The United States Military, under the direction of its Commander and Chief President Barack Obama, is now engaging in drone attacks against Yemen, killing dozens of civilians in just the past couple of weeks. This of course follows the similar campaigns in Libya, Pakistan, & Afghanistan. Just another factoid on a news ticker. Just another Wednesday in America.
Think for at least a moment about the climate of fear in which the citizens of these countries must live. Every waking moment they face the possibility that the house or coffee shop or market or public square they are in might suddenly explode. How must it feel to approach each conversation with a friend, family member, lover, coworker, or complete stranger as if it might be their last? And how can we as Americans simply allow this to occur in our collective name? How can we not be astonished and abhorrent that this is all being orchestrated and presided over by a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize?
Perhaps even more unseemly is that fact that due to the foreign policy of the United States and the monetary policies and actions of the Federal Reserve, billions of people both abroad and right here at home face not an immediate death from military attack, but a slow, painful, drawn out one from an attack financially. The cost of food and energy - not just the price, but the cost (i.e. Fukushima, Deepwater Horizon, global civil unrest, et al.) - has risen so much so fast that people the world over have had it. As Celente famously says, "When people lose everything and they have nothing left to lose, they lose it." They are losing it right now, together, in a global revolution. If it seems at all like this claim employs hyperbole, go to YouTube, type in "civil unrest" or "riots" and see how many different countries you can count in the first four or five pages. How much of this have you seen covered in the American press?
In November I wrote "Civil unrest has already begun and will only widen and intensify..." When will we collectively face the fact that what is happening in Madison, Illinois, & Detroit is mere calisthenics for what is to come on our native soil?
The following is an excerpt from the mission statement of the Spanish Protest Movement's website:
"We are ordinary people. We are like you: people who get up every morning to study, work, or find a job. People who have family and friends. People who work hard every day to provide a better future for those around us. Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, some are apolitical...but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic, and social outlook around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice. This situation has become normal, a daily suffering, without hope.
But if we join forces, we can change it."
I labored tirelessly, without pay, and did so with gusto to help get Barack Obama into the White House. I was so proud - perhaps the most proud I've ever been in my life - the night he was elected for playing my small part. I thought to myself "Finally, I'm a part of something that matters." I recall thinking that bringing some intellect back to the West Wing, the end of the ridiculous and expensive wars, a real, objective look at the economy, and an assessment of the disparity of wealth in America - this is how I would be paid for my labor. During the voter registration drive I recall convincing many people to make the effort to vote by simply saying, "This could potentially be the President when you're 30. You don't want a say in who that will be?"
Of course, we have no say.
If anyone caught the CNN Republican Presidential "Debate" the other day, you saw the hard hitting questions that were being hurled at the candidates in our nation's perhaps most dire hour:
Blackberry or iPhone?
Deep Dish or Thin Crust?
Dancing With the Stars or American Idol?
If you even have an opinion on that last question, you are not qualified to be President of the United States. Perhaps of these United States...
But whomever of these men elicits the most funding (in our longstanding system of political bribery) and whomever of these men the press collectively decides is best will inevitably receive the Republican Party's nomination and will square off against President Obama in a race to the bottom. All 3rd Party candidates will be ignored, as evidently we as a people have decided (or we've allowed the "News Networks" a la idiot box to decide for us) that in order to rule our nation you're either a Jet or a Shark, with no room for "middle ground" or an alternative opinion.
Sadly, the winner is selected long before he is elected, and by the time we see ballots his policies are already in action. But we get to rejoice in our freedom because we were allowed to fill in a bubble with a pencil (or touch a screen, because computers are tamper-proof).
In the, to me at least, immortal words of George Carlin "..rights aren't rights if someone can take em away. They're priveledges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY priviledges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list gets shorter, and shorter, and shorter."
I wanted and expected this man to, on his first day in office, burn the Patriot Act on the White House lawn, to reassure us that this is a country of laws to which even those at the top are held. Instead, we're extending and expanding the Patriot Act. And a recent Supreme Court ruling states that police can now come into your home if they arrive at your door and hear any suspicious activity inside. Of course, the definition of suspicious is fungible at their discretion.
I wanted and expected this man to throw out all of the goddamn banksters along with the Bernank, bring some common sense rationality back to the financial system, and at least make an effort to fix the economy. Instead, he borrowed his entire treasury department from Goldman Sachs, as was the case of his predecessor - the same greedy, lying, thieving, conniving, sleezey, fat, obscenely gratuitously insanely rich rat bastards who deliberately, corruptly, selfishly, and eagerly created the problems we now face.
