say we seek, is an illusion than can never be
attained. To pretend otherwise is to deny the everyday realities of ordinary
life, and common sense.
Look at our laws for the poor and the powerless. They come from a faceless
machine, utterly without compassion or recourse. For the wealthy ‘the law’
is nothing but a toothless hag that is only there to fatten up ill-gotten gains.
The gap between these two faces of "the law," widens each and every
month. Our ‘representatives’ have been nothing, since they discovered how to
vote themselves money (ala the military-industrial-congressional complex). So we’re
a nation of the unrepresented, soon to be disenfranchised completely. We began
by giving our responsibilities to the government – wholesale: because we
couldn’t be bothered to take an interest in the arcane practice of politics,
and now we are outraged at what has become, of what we thought of as our
birthright. The responsibility for government is, and always was ours, until we
gave it away, and then ignored what those we gave it to, did with our rights and
our treasure.
Bush never left the USA before he ran for president – yet daily he decides
who to trust as well as what global situations are serious. He is an officer
without portfolio. Bush has never known success, has never been serious about
anything except his own pleasures – so how can the world take anything he says
seriously? Kerry, for his part has always been a number two, a far too willing
tool for the use of the powerful. Neither man has any use at all for the vast
majority who must work to live. This ‘election’ is a farce by any measure,
and the public needs to face this fact because it is what has become the truth.
http://207.44.245.159/article7093.htm
What’s ahead may ‘look like freedom’ but more and more it begins ‘to
feel like death.’
Our "laws" will soon decay even further, adding farce to treachery,
until the Outlaws are able to intimidate those still resisting; because if that
doesn’t work then impeachment will follow. The ‘first term’ has only been
a preamble for the confirmation of their illegitimate rule, through yet another
miming of the public act of voting. This Coup was accomplished four years ago,
what remains is to be able to announce that fact to the world, and that will
happen, unless they lose in November. If they’re still in power after the
election: Then we should prepare for shortages of all types, for a massive
military draft and for black-markets in a number of major areas. What’s
happening with the Flu shots is only the tip of an iceberg. Look at the military’s
most recent medical snafu:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Price gouging, hoarding, and increased gang violence will also become far
more common than they have been – and that’s the good news. Here’s the
other side of the same coin.
www.rense.com/
The above may be circumstantial, but our real problems lie in the fact that
if we cannot trust others, we cannot live in the vitality of any moment. We
shall become entombed in the trivialities of life, "imprisoned between the
interrupted past and the assumed future: Living in an illusion that is as blind
to the wonders of possibility and to the miracles, as we are to the horrors of
today." That does not constitute living by any known equation.
People have the power to stand up to this charade; in fact each of us is far
more able to do so, than are the politicians, who have a vested interest in
continuing the status quo. ‘Responsibility’ is personal, and once it’s
clear, that you can create your own reality and alter that which has been
blocking far too much of life - then there are options.
Look at the airline industry. From their golden age in 1939, the airlines
began a meteoric rise, until they succeeded in achieving de-regulation
(privatization). Thereafter the equations between costs (real or created) and
profits (for whom and for how long), as well as between competition, services
and expectations, all changed radically. After the murder of the air-traffic
controller’s union by Reagan, the writing was carved into the wall for the end
of public choices and the beginning of the fall from continued viability. The
airlines moved from simple corruption to corporate dominance, and now they’re
in a major meltdown, because privatization didn’t work. So the choices that
customers make can create a huge difference today, and not just in the airline
industry.
When people stop using corrupt or badly designed services, those services
will change or die, and government is one such service. The US government is
non-responsive in the extreme, totalitarian in its outlook, and leaning heavily
toward fascism as we move toward November. Even the once all-powerful
"mob" has learned that wars are bad for business, and
counter-productive for growth – so why can’t these governmental Outlaws see
the need for real and lasting peace, especially now, in the Middle East?
Eighty-seven attacks a day, and that barely gets two lines on the evening news
– no effort to explain why things are so bad and getting worse – what’s
the policy, we can see the secrecy—where’s the sense?
We don’t have to have all the answers but we do have to know what the
questions are. Whoever wins in November, we will lose, unless we begin to
question everything!
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