On giving up

Since 1945, we- and by ‘we’, I mean the international movement for peace, prosperity and social justice- have faced challenges. Many challenges.

We have always sought fairness, freedom of thought and ideology, government ruled by the people, and an absence of cruelty and injustice in all forms.

We have been killed, imprisoned, burnt on crosses, enslaved and forced to fight wars in which we had no stake and no belief.

We have never given up.

We will never give up.

And we will prevail.

We are a new generation of people. Little men being erased. Citizens insane. We were never represented by the media that purports to be fair and balanced- and may be, at the expense of truth. We are only simple people, trying to get our lives on track. We live busy lives. We are easily confused.

Yesterday we saw something exceptional- we saw one hundred and twenty million people voting on a single day. We didn’t get the clear result we were hoping for. This is because people believe what they are told.

Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

– Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

This year, or during the one that will follow, I expect Bush and his paymasters to finally remove the last remaining protections the FCC mandates against corporate control of the media. He tried last year, but he failed because Democratic opposition was too strong. He will sadly succeed this time because the Hosue of Representatives will be Republican-controlled.

They will be free to buy up every newspaper, every TV station and every billboard in a town, and use it to further their ideology. Always. Over and over again. Drip, drip, drip. Keep the dripfeed going long enough and it always works. People are swayed

Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.

– Washington Post (link above)

When will we take back the world from these men? They took root in 1949, with the coming of the Soviet atomic bomb. A device called Joe, as I recall. With that innovation, the ultraconservatives had a hook, a bogeyman enemy to scare the people with. Given long enough, the enemy itself became irrelevant. All that was needed was a way to scare people long enough, and eventually they took being scared of their enemies as an abstract concept to be reason enough to build a huge army and to spend 20% of the gross national product on weapons of mass destruction.

Which, incidentally, nobody else is allowed to have.

It starts to get ridiculous. Last night I told someone- a gay woman with a partner to whom she was married- that she was an idiot for voting for Bush. She said that I should go back to France, they needed people like me there. France becomes the enemy. It’s enough for them to make an off-hand comment, and bingo, a new enemy.

Critical thinking will take a nosedive over the next four years.

It falls to us to rescue a once-great nation.

And so, into the maelstrom.