We The Sheeple

We The Sheeple

So, tell me again why we fought WWII? I forgot. Was it to bring democracy and human rights to the forefront of civilization?

Was the Civil War supposed to unite us, rid us of slavery? Did we fight the Revolutionary War to free ourselves from Imperial England and religious dominance? I really forget.

I watched ‘Saving Private Ryan” again the other night. I was giddy with laughter - surprising myself - as I watched people getting blown to bits. Not because it was actually funny to me but because I was watching it while being squarely in the present and not allowing Spielberg to transport me to another time through the miracle of movies.

Watching that film while knowing how the efforts of WWII actually unfolded over the last 50 some odd years just brought me to the point of hysteria All those good American boys, dead. All the Mothers being informed of their great ‘sacrifice’ just made me roll in laughter. It also made me wonder, would those GI’s really have done all that if they knew we would later capitulate to the likes of the leadership that steals from the people here in our day?

To think, we evolved from that to the state of America as it actually is now is nothing less than comical. Present leaders did not serve in battle. They ducked the call using money and influence instead to allow them to do more fun things than enlist or fight for some dopey country, American or otherwise. Instead they prefer to fleece America, play golf, spend money and fly around the world speaking of dominance, lofty visions fueled by power and the violence they use to make people submit to their will, their needs, their lives and the ego-driven visions of absolute power.

Yeah, war movies crack me up. So many men involved in an activity that is clearly an utter and complete waste of time. Not because there aren’t bad guys out there. But because here are more bad guys in our own country and they damage they do is far and away worse than any war-ever.
Yes, it is tough to sit in a foxhole, armed and not knowing what’s coming next. But is also equally difficult to try and live a life in your own country when your government is making your life as difficult every day as it is for the short foxhole visit. There is no aspect of American life that speaks to freedom anymore; personal or otherwise. None. It is all a mirage where each and every freedom has been steadily eroded ultimately leaving the individual with no choices other than “would you like fries with that”?

What was the point of all the sacrifice made in the Revolutionary War, The Civil War or the WW's I and II if we arrived where we are now? Hysterical, right? We witness the atrocities of Israel upon the Palestinians after we freed them from the brutally terminal hands of the Germans. We fought and died so Israel could bomb children. And we arm them! We destroyed Iraq, an ancient culture that has been around since the earliest word of the Garden of Eden were spoken. Very funny stuff. So far away are the shores of Normandy.

We fought England so we could free ourselves from religious persecution, industrial exploitation and the arrogance of class dominance. We fought and died there too and for what? So we could have righteous sex-starved preachers give us free and unsolicited advice on how we should live? So we could establish a government that would tax and oppress us way beyond what the British would do? So we could work endless hours to pay taxes and mortgages on homes we cannot afford because the same government allows criminal acts by bankers to make life simply impossible to maintain-no mater how many jobs you have. Shitty jobs and frequently equally shitty houses.

You gotta admit. This is really funny stuff.

Banks broke, businesses gone, taxes rising, money diminishing. And yet, the government simply goes on reframing the past yet again to place themselves in a good light in front of a public too young to remember truth, too afraid to ask for it and too self-absorbed to really care anyway.

Want fries with that?

And why should they care? No one else does. We live in a world where Congress does not work. The feign activity seeking that spotlight moment that will allow them keep their job - not help you find yours. They want to retire whole and complete with plenty of material security for their families - not for yours. They want to leave a legacy they can proud of citing some humane achievement so distant and impractical, so bound up in legalese and wrapped in a flag of never ending patriotism so as to do nothing but drown out discontent. To drown you out. Completely. Period.

It has been a long, long time, long since passed where we have had the likes of statesman like Jefferson & Friends. Men who, knowing they were already rich, cultured and privileged, and yet debated endlessly in the present to assure the future of this country of ours. This thing of ours. Morphed many times over, hardly discernable from it’s own origins, a terminal grotesque parody of our former great selves. Such is the stuff of what we have become.

