From the heart ...
Three times in the past I have abandoned
the blogoswamp because I was too sick to write. I have nearly done it
again. I can't really blame "illness" again, although I have been
fighting my seemingly intractable clinical depression again over the
last six months. But it's been more than that. I have been
constitutionally incapable of continuing to catalog in these pages our
descent into hell.
As my regular readers know, this blog has
always contended that we are facing insurmountable odds against our
survival as a sovereign nation. Long before Obama was elected, I wrote
that he would unerringly continue the financial, moral, and psychic rape
of this country.
We have been past the point of no return for years
now. We got "change" all right; it's gotten intolerably worse. And the
beat will go on. Inevitably, our military will take on more wars and
many now predict the true commencement of World War III. Even after 911,
such an event seemed incomprehensible.
I saw a report today
telling us that the US government has instituted a program that will aid
and abet companies in profiting from off-shore cheap labor. This, of
course, is at a time when we desperately need those same companies to
create jobs with fair living compensation for our own citizens. This
initiative by the Administration is the definition of cynicism and is
crushing us.
Again, I'm not surprised. Any person capable of
turning off the TV and with one iota of awareness can easily see that
loyalty to present ideologies, "Left" or "Right", is simply a form of
mass hypnotic denial. In the face of a badly crumbling base, Democratic
Party loyalists continue to cling to the shards of a sunken oil tanker.
Not that I blame them. Where else can they go, since the pickings on the
Left are slim at best. This, while the Right is being drawn in a
frothing fury to the end of rationality by a psychotic TV host and a
moronic hockey mom. The mid-term elections, now just a bare few months
away, promise to be no better than a Saturday night cattle call in a
local dive bar. Good luck with that. Say what you will, but once again, I
will not vote, because there is no one to vote for who represents my
interests. Not only does that dog just not hunt any more, it doesn't
bark. It just whimpers.
Last week, Cindy Sheehan posted an article entitled, "I Have Become Uncomfortably Numb". Here are some excerpts ...
I am numb, I think.
Since
the U.S. Corporate Military Industrial Complex forced me into the World
of the Aware after my son’s murder in Iraq, I feel that the news
freshly assaults me on a daily basis.
I am numb, I think, from being abused by this Empire on a regular basis for years.
I
am numb, I think, because it wears on one to care so deeply when so
many citizens of my national community (reader excepted) barely even
know we are at war, let alone that we live in a murderous Empire ...
I
am numb, I think, because many people elected a “Change” regime that
has turned out to be a “Status Quo” regime and many of the people who
voted for the Changer-in-Chief have become born again Cheerleaders for
War. The anti-Decider-in-Chief movement has all but fizzled out to
nothing. That the “Changer” is no different or better than the “Decider”
is not what has numbed me--it’s the unreasonable support for the
Changer that would cause me to stomp my feet in disgust, if it weren’t
for the numbness.
Deep down inside of me, there is the Cindy who
is raging against the Democratic Congress’s passage of the recent
war-funding bill, but so I don’t explode, I am outwardly calm. Pissed
off Cindy has to be in here, or I wouldn't be writing this piece--but
the rhetoric that I have written hundreds of times is now having the
feeling of "been there, done that." Well, I am numb, I think, because I
have visited this topic continually and words are just not cutting it.
How many words are there for: murder, death, destruction, slaughter,
starvation, predatory Capitalism, war profiteering, war, illegal,
immoral, war crimes, callous, greedy, rape, pillage, plunder, blah,
blah, blah! ...
Sigh. At least I'm in good company.
At around the same time, writing in "
America Is a State of Mind" at
Atlantic Free Press, Debbie Menon says in part ...
I
am even more grievously outraged that America may have presented itself
to the world as a defender and protector of man, when the richness of
its false garments hid the jailer slaver. I now deplore and dislike what
I see it has become, or has exposed itself for the “Raincoat Charlie”
it has always been.
Might the ideal still be within the realm of
achievability? I have my doubts. But, that is the way with ideals. And
without them, we have nothing upon which to build hope.
The ugly
nudity we see in America’s corpse today, is not the work of George Bush,
the Republicans, nor the arrogant Americans, but is the product of its
history. Neither is a root cause, they are but the effects of a long
history. They are consequences.
As a corpse, the obvious becomes
apparent; this thing is not growing or developing; it is corrupting, and
the stench is becoming unbearable.
And, the fight they pursue,
is it futile? Are they trying to beat life into a dead horse which never
actually lived? Trying to beat a dream into reality? By doing so, are
they perhaps forging what was a lovely and idyllic dream into a
nightmare? ...
Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift a Navy lawyer, recently
responded to a question by describing America in the same terms; an
America undefined by racial, religious, ethnic or cultural circumstance,
by geographic boundary, or cultural identity when he said; “America is a
mix of every people in the world. …Our territory is not homogeneous.
What we are fixed by are our ideals. That’s basically what America is.
We are a set of principles. If we lose sight of those principles, then
we lose sight of America.”
I tend to agree, but only in
part. My argument with Ms. Menon lies in the fact that our government
has rarely fully embraced the values and principles she refers to. And
now a great majority of our population seems to have abandoned those
values to hateful rancor and mass confrontation. Whether on the Right or
Left or in the middle, what values and principles do we share?
I
haven't written here because I'm just beat up. I'll be 63 years old in
about a month. I live on a little over $12,000 a year from a Social
Security retirement benefit that is in danger of being gutted to
continue to fund our martial bent. I volunteer my humble services to
children, animals, and, believe it or not, out local police 911 center.
This activity, it seems to me, is truly political - or at least
post-politics at is fundamental best.
I do what I can. I donated
some extra food that was originally donated to me to a family in need
and to a local food bank that may be on its last legs.
I also
have a presence on Twitter. My role is to get the news out. I monitor
about seventy news feeds. I have a few hundred loyal followers. Not one
lives in my city, so I'm pretty alone with this stuff. It's the best I
can do to stay in the fray.
None of this seems to cheer me.
Please do not speak to me of hope. Hope don't feed the 'gator. If you
dare, please read my essay, "
The Idiocy of Hope".
Maybe
I can rewind myself enough to write here again with some regularity, if
only because this blog's sponsors and other friends have seen fit to
give real money to keep this blog going through some
very difficult times.
My only question is, "What can I say"?
Be at and about peace, my friends.
