The Folly Of Man
To all who have inquired:
I am still alive. I’m basically working my butt off again. Orders are coming in VERY fast now. The war drums with Iran are probably the primary reason.
This is insane, but common sense has long since abandon our government. Apparently, this is also true of many people. A full 77% approve the use of drone wars. That’s probably a good thing, since there will be at least 30,000 of these killers drones over American skies by 2020 according to the latest reports, so they should be very comfortable with these figures. The thought of terrorism by government in America needs to be looked at long and hard. See Who are the real terrorists? for another perspective. The Divine Injustice of killing non-combatant civilians is what drone wars really mean — and their terrifying threat to democracy.
But it does pose the question, how will freedom loving real Americans live in a police state with constant surveillance from the skies? Where every move is subject to scrutiny and suspicion? The surveillance state is ratcheting higher and higher and for no good or particular reason other then because “they can” and because they want to. It’s good business, and extremely profitable.
It demonstrable that complaining about the rising tide of fascism is now a crime. Disagreeing with anything our government does is now a crime. Viewing the ongoing insanity and expressing opinion about any of it is now a crime. But most of America has refused to pierce the veil of media brainwashing that has trapped their minds and dulled their senses, and realized just how far down this road to fascism we really are already.
Even worse however, is the media complicity in what is now a crime against all Americans. It is very hard to sift the wheat (truth) from the chaff (incessant lies). Alternative websites are also as guilty in many cases. They’re being bent into contortionists positions to support what they traditionally didn’t support. It’s almost as if “someone got to them”. And maybe that is exactly what happened. Or maybe they just gave up.
I think that giving up has crossed many of our minds. Truth be told, it has done little good to protest, or to participate in any disagreement, online or in person. The Occupy Movement was co-opted very early on and so was every other so-called “movement”. I’ve always said that these efforts are steam-valves, permitted to the people to allow them to vent their displeasure and their anger before they got really riled up. Most other countries put Americans to shame when it comes to getting angry. We witness the rock-throwing, car burning and general trashing of the place with alarm, but there is definitely something to be said to saying I’m simply not going to take it anymore and being willing to pull the plug on all of it. If it doesn’t work anymore, replace it!
We don’t live there, nor are we under their austerity measures or price hikes or their particular flavor of government corruption. We don’t have their perspectives or experience on what they are enduring. But if they’re fed up, well then they’re fed up, as is their right, and it is a fact that it is also their right to do whatever they need to do to make it right for them. We cannot sit in judgement on them.
We’ve been bamboozled into believing that we do not have the right to rebel or express our discontent except through “authorized means”. While this works very well for keeping those in power, it also works very poorly for those who have long tried these authorized means with little results. That’s why these steam-valves are permitted us, they tread upon the boundaries of “acceptable dissent”, with even a few smashed cars and broken windows, but in the end, they have change nothing. The status-quo remains the same as ever, because such token disagreements never threaten their power.
Human rebellion has always gone through predictable cycles. Those that prefer the peace are not always those that prefer the status-quo. They may appear to be similar, but they are not. Peace is acceptable so long as it does not become disagreeable. The status-quo can be very disagreeable. Americans have demonstrated their desire for peace in their own country, but not anywhere else. We won’t rebel over unauthorized drone wars or innocent killing of civilians so long as it doesn’t happen too often here. But we have most decidedly given our approval for all this to occur there. What are we going to do when it starts to happen here?
Our xenophobic nature is quite selfish. What matters to us is us, and only us, and not much else seems to matter at all. So long as business is good, even the business of killing or manufacturing weapons of war or dominating the planet into extinction, we simply don’t care. All of these activities trickle backwards to each of us, benefiting the economy and jobs of millions of Americans. We gladly exchange our birthright for a bowl of porridge and ignorantly ignore the total consequences of our actions. We can rightly say that we have profited quite handsomely from the endless rivers of death we’ve engaged upon, and we are going to continue to profit from this trail of death as long as our culture continues to accept this.
