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Stop Begging Obama to Be Obama and Get Mad
The right-wing accusations against Barack Obama are true. He is a socialist, although he practices socialism for corporations. He is squandering the country's future with deficits that can never be repaid. He has retained and even bolstered our surveillance state to spy on Americans. He is forcing us to buy into a health care system that will enrich corporations and expand the abuse of our for-profit medical care. He will not stanch unemployment. He will not end our wars. He will not rebuild the nation. He is a tool of the corporate state.
The right wing is not wrong. It is not the problem. We are the problem. If we do not tap into the justifiable anger sweeping across the nation, if we do not militantly push back against corporate fraud and imperial wars that we cannot win or afford, the political vacuum we have created will be filled with right-wing lunatics and proto-fascists. The goons will inherit power not because they are astute, but because we are weak and inept.
Violence is a dark undercurrent of American history. It is exacerbated by war and economic decline. Violence is spreading outward from the killing fields in Iraq and Afghanistan to slowly tear apart individuals, families and communities. There is no immunity. The longer the wars continue, the longer the members of our working class are transformed by corporate overlords into serfs, the more violence will dominate the landscape. The slide into chaos and a police state will become inevitable.
The soldiers and Marines who return from Iraq and Afghanistan are often traumatized and then shipped back a few months later to be traumatized again. This was less frequent in Vietnam. Veterans, when they get out, search for the usual escape routes of alienation, addictions and medication. But there is also the escape route of violence. We risk creating a homegrown Freikorps, the demobilized German soldiers from World War I who violently tore down the edifice of the Weimar Republic and helped open the way to Nazism.
The Afghanistan and Iraq wars have unloaded hundreds of thousands of combat troops, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, back into society. According to a joint Veterans Affairs Department-University of San Francisco study published in July, 418,000 of the roughly 1.9 million service members who have fought in or supported the wars suffer from PTSD. As of August 2008, the latest data available, about a quarter-million military veterans were imprisoned on any given day-about 9.4 percent of the total daily imprisoned population, according to the National GAINS Center Forum on Combat Veterans, Trauma and the Justice System. There are 223,000 veterans in jail or prison cells on an average day, and an unknown number among the 4 million Americans on probation. They don't have much to look forward to upon release. And if any of these incarcerated vets do not have PTSD when they are arrested, our corrections system will probably rectify the deficiency. Throw in the cocktail of unemployment, powerlessness, depression, alienation, anger, alcohol and drugs and you create thousands, if not tens of thousands, who will seek out violence the way an addict seeks out a bag of heroin.
War and conflict have marked most of my adult life. I know what prolonged exposure to industrial slaughter does to you. I know what it is to confront memories, buried deep within the subconscious, which jerk you awake at night, your heart racing and your body covered in sweat. I know what it is like to lie, unable to sleep, your heart pounding, trying to remember what it was that caused such terror. I know how it feels to be overcome by the vivid images of violence that make you wonder if the dream or the darkness around you is real. I know what it feels like to stumble through the day carrying a shock and horror, an awful cement-like despair, which you cannot shed. And I know how after a few nights like this you are left numb and exhausted, unable to connect with anyone around you, even those you love the most. I know how you drink or medicate yourself into a coma so you do not have to remember your dreams. And I know that great divide that opens between you and the rest of the world, especially the civilian world, which cannot imagine your pain and your hatred. I know how easily this hatred is directed toward those in that world.
There are minefields of stimulants for those who return from war. Smells, sounds, bridges, the whoosh of a helicopter, thrust you back to Iraq or another zone of slaughter, back to a time of terror and blood, back to the darkest regions of your heart, regions you wish did not exist. Life, on some days, is a simple battle to stay upright, to cope with memories and trauma that are unexplainable, probably unimaginable, to those seated across from you at the breakfast table. Families will watch these veterans fall silent, see the thousand-yard stare, and know they have again lost these men and women. They hope somehow they will come back. Some won't. Those who cannot cope, even by using Zoloft or Paxil, blow their brains out with drugs, alcohol or a gun. More Vietnam veterans died from suicide in the years after the war than during the conflict itself. But it would be a mistake to blame this on Vietnam. War does this to you. It destroys part of you. You live maimed. If you are not able to live maimed, you check out.
But what happens in a society where everything conspires to check you out even when you make the herculean effort to integrate into the world of malls, celebrity gossip and too many brands of cereal on a supermarket shelf? What happens when the corporate state says that you can die in its wars but at home you are human refuse, that there is no job, no way to pay your medical bills or your mortgage, no hope? Then you retreat into your private hell of rage, terror and alienation. You do not return from the world of war. You yearn for its sleek and powerful weapons, its speed and noise, its ability to abolish the lines between sanity and madness. You long for the alluring, hallucinogenic landscapes of combat. You miss the psychedelic visions of carnage and suffering, the smells, sounds, shrieks, explosions and destruction that jolt you back to the present, which make you aware in ways you never were before. The thrill of violence, the God-like power that comes when you can take a human life with impunity, is matched against the pathetic existence of waiting for an unemployment check. You look to rejoin the fraternity of killers. Here. There. It no longer matters.
