I only write because of all the lying. I don’t think I’m a good writer at all. I think I’m terrible. What I’m convinced of is that my viewpoint is one of the few sane and objective views left in America or on the Internet.
I read so much non-fiction that I’m chronically depressed these days. The massive de-funding of the left that has occurred in this country started long before we even began to be America. At least that's what I gathered from reading history professor Thadeus Russell's new book “A Renegade History Of the United States”. Do you know what they used to call us Irishmen before we stopped dancing and fiddling around and became “white”? They called us “white niggers”. That’s right, look it up if you doubt me. According to professor Russell, our founding fathers were puritanical prudes that didn't think a bunch of drunks, slackers, pirates, homosexuals, Indians, Blacks and prostitutes could ever win a revolution. Maybe if they hadn't purged the fun stuff we wouldn't have our panties all in a knot over a few spilled secrets today.
Eventually fear and hate reached a fever pitch with Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the purging of communists from the labor unions. More recently I could hear them shouting; “Cut your F%@#ing hair and join the human race you F%#*ing hippie!
This marginalization of liberals and our politically informed art over the last century or more has continued into my own era at such a pace that in hindsight, I realize that my own life and the lives of so many others have been squelched by poverty and right wing marginalization and fear mongering from the very beginning. It’s as if I’ve been in a kind of prison all my life. Never having enough money to quite realize your dreams has taken a huge toll upon not only myself but every man woman and child in this country. If you don’t believe me, just sit and think for a while about what we could do, and what we could have done with the annual pentagon budget for the last 60 years. We’ve all been ripped off, liberals, conservatives and independents alike! Worse than that, they’ve stolen our children’s future for mere billions and for all intents and purposes, crowned themselves kings of the world. In fact no kings in the history of the world held nearly as much power as neo-feudal lords David and Charles Koch hold over us today. Their tyranny is based in corporate personhood and their stranglehold upon America’s politics could mean the death of half the world by war or by climate change driven famine.
When Richard Nixon went after potheads in 1968 he did it because the right wing realized they could forever silence the left regarding the imperial war machine by starting a “war on drugs”. Particularly Marijuana. The left has never recovered. And I’m still paying the price to be a voice for compassion, fairness, justice, peace and yes, love!
Czesław Miłosz said:
"In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot."
Maybe that was true prior to the right wing consolidation of the media ownership and training of journalists to be nothing more than lap dogs for our rich owners and calling vociferously for their own censorship.
Instead now we have the executive director of the New York Times Bill Keller standing firmly for their right “not to publish”...
Wow! That was perfect double speak!
Allow me to decode. This is actually what Bill Keller is saying: “We have the right to withhold information from the American people”. I’ll take it even further; “We reserve the right to LIE to the American people!”
Floyd Abrams, an attorney that represented the NYT’s during the Judith Miller / Valerie Plame scandal, is now claiming that WikiLeaks are different. He points out that Daniel Ellsberg held back part of those documents in the interest of ongoing legitimate American interests. Nevermind that Daniel Ellsberg himself has just said recently:
"That's just a cover for people who don't want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time."
It is certainly interesting what else WikiLeaks is revealing. For instance, the assumption that the New York Times is a “liberal rag” as the right blathers on and on about. RIGHT! It is obvious that Bill Keller is “uncomfortable” with a great many things including an informed American electorate.
I think the real question Americans need to ask themselves is: Do we want to live in a tyrannical American Empire or a humble American Republic?
Do we as Americans really want to continue supporting our global imperial garrison of possibly 1000 military bases? Or will we choose to allow WikiLeaks to let the gas out of this bag and finally reveal the truth that America’s addiction to war is killing not only our own democracy at home but democracies all around the world? Not to mention eventually leaving our nation both morally and financially bankrupt!
