A War of Civility
The Real Brutality of America
Or
Civil Obedience
In the course of watching the news and living a life, I have come to more fully realize the brutality and shortcomings of our country, where we are going wrong and what precisely needs to be done to make a correction that is essential to the survival of our nation. Indeed, the survival of our very selves.
For some time now, it has been painfully evident that we, as a nation, are openly waging a war. Not a war against a foreign entity, be it justified or not. But a war within our borders. A civil war. A war of civility. A war that has stripped each of us of our right to our constitutional freedoms but not by the means we are all accustomed to reading about nor by the redundant explanations we hear parroted on talk shows, news outlets and numerous internet sites.
What we have done is actually far worse than simply a runaway government hiding behind some ideology, economic philosophy, legal interpretation or party affiliation. It is the way we treat each other.
Group violence on the individual has long been cited in classic writings. Most notable in recent literature is Eric Hoffer in the The True Believer. In his book, Mr. Hoffer plainly lays out the way in which a group unites with a common purpose to perpetrate a violent assault upon the individual, typically for the good of the group at the expense of the individual, always for personal gain and frequently directly for money.
Examples of this abound today. We see in Wall Street and current fiscal crisis the way a group is continuing-even now-to feather their bed with untold wealth while the individual homeowner goes off the cliff somewhere or simply finds a dark corner to cry in his/her beer or prescription medication. Choose your poison but the reason for doing so is not simply economic. It is more psychological in nature and here are several examples of how it works, why it is being done and what we need to do to stop it and truly become a great society.
Today, you do not have to go very far to find a soldier, a military person or a Dept. of Defense employee who is completely alienated from the group they work for, dedicate their life to and, in many cases, have literally put their life on the line for. Returning soldiers feel they been sold a bill of goods with no real content. Patriotism without direction. Fighting a fight with poor or no equipment, and little training. And, upon their return, finding they have been thrown under the bus when they find they need assistance to recover their losses. Assistance that was also promised them when they initially made the step into the service and decided that they would serve their country.
-2-
The DOD is a huge organization, of course. But for our purposes we need not examine the inner workings of a government agency. We need only to follow the constant in the dynamic that we are witnessing destroy our nation. That dynamic is specifically a complete disregard for the individual. A wholesale slaughter of his/her rights as a man, a woman, a father, a mother, a child, as a human being. The needs of the group are placed as an inordinate and insurmountable burden directly upon the shoulders of the individual with a complete disregard for the human costs that will inevitably come with such a demand. There is simply no way a soldier, in this case, can survive the training, time away from home, the call to arms and then return and be expected to re-engage as a fully human citizen and participate and, indeed, contribute to the society he no longer believes in and, for many, have extreme difficulty simply functioning in that society.
The soldier commits, leaves to do the job required and then finds that they have been handed a really bad hand usually followed by divorce, bankruptcy and broken families. The result is that of a broken person. Traumatized by both their experience and by their government, the returning soldier has difficulty sleeping which leads to trouble in performance resulting in either poor or no employment. A complete mistrust of the military becomes a permanent feature for the ‘man in uniform’ and is often transferred onto the government as a whole. How could it not? And all the while a profit is being made by a wide periphery of players, suppliers, aircraft and weapons manufacturers, all the way down to a plastic bag full of goo for the soldier to sustain themselves on in the field called a meals-ready-to-eat, of MRE for short. Billions of dollars spent in the form of an endless supply of disregard for the individual. As of this writing foreclosures in the US are 400% higher in military towns than they are in non-military ones. Semper Fi !
The American justice system perpetrates the identical type of violence with the only difference being the tools of the trade are a little different. In law, we routinely see young people hauled into court for minor offenses, typically marijuana or petty theft. In these instances we see the same trauma take place albeit in a somewhat lesser fashion. Certainly lesser than being shot at in a foreign country but no less devastating in its long term affect upon the individual. In this case, the young person has a revelation in the court experience in that they witness the utter cruelty and self-absorbed nature of law and the change becomes an ever-lasting one to be carried forever with them in their lives. A complete mistrust of the justice system is born in these individuals and remains as a permanent feature in their psychological dynamic. How could it not? Unable to comply? We hold you in contempt. We have a jail for you.
