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Yesterday I finished reading CIA whistleblower Susan Lindauer's book, "Extreme Prejudice" and started reading "Classified Woman," a book by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds.
So far it looks like both discovered that corruption in their organizations exists at every level... from the lowest levels, all the way to the top.
Perhaps the grand illusion is that the real top of the pyramid is even higher up than the Office of the President, Congress, or the Supreme Court. The pyramid these three branches of government occupy doesn't seem to belong to us anymore. Somewhere along the line, they seem to have transferred their loyalty to people we never even heard of. Did we really put these people in office?
I ran for President of the United States in 1988 against George Bush, Sr. One of the things I wrote to the American people in 1988 was... "If you elect one more president who doesn't love you, you will no longer be living in a free country." Back then, I didn't really know for sure how true my words would turn out to be. I heard that there are hundreds of candidates for president each election cycle that no one ever hears about. I was so naive that I actually believed what I was told in grade school: that anyone could grow up to be president.
If you want to know why there's so much apathy, maybe it has something to do with this: knowledge is power. What people do with that power is up for grabs. Every institution I was ever involved with or can think of is and was structured as a pyramid. Those at the very top have a bird's eye view of what's going on as information flows up to them from all levels of the organization. Those below only get to know that portion of the whole that those at the top want them to know. If you go into a local Chase Bank, the teller will smile, be very polite, and offer to be of service, but he or she will not know even what his or her manager in the next room is really thinking. And that manager will not know what the real goals are of those who occupy the offices in the next floor up, and so on. But even in the end, what those at the top KNOW, will not determine what they do, or what the real goals of the organization are. What they do and what the real goals of the organization are, will depend on who those people at the top are. I don't mean what their names are; I mean who they are as human beings; what their current state of consciousness is.
Some people at an early age are taught to love and have respect for the truth, for honor, courage, dignity, and compassion. Those people are not apathetic when they grow up.
What people like Susan Lindauer and Sibel Edmonds experienced; what they learned and share about corruption and deceit at the highest levels of government is extraordinarily valuable. The question is, how do you inspire other people to value the truth, honor their own integrity, have compassion, and be brave enough to look for and find ways of changing or impacting a corrupt reality that dishonors their humanity.
I am smart enough to be somewhat paranoid after reading what people like Lindauer, Edmonds, Snowden, Greenwald and so many other brave souls have to say. So I also have compassion for and understand why other people might not be inclined to read or hear what whistleblowers have to say given the possible danger they might face if they were to act upon the implications of that information: like perhaps take steps to oppose those who they now know are devoted to the control and domination of peoples everywhere.
So I think the challenge for us all is not only sharing with others what we know, but also sharing who we are, which is not exactly the same thing.
Who is it that occupy the top levels of a pyramid that would rather enslave us than love us? How happy could they or will they ever be having never really experienced the joy of loving and being loved. And what would it take to inspire them to value freedom and the truth more than their imagined security... for they are not really any more secure or free than those they conspire to dominate... for surely you cannot know what freedom means if you spend your life giving or taking orders that deny freedom to others.
I think we would be wise to start a conversation about this; we need to explore how we might find our way back to freedom given the illusions, attitudes and ideas we dearly hold onto that keep us enslaved to people who don't love us.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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"...and if you haven't the courage to tell the truth, or the consciousness to honor the truth, or the love to love the truth, then one day you will not have the truth to tell, and soon thereafter you will not live in a place that will acknowledge the truth when it is told, and not long after that the truth will not be told, for it will no longer be allowed. You cannot hope to be a traitor to life, and then expect to live in a free and just society."
From "The Answer"
By Mark A. Goldman
“Liberty lies in the hearts and minds of men and women;
when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it;
no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it…”
—Judge Learned Hand
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