At the end of this blog I am going to post a link. I offer this link because it is the catalyst for my writing today.
Over the last few years, on my Myspace account, I have written several blogs about the direction that world politics is taking. It is my habit to try and dilute these rants, to some degree, as it is very easy to get pegged as an alarmist, and to have ones thoughts dismissed as hyperbole.
Today I am not very concerned with seeming alarmist. In fact it is my position that the time for being alarmist is probably already in the past. The very idea of raising an alarm is predicated upon the notion that something might be saved. An alarm at the first sign of smoke is productive. Calling the fire department to a smoking ruin is less so.
As a citizen of the United States of America, I fear that I have missed the smoke and am discussing a ruin right now.
Even as a youth I realized that much of what people believed about this country was incorrect.
America is NOT a democracy. It is a democratic republic. It has always been so. Think about it, do you pledge allegiance to the democracy or the republic? Democracies and republics are very different things in practice, if not in theory. In a democracy every voice matters. In a republic, only select voices have sway.
Think, if you will, of the "super delegates" that have been in the news of late. Twenty-five years ago these delegates would not have even been mentioned in news. The citizens of this nation had the misconception of "one man, one vote" and nobody really worried beyond that belief.
Then again, twenty-five years ago old conventions still held, and the delegates had only once gone against the popular vote. So it was easy to have misconceptions about the process.
As another example, the second amendment is a highly misunderstood piece of legislature. We, as Americans are not expressly allowed to bear arms. We are allowed to have well armed and regulated militia. Militia, these days, brings to mind images of white supremacists or extremists, hiding in compounds. In the early days of this nation we had a very small standing military, and a very large segment of armed and organized citizen militia who would augment the military when needed. They also existed to oppose the military should the military ever be mustered against the citizenship.
The police state, we now exist in, proves that the second amendment failed, horribly, at it's intended goals. We are under siege, to a degree, from our own governance and we have lost all prophylactic protection from it. It is absurd, in this day and age to conceive of a SWAT team being met by armed civilians, and driven back. But, in the origins of our nation, this right and power was intended.
It would be possible for me to go on and on about a laundry list of things that we take, as everyday and acceptable, but which our forefathers would have rebelled against. The income tax, fractional banking, militarization of police, abuse of the executive and judicial process, land appropriation, and a slew of laws, including the patriot act, the military commissions act, and almost everything labeled as "homeland security".
Even a few generations back NONE of these things would have been possible, without, literally, a civil war occurring.
Now we just accept them without thought. We believe that the government has our best interests at heart. We believe that others will oversee our safety and freedom. We were taught, in school, about checks and balances. So, we are conditioned to believe that things are, actually, checked and balanced.
We pump three dollar a gallon gas, as we smoke four or five dollar a pack cigarettes and we think nothing of it. The older people have been conned into believing that a hurricane changed everything. That, due to one storm, now, forever, gas is an issue. And if you inquire beyond Katrina, as fault, you are met with rhetoric about "peak demand" and "seasonal mixtures" as the reasons prices are high.
Amazing that for decade upon decade NONE of these factors caused price shifting. Isn't it?
And how unpatriotic it is to realize that most of the Washington insiders happen to, at this point in time, come from oil wealthy families.
In fact, since 09/11/01, how unpatriotic it is to question government at all. Personally, to me, the greatest tragedy of 09/11 is that the deaths of so many innocent people have been hijacked and used to predicate so many heinous and illegal acts, across the globe. Including acts that directly effect the U.S. population.
The temptation, at this point, to dabble in conspiracy theory is very compelling. But it is totally unproductive. Studies, for example, show that the majority of those polled, in all western nations, feel that Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy. Yet, when polled again, about any number of specific theories, regarding this event, the majority of people dismissed any and all theories as "crack pot" ideas.
Think deeply about that. Most of us believe, in our own hearts, that there is more to the story. But we suspect anyone who would voice the opinion... This is called conditioned response. We compartmentalize our initial ideas away from how we've learned to react.
And, after 09/11 conditioned response gained a giant boost in its' effectiveness because it was joined by a very strong need to disbelieve that anything, other than the official story, was possible.
I put it to you, the reader, that we should suspect the entire story. After the battle cries of "Alamo", "Pearl Harbor", and "Gulf of Tonkin", to name a few, were all historically proven to have been avoidable, and even fabricated, any single event that serves as a catalyst for war should be suspect.
But we do not suspect. We are too busy worrying about our jobs, debts, and personal concerns to be able to stop long enough to see a bigger picture. This is not judgment and I am not exempt. But it is a very accurate portrayal of the situation. It's much easier for me to focus upon meeting a few friends for drinks, or to want to FU, than it is to take the exhaustive time to research things.
To illustrate a bit of what I am talking about, use Google. You can type in "google" and the name of any other country, other than the one you reside in, and find that nations Google engine. Strangely enough, searching certain words, on the different Google engines, produces very different results. It is a very distinct demonstration of information control. Which, in essence, goes right back to conditioned response.
Hopefully this vague overview of ideas might stir a person or two into doing a bit of research of their own. Then, if that person, or two, writes their own blog, another person or two might do the same. Viola, a grass roots movement.
The link promised, earlier, is provided.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Evensen/greg25.htm
