2006-01-22

Editorial-

Taking Stock

Let’s see now, where are we?

- we have a President, a Vice-President, a Secretary of Defense, A Secretary of State and other lesser functionaries who have demonstrated that “truth” is not in their vocabulary;

- we have a series of blatant violations of our own and international laws exemplified by our illegal war in Iraq and our involvement in and approval of the torture of prisoners, many, if not most, of whom are being held isolated without any chance of legal representation;

- we have a government that is running roughshod over long established environmental policies that were designed to protect our own health and well-being and that of future generations;

- we have a military that with apparent approval by our Commander-in Chief uses phosphorus and depleted uranium weapons, thereby jeopardizing the health of our own soldiers and any civilians who happen to be in the area;

- we have a Congress that is thoroughly polluted by a majority of members on the take for whom “honesty” and “integrity” have no meaning;

- we have a substantial portion of the population that believes in something called “creationism,” reasoning that a supernatural being must have created everything on earth because things are so complicated, never pausing to reflect that perhaps they just aren’t themselves mentally equipped to understand complicated things;

- we have a business sector that has virtually abandoned our country, preferring to move operations overseas in pursuit of cheap labor while hanging its former employees out to dry and with absolutely no concern for the impact of their decisions on America’s future;

- we have stockholders in those corporations who actually are pleased with corporate acts such as union-busting and employee wage, medical and retirement benefit cuts, insofar as those acts increase the value of the corporate stock;

- we have a substantial number of supposedly caring individuals who, perhaps justifiably value the life of the unborn, but who, once birth occurs, aren’t loath to send the children to perish in an illegal and immoral war;  

 

 

 

- we have a government that has spent what is now estimated as trillions of dollars on a misguided, bungled military escapade while at the same time failing to financially support speedy and adequate medical treatment for its veterans and educational support for its young;

- we have a conglomeration of newspaper, radio and TV news media that seem to strive for nothing more than regurgitating government policies with little or no attempt to delve into obviously nefarious on-goings and to report the truth until things become so bad and obvious that they are forced to do so;

- we have a government that spies on us, threatens us if we object, keeps what should be public information secret and maintains a cadre of shyster lawyers to justify the illegal actions;

- we have a voting system that reeks of corruption and a government that apparently can’t or won’t do anything to change it, thereby insuring that corruption will continue to the advantage of the corrupt incumbents;

- we have a legislative system in which bills can be passed by the Congress and signed by the President who can then note an exception to the bill indicating that he doesn’t have to carry out the intent of the bill if it doesn’t jibe with his own wishes and desires;

- we have a health care system that allows millions of people to be disenfranchised from medical care because private medical care conglomerates and employers need more profits;

- we have a government that has demonstrated its inability to react quickly and effectively to national emergencies, including natural disasters;

- we have a government in which the President and other political functionaries hire incompetent cronies for positions critical to maintaining the common welfare of the people so that the people suffer and the cronies prosper;

- we have a significant portion of our population that seems to be completely oblivious to most of the above and indications are that even if it were aware of all of the misdeeds listed above it wouldn’t give a damn anyway.

The list could go on and on.  

 

 

 

 

There seems to be a general trend toward ignorance in this country and much of it may be attributable to an ascendance of religious extremists who reject intellectual thought and action that is based on rational decisions. The 9/11 episode demonstrated that a significant part of our culture responds to stress via the gut rather than the brain. Clever Carl Rove has capitalized on this phenomenon and focused on maintaining fear as the basis for most government activities that require approval and support of the people.

Osama seemed to operate on the same wavelength as the Bush administration, issuing threats periodically to refresh the fear component in daily American life. He understood better than most Americans the part that fear plays in our culture; how ready many of us are to submit to authoritarian rule when we are afraid and how ready we are to be afraid. There is little backbone in the “masses.”

Aware of the logical fallacy of concluding that because of this similarity Osama and Bush are somehow intertwined, I nevertheless understand and am intrigued by some of the conspiracy theories that suggest (1) that Osama has been dead for sometime and that recent communications from “him” are forgeries designed to keep fear in the foreground of the thoughts of Americans and (2) that important technical information regarding the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9-11-01, which would lead one to question who did the horrible deed, has been deliberately suppressed.

My fantasies always have a tendency to run wild. Perhaps it’s the dismal doldrums of winter that leads to my speculation or perhaps it’s my having viewed videos of how building #7 collapsed and read some highly technical discussions about how the collapse had to be pre-arranged (a planned demolition). I’ve shown that event before in the Reality Show Section of http://www.Fiatlux.info . . You can reprise some of it at http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/wtc/videos.html (Links within that link sometimes take a long time to download. Read the entire narrative presented therein by Prof. Jones).