There is a yawning indifference at home about what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. The hollow language of heroism and glory, used by the war makers and often aped by those in the media, allows the nation to feel good about war, about "service." But it is also a way of muzzling the voices that attempt to tell us the truth about war. And when these men and women do find the moral courage to speak, they often find that many fellow Americans turn away in disgust or attack them for shattering the myth. The myth of war is too enjoyable, and too profitable, to be punctured by reality. And so these veterans nurse their fantasies of power. They begin to hate those who sent them as much as they hate those they fought. Some cannot distinguish one from the other.
As I stared into the faces of the men from A Gathering of Eagles on Saturday at a protest calling for the closure of the Army Experience Center in Philadelphia, I recognized these emotions. These men had arrived on black motorcycles. They were wearing leather jackets. They had lined up, most holding large American flags, to greet the protesters, some of whom were also veterans. They chanted "Traitors!" at the seven people who were arrested for refusing the police order to leave the premises. They sought vindication from a system that had, although they could not admit it, betrayed them. They yearned to be powerful, if only for a moment, if only by breaking through the police line and knocking some God-hating communist faggot to the ground. They wanted the war to come home.
It is we who are guilty, guilty for sending these young men and women to wars that did not have to be fought. It is we who are guilty for turning away from the truth of war to wallow in a self-aggrandizing myth, guilty because we create and decorate killers and when they come home maimed and broken we discard them. It is we who are guilty for failing to defy a Democratic Party that since 1994 has betrayed the working class by destroying our manufacturing base, slashing funds to assist the poor and cravenly doing the bidding of corporations. It is we who are guilty for refusing to mass on Washington and demand single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. It is we who are guilty for supporting Democrats while they funnel billions in taxpayer dollars to sustain speculative Wall Street interests. The rage of the confused and angry right-wing marchers, the ones fired up by trash-talking talk show hosts, the ones liberals belittle and maybe even laugh at, should be our rage. And if it is not our rage soon, if we continue to humiliate and debase ourselves by begging Obama to be Obama, we will see our open society dismantled not because of the shrewdness of the far right, but because of our moral cowardice.
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Show AllYou could say the same thing of the Libertarian Party in America. Even though they weren't in power, their economic libertarian policies have been approved by both major parties.
It's very predictable that this is happening, but you have to ask yourself what is going back to the Republicans going to do? Except for the absolutely lunatic antics of the Republicans in Congress, I don't see a difference in either party, with a few exceptions among the Progressive Caucus members. So playing ping-pong between these two parties is absolutely insane and will only further the degradation of America. I believe both parties are irreparably lost.
I watched the shenanigans of Pelosi this weekend -- first she speaks out in favor for the public option (whatever critter that is) and everybody's cheering -- that's our Nancy, etc. And then two days after Obummer's health care speech in favor of corporate giveaways, there's Nancy going to a big fundraiser on her behalf by United Health Care.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/unitedhealth-lobbyist-ann_b_284442.html
And this betrayal of the people is going to happen again and again. We can complain all we want but the same people are put back in office again and again, and that is the fault of the people.
I don't support the Republican Party either and I know that the two parties are simply there to playing switcharoo and sell out. What is alarming is that never before have I seen Republicans actually campaigning as faux "economic populists" and for the first time no bringing up any social issues. This entirely unprecedented. I may not vote Republican but there are more swing voters out there who are likely to fall for the GOP hook, line, and sinker because of this. I have yet to see an independent candidate for governor emerge. We had one in 2005 and he was a former GOP statesman turned independent liberal but got only 2% of the vote. More people will have to generate independent candidacies from the bottom on up but then independent candidates will have to see to it that neither the Republicans nor Democrats take away their ideas and call them their own just to trick the public into believing their changing.
Chris Hedges nails it.
His second paragraph and some of the posters below are giving voice to my analysis that we all must join together and take the best from all political spectrums in order to dissolve a corporate system that is oppressing the WHOLE WORLD.
Chris Hedges is quite correct in many of the things he says here. His comment on the anger outside of Washington is if anything, understated.
His regurgitation of the report by DHS on veterans is a bit silly. There is no likelihood of a recurrence of the German soldiers in the pre WW2 years. The similarities are not there.
His assumption that he knows what war does to men is amusing, though parts are certainly correct.
His last paragraph is Gospel except for the "killers" lapse.
Good on ya, Chris.
Henry8 states that "he [Hedges] knows what war does to men is amusing". I must say, that incredibly patronizing statement is simply brilliant in its stupidity. Henry8 may wish to, if he has any semblance of any open mind, get his hands on the moving book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. In it, he would find that Hedges does indeed know the trauma that war causes, as Hedges has covered conflicts up close in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, the Sudan, the Punjab, Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo. Hedges realizes from being a war correspondent that war is anything but amusing.
Agreed. Henry8 is worthy of pity.
Henry8,
since you know so much about war and all, why don't you go back to Viet Nam and help those folks get rid of all those mines you helped plant in their country? Your mines are still killing one or two kids in Viet Nam a week. Semper Fidelis TO WHAT, pal?
Believe it, Henry8 does this kind of thing ALL the time. One one post he seems to have good sense and makes intelligent comments. Next one and he's the most befuddled, uncomprehending buffoon anywhere to be found. It's as if his brain is only operating on half power half the time.
