Just who is the enemy now in the hurly-burly of American politics? As one commenter observed, "The candidates are the science fiction." There is a kind of risky business in these grim post-9/11 festivals because the mask of civility may drop to reveal a nation under military occupation.
The ACLU is suing both cities to disclose how security money is being spent, with hopes as to determine what specific weapons may be deployed against Americans. However, officials say it is important they be secretive about the technologies employed by their security forces, lest the crowds which will inevitably surround the conventions gain the upper hand.Can Americans be fearmongered to the point where they welcome the totalitarian hand? Shall our children receive institutions which are worse than those we inherited? Is the America we are willing to settle for, a nation that will turn to paramilitary death squads and mercenary cadres?--or accept the shell game for oil that covers up genocide? Wouldn't we feel contempt for a society where the walls have ears?--where we can imagine the whole planet shrunk until it seems that the cries of the tortured are coming from the next room?
(David Edwards/Stephen C. Webster)
"It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it," said George Carlin.
For close to 8 years we haven't really been mesmerized with the oratory of a Pericles, who advised the citizens of Athens not to throw away their Empire, "which some say we ought not to have sought, or desire at all."
No, in our case, the country was fed the most stupid, vapid, degenerate rhetoric ever heard on these shores. And the object was war and mind control; and these are indeed the dark days of this struggle.
"Problems cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them," said Einstein. And it's clear that we need some kind of renewal and revelation in our thinking process. We don't need hero worship or the idolatry of the Leader; we don't need that infantilism that is the product of corporate media; and we don't need self-indulgent self-pity.
I suspect that we need to find a central, still point, in our national character, the self respect that will make it possible to stand before the world on our own merits, without the resort to violence to steal from weaker countries and exploit the poor.
No comments:
Post a Comment