Many divorce cases are casually coupled to bankruptcy. The dissolution of a marriage is a very difficult time for many people. Indeed, if it is not, then their may be something wrong with the participants. During this time of enormous upheaval the couple in divorce is preyed upon by a bevy of supposed professionals that serve as officers of the court but bear a striking resemblance to a low level entertainer. They play to an audience even lower than themselves, namely to the bar, the judge presiding over the charade.
-3-
Not knowing the law is no excuse for breaking it these days and frequently the punishment is steep. I cannot imagine what kind of a person I would have to be to hold everyone I meet as fully accountable for the depths of psychological understanding; my area of expertise. The deep abyss of the subconscious, the endless interpretations of Freud or the complexities of co-morbid behaviors and their affects on the constellation we call a family are serious business. And yet, this is an acceptable practice in law, but, again, only because it serves the needs of a few under achievers that feed off the legal system and make a pretty fat living defrauding the individual of their rights, their work, their monies and, indeed, frequently of their very lives. Non-compliant? Refuse to participate? We will call you contemptuous. We have a jail for you too.
Returning to Wall Street for a moment, nowhere do we find a more egregious assault upon the individual than the current bailout. Nowhere in this event is the consideration due the individual noted except in fluffy terms about a return on investment. A return no person seriously believes or expects to see; ever. The utter disregard for our humanity in this equation is astounding and the level of violence being perpetrated upon the person of this country is so severe it can only lead to a complete loss of confidence in our government, the financial sector and the millions who have abandoned their responsibility to their fellow man in the process.
The dynamic here is consistent and beyond the group violence level of explanation, it bears a little more thought. When we turn away from another person living in our community and leave their devastation to them and them alone, we are laying out our own future. The way we treat each other is what we are truly made of and is the very essence of our society. If we allow the money changers, the judges, lawyers, accountants and the rest who feed at the low, swampy but fertile troughs, of this great nation we can expect nothing more than utter failure and destitution due us as compensation for acting in this manner. A more serious form of impoverishment is sure to follow. Predatory lending is a good example.
For Wall Street to be allowed to gamble with your money, for Washington to be allowed to kill for personal gain, for law to be an event that occurs in some dank room with strangers who carve you up with archaic terms designed to mask their true motive belies the genuine needs of humanity. Those needs cannot be repeatedly dismissed in favor of some other system of belief. There is no other system of belief than that which serves us as a people. No computer program, no technology can replace the needs of humanity or place it into a framework that does it justice. We need to act as a people first, not as a country first. Without its people, we begin to suffer the deficits we are now experiencing.
And we have lost our people. Our culture was already thin. Now it is being completely replaced or more accurately ravaged by the faceless monsters of government acting as agents of American business. The veil between the two is indistinguishable.
-4-
So, what to do? A return to common decency and civility with healthy boundaries needs to be re-constituted. Not reform but a true affirmation of rights. Reform has long since been furtile ground for corruption. We should reaffirm The Constitution and consider adding more severe penalties to those who would abandon it under any circumstances. We should see that no war power is ever given to a single individual – ever. No case in a court should be deemed so unimportant that a person can be overrun by a few criminals posing as officers of the court colluding with the court itself for personal profit.
The only genuine way to effect a positive outcome here is to include citizens in the process. We must organize and defend ourselves. We must realize the needs of the government of our country are actually at odds with the needs of the individual. Courts must have citizens groups who serve as witness and make formal complaints against abuses. In this way and only in this way can the person be guaranteed of their rights and the protection of themselves, their family, their work, their very lives. No judge will be allowed to operate in a vacuum. No case will be deemed ‘unimportant’ and dispensed with quickly and unfairly.
Regulations for Wall Street are not inappropriate either. They have functioned very well for many years and only until recently have those barriers been demolished by a handful of people acting as a group for their own benefit with the use of the legal system. Severe punishments should be doled out if, in fact, there are deviations from these healthy boundaries as they are their not to stifle democracy-as is often claimed-but there to protect the citizenry that makes up the greatest part of those very same investments as well as Wall Street workers themselves who are also being ravaged in these times.
It follows, of course, that if a war is illegally pushed upon the society that the perpetrators of such a heinous crime should also find themselves at the end of a long prison sentence if not hung by a war crimes tribunal if found guilty.
We should not fear this type of tough talk when it comes to protecting out nation. This is truly the battleground for our survival and if we are to apply tough, hard and fast rules anywhere, this has to be the place. We cannot go forward without correcting our mistakes. Implementing those corrections is the only way to rekindle the confidence essential to being a whole and functioning collective. A people. An American people.
-5-
Our New Deal must include not only a reinstatement of regulations but also the creation of a witness program staffed by the people. This new witness program would bear witness against corruption, against the reckless abandonment of our Constitution, indeed against any man operating in a lone room abusing power and rendering the receiver helpless. Politician, judge, policeman notwithstanding. Anything less than this approach will only continue to fuel our high-octane approach to governing and invariably result in abuse of power. We have doubled our efforts but have no destination in mind. A sure sign that we are all being had on some level. And we know it. We know government is a mess. We know that in our country a sure way to devastation is having either medical or legal problems. Either will sap you of your beliefs as well as of your money and self-efficacy. We are all at-risk when it comes living in our country. And, we know it.
Through these measures we can return to a simpler life with greater productivity and live safely within the healthy boundaries of real expectation. Expectation that our financiers will be there when we need them and not ask for the umbrella back they lent us simply because it began to rain. Expectations that if we go to court we can be assured that we will get a fair and reasonable solution not one that destroys either party or fleeces both parties of their monies delivering no result. And, of course, the ultimate expectation that if we are in fact called upon to serve our country and to risk having to lay down our life in the cause, it must be that the cause be totally just and not veiled behind a series of non-sequiter events coupled to make it look like we are just when in fact we are not.
We need clarity and continuity in our lives to re-create the stability we have so obviously lost and desperately need to get back so that we can go forward. Without taking these steps there is simply no way we can progress as all we have left is more deceit engendering more panic and further despair. The despair we feel is as much moral and civil as it is financial. We have been robbed and we know it. Denial is not a viable long term solution. We need to truly reconstitute our sense of honor and of justice. Not in a punitive way but in a genuine and relevant way so that we can proceed and go forward head up and as it has been said, ‘enter our house justified’
Strong fences make good neighbors-Robert Frost
The Real Brutality of America
Or
Civil Obedience
In the course of watching the news and living a life, I have come to more fully realize the brutality and shortcomings of our country, where we are going wrong and what precisely needs to be done to make a correction that is essential to the survival of our nation. Indeed, the survival of our very selves.
For some time now, it has been painfully evident that we, as a nation, are openly waging a war. Not a war against a foreign entity, be it justified or not. But a war within our borders. A civil war. A war of civility. A war that has stripped each of us of our right to our constitutional freedoms but not by the means we are all accustomed to reading about nor by the redundant explanations we hear parroted on talk shows, news outlets and numerous internet sites.
What we have done is actually far worse than simply a runaway government hiding behind some ideology, economic philosophy, legal interpretation or party affiliation. It is the way we treat each other.
Group violence on the individual has long been cited in classic writings. Most notable in recent literature is Eric Hoffer in the The True Believer. In his book, Mr. Hoffer plainly lays out the way in which a group unites with a common purpose to perpetrate a violent assault upon the individual, typically for the good of the group at the expense of the individual, always for personal gain and frequently directly for money.
Examples of this abound today. We see in Wall Street and current fiscal crisis the way a group is continuing-even now-to feather their bed with untold wealth while the individual homeowner goes off the cliff somewhere or simply finds a dark corner to cry in his/her beer or prescription medication. Choose your poison but the reason for doing so is not simply economic. It is more psychological in nature and here are several examples of how it works, why it is being done and what we need to do to stop it and truly become a great society.
Today, you do not have to go very far to find a soldier, a military person or a Dept. of Defense employee who is completely alienated from the group they work for, dedicate their life to and, in many cases, have literally put their life on the line for. Returning soldiers feel they been sold a bill of goods with no real content. Patriotism without direction. Fighting a fight with poor or no equipment, and little training. And, upon their return, finding they have been thrown under the bus when they find they need assistance to recover their losses. Assistance that was also promised them when they initially made the step into the service and decided that they would serve their country.
