Dissent, not Submission, as the Naked Emperor Marches On

State of the Mind rant
28 March 2003

It is one of those times in my half-century on the planet when I am particularly disgusted with humanity... especially the vast quantities of gullible and submissive McWalmart consumers here in North America; weather-beaten red/white/blue rags waving from antennas on their SUVs, radios transmitting idiots blathering on about supporting our troops and name-calling as traitors anyone who doesn't fit their shrunken-head agenda.

How different is it from the propaganda-radio that sold fear and promised security to the Germans as their government invaded country after country? Which country will be next in this endless game of domination that has left the trail of history, as far back as history books written by the victors distort it, drenched with human blood spilled over lies, illusions and false promises.

God bless America the parrots sing, their beaks tilted, their eyes lowered - a mask of a self-righteous sincerity that suggests that it should not be questioned. They sermonize that this is a time when all kinds of things are not supposed to be questioned. How dare they! I recommend & scream the opposite - jump off the bandwagon - begin to look beyond the usual sources, examine deeper below the surface...and - especially now - doquestion and dissent.

Jesus and Ghandi and Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King and Philip Berrigan certainly questioned and challenged. Women's rights and civil rights and gay rights and labor rights and the end of the Vietnam war and the list goes on and on - freedoms and justices gained...by the people...who raised their voices in opposition and had to speak with demanding pressure to the government - which in each case did not want to give in, owned as it was by the rich and the powerful whose self interests were challenged by these demands for sharing freedom and justice.

Question! - and speak out against the madness while you still can - before the jingoist orchestra is turned up so loud that your voice is drowned out. They talk of freedom, of killing and dying for it, but just don't step outside the stunted parameters of where they've drawn the lines (not far beyond the box-store parking lots).

A few years ago I felt a similar nausea when the civil unions debate raged here in Vermont - everywhere I went there were the reactionary Take Back Vermont (from the new sinners for the old righteous) signs everywhere - bumper stickers on pick-up trucks that reflected the heightened intelligence of this movement: "In Vermont we spread shit, we don't pack it."

Mob mentality, when driven by fear of something new and different, and fueled by ignorance and hatred, is the worst human beings can be. It's the antithesis of a Ben Webster sax solo, a VanGogh sunflower, a Rilke poem or a Woody Allen film. One brings me to despair, the other to a desire to live forever.

When the nausea creeps up, when the landscape is polluted with these displays of human sheep I feel like I'm in the middle of a madness - a bad dream - no, a hallucination - because I am starkly aware that I am awake. Patriotism, that misdirected love for a territory within certain borders, gets confused with not questioning the actions of the government of that area.

With patriotism as drug, the mythologies of war are easily sold.....and religion.....there is always religion as part of the manipulative selling methodology - a vital part of the deadly elixir! - used to inflame visions of postlife pleasures in minds of hijackers with boxknives, as well as to inspire visions of blessings as marines charge out to kill or to be killed while the president spews forth: god bless America (not South or Canada.).

How they suck it all up at the teat of indoctrination and spit it all out again with arrogance and pride...emboldened by this thing that replaces, yet imitates, their dwindling individuality. As if these slogans, full of emotion and empty of reason, were something real, something worth killing or dying for. And the ideologues who wield power - be they Caesar or Bush or Hitler or Saddam or BinLaden or Clinton - they use their pawns….be they suicide bombers or hyper-trained high-tech soldiers or servile journalists or just uninformed indoctrinated citizens - to somehow keep repeating the murders in the name of completely distorted usage's of the words "justice" and "freedom" and "peace". Hail Ceasar! Jawohl, mein Fuhrer!! Yes sir, my Commander-in-Chief!!!

Once started, to keep up the roaring momentum of madness, all sorts of instruments conspire to orchestrate a roar to drown out dissent. The military comfortably moves into the corporate owned media news programs in the form of dried out old generals who provide technical and abstract analysis - war game goons who can talk in terms of strategies and victories, not the lives of the pawns in the game whose smiles will be missed by their loved one. The language gets politicized and distorted to suppress any thinking too far outside the box.

When Michael Moore spoke out at the Academy Awards the crowd cheered and booed, and the orchestra roared in to drown him out. I understand the cheers - I know the release of pent-up energy at the boldest child’s acknowledgment of the emperors lack of clothing and arrogant pissing all over the house and on all our neighbors lawns, with total disregard for laws and agreements.

Whatever the distortions, the publicized polls say that the majority still sees the clothes on the emperor. They booed because they did not want this pageant disrupted - this boldly broadcast Show of Denial - projecting out to the vast populace in front of their viewing boxes that celebrity and wealth remain for the most part untouched, that the culture's illusions are stable even as the smell of blood fills the air above the tuxedos and thousand dollar dresses. Rebuilding the illusions of safety - projecting the horror and murder over thereagain, suggesting it is out of reach of the lives going on here. . . Slowly unlearning this country's involvements and responsibilities in so much of the horror that goes on out there…Pushing it back out there - where it was always kept before those buildings fell over here.