The ultimate reduction is that without the debate, we are simply not ourselves. So starved are we for the debate, a national dialogue, that we create and re-create organizations over and over again in a feigned attempt to stage an inclusive debate even if only to give us the ‘illusion’ of participation in our actual lives, our country, our direction and what we truly want to stand for. You can join all sorts of groups - all substitutes for a real democracy. Groups that help you watch-your-weight, pray to your religion, quilt a rug, divulge the horrors of your life so you can move on. All suspiciously designed to make you feel part of The Collective we like to call ‘America’. Even the term ‘America’ seems and feels foreign to me, in my soul. I no longer have an easy feeling about our country. I love it. Always have. I am a Yankee, in fact. And Yankee blood runs deep. As deep as the South, the West or all parts of this country. Well, ok, not so much he West.

But now, I feel like a man-without-a-country, to borrow a line.

Strange, I do feel a kinship to my fellow Americans, but not to the government that appears to stand between us, our work, our beliefs, our civilities. It would be nice to see the powers-that-be stop taxing us to make their ends meet, put regulations in place in every transaction involving a white-collar entanglement, invest in us instead of every other ‘them’ they can create to in the never ending wrestling away of wealth from us - the people - to themselves - our representatives.

I don’t hate the government. I just feel they are sick. Sick with money-fever; power-fever and just are so addicted to the process that they cannot tell the truth from a lie. Nor our needs from their personal needs. Going to Washington appears o be a license to steal; nothing more. They are selective in their application of the law allowing themselves to be free of such quaint practice. And for us, well, we get in trouble simply for driving too fast or for going too slow.

If the government were a friend, a person, an individual whom I cared for, I would say it was time for an intervention. An intervention to free them of their cycle of despair, conceit and greed. Washington is a Hall of Mirrors for the conceited, the arrogant narcissistic megalo-maniacal.

They are just people. Like you. Like me. But making laws to suit them.

And it needs to be corrected to a level that honestly represents the people without diluting our needs in endless discussion invoking terms like ‘healthcare’ ,‘campaign reform’ and ’national security’ over and over until we are numb with the words and completely lose the meaning. We really need to make a change in the very way we govern ourselves. Not to a new system but back to the old. The Constitution was pretty comprehensive. And, I have not yet seen a replacement arise to which we should yield our civilization.

A return to open discussion may be wishful thinking but I am always enamored with the idea. I would love to be able to openly discuss the fact hat I think an administration that breaks the law is culpable and should be punished. After all, how can we go forward without maintaining our laws and seeing them properly applied to war crimes and the rest of it.

I would love to be able to openly discuss the enormous trouble heaped upon us by the police and all the homeland security experts that have duped us into believing we live in a dangerous world an that the only way we can survive is under their protection. Their supervision. Their demands. Their needs. Ever notice money flows towards them? Ever notice they seem to accumulate more and more power and invariably use that same power to keep you in your place. Not some imaginary terrorist. You.

In just my county alone, there are more than 400 positions that pay a six-figure salary. Often the pay comes long with a shiny truck with symbols and badges on it. Fire, police, animal rescue ,and even postal police. Many of these salaries run well into the $200K and $300K range for fire marshals; whatever that is. Aren’t firemen enough? Do we need a marshal? Will we declare a war-on-fire next? Didn’t American business cut out middle management by necessity back in the late ‘80s, early ‘90’s?

I don’t think we are going to be saved by the police or the firemen. I think we should greatly reduce their numbers and make them stay in their firehouses or stations until they are called out for a particular need. Sorry, this is not anti American. It is free speech. A nearby town went bankrupt some six months ago and fired nearly all the police. Crime did not rise. Violence did not surge. Nothing happened. No-thing.

We must be a lot better people than they seem to want us to think we are.

And we have definitive proof that the FBI, CIA and NSA cannot effect a positive outcome. In fact, not only do they miss the chance to ‘save’ us, they create enormous divisions within our country and with that of other countries. This is no accident. Divisiveness creates opportunity for those pledged to defend. Nothing to defend means that very large sector of our population is simply not necessary. A position they find untenable and therefore they seek create disturbances like he ones we saw at our last national conventions leading up to the presidential election. Completely unnecessary. Completely fabricated and executed by law enforcement against a people who are desperate to be heard. I guess we are not all the same people. It appears to be us and them. How sad. But there are many of us. We should give this some consideration.

