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America the Pitiful
By Charles Sullivan
03/04/06 "ICH" -- -- Calling our form of government a democratic
republic does not make it so. We are what we do. By now it should be
abundantly clear that most Americans are incapable of recognizing
real democracy—because they have never been subjected to one.
Perhaps no culture on earth is more materialistic or delusional than
ours’. Compared to much of the world, America’s behavior is
tragically pathological. We react to planetary warming by driving
metal gