Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Hope is poison of the will in the face of fear by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News May 1, 2009 # Out of a sense of decency for the mental suffering of those who may read my words, I have maintained authorial silence in the face of the now iconic "first hundred days." I am tempted to twist the oft repeated lefty bad joke about the new boss and say, "Meet the first hundred
But to a first approximation, the first hundred days of Obama are similar enough to the last hundred days of Bush to pass for identical at an appropriate distance. Sure there have been some heart warming reversals of key cruel policies, and for the aid these changes have brought to the needy and suffering we give thanks, but we are still at war using massive weapons against innocent civilians, we are still watching our treasury being actively looted, the military budget is still growing, houses continue to be repossessed by the same banks that are draining the treasury and condemning our children and grandchildren to perennial debt peonage, organized criminal syndicates are still operating with impunity in the US and around the world essentially unmolested, military recruiters are still wooing early teens into the military like so many serial pederasts (my personal favorite example of legalized child abuse), but ... Oh hell! Anyone with a modicum of intelligence could make a list a mile long of such abuses instituted by government at the behest of wealthy individuals and large corporations who have invested in their political futures by participating in the system of legalized bribery that we euphemistically call "campaign contributions." It is a big picture problem. Here at the one hundred and first day of the Obama administration I think it is time to begin letting go of the denials that we have perfumed with hope, so we can stand the stench of our rotting minds. Hope is such a funny thing. The kind person never seeks to undermine a person's hope as they confront great challenges to their survival. But it is a mistake to generalize from the individual to the general public. For the general public, the custodian of
The US population is locked in this state of agitated immobility. You can practically hear the mental gears grinding and shearing metal as people vainly try to incorporate their current experience with the propagandized myths that they have being fed their entire lives. What do you mean, "It's a free country?" Our democracy has been leached away by a mass media that has no incentive to deal with substantial issues and controversies and every incentive to provoke the public to a condition of automatic emotional reactivity that is the social equivalent of a lobotomy. But there is good news on the horizon. At some point, and for many, many people already, the damage caused by a government, a military, a corporate management elite and a mass media, all under the control of organized crime, will force folks to awake from their trance and start to think about how to confront the depth of corruption that we have allowed to develop. One good sign is that, in some states at least, folks are beginning to dismantle the old political horse-trading system where red meat was regularly thrown to enough extreme interest groups to establish effective rule by coalitions of the insane coddled by a class of corrupt professional politicians. The awakening of the New England region to its humanistic traditions after a century of somnolence, as evidenced by the epidemic of marriage law reform at the moment, is heartening. The success of clean money campaigns in a number of states has brought enough ordinary people into representative government
We need to talk person to person about our situation in any and every way possible, in families, among friends, neighbors and at work (whispered of course to evade our current wrap-around workplace surveillance system) and in our places of worship. This is how the common folks who founded this country (no it wasn't the "founding fathers") went on to decide to struggle for their freedom from their colonial masters. We have developed a new set of oppressors that, in general, are very, very much like the oppressors that we threw off in our Revolutionary War. In fact some of the same concentrations of inherited wealth that oppressed those revolutionaries through the agency of the British East India Company are today attempting to do the same thing through control of our financial system. The plan this time seems to be to crush us economically and then come in and buy up the wreckage at salvage prices so that we are once again reduced to the status of indentured servants (that's what you are now if you can't afford to quit your job and lose your health benefits) of absentee landlords. I would like to recommend three books to help more voracious readers understand things more clearly than my polemic can serve to illuminate. First, Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is a must. She describes the treatment that has been meted out to many countries driven to desperation and who's leaders were willing to abandon the long term interests of their people for short term fixes and ended up opening their countries to looting by organized crime syndicates. Sound familiar? Yes, that is a capsule description of the process we are going through.
Finally, for a better understanding of the US role in all this and the political context that makes this surrealistic regime in Washington/New York/ LA possible, I recommend Thomas Frank's book The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule. I just don't understand why so many people pass up the opportunity to learn about the catastrophe we are going through. Aside from the issue that stubborn ignorance precludes effective action, it seems grotesque to me that people would want to experience this most interesting of times with their eyes and ears shut. Of course, denial is the last defense of a weak ego about to be overwhelmed with emotional dissonance, but why are so many apparently affected? So, the doctor's advice, as usual, is to stay cool. Don't watch the TV. Don't read daily papers. Shop for your information very selectively on the net. Depend for your deepest understandings on well researched and referenced books. Listen politely to your family members, neighbors and friends even when they are obviously ignorant and misinformed and shift the conversation to areas of mutual agreement before attempting to challenge their ignorance. Force a smile on to your lips in spite of it all and reach out mentally, if not physically, with compassion and concern and without resort to violent fantasies of retribution and/or self-defense. No-one listens to someone tense with fear. OK, you can fantasize and pretend as long as you don't take your self seriously, and never, ever speak of
And by all means don't let yourselves get swept up in the latest media manufactured panic. If you feel yourself being swept up just sing "Where have all the SARS gone? Long time passing." (to the tune of "Where have all the flowers gone" of course) with verses for Anthrax, Small Pox and so forth. And take a hint from the First Lady. Plant a garden. Especially plant potatoes. They are sooo easy. It matters more that you plant something edible than if it is organic. But organic is wise. In a well-fed and relaxed state, maybe after some simple relaxation exercises, sit back and enjoy the show. It is your birthright. © by the author. This page is archived at unknownnews.org/0905-01HR.html | Big howdy | Disclaimer for dummies | Our privacy policy |
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"Don't feel bad, most species of large mammal die off ... it's just our turn."
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