Some of us disagree with all this quite strongly, and being one of these individuals, I find it absolutely disgusting that our so-called “value system” and phony morality permits us to kill and slash and destroy on one hand while we claim the sanctity of life on the other. Hypocritical doesn’t even begin to describe the depraved morality that this actually represents. This is most definitely a case where the right hand needs to know what the left hand is doing (and put a stop to it). These are polar opposites and demonstrate our cognitive dissonance, a short-circuited disconnect between what is right and what is wrong.
It is very clear that America has moved on from being the policeman of the world to being the leading champion of the police state. In a truly free country, none of this activity would be permitted. But in a country that sees a terrorist in every grandmother and in every teenager, even in the drawings of a small child, freedom is the first thing to go and the last thing being protected. Osama would be so proud of the new America. What a terrible legacy we are leaving our kids, an entire generation of stupid sheep, scared of their own shadows, turning their own country inside out in fear.
It is perhaps pointless to ponder or lament on how we got here, because gathering spilt milk is an exercise in futility. It is equally pointless to engage in useless debates about “how bad it is” or some such nonsense. I’m just as guilty as that as any, and my reasons for not writing more often are related to this. There is little point to a blow-by-blow account of our descent into absolute insanity. The more I’ve had opportunity to digest and attempt to understand, the more I realize that it’s pretty bad and getting very much worse. This headlong rush within America to war and fascism is not going to be stopped.
So it makes more sense to try and deal with what this will mean for our daily existence. Unfortunately, there is no one-size fits all plan available to anyone. Nor is this “acceptance” of things to come even remotely agreeable, it is simply acknowledgement of reality. Asking (or expecting) your children to grow up in a police state is the last thing any father would want. But I think that every single measure of protest tried against this juggernaught is seriously misguided in its expectations and tactics and utterly doomed to fail. We could learn a thing or two if we were willing, but we don’t seem to be able to do that.
I suppose, not having lived there, that the German people who fled their country felt the same way, as Hitler’s rise to power and fascism consumed all of their freedoms. It’s at least easy to envision this feeling of helplessness and fear as our own cloak of darkness descends. Some very, very stupid Americans are quite proud to tell all who disagree with the security state that “you should leave”, but they err greatly. It is they who should leave, taking their fascism and police state with them. Or better yet, let them rot in jail for treason.
People cannot live in fear indefinitely. They can for decades, and even hundreds of years as the Dark Ages and other times demonstrate. The modern world, at least in America is descending headlong into a new Dark Age, instigated by some really truly evil persons. They are having an inordinate amount of influence upon our descent towards hell, but only because we have chosen to listen to them, and because we have refused to expel their poison from our midst. But I emphasis — it is still a choice that we have made. Even here, you can still choose, if only silently for fear of arrest, on whether or not you agree with the insanity that the world has become. And you can also still choose to not participate (for now). That may soon disappear, but though they may own your body in the gulags of hell, they will never own your mind unless you let them.
Do Americans truly want to live in fear for decades? It is quite possible that they actually do. Only time will tell. But if we continue on this path, then it is already quite clear that we will bring down the rest of the world with us by sheer force of will (and military power). Something quite cataclysmic, even Apocalyptic could occur to stop this (albeit temporarily imo), but speculating too much is pointless. What matters is where we are today, what the attitudes and beliefs are of my fellow Americans, and what direction we are on right now. This isn’t something we can just “stop” as many have shown. It’s deeply entrenched into our culture and very way of life now and it would take a long time to redirect. Most likely however, it will not happen at all, because you cannot just simply divorce from what is so deeply imbedded into our business and culture. This is our way of life, make absolutely no mistake about that. It’s always been there, but it’s much more obvious to everyone now.
I’m finding a little peace in Henry David Thoreau book, “Walden”, which I’ve been escaping to every evening. So many bits of wisdom and insight into the folly of man! Perhaps I’ll find the time to intersperse some future words of my own with some of his quotations. If only the world would acknowledge that we can indeed do much better then we have so far, we could escape this tornado of fear and death, and learn to finally live our lives in peace, content with what we have and desiring not all that we don’t.
