Democrats & Liberals Archives

Redefining Our Nation

Participation in the great debates of our time like most times in history is not restricted to those who tell the truth. The Bush administration lies so effectively that a majority of the people in this country still believe that Saddam Hussein had a direct connection to the events of 9/11 2001. Of course it is true that there was never any evidence of any link and much evidence to the contrary, but the lie still stands. Now in an attempt to turn reality on its head once more and defy the evidence of our senses it is clear that the voices of the right have come up with another entire new lexicon. They have now redefined the Bush team’s ineptitude at diplomacy as candor, an amazing twist of sensibilities that makes buffoons into master strategists and liars into those who would uphold the truth at any cost. The amusement level would be rising if so much were not at stake in these matters of such vital import to the women and children of Iraq to say nothing of the men.

Our sanctions killed five hundred thousand Iraqi children before the war. In our attempt to set things right with a war in Iraq several thousand more perished. They died largely from diseases that would be treated in most nations in the world, and they are continuing to die. It is all very well to say that those deaths are the product of Saddam’s beastliness but he was the product of our CIA coup in the first place. You see the interconnectedness of things like imposing governments of horror on other people and human deaths from our foreign policies are impossible to eradicate with a redefining of words. Our leadership in this nation is raping the world and the benefits are falling less and less to the people, even those in our nation, and more and more into the hands of a few very rich corporations, and the people who run them. Bill Clinton stands accused in that Dock alongside Ronald Reagan, Bush Senior, Bush Junior, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and others throughout our history.

It is hard to admit that our beautiful nation could be destroying lives at such a pace and most of us do not care to know those facts about our wealth. Our wealth is maintained on the backs of poor people around the world and our consumer society is a crime against humanity. The final stages of growth in a society of excess are now clearly coming before us. The economic warfare that we have inflicted upon the world in order to have the exclusive rights to their oil and gas and tin and other items of value is now in its final stages. We have tried to rebuild the world in our image of man as the consumer instead of human beings as the loveliest creation of a glorious God and we are failing. Oh yes, China is following the path of capitalism, but they have demonstrated quite adequately that freedom has nothing to do with the creation of wealth through capitalistic endeavor.

Basic freedoms and rules of law on which our nation was founded are being reduced and demolished daily by our current government in the name of perpetuating our dominance over the oil of the world. We are running low on natural gas to heat our homes and prices are rising in spite of this administration’s dedication to keeping fuel prices as low as possible. It is on cheap fuel and cheap food that our empire is founded and the entertainments on our TV that give us vacuous gratuitous pleasure and the illusion of a circle of friends. We, some of us, in embracing wholeheartedly this illusion of connection love those people we have never met more than our own children and grandchildren.

There is still a great and powerful spirit of freedom and love of democratic institutions in our land and even the fear of terrorists promoted by our leadership has not snuffed it out. There are still a lot of people in our nation who care more about children everywhere than they do about owning a second car or driving a Humvee. That they have been badly led cannot be doubted. Whether they will awaken to the fact that their very real power in the world outside our borders is being squandered and abused is still an open question. You see, it is not the depravity of our leadership that should define the nation but the open and loving minds and hearts of its great people.

We have been distracted by the effort required to build our homes and our families even in this richest of nations. We have for too long ignored the fate of people in the rest of the world due to our government’s intervention in their lives. Indonesia, one million and more of his own people killed by a ruthless dictator who handed out contracts to our multinational corporations like party favors and put a lot of the money they paid in his family’s and his crony’s bank accounts. Iraq, over a half million children dead because of an embargo that lowered their life expectancy while accomplishing nothing to weaken the dictator that we had installed years before. The count continues, remember this when you are reading or listening to those lulling lies of pundits from the right and left both. In spite of 9/11 we are seldom the victims in this world and terrorism is not our greatest enemy. It is complacent ignorance of what our government is doing on our behalf that is our greatest enemy in the vast and powerful nation that we live in and love. I love it no less than you for all of my recognition of its failings and problems and will continue to work to change it. God bless and keep you all safe in this time of our redefinition.