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Lorenzo's
Random Musings
. . . about Chaos,
Reason, and Hope

 

A Nation Gone Crazy
(Ruth Lopez, BuzzFlash, November 7, 2004)
Yeah, I know the drill: I'm supposed to 'get over it'. Well, I will not pretend to act like this is fine. That the system worked. That we did what we could, that they won honestly, or, even if they didn't, that it's time to move on. . . . No, I am devastated and I weep for my country. But I am also as angry as I am heartsick. . . . Within a few short hours of Kerry's concession speech, the left wing focus shifted to how we will win next time. Next time. This pathetic mewl of defiance completely falls within the definition of insanity: repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. . . . There won't be a next time, not as long as we lie to ourselves. . . . While we're sitting around sniveling and dreaming of our revenge, the bully and his friends are going to get bigger and stronger. These people dream of world domination. The American electoral process is a minor impediment to them. Ignoring this reality is the road to insanity and failure. . . . It's a bitter pill to swallow, but I say at least be big enough to see this for what it is. . . . The next election will be less of an election than this election. . . . There will be no next time on those terms. This country is now headed inexorably down a road that will take a generation or more to get off of, If we even can. If America as we know it even survives. . . . Nations do go crazy sometimes, and the progression of symptoms we've been exhibiting here in the Good Ol' USA has entered rubber room territory. We are a people in dangerous denial. Don't participate in it by accepting this insanity as your reality. Even as everyone around you buys into the comfort zone of 'next time', stay strong by never acknowledging it as your truth. Whatever else you do, for God's sake, at least see this for what it really was. . . . The extreme right-wing of the Republican party has not only sealed a majority rule in this election, they now have carte blanche for the next two years to further consolidate their hold on everything that truly fosters democratic participation: the media, the Supreme Court, voting machines, gerrymandered Republican districts that guarantee majority re-election indefinitely. You name it, their iron fist is now wrapped around it. Even the Internet. . . . Never forget: by rolling over as we all collectively just did, we have kept in office the man who granted himself the power to take any of us, declare us enemies of the state, strip us of our citizenship, torture us and jail us indefinitely, with no due process. Just because they've only done it so far to swarthy looking men who don't really look 'American' to Bush's supporters doesn't mean the rest of us are exempt. All the warm fuzziness of network anchor assurances do not change that. . . . We have given Bush two completely unobstructed years to enhance and consolidate those powers before facing the electorate again. By that time, the electoral process will be more akin to some bizarre national obsessive compulsive ritual than any kind of real participatory process: voting will become useless repetitive behavior compulsively acted out to relieve national anxiety with no reality based connection. We'll vote in record numbers again, the votes will be manipulated, and our TV pundits will console us with meaningless explanations. More insane behavior. . . . Americans used to be so smug about Soviet elections. What a joke they were. Not like us. Well, welcome to the new America. We'll all go vote on our shiny new privately owned electronic machines, machines that will be everywhere by the next national 'election', with votes that will be counted by privatized vote counters. Don't worry your little heads about paper trails or accountability. To question is to undermine confidence in our leadership. Good citizens don't do that. Go home and turn on your privately owned corporate media outlets who will soothingly tell you that everything is all right. A few malcontents may have to be put down, but the people will have spoken: the Great Leader can continue his Holy Mission. God loves us, we're Americans. . . . And the next election will be even less of an election than the previous election. And the election after that even less. But they will look great on TV. . . . Why are we taking this so complacently? I mean, seriously, what is it going to take? When will enough be enough? Are we waiting for someone to tell us what to do? Are we waiting for someone to do it for us? Or are we so afraid to lose what we have that we will trade what we should value most for it? . . . I think of the men who formed this nation. They were a tiny minority, but they didn't wait for someone to tell them it was time for a revolution. They thought; long, deep and hard, and then they acted. One of those men said, "Any man willing to trade liberty for security will have neither." I don't think most of us can even conceive of the true depth of that concept. These men, our founding fathers, weren't poor. They had a lot to lose. Some of them lost everything. Some of those signatures on your Declaration of Independence are names of men who started out their fight wealthy men of property and who died broken and penniless by the time it was over. But they believed that freedom was more important than their wealth and comfort. These weren't slaves fighting for their freedom, with nothing to lose but a life of slavery. These were men who led comfortable middle and upper class lives. Could that happen now? Who among us really has the stomach for that? We are so comfortable. We are shackled by our comfort and so terrified of losing it that we ignore the price we are paying with our humanity, and our sanity. Never mind. Turn on the TV, we'll fight next time. Next time. . . . In WW II Germany, the good German citizens of towns downwind of Auschwitz and Dachau swore that they never knew what was being done by their government. As hundreds and hundreds of thousands of bodies were incinerated not even a few miles upwind of them, they swore they never noticed the smell that was horribly obvious to the liberating soldiers. They didn't want to know and therefore they didn't. Perhaps they did it out of misguided nationalism, or fear for their very lives, but they did it. They were as insane as the Nazis. Ignoring the truth is the road to insanity and failure. . . . We have to be like the few in Germany who held on to the truth and their humanity through the darkest times. Like those who worked in the resistance. Who hid Jews at their own peril, because it was the right thing, the sane thing, to do. Who looked at the truth head on and survived with their sanity and their humanity bruised but intact. We have to be Fair Witnesses to the truth around us, never giving in to the easy and comfortable propaganda that let's us off the hook. That starts with a brutally honest look at what just happened. . . . When madness is all around, like a turbulent, relentless sea, the only thing worth hanging onto is a hard, unflinching grasp of the truth. . . . No matter what happens now, at least hang on to the truth.

posted by LoZo 11:07 PM