Why?
Money.
Lots of Money.
Now the State Department has agreed with Goldman's assessment that it would be in the nation's vital interest to see the bank pay a nominal fine rather than face a criminal charge for their criminal behavior of intentionally robbing their clients, as Goldman is simply "too big to fail." In Florida last week a couple who's home had been foreclosed upon illegally by Bank of America managed get a court order to seize assets at the local BoA branch, including the cash in the drawers, after they beat the bank in court, but had still not received the fines and damages the court ordered BoA to pay. This past winter a debt collector in Pennsylvania sent out fake cops with fake summons to a fake courtroom to sit before a fake judge in order to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts under the threat of actual imprisonment.
I wanted and expected this man to close down the illegal detention center at Guantanamo, as he promised he would. Not only is it still open and in use, now a recent report documents the number of young men who have spent their entire adolescence there, a tragic parable for a generation of boys - all over the world - now becoming men who have nothing but disdain for the nation once seen as the saviors of the world. Not because of religious animus or institutionalized hatred, but due to our own actions in a part of the world that we clearly do not understand.
I wanted and expected this man to end the senseless wars that are daily draining not only our economy, not only our budget, not only our national morale, but also any credibility or goodwill we still have with anyone anywhere in the world. Now, not only are we fighting wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan, Libya, & Yemen, and we're sending toy planes flown with Xbox controllers over innocent people and dropping bombs on the utterly defenseless in the detached manor of a deranged video game. And of course, the contractors who build the drones are already vying for the bids to build models for domestic use. A year from now, they'll be all over American skies...to keep us safe. All of this signed, proscribed, & presided over by, I keep coming back to this, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
I wanted and expected this man to set a new tone, to remind us that the idea of America still stands for something, still means something, that it could still be a beacon to the rest of the world instead of the blight upon it that we have long since become. Unfortunately, it seems that all that is left of what once was America is the idea.
Why is that?
Why are we intentionally, bitterly divided by a two-party system that seeks only to further its own interests, a system that will employ any means to maintain its hegemony, and a system that will continue to sink while simultaneously professing its soundness, greatness, impunity, and altruism? At the same time, the majority of Americans want the exact same things - a living wage, the freedom to express our ideals unrestrained, an end to oligarchy, corruption, and financial debt slavery, the ability to feel safe and secure - and, by and large, we do not have these things. Even more sinister and depraved, we're being made to feel as though perhaps we don't deserve them.
But we cannot blame that on politics or corporate greed or government control or inequality of wealth. Were those the causes of our strife, we might have a real problem. But we absolutely cannot allow ourselves to say "This is their fault." The 300 wealthiest people in America have more money than the bottom 200 million combined, and those at the top make all the rules. But 300 people do not rule 200 million...they cannot decide what does and doesn't happen to us - unless we allow them to do so.
I beg of you this: If you are still proud to call yourself an Obama supporter, a Democrat, a Republican, or an American - please tell me why. Because it seems to me that, in the face of evidence all to the contrary, anyone who still thinks this is the "Hope" & "Change" we so desperately wanted, that this is the man of peace we sought to empower, that unregulated capitalism is so obviously the best social structure, that food and energy will always be cheap, that a home will always be a safe investment, that journalism and news are one and the same, that the government has your best interests at heart, that the Titanic simply cannot sink...anyone who still believes these things...simply must be a drone.
That term was adopted from one used for bees. A drone is just one solitary worker bee out of hundreds of millions that has no information, no autonomy, no freedom, and no understanding of the whole puzzle - buzzing voraciously about doing exactly what it is programmed to do - in perpetuity & without choice, without belief, without contemplation, reflection, or emotion. It simply is and it simply does. And even as a colony withers and dies, it continues to buzz about voraciously, doing as it is programmed to do, until one day there is nothing left to return to...and then it dies.
Ask yourself this: When was the last time that in your daily life, in your paycheck, in your conversations with friends and family, in your mind, in your heart...when was the last time you felt like things were getting better instead of worse? Is it perhaps time to stop thinking about what we will do when things get better, and start thinking about what we will do as things get even worse?
All of these riots and protests we're seeing all over the world, they're coming here. In many places, they're already here. When they arrive at your city, your job, your home...what side do you want to be on, and how well prepared do you want to be?
I will again close with my favorite prose, and my constant plea:
"Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
And shake to earth your chains like dew
Which in sleep have fallen on you
Ye are many, they are few."
Percy Bysshe Shelley - The Mask of Anarchy