-2-
The DOD is a huge organization, of course. But for our purposes we need not examine the inner workings of a government agency. We need only to follow the constant in the dynamic that we are witnessing destroy our nation. That dynamic is specifically a complete disregard for the individual. A wholesale slaughter of his/her rights as a man, a woman, a father, a mother, a child, as a human being. The needs of the group are placed as an inordinate and insurmountable burden directly upon the shoulders of the individual with a complete disregard for the human costs that will inevitably come with such a demand. There is simply no way a soldier, in this case, can survive the training, time away from home, the call to arms and then return and be expected to re-engage as a fully human citizen and participate and, indeed, contribute to the society he no longer believes in and, for many, have extreme difficulty simply functioning in that society.
The soldier commits, leaves to do the job required and then finds that they have been handed a really bad hand usually followed by divorce, bankruptcy and broken families. The result is that of a broken person. Traumatized by both their experience and by their government, the returning soldier has difficulty sleeping which leads to trouble in performance resulting in either poor or no employment. A complete mistrust of the military becomes a permanent feature for the ‘man in uniform’ and is often transferred onto the government as a whole. How could it not? And all the while a profit is being made by a wide periphery of players, suppliers, aircraft and weapons manufacturers, all the way down to a plastic bag full of goo for the soldier to sustain themselves on in the field called a meals-ready-to-eat, of MRE for short. Billions of dollars spent in the form of an endless supply of disregard for the individual. As of this writing foreclosures in the US are 400% higher in military towns than they are in non-military ones. Semper Fi !
The American justice system perpetrates the identical type of violence with the only difference being the tools of the trade are a little different. In law, we routinely see young people hauled into court for minor offenses, typically marijuana or petty theft. In these instances we see the same trauma take place albeit in a somewhat lesser fashion. Certainly lesser than being shot at in a foreign country but no less devastating in its long term affect upon the individual. In this case, the young person has a revelation in the court experience in that they witness the utter cruelty and self-absorbed nature of law and the change becomes an ever-lasting one to be carried forever with them in their lives. A complete mistrust of the justice system is born in these individuals and remains as a permanent feature in their psychological dynamic. How could it not? Unable to comply? We hold you in contempt. We have a jail for you.
Many divorce cases are casually coupled to bankruptcy. The dissolution of a marriage is a very difficult time for many people. Indeed, if it is not, then their may be something wrong with the participants. During this time of enormous upheaval the couple in divorce is preyed upon by a bevy of supposed professionals that serve as officers of the court but bear a striking resemblance to a low level entertainer. They play to an audience even lower than themselves, namely to the bar, the judge presiding over the charade.
-3-
Not knowing the law is no excuse for breaking it these days and frequently the punishment is steep. I cannot imagine what kind of a person I would have to be to hold everyone I meet as fully accountable for the depths of psychological understanding; my area of expertise. The deep abyss of the subconscious, the endless interpretations of Freud or the complexities of co-morbid behaviors and their affects on the constellation we call a family are serious business. And yet, this is an acceptable practice in law, but, again, only because it serves the needs of a few under achievers that feed off the legal system and make a pretty fat living defrauding the individual of their rights, their work, their monies and, indeed, frequently of their very lives. Non-compliant? Refuse to participate? We will call you contemptuous. We have a jail for you too.
Returning to Wall Street for a moment, nowhere do we find a more egregious assault upon the individual than the current bailout. Nowhere in this event is the consideration due the individual noted except in fluffy terms about a return on investment. A return no person seriously believes or expects to see; ever. The utter disregard for our humanity in this equation is astounding and the level of violence being perpetrated upon the person of this country is so severe it can only lead to a complete loss of confidence in our government, the financial sector and the millions who have abandoned their responsibility to their fellow man in the process.
The dynamic here is consistent and beyond the group violence level of explanation, it bears a little more thought. When we turn away from another person living in our community and leave their devastation to them and them alone, we are laying out our own future. The way we treat each other is what we are truly made of and is the very essence of our society. If we allow the money changers, the judges, lawyers, accountants and the rest who feed at the low, swampy but fertile troughs, of this great nation we can expect nothing more than utter failure and destitution due us as compensation for acting in this manner. A more serious form of impoverishment is sure to follow. Predatory lending is a good example.