What the wealthy right wing owners like the Koch brothers are really afraid of is that too many workers of the world will rebel and take a huge bite out of the profits that the billionaires of the world make sitting on the backs of the poorest of people. Like in Tunisia. WikiLeaks may actually at this very moment be stimulating a large spike in workers organizing against the oppressive governments and dictators of the world. This truly does hurt any empire’s bottom line, not just ours!
I think Howard Zinn said it best: “Every war is a war against children.”
I do feel like a child sometimes. Still trying to reach my dreams. And I’m almost fifty years old. But I now realize that my particular dreams are of a world who's people live not just with tolerance for each other, but real loving cooperation with not just each other but all life on earth.
Oops, wrong planet!
The best I feel I can hope for these days is that my seed savers catalogue gets here soon. I want to spend my meager unemployment money buying heirloom seeds for this coming spring. I’m not going to get caught without real heirloom vegetable seeds when the next collapse comes and brings the empire to it’s knees. I’m suffering from what they call structural unemployment. That’s when your job left the country permanently. I now believe that if I don’t re-invent myself and begin living outside this corrupt and diseased system of oppression we call American life that I will starve.
So, I’m looking for a new me. I’m thinking things like; “Damn them anyhow, where the hell is the funding to retool my brain?” And where the hell is my green job? Oh that’s right, I’m just an ex felon. No Pell grant for me. Such is life as a member of a demonized subculture in America, ostracized and marginalized for the last 30 years. This is a civil rights issue. Weedheads are people too!
The recent WikiLeaks induced truth telling may very well precipitate the early ending of the American Empire. I’m fine with that. I can happily exist in a humble country among countries in the world. America can finally stand down from its war footing. There are people from practically every country on the planet here. I actually have great faith in America’s diversity. These are real liberal values. Love, diversity, compassion, cooperation.
We Need To Stop The Hate, America Is Better Than This!
The right wing is all about fear. Living in fear is what they do and how they keep their power. Living your life in fear is playing right into their hands. The left is all about love and cooperation. So really, we have been far too long away from our real core liberal values. But I still remember that the only thing to fear, is fear itself... Besides, if we cut the military budget in half, we’d still be outspending the Chinese 3 to 1!
So lets put that pentagon money, wasted on war and death to good use here at home guaranteeing that all Americans (and by proxy the whole world) have more than just “a shot” at a severely downgraded American dream!
David VanThournout is an old hippie who instead of running around barefoot in the woods, came back to the abuse of corporatist bastards and their police state because he decided no one could run far or fast enough away from the 100 million pound gorilla “civilization” actually turned out to be. That and not wanting to be on the lam for the rest of his life. Dave enjoys several cats (or they enjoy him perhaps), as well as writing scathing critiques of current American politics and likes to save time using regular expressions to put the html tags in his articles in order to hand code them into his blog. He can be reached via email at
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From whence I gather some of my facts
I think it's only fair that I mention that two of the people I've been reading lately have inspired this particular rant... Pulitzer Prize winning Chris Hedges who recently wrote a book called; "Death of the Liberal Class" (not for the faint of heart) and Chalmers Johnson who recently departed this earth but left us with much to think about in a book called; "Dismantling The Empire, America's Last Best Hope". Both essential reads for those that wish to truly understand why the world is in such dire straits these days.
See what I mean? Hope. As much as the right likes to laugh at those that have some tiny shred of it, it is essential for human survival through the most difficult of times.
11 Freedoms that Drunks, Slackers, Prostitutes and Pirates Pioneered and The Founding Fathers Opposed
http://www.alternet.org/media/148518/11_freedoms_that_drunks,_slackers,_prostitutes_and_pirates_pioneered_and_the_founding_fathers_opposed_/
New York Times editor touts role of establishment press in “war on terror”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/oct2006/kelle-o21.shtml
Why WikiLeaks Is Unlike the Pentagon Papers
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204527804576044020396601528.html
The New York Times and WikiLeaks
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/pers-d16.shtml
Every war is a war against a child
http://calcoastnews.com/2010/02/every-war-is-a-war-against-a-child/
