Re: America the Pitiful


steward237@xxxxxxx wrote:
By Charles Sullivan --

03/04/06 "ICH" -- -- Calling our form of government a democratic
republic does not make it so. We are what we do. By now it should be
abundantly clear that most Americans are incapable of recognizing real
democracy-because they have never been subjected to one. Perhaps no
culture on earth is more materialistic or delusional than ours'.

So tell us Mr Sullivan what is a democracy to you? A Stalinist state
like Cuba? The old Soviet Union? Nazi Germany? Italy's Mussolini?
Perhaps it was Herod the Great?


Compared to much of the world, America's behavior is tragically
pathological. We react to planetary warming by driving metal gas
guzzling monstrosities, rather than enacting conservation measures.
Americans have the habit of doing the opposite of what we should. Our
so called leaders think our sensibilities are too delicate to expose us
to truth-so reality is omitted from our diet as if it were a plague.
Rather than receiving nourishing truth, we are given the opiates of
propaganda that affirm and reinforce our odd self destructive behavior.
We are held captive by the lies that are deftly woven from the threads
of capitalism, and persuaded to act against our own interest, as well
as the public good.

What is nourishing truth ti you? Castro's Granma? Stalin's Pravda? Das
Kapital? or it Hitler's My Struggle?

Propaganda is like a powerful and paralyzing drug that induces the most
bizarre social behavior. In the mind it acts like an opiate that
provokes psychotic episodes of self harming conduct. We are a nation
addicted to oil and violence; a people grateful for our chains of
ignorance and servitude to the gods of consumerism and unrestrained
capitalism-the very gods that are our undoing. The drip bags of
propaganda are permanently attached to our veins to assure that we
never awaken from our news-induced coma. Mind control is more subtle
than the open use of coercive force in shaping human behaviors.

No kiiding! Go a a totalitarian state like Cuba and you will see every
media owned by the governement. At least, in this country, idiots like
you can express his opinion.

No one
is more effectively enslaved than those who think they are free.
Witness the glee with which so many naïve and witless conservatives
cheer on the neocon cabal in the mistaken belief that their policies do
them good. The paradigms of our time, which drive our behaviors, have
been deftly marketed to us without our knowledge-subliminal
advertising's finest frenzy. So effective are these media campaigns
that few of us even bother to question their authenticity. The result
is a virtually comatose culture of consumption and waste that is
incapable of defending itself from the predation of wealth and power.
Propaganda marginalizes and renders us useless as citizens, by
affecting our ability for self examining critical thought. We can no
longer add two plus two and get four.

There are other points of views that are different and people are free
to express. It is not the case in totalitarian country, where the
people like you control all source of information.

In this land of uncommon grace that is blessed with fabulous wealth,
mantras are repeated over and over, without regard to validity, until
they become ingrained in the public conscience and assume the authority
of truth. They become our cultural paradigms, the bedrock of society,
whose moral authority is rarely revisited. Centuries of self deception
have led us unerringly to the present moment. Everything that
contradicts our version of reality is expunged from the public record.
Americans do not like to confront unpleasant realities. Let us not hear
about the abuse of captives of war. Rather than take action to correct
the gross injustices we routinely heap upon the world, as demanded by
conscience, we simply deny their existence. We turn our backs on any
reality that assaults our conscience and suppress the evidence. We go
on as if there were no consequences. Cause and effect is not something
we wish to ponder, so we sweep it under the carpet.

Not true. In this country we can discuss whar we wish

In a world where other cultures respect human rights and cherish some
notion of justice, America's sociopathic behavior is seen as the
belligerent obscenity that it is. Our actions on the world stage are
justified by fallacy and drip with a hubris that has no basis in truth.

No basis in truth? Go to Castro's Cuba and you will see NO BASIS in
truth


There can be no justice without truth; no peace without justice. If we
truly reap what we sow, we are in for some hard times in the years
ahead. When our government behaves irresponsibly and with violence
toward the world, it is incumbent upon the people to restrain it, to
remake that government in the image of the people, rather than the
elite. But this is only possible with an aroused and wakeful
electorate. Revolution requires an informed and militant citizenry.
Awakening is the first step in the long and difficult journey to self
liberation. The people will not rise until they awake. If they are to
awaken, we must get them off the opiates that make them comatose. We
must get them off the commercial news.

You want a revolution? Self-liberation? Don't make me laugh. You want a
marxist state.

Progressives and conservatives alike recognize that we have an obscene
and belligerent presidency that is buoyed by a frightened and timorous
congress. They see that the institutions of government are not servants
of the people-they are the servants of their corporate pay masters.
Depravity and concentrated wealth hold sway in the halls of government.
The White House is a brothel teeming with corporate lobbyists, whose
fornications are conducted beyond the pale of public view. Congress is
as awash in corporate money as maggots on a corpse. The Bush cabal has
to go. However, we must also recognize that the cancer extends well
beyond Bush. We must recognize that the system itself is the
malignancy. Effective and conscientious citizenship demands more from
us than paying taxes and exercising our right to vote. It demands that
we act for the common good with conscience and tenacity of purpose. Let
us finish the revolution that was begun here in the 1700s.

You are nuts

Real democracy cannot be served by paying homage to freedom through
garish displays of trinkets-flags and plastic yellow ribbons. These
symbols are shallow, superfluous, and disingenuous. Anyone can
administer them. To do so requires neither courage nor effort-real
patriotism requires an abundance of both. Unlike real patriotism, the
symbols of patriotism do not require thought or understanding-they
are a conditioned response to the choreographed propaganda that oozes
from our televisions and radios, the words that drip from the
nation's daily newspapers. Real patriots do not encourage the
champions of Manifest Destiny in their grim work of conquest and
empire-they actively oppose them and resist. Those who uphold the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights when the government does not are
the real patriots. They are America's dissenters and protesters. They
do not require flags and ribbons to demonstrate their patriotism. Their
every gesture, their very lives, is an expression of the patriotism
that might have made America a different place than it is now-if only
there were more of them.

Fine. It's a free country. Let them dissent and protest!

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Charles Sullivan is a photographer and free lance writer residing in
the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at
earthdog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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