For Wall Street to be allowed to gamble with your money, for Washington to be allowed to kill for personal gain, for law to be an event that occurs in some dank room with strangers who carve you up with archaic terms designed to mask their true motive belies the genuine needs of humanity. Those needs cannot be repeatedly dismissed in favor of some other system of belief. There is no other system of belief than that which serves us as a people. No computer program, no technology can replace the needs of humanity or place it into a framework that does it justice. We need to act as a people first, not as a country first. Without its people, we begin to suffer the deficits we are now experiencing.
And we have lost our people. Our culture was already thin. Now it is being completely replaced or more accurately ravaged by the faceless monsters of government acting as agents of American business. The veil between the two is indistinguishable.
-4-
So, what to do? A return to common decency and civility with healthy boundaries needs to be re-constituted. Not reform but a true affirmation of rights. Reform has long since been furtile ground for corruption. We should reaffirm The Constitution and consider adding more severe penalties to those who would abandon it under any circumstances. We should see that no war power is ever given to a single individual – ever. No case in a court should be deemed so unimportant that a person can be overrun by a few criminals posing as officers of the court colluding with the court itself for personal profit.
The only genuine way to effect a positive outcome here is to include citizens in the process. We must organize and defend ourselves. We must realize the needs of the government of our country are actually at odds with the needs of the individual. Courts must have citizens groups who serve as witness and make formal complaints against abuses. In this way and only in this way can the person be guaranteed of their rights and the protection of themselves, their family, their work, their very lives. No judge will be allowed to operate in a vacuum. No case will be deemed ‘unimportant’ and dispensed with quickly and unfairly.
Regulations for Wall Street are not inappropriate either. They have functioned very well for many years and only until recently have those barriers been demolished by a handful of people acting as a group for their own benefit with the use of the legal system. Severe punishments should be doled out if, in fact, there are deviations from these healthy boundaries as they are their not to stifle democracy-as is often claimed-but there to protect the citizenry that makes up the greatest part of those very same investments as well as Wall Street workers themselves who are also being ravaged in these times.
It follows, of course, that if a war is illegally pushed upon the society that the perpetrators of such a heinous crime should also find themselves at the end of a long prison sentence if not hung by a war crimes tribunal if found guilty.
We should not fear this type of tough talk when it comes to protecting out nation. This is truly the battleground for our survival and if we are to apply tough, hard and fast rules anywhere, this has to be the place. We cannot go forward without correcting our mistakes. Implementing those corrections is the only way to rekindle the confidence essential to being a whole and functioning collective. A people. An American people.
-5-
Our New Deal must include not only a reinstatement of regulations but also the creation of a witness program staffed by the people. This new witness program would bear witness against corruption, against the reckless abandonment of our Constitution, indeed against any man operating in a lone room abusing power and rendering the receiver helpless. Politician, judge, policeman notwithstanding. Anything less than this approach will only continue to fuel our high-octane approach to governing and invariably result in abuse of power. We have doubled our efforts but have no destination in mind. A sure sign that we are all being had on some level. And we know it. We know government is a mess. We know that in our country a sure way to devastation is having either medical or legal problems. Either will sap you of your beliefs as well as of your money and self-efficacy. We are all at-risk when it comes living in our country. And, we know it.
Through these measures we can return to a simpler life with greater productivity and live safely within the healthy boundaries of real expectation. Expectation that our financiers will be there when we need them and not ask for the umbrella back they lent us simply because it began to rain. Expectations that if we go to court we can be assured that we will get a fair and reasonable solution not one that destroys either party or fleeces both parties of their monies delivering no result. And, of course, the ultimate expectation that if we are in fact called upon to serve our country and to risk having to lay down our life in the cause, it must be that the cause be totally just and not veiled behind a series of non-sequiter events coupled to make it look like we are just when in fact we are not.
We need clarity and continuity in our lives to re-create the stability we have so obviously lost and desperately need to get back so that we can go forward. Without taking these steps there is simply no way we can progress as all we have left is more deceit engendering more panic and further despair. The despair we feel is as much moral and civil as it is financial. We have been robbed and we know it. Denial is not a viable long term solution. We need to truly reconstitute our sense of honor and of justice. Not in a punitive way but in a genuine and relevant way so that we can proceed and go forward head up and as it has been said, ‘enter our house justified’
Strong fences make good neighbors-Robert Frost
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