"The thrill of violence, the God-like power that comes when you can take a human life with impunity..." What the brilliant Mr Hedges nevertheless misses is the way that ordinary citizens are invited to share this God-like power vicariously all of the time. He probably has better things to do that play computer games, watch tv or go to the cinema. But if he did he would be immersed in the imagery of violence and potency, deafened by the language of patriotic heroism expressed as militarism. The ordinary public are not indifferent - the truth is that they are living the same war-mongering dreams of empowering vengeance and payback as the combatants. Scour the media for messages of love, peace and forgiveness. You will find very few (not necessarily on the evangelist channels).
Sioux Rose
BRIAR: Speaking for Venus in this Mars-rules nation the whole thing repels and disgusts me. Any "war is the force that gives our lives meaning" macho rhetoric that's been imprinted into Chris Hedges as a result of his own interest in the dynamics of war, after being processed by patriarchal religion, is NOT a universal construct. It is specific to a certain genre of human experience, that which is most primitive on the dial/spectrum, the thing that should have been transcended by now. However, given that the political powers noticed how profitable it was to make war and then rebuild thereafter (the Marshall Plan may have been the first jab at "Disaster Capitalism" before it became its own fiscal ethos), war is now the FIRST line of "business enterprise" as seen by the way this profligate nation traffics in weapons sales. What a plan. At least Hedges can chronicle the costs in the form of so many broken persons. He's diagramming the precise nature of karmic blowback. War is effete! It solves nothing, and likely returns problems ten-fold, a dark form of inverted tithing. It is time for us to cast our cognitive nets to the other side. One cannot fight an enemy, they can only role model the incentives of PEACE.
Sioux Rose: Excellent post!
Today, Paul Craig Roberts writes in his article (The Health Care Deceit) on counterpunch.org:
The public’s interest is not considered to be the important determinant. The politicians have to please the insurance companies and reduce health care expenditures in order to save money for another decade or two of war in the Middle East.
The telltale part of Obama’s speech was the applause in response to his pledge that “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits.” Yet, Obama and his fellow politicians have no hesitation to add trillions of dollars to the deficit in order to fund wars.
The profits of military/security companies are partly recycled into campaign contributions. To cut war spending in order to finance a public health care system would cost politicians campaign contributions from both the insurance industry and the military/security industry.
Politicians are not going to allow that to happen.
It was the war in Afghanistan, not health care, that President Obama declared to be a “necessity.”
Sioux Rose
Hello Kay: I don't know if you can apply this prescription, but I used it as a single mother and stayed afloat (sometimes barely). What CAN you do while you are unemployed? Can you tutor students? Can you edit for a magazine? Can you babysit? Can you run errrands for busy employed persons? Instead of expecting income from ONE employer, how can you "employ yourself" and create income?
A few years ago I was the guest at the home of a very wealthy male entrepreneur. He had an expensive bicycle that I was free to use, and I began biking on mountainous terrain. I was amazed at how far I could go (into the mountains between Ojai and Santa Barbara) following a psychological trick that holds an analogy to this discussion (between you and I) on employment. If I looked at the mass of mountain before me, my breath would quicken and the EFFORT to climb would seem overwhelming and tire me out; but if I just looked at my feet pedaling, I somehow gently ascended. It blew my mind. Perhaps that angle had something to do with breathing (we learn this in Yoga, too) that extended my stamina, but I think there is a psychological factor at work. By analogy, the pedaling = just do the first job you can imagine, what comes to you. Generally it will lead to the next one and the next one.
When I look back to the phase where I went from making a solid $2800 a month to being suddenly reduced to $800, still supporting two daughters, going from a mortgage to a rental with only a $125 difference in cost, maintaining credit cards, phone, electric, cable TV, car payment, car insurance, food, etc... I did it THAT way. Pedal by pedal, job after job, just paying bill after bill rather than seeing them as that singular mountain, to be tasked all at once. I swear it worked! To this day I can only marvel at the fact that I made EVERY expense, NEVER was late with work, and my family maintained the lifestyle we had when I made $2800 a month! We still had dinner out here and there, and we had a nice home. I hope that recipe works for you! And sometimes one must give of their services gratis to open that first door, it's the economic equivalent of priming the pump.
SR, we must have been writing at the same time. This guy gives me the same feeling of disgust. But you always manage to say what I was trying to say below, (or above depending on how you order your posts) only you say it with so much more flair. I especially love your last sentence, as well as this: "being processed by patriarchal religion". We've all been "processed" to some degree, and that's what I was talking about trying to rise above. Nobody said it would be easy. The struggle to rise above our often vicious nature is at the core of every religious and philosophical belief. Too bad those beliefs have been bent and manipulated to serve the opposite of that for which they were intended.
Sioux Rose
Double post (Hello, Mercury retrograde!)
Sioux Rose
Hi Elaine: Keep weeding that garden! If I didn't go biking into nature's forest/garden most nights I think I'd become a basket case due to the onslaught of so many wicked, twisted, sickening, amoral acts being passed off as official state policy, and no ordinary state, not this, the "land of the free and home of the brave," a nation blessed with so much that to steal and murder and lie and blame for access to others' resources is a calamitous felony against not only humanity, but the very SPIRIT of life, itself!
