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George Bush is one of the best
teachers we’ve ever had. His administration offers us a
great opportunity. The lies and incompetence of his
administration are so transparent that it gives us the
opportunity to gain insight into things that we don't usually
get to see... things that went on in other administrations as
well as this one... but were better hidden. (Read Legacy
of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner).
Evidently the powers that be
are so confident that they have the situation so under control
that they can now afford to have us come to the realization
that we are powerless to stop them and/or turn things around. All that’s
needed to complete their
strategy is for us to admit to this new reality and then resign
ourselves to it. We might still have a chance to change this reality but
this window of opportunity, once closed, probably will not open
again for a long time.
Last week I got an email
informing me that the Chamber of Commerce in my community was
hosting a meeting where local business leaders were to discuss
“traffic flow, parking in town and recent breakins.”
Everyone was invited.
This was a good thing for the
Chamber to do I thought. But it got me to wondering if and
when the Chamber would ever consider hosting a meeting to
discuss the loss of our purchasing power due to war inspired
inflation, wide spread
government corruption, the
degradation of our Constitution, and the loss of our civil
liberties.
I was going to go to the
meeting and ask this question but I decided that for me to do
so would be counter productive. People barely tolerate my
ramblings in our free local newspaper. Some people say I
am a left wing radical and so anything I say now is viewed by
them as not worth the time of day. I personally don't
see anything radical about any of my views, but obviously that
depends on your point of view. In any event, I
believe that if I had gone to the meeting I would have been told that these are not the kinds of
questions that fall within the purview of the Chamber of
Commerce and, of course, that would normally be true.
But these are not normal times. Two years ago I was told the same thing by our local
Community Council when I tried to ask whether or not George
Bush and Dick Cheney’s should be allowed to keep their jobs. That same question
is even taboo in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Where do responsible citizens go when it's time to defend our
country and our rights, and the people who we hired to do that
job are too afraid to do it and have gone AWOL?
People don’t think they have
much to worry about. They figure, “As long as I don’t
break any laws, cause a ruckus, or be too annoying, what do I
have to worry about… I don’t see where my civil liberties
are being impinged.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that
it’s not so much that folks don’t care about their
freedoms and financial security. It’s that maybe they don’t care
that much about the freedom and financial security of other
people, particularly the kind of people who always seem to be
making a fuss or getting into trouble with the powers that be.
But here’s the problem. The
George Bush’s of the world say they are out to fight evil.
Right now, according to them, most of the evil people in the world seem to live in
places that have lots of oil. Once those people are brought under
control or gotten out of the way, perhaps most of the
so-called evil people will
then be those who are always
complaining about how administrations lie, cheat, invade
privacy, inhibit free speech, offer tax breaks to the rich and no bid
contracts to their friends or just have the wrong color skin,
practice the wrong religion, or speak the wrong language.
Somehow people who are out to fight evil are never at a loss
at finding evil in whoever seems to be in their way now, or
might be in the future. In that
consciousness, the only real way to get rid
of evil once and for all will be when the only folks left are
The Last Man Standing… and his or her slaves. If you want to play
that game, and eventually have that game be what your life is about, then all
you have to do is… nothing.
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