Here is what we do know. We know that the actions of a violent Pentagon foster terrorism. We need to recognize that the Pentagon wants, solicits and maintains violence. It is their business. It is their livelihood. It is what they do. It is all they do. That places them at odds with the wishes of the American people. They export violence and are a for-profit organization that feeds money we don't have to corporations that dont need it.

We know that the Pentagon is the violent arm of the unfettered capitalism we have witnessed brought to the foreground by the likes of Milton Friedman. We know that the US will use violence overtly, clandestine if necessary, to create opportunity for US companies to get cheap raw materials, cheap labor and all forms of energy.

As a nation, we need to change the way we view our government in order to clearly recognize who and what we have allowed them to become. By way of example; recently we saw the automotive firms begging for bailout money. General Motors was desperate. For several weeks the Senate was posturing as to whether they would or should help our GM. GM stock tanked, the country was mixed on how they felt about GM. They posed questions about the safety of the overall economy should GM be allowed to fail. On and on. Merely theatre, though.

The reality is quite different. The logic is more razor-sharp and goes a little like this. The Senate does not care about the union jobs or whether GM ever makes another vehicle-ever. The only equation to be considered is this: We need GM because they use a lot of oil. We need Exxon-Mobil because they maintain our need for a presence in the middle east. We need to be involved in the middle east because the Pentagon needs a threat to justify the trillion a year they receive to ‘protect’ us and, in turn, feed the corporations. All the rest is posturing. A bitter pill to be sure but a reality we witness and consequences we endure daily as citizens of what has long since become runaway train of a country.

The damage done by government far outweighs the troubles brought on by individual citizens, (sadly quoting Jefferson long ago). Criminals are rare except in DC. We need to be clear about this and to let them know that we know. It is they who are addicted to oil. Not us. It is they who benefit from that dependency, not us.

Remove GM and you have a lot less American vehicles running on the road. Less fuel demand, more stability.,….very bad for government business. Which means peace will never be given to the people, here or abroad. There’s no money in it. Peace would make for freedom, freedom would render our government powerless and undermine their ability to requisition monies for their needs. Not yours. Their needs.

Again, you find yourself at odds with your own government. Your country. And by way of having done nothing. Just working, paying taxes, abiding in the laws and yet, here you are able to see how we have all become at-risk. Perhaps it is by doing nothing that we are guilty.

Our leaders make appearances in Sunday Church to give the illusion that follow some form of law, a higher law that would by definition have to be inclusive of forms of life. But they do not. The most critical needs of our society have been repeated over and over, ad nauseum, so that the very words like ‘campaign reform’, ‘clean air’, ‘human rights' have been so diluted as to be inaccessible to us-the people. Topics like abortion and gay rights surface only during election years to be used divisively to garner attention and votes. Equality for women has been perverted into a very long work week for many with less pay.

To play with your life on so personal a basis is not the function of government. And yet, that is all they do.

We would do better to have our leaders blindfolded and throwing darts at a board marked yes or no when voting on the best course for our country. That would, at least, remove the special interests straight away and allow us a 50-50 chance of succeeding. As it stands, we may be exercising hope over reason.

And now, inauguration day for a new leader, we are so weakened that we are goaded into placing all of our hopes in a new man. One man. So weakened are we and so ineffectual is our role that we stand helpless, waiting, staring and wondering if ‘we’ will succeed. If success only means to consume, we probably will succeed even if only to bump along. But, if we are to seek a better order, a truly inclusive and safer world, we need to do more. We can begin by ridding ourselves o the excesses heaped upon us by the military and begin a meaningful dialogue with all nations. No matter who approves or who does not.

And if these writings are viewed as anti-anything, so be it. We should set our sights on a more meaningful world and go after it at all costs and not concern ourselves with criticisms from newspapers, politicians, military leaders or businesses or even spiritual leaders.

They have their needs; we have ours.