One only has to look to history to realize it is just a matter of time. It may happen overnight or over a period of weeks but it will happen sooner or later. Eventually the lies, deceit and hypocrisy will reach a critical mass of awareness and the public will turn against those responsible with fury.

The mainstream media will react predictably. They will credit themselves as the instruments of this mass revelation. They will write articles about how ‘we were all fooled.’ They will pat their own backs and give each other awards for excellence in journalism as each morsel is parsed out to a now interested and briefly engaged public. For a rare and fleeting moment, the truth will be good for the bottom line. The myth of the free press will live on a little longer.

A few scapegoats will be drawn up from the ultra loyal and expendable within the administration to be sacrificed in the public forum. There will be dramatic but fruitless hearings in Congress and a show trial or two in the courts. But the institutions will remain unchanged and plausible deniability will rein victorious once again.

The Democrats will call for a new bi-partisan era of cooperation as they kowtow to their corporate masters’ desires for a submissive but ever consuming public. They will abandon their colleagues, constituents and their professed values to maintain their positions of power and prestige.

The Republicans will declare the now bankrupt treasury a result of seeds laid by the Clinton administration. They will talk about the tax and spend liberals in congress that obstructed the great prosperity that would have resulted if only they had been able to pursue their agenda of tax cuts and privatization unhindered. They will decry the peace movement for the now obvious disaster in the Middle East.

Flags will wave and parades will march.

It is at this point in the story that we will most likely fail again as we have in the past. Weary of all the protests and hard work involved with creating a peaceful and just society, we will breathe a sigh of relief that it is finally all over. We will fool ourselves into thinking that we have prevailed. We will hang our peace signs on the shelf and go home once again to our air conditioned homes and cable TV.

After all, we the people do not command 6 figure salaries for our activism as do the purveyors of corporate spin. We are always at a disadvantage – acting out of a sense of duty after a 40 hour week spent at our day jobs. We are often in a state of apprehension – fearing that those letters to the editor we wrote or the photos of us at the rally taken by the authorities may some day be used against us in ways we can not now imagine.

Humans are not wired for struggle and we tend to avoid it whenever possible. However it is at this very point in the process at which our real work will have just begun.

It is naïve to think that we will see a peaceful and just world in our lifetimes – we won’t. It is only through a life-long commitment of working toward this goal that we can even hope to lay the foundation for future generations to continue with what we have done. As we celebrate the victories that are bound to come sooner or later, let us not be blinded by wishful thinking again. We may not have many chances left.

Jon Vote is a free lance Computer Programmer based in Southern Oregon. He can be reached at jon@idioma-software.com

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