The emperor and his tools must parade in public to reassure the populace that it is business as usual, that we are sitting on top of the world, that everyone is safe here in the homeland as long as those in power are allowed to do whatever they want anywhere else. In Baghdad’s homeland, with variations of cultural style, the same underlying themes are presented to the people.

But I too have to shout it out - the emperor is naked! and a liar - and a theif and arrogant and viscious and callous - and it’s okay for the people to loudly scream NO! when their leader stands at the polished wood podium and pisses on the rules of democracy - it’s okay…it’s necessary!…to say no to his plans of taking his arrogance, his high-tech terrorism, parading around the planet. It seems sometimes that in this country, because power is displayed in suits & ties and clean shaven (and has the upper hand so as not to get its hands too dirty; and the whitewash nearby to cover it over if it does), that people can't see beyond the cosmetics that it is fancy dress terrorism.

Daily now the lies pour into homes through the idiot boxes - the media agencies of the US government, CNN and its ilk, provide some new evil from the other side (must keep our troops and citizens morale high, with lies and blinders, so they don't look at themselves; because then they might want to stop the killing) - chemical weapons plant found, prisoners executed, opposition rising up to welcome the liberators (sic), and on and on. The next day the stories are of course discounted - oops, that didn't really happen - but the residue of they-evil & we-good remains and we must go on, so here's the latest propaganda, er, news.

The slight of hand was successful - those who wanted this war so badly got it. The goals were tightened and adjusted daily, to keep ahead of the resolutions and solutions as they progressed. Parallels were drawn with disregard to accuracy, links were implied with disregard for truth.

The boldfaced lie that got us to this stage of war is that everything possible was done. It doesn't take much intelligence to see how absurd this is. This attack was based on assumptions and accusations that were never allowed time to be fully confirmed or denied. It was accomplished by turning up the heat on the Fear Projection Machine, by imagining vague scenarios of possible future attacks. Then, over-riding the most amazing global opposition, armed with the cliches that this would stop terrorism and provide security - the pre-emptive excuses were in place to begin the killing.

The war marketing departments jumped in to serve up a couple other side dishes - that this was being done to liberate the Iraqi people, and to install democracy [In fact the goal is to install a current US specialty: unchecked capitalism. If the goal was to install democracy, the US would have to start Operation Boomerang, and invade itself. ] The whipped cream on top, to dazzle the populace, suggested the high moral character of our emperor (Michael Moore did point out that we live in ficticious times), and the righteousness of this suddenly urgent cause.

Mumble god bless America here - while the sheep and parrots proclaim in chorus that now is a time to agree to the splendor of the emperors garments though we are quite clearly faced with the sight of his hateful flesh.

It’s a goal of mine to help my children learn to see through these veils and illusions, to question the assumptions and peer pressures that would either blind them or just bend them into submission. To explore alternative resources, and inform themselves....to see that these uses of might and weapons are not ways of resolving conflicts, in personal life and most certainly in the larger world communities. They know that no god will somehow bless anything American any more than Allah or YHWH or Ieyedigama will bless any others. Fantasies about after-life distort the life that we are in right now. The Pledge of Allegiance must at the very least be replaced by the lyrics to “Imagine”, the national anthem, if we must have one, at least be as democratic as "This Land Is Your Land".

No matter how long it takes to happen - and maybe it never will, I daily fear - but the goal has to be there - to get over this particular waste of human energy and lack of creativity called war, to banish the people who are so uncreative, so stunted as to resort to these methods. My century plus indicates that this madness mostly originates in men and is upheld by women, but whatever the case, the addiction to the mythological drug of war and its derivatives has got to be kicked, the cycles of violence must be broken.

And a Burchfield watercolor sustains me. Hamlet, and a Celine novel. I Am The Walrus, a Shostakovich quartet, a Greek folk melody. My Dinner With Andre, Wings of Desire. All the inspiring wonders humans have created over the centuries to celebrate and reflect life’s labyrinths - while greed, power and hatred feed and threaten to devour.

Sick to my mind's stomach, the extent of my optimism is that this currrent military madness will turn upon itself, reveal itself once and for all for people to see it for what it is - a madness, a human flaw, in need of isolation and a cure. As they saw it coming, as they saw those who are most addicted to it lust for it and demand it, millions around the world raised their voices to say no. Those people are out there, that blood information of dissent and peace has flowed out to touch the world. The seeds are planted.

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
- Leonard Cohen