Thank you for your gracious compliment. This idea of how we are processed is very strong in Mr. Hedges. I think he is a brilliant man, and all of us, myself included, have our particular blindspots. His comes from his early church-related conditioning. It's such a factor in his good versus evil perspective on human existence. I don't know if he needs to get laid or what it is, but his testosterone seems to scream out as a call to war. The best antidote to Mars (war) is Venus (love); and like Marvin Gaye sang from "What's Going on" to "Sexual Healing," I think that beautiful prophet of love provided a sane recipe. Remember the 60's, "Make love, not war." I am so grateful that I came of age in that era. Another world is possible, but it does not come from fighting Mars with Mars, it comes from casting our cognitive nets to the other side, which is Love/Venus/Peace and the capacity to experience empathy for other. 95% of US media is designed against those purposes, as is an entire network of behavior mod devices devised to pit person against person, develop ego and a sense of raw self-interest over any faint notion of the collective or greater good.
I know that intelligent posters like NATIVE SON will make a fine case that the US has always been thus and so; but the US like any living entity passes through cycles. And the current one is diabolical. At other interims of this nation's history there were forces of good that stood up against evil and did incredible things to marginalize the damage otherwise fostered by elites and persons so devoid of conscience that they make the concept of a satanic force plausible. Presently, the marriage of militarism with corporatism is at a high ebb and it is THE THING that murders life. It's demoralizing that so many have been rendered somnambulant due to TV, alcohol, prosac and its chemical cousins, the rigors of trying to keep up with costs that too often resemble 21st century usury... were these factors NOT putting minds and souls to sleep, the realization that EVERYTHING is now at stake would scream out in their own minds. Of course with so many taking sleep medication, probably many souls ARE haunted, but they have been taught that this angst is a matter of private proportions, that something is wrong with "their personal happiness quotient," and told that by ingesting a nice little colorful pill, their problems will be solved. For a nation that has a war on drugs, it sure has used drugs to take the spirit OUT of people... and the result is a wasteland.
Nonethenelss, as my friend Roberta says, LOVE IS ALL. The spirit of life will not go gently to that good night.
SR--I really like what you just said and agree whole-heartily.
Sioux Rose
JIM: Gracias, and I am considering the carpool to DC in October.
SR--I really like what you just said and agree whole-heartily.
Sioux Rose: absolutely, profoundly true. To put it in prosaic terms: we need a paradigm shift at the core of society and culture. I have felt this for most of my conscious life, but never has it seemed more necessary than now. The glimmer of hope I sensed in my early teen years in the 60s, as those older than me appeared to reject in full a system of greed, violence and exploitation, was soon obscured, but now the chance seems there again, if only because it is so utterly imperative. And it can only be achieved nonviolently, but with an equal, or even greater, passion for transformation.
Sioux Rose
CLOVIS: There's the pendulum theory applied to history, how cycles swing back and forth between the controls of elites and the demonstrations of the proletariat as it searches for more liberation. There's wave motion where every wave literally turns UNDER itself (appearing to lose progressive momentum) in order to gather the power to move forward. The tree visibly sheds its seeds but the process of their rooting and germination proves a silent, secretive, mysterious matter.
I use these 3 images to suggest that what took place in the l960's was the SEED, the beginning of a wave, the motion of that pendulum... the DANCE ain't done yet! The authoritarians are hoping for "our kind" to die out, and have meanwhile created their own ersatz legitimacy by funding the varied think tanks that have led to the publishing of all their expert works, testimonies to greed and the class-based society, libraries that espouse the ways and means to further man's cruelty and inhumanity to man... and decidedly, woman! BUT, the Light that broke loose in our generation can never die; and the wisdom of the logos is such that in EVERY age, and every culture a percentage of awakened souls will be born, have been born, to champion Truth however inconvenient its prospects when placed against the bass relief of lies, delusions, and the frequently fraudulent laws so many have been trained to live by. I have always challenged authority, and will only oblige IF I believe that authority is standing on just cause, sound law, true principle. There are many of US in this forum, each a child, in spirit, of Artemis, the Zodiac's key rebel ahd champion of human rights across the broadest spectrum. I chose her to represent Aquarius in my new book, Moon Dance.
Amen, Sioux, and perhaps the key to tranquility in this regard is, paradoxically, to know that these rhythms, these wavelengths, can be very long. That we may not live to see the full fruition, but must find solace in being small parts of the great whole, and in doing what we can, in every regard, to further the movement. Thanks for your wise words.
Sioux, I think you misunderstand Hedges when he says, "War is a force that gives us meaning". My understanding of what he means is that he suggests that we have become so removed from our grounding with Mother Earth, that we no longer even feel really alive anymore. We live in the past, and we live in the future, but we no longer live in the NOW. Or as Chief Seattle said, we have reached the end of living and the beginning of just existing.
I think that Hedges is suggesting that in the intensity of war we experience Life--we feel alive. It is similar to, or perhaps the same as the extreme sports--all of our senses are alive and awake, and we exist in the NOW.
This is not a macho male thing at all. Both men and women who live empty lives find the same longing for the feeling of being alive. Hedges speaks of meeting people long after a war has ended, and they say that as awful as it was, they long for those days because they never were so happy.
I have spent some time living and working with "peace workers" and surprisingly, I find them drawn to war with equal passion as those who engage in it and their supporters. War is a force that gives their lives meaning as well, and I have come to the conclusion that they, just like those active in war, find it always easier to rise up against the enemy "out there" than to face their own inner struggles
Sioux Rose
GANDY: Your post gives me the same sickening feeling I might experience in a plane losing altitude. IF what you said (about the peace workers) is true, than the human spirit is far more bankrupt that I had imagined.
Why is it not LOVE, or putting one's self out for others, the THING that gives life meaning. I did NOT misinterpret what Hedges said, your examples are another indication of the sickness of it.
To fully explain why this condition, like Stockholm Syndrome, seeing its victims cling to the state of a certain dark passion, is as omnipresent as you seem to indicate, I'd have to go into a very long explanation of over 4000 years of social conditioning upon Western culture. I'm sure you've read my posts about the Age of Aries, the 2200 year phase that predated the Age of Pisces, that began with Jesus as the fisher of men. Whereas the Age of Aries, ruled by Mars, constructed as its god a hostile angry, jealous figure demanding obedience, strict adherence to rules, inheritance to the first born sons, and WAR as proof of fealty... Jesus arrived to usher in a different epoch. As Avatar of the Age of Pisces, which is ruled by Neptune (a feminine Yin sign, but also the zone to which Venus--antidote to Mars, is exalted) Jesus came to teach the ways of peace and reconciliation. What ultimately happened is that the Karl Rove/Bernays/Rush Limbaugh pundits of that era figured out how to use Jesus to their own advantage. What resulted was a continuation of the same crimes, the same beliefs in war and enemies, tribes and conquest, only these were put into a rubric that was supposedly all done FOR Christ (or a rival patriarchal 'god').
Thus this conditioning of WAR is a very strong part of the human experience for many generations. And instead of religions rallying against it, too many have in fact been behind it! That is evident today with so many Christian churches having supported Bush's cries FOR vengeance after 911; and in that segment of the Jewish community that does not recognize its own racist carnage in Israel. Equally, it's seen in some of the Muslim camp in the form of suicide bombers, though I think mostly the Muslim world is responding to what's been done unto them. They are not often the antagonists in this violent play that's infected the world like the oldest, darkest disease. when at long last it is the RELGIONS that lead the charge to put down arms and join hands, we will know the Age of Aquarius, an age of friendship and "hail fellow well met" has indeed begun to ascend.
That persons identify with the sickness, rather than the cure, as I said, leaves me with a sinking feeling. Fortunately, for whatever past lifetimes I had as warrior or victim of war, I am 90% cured. The last remnant is the temper of the lion that I possess, but as a woman who's dedicated her life to a field that has always been placed in a heretical camp, I require that fire to teach what I know to be so.
Sioux, If you believe that most "peace workers" are doing what they do out of Love, I believe you are wrong. In my experience they are just acting out of an inner need, and it's not a lot different than those who engage in war. It is a force that gives their life meaning. I believe that Jesus alluded to this when he said that good works alone will not get you into "heaven".
I don't believe that Hedges has suggested that war should be the force that gives our life meaning. I don't know his take on astrology, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that he would agree with a lot of what you have to say. He does say this in the last paragraph of his book:
"To survive as a human being is possible only through love. And when Thanatos is ascendent, the instinct must be to reach out to those we love, to see in them all the divinity, pity and pathos of the human. And to recognize love in the lives of others -- even those with whom we are in conflict -- love that is like our own. It does not mean we will avoid war or death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures. It alone allows us to embrace and cherish life. Love has the power both to resist in our nature what we know we must resist, and to affirm what we know we must affirm. And love, as the poets remind us, is eternal."
Sioux Rose
GANDY: Thank you for your patience. That last paragraph attributable to Hedges stuns me. I guess it shows that all paths lead to the same ultimate truth, which is love, Divine Light expressed by and through us.
My main contention is that much that is taken for human nature is a product of how people have been conditioned over the centuries, and belief systems are the food for thought that have basically nourished many aggressive behaviors.
You raise interesting points. Every human being is motivated from a galaxy of needs that express--like that proverbial Greek chorus--from the inside. I am convinced what we think of as schizophrenic is really indicative of the type of person whose inner voices relate through cacaphony as opposed to harmony. For instance part of me might want to spend money on a certain indulgence, while another part reminds me of bills up ahead. And by no means do just these twin polarized "voices" exist. Therefore when you mention that those who work for peace own a number of motives, I would nod in affirmation to that conjecture.
I think you would agree with me that the way school systems promote rank, test scores, positions on teams, and competition; and that so many films and TV shows promote selfish, careless behavior when not championing outright violence... these cues become part of the collective unconscious and profoundly affect the types of cultural milieus we find ourselves operating within. And since so much violence is thus conditioned, we must begin to change the references, images, cues that promote it. That is where I believe real progress can occur, even if the net effect takes a generation or more before benefits show up.
CLOVIS: Lovely metaphor and hopeful message. KAY and I were just discussing that ubiquitous circle (and its influence) in a thread a day or so ago. Thank you for your input.
Dear Sioux, the "heresy" you practice has informed poetry and art since time immemorial, and as the patriarchal Abrahamic faiths and their dogmas relinquish all claim to truth--while flailing all the more desperately to cling to former glories--the timeless esoteric truths remain standing, changing with the times in order to remain the same. Our culture may move outside the circle, careening in a straight line god-knows-where, but the circle remains. May we one day rejoin it. Peace.
Sioux Rose, I always respect your posts here, but lets not be too quick to point fingers at Hedges for being processed. I think we are all processed by patriarchal capitalist values from day one. We are processed by a war loving, patriarchal media system. We are processed by hierarchical, patriarchal school systems and indoctrinated with extreme individualistic ideas of wealth, beauty and power on a daily basis in the U.S.
Hedges reported on war zones for a very long time, so yes, he has a direct experience with the trauma of war. I applaud him for bringing the real pain and suffering of war to the rest of us via his writings, rather than the glorification of war, violence and domination presented to us daily in the media system. I applaud him for taking a tone of urgency. It's not just this culture that is heading towards disaster, but so is the planet. We can't sit idly back and hope that peace will come to one of the most violent empires the world has ever created.
Action is required. Direct, militant action is required. Hopefully non-violent. I grew up around the solidarity movement with Central and South America. It's very easy for rich white northerners to talk about peace and non-violence. I certainly don't like violence, but I think it's far far to easy for us to point fingers at those who fight back in the global south, for example.
Let's not forget that the conditions under which people resisted were horrendous. Entire families were slaughtered in front of the eyes of children. And a question for all of us is this: if you were about to witness the slaughter of your family, would you fight back or proclaim the lofty principle of non-violence and sit and do nothing? Which action is more disturbing to you? I know the answer for myself.
Now lets be clear, I despise the use of violence by the state. I think the fact that Hedges confronts us with these horrible choices is a call to action, something more than just sitting back and writing here, or consuming more crap, or watching TV. It's time to act to save ourselves and this planet.
Sioux Rose
AGIT: Some DO fly over the cuckoo's nest. Hedges seems too enamored with the burning ashes to yet rise, although I have commented in these threads that I do notice GROWTH in his consciousness. In the same way I cover my face when intense violence shows on a movie screen, I seek refuge from the sights Hedge's focuses upon. It's not just a matter of sensibility. Whatever a society focuses upon or invests in enacts as a manifest reality. WE can no longer afford the most bestial elements of human nature. I see nothing productive about romancing THAT stone cold part of the raw homo sapien. The more who turn away, the greater the odds of HIS-story as continuous war altering! I am ALL for a new movie! Collective consciousness owns the channel.
Perfect. Perfect in message and tone.
Chris Hedges writes the poetry of disaster.
Everything is beautiful, in it's own way.
When and where do we march?
If someone in America ever figures out how to bring the moderate right and the moderate left together, like Ron Paul and Alex Jones have tried to do, you will have millions of people venting their anger in D.C. and elsewhere and then you might see real change we can believe in, but as long as we have divide and conquer, nothing will change.
Yes, the problem is that people tend to allow ideological labeling to keep them from seeing the true enemy. They're a "Libertarian", they're a "Socialist" they yell with bitter contempt, while the real enemy, the Corporate State has us all under it's spell of propaganda. We don't live under the gun of Fascist rule (yet) but we do live under the overwhelming power of the nation states corporate propaganda. And that Corporate State is the true enemy of both socialist and libertarian leaning people.
Corporate News, the propaganda arm of the Corporate State, loves to pit these two together and watch them go at it, like scorpions in a jar.
I couldn't agree more. Excellent post!
Yes! Yes! Yes! Why on Earth can't Libertarians and Progressives form a sane coalition to repel the Corporate Imperium? WTF!
The future of our Nation is at stake--its health and well being should be the common purpose that compels us all to come together--if we don't we are doomed.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
2.1 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
2.2 That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
2.3 Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
2.4 But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
The future of our Nation is at stake--its health and well being should be the common purpose that compels us all to come together--if we don't we are doomed.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
2.1 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
2.2 That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
2.3 Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
2.4 But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
Paul 12:52 Exactly
I totally agree. I can't think of a moment in my experience when this didn't seem more possible than now. But it already seems to be dangerously poised at the edge of the abyss with the polarization created by the Repugs' new bag of dirty tricks over Obama's "socialism" (LOL) and the instant recoiling of the liberal set. Sorry to keep harping on this, but it seems to me that the 9/11 coverup issue, and the wars that have ensued, could be a catalyzing point to bring these different camps together. Especially as the ideological models of both the right and left--i.e., in the strictest sense, unfettered laissez-faire capitalism on the one hand and Marxist "scientific" socialism on the other--have both collapsed. Before the last election I was one who had hoped for a Dennis Kucinich - Ron Paul third-party "dream ticket" to capture this very momentum, and I still hope something of the sort materializes. Because as things stand now, there's already a danger of a resurgence of the Republicans, something that would have seemed impossible a year ago and stands, as David Michael Greene recently pointed out, as perhaps Obama's greatest achievement thus far. But, to conclude, and to concur with you, only a massive expression of such a unifying political spirit--such as turning out by the millions--will bring this to pass.
Again....Hedges nails Obama and our freightened liberal/left situation correctly. I am horrified at the lack of mobilization on the left to show unified support at local events here in Portland, OR like when a group of medical doctors rallied in our Pioneer Square with their motorhome that read "Mad As Hell Doctors" on both sides.
These doctors earned my respect....they are the first physicians I have ever known or met who felt that it was more impt. to help people like me get Single Payer insurance than it was for them to go to work to line their pockets with cash!! The turnout of people in Portland who came to send them off with love and support.....less than 200.
Three is a 24 percent under and unemployment rate here....there is 1/2 million people living in Portland......the political tendencies of people in Portland are LEFT or at least PROGRESSIVE... How could there have been so few people show up?? I am baffled too! It isn't like we do not have community radio. It isn't like we don't have NPR (they even ran a story on it the day before the kickoff)... No....we just have an apathetic left/progessive community and we are letting Obama here get away with selling out the more than 100,000 Obama supporters who came out before the election in rallies who helped get him elected. WAKE UP.....THIS MEANS YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
freethinker68: This is exactly what we were discussing yesterday! And, today, here's Chris Hedges to back us up. As I was telling you, many of my friends, who are scattered across the country, no longer reply to my political e-mails about Obama's actions, and his inactions. I am only one person, but I keep writing leters, I keep making phone calls, and when I can, I protest, march and attend rallies. But, the crowds -- in NYC -- have been small.
If you have time, go to Counterpunch.com and read Paul Craig Roberts' blistering article about the NEED for single-payer health care reform. He even gives a nod to Dennis Kucinich.
My friend do not give up--you have me and millions of others across this sick nation--I have 2 suggestions for you; first get the movie called "the power of one," secondly make plans to be in DC the first week of October--I promise you that you will meet people that think and feel like you do--and together you will change the world.
First of all, I haven't given up, or I wouldn't still be making phone calls and writing letters. I do know people who are fighting -- but so many people aren't. When the Ethical Society in NYC holds an event on the issue of torture, with Chris Hedges, Michael Ratner, Jeremy Skahill and Diane Ortiz on the panel, and the room is almost empty, it's a sad day in this country. When Gee Dubya was president, the room and balcony were packed, and they often turned people away.
As for DC in October -- well, I'll have to wait and see -- that may be impossible since I am amongst the unemployed and hanging on by less than a thread, which is why I try to attend every possible event that I can -- right here in NYC.
I'll look for the "Power of One," if it's on the Internet or at the library.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the encouragement you are offering, but I can tell you that I am fighting with every ounce of my very being.
That's good to hear--it might just be NYC is looking but does not see and listening but does not hear--it's delightful to me that you do.
ps try netflick.com for less than 5.00 per month you can download all the movies you want--right now they are giving a free 2 week trial. enjoy
I will put this in my to-do list to read that article. But, of course, you don't have to convince me. I am one of the uninsured and I am terrified of that private insurance mandate. Plus, with private insurers in charge the massive amount of paperwork is not going to stop in doctors' offices and hospitals, thereby that one aspect of expense will keep going up. And that's only two reasons that cry out for single-payer.
I was hoping I could something better about the NYC situation. I'm really shocked. I could not go due to work. I live out east on Long Island. There will be no single-payer rallies here. They're either Obama blind allies or Repubs of the tea-bagger variety.
BTW, I just got a note that from Gillbrand's office that Guiliani is hoping to make a run for the Senate against Gillibrand. While I don't agree with Gillbrand on all issues, she is a progressive in favor of single-payer. I don't think NY would be stupid enough to vote Guiliani back in, but you never know.
Couldn't have said it better. It's very discouraging. You hear that up to 70% of the people were voting yes on a public option -- when it was phrased as Medicare for All in the question. That would indicate that they are really for single-payer. But where it the support. There were supposed to be a bunch of rallies on September 13th, yesterday, for single payer in many cities. I see no reporting on them. But there was extensive coverage of the lunatics -- 60,000 to 70,000 -- who showed up in D.C. spewing hate all over the place on September 12th.
October 5 marks 8 years of war and occupation in Afghanistan. Join us at the White House as we take action in nonviolent civil resistance, risking arrest as we call on Obama to end the wars and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, end the bombing in Pakistan, and end the torture of Bagram, Guantanamo and other places around the globe.
It is time for people of conscience to take action. Go to http://www.nogoodwar.org for more information and to sign up for the action. There are going to be over 100 people risking arrest in DC on Oct. 5.
Here he goes again, reveling in the "alluring, hallucinogenic " high of violence even while he poetically describes the horrors of war. Which, by the way, he witnessed voluntarily. He could have gone home at any time.
Did anybody notice that he is calling for violence? "If we do not tap into the justifiable anger sweeping across the nation, if we do not militantly push back against corporate fraud and imperial wars that we cannot win or afford, the political vacuum we have created will be filled with right-wing lunatics and proto-fascists. The goons will inherit power not because they are astute, but because we are weak and inept."
I'm pretty sure that "Militant" means fighting, not talking tough. Or writing tough.
Us weak, inept Americans are all at fault for the world's violence and corruption. Except he forgets that violence and corruption was how things got done in Germany, Great Britain, Rome and the Garden of Eden.
So F you, Chris Hedges. If you want militance put down your keyboard and pick up your gun. Stand in the streets like the teabaggers do and organize some resistance. It should be a piece of cake for a man as in love with war as yourself.
As for me, I'm gonna keep weeding my garden, shopping secondhand, repairing my 15 year old car, smiling at strangers and trying to rise above the base notion that violence is the way to control the world. I'm going to continue to believe that the actual people who did the crime should be prosecuted and do the time. I'm not going to blame a bunch of weak and inept people for being misled, backstabbed, psychologically manipulated, scared and anxious.
What this country lacks is true, human, selfless, dedicated Leadership. Anyone want to step up? Mr. Hedges? Anyone?
--you must glory in this shit or you are profiting in some way from it--you must be if you can't feel this man's pain--he's trying to end it and nothing seems to be working. Here's an old tried and true formula that has worked before with no violence: Dewey Canyon III - Washington, D.C., April 1971
This peaceful anti-war protest organized by VVAW took its name from two short military invasions of Laos by US and South Vietnamese forces. Dubbed "Operation Dewey Canyon III," it took place in Washington, D.C, April 19 through April 23, 1971. It was referred to by the participants as "a limited incursion into the country of Congress." The level of media publicity and Vietnam veteran participation at the Dewey Canyon week of protest events far exceeded the Winter Soldier Investigation and any previous VVAW protest event.[17][18]
Led by Gold Star Mothers (mothers of soldiers killed in war), more than 1,100 veterans marched across the Lincoln Memorial Bridge to the Arlington Cemetery gate, just beneath the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A memorial service for their peers was conducted by Reverend Jackson H. Day, who had just a few days earlier resigned his military chaplainship. In addition to his passages of scripture and citations of poetry was a personal statement, including the following:
“ Maybe there are some others here like me--who wanted desperately to believe that what we were doing was acceptable, who hung on the words of "revolutionary development" and "winning the hearts and minds of the people." We had been told that on the balance the war was a good thing and we tried to make it a good thing; all of us can tell of somebody who helped out an orphanage, or of men like one sergeant who adopted a crippled Vietnamese child; and even at My Lai the grief of one of the survivors was mixed with bewilderment as he told a reporter, "I just don't understand it ... always before, the Americans brought medicine and candy." I believe there is something in all of us that would wave a flag for the dream of an America that brings medicine and candy, but we are gathered here today, waving no flags, in the ruins of that dream. Some of you saw right away the evil of what was going on; others of us one by one, adding and re-adding the balance sheet of what was happening and what could possibly be accomplished finally saw that no goal could be so laudable, or defense so necessary, as to justify what we have visited upon the people of Indochina.[19] ”
The Gold Star Mothers and a few others approached the cemetery gate to enter and lay wreaths, but the gate had been closed and locked upon word of their impending arrival. They placed the wreaths instead along the gate, and peacefully departed.[20]
The march re-formed and continued to the Capitol, with Congressman Pete McCloskey joining the procession en route. McCloskey and fellow Representatives Bella Abzug, Donald Edwards, Shirley Chisholm, Edmund Muskie and Ogden Reid addressed the large crowd in a show of support. VVAW members defied a Justice Department-ordered injunction that they not camp on The Mall and set up camp anyway. Later that day, the District Court of Appeals lifted the injunction. Some members personally visited their Congressmen to lobby against the U.S. participation in the war. They presented Congress with their 16-point suggested resolution for ending the war in Vietnam.[21][22]
On Tuesday, April 20, 200 veterans listened to hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on proposals to end the war. Other veterans, still angry at the insult to the Gold Star Mothers when they were refused entry to Arlington National Cemetery the previous day, marched back to the front gate. After initial refusal of entry, the veterans were finally allowed in. Veterans performed guerrilla theater on the Capitol steps, re-enacting combat scenes and search and destroy missions from Vietnam. Later that evening, Democratic Senators Claiborne Pell and Philip Hart held a fund-raising party for the veterans. During the party it was announced that Chief Justice Warren Burger of the United States Supreme Court had reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals and reinstated the injunction. The veterans were given until 4:30 the following afternoon to break camp and leave the National Mall. This was the fastest reversal of an Appeals Court decision in the Supreme Court's history.[23]
On Wednesday, April 21, more than 50 veterans marched to The Pentagon and attempted to surrender and turn themselves in as war criminals. A Pentagon representative took their names and then turned them away. More veterans continued to meet with and lobby their representatives in Congress. Senator Ted Kennedy spent the day speaking with the veterans. The guerrilla theater re-enactments were moved to the steps of the Justice Department. After a close vote by the veterans, they decided to remain where they were. Many of the veterans were prepared to be arrested for continuing to camp on the National Mall, but none were arrested. Several of the patrolling park police officers reassured the veterans that arrests were not going to be made, despite orders to do so. Headlines the following day read, "VETS OVERRULE SUPREME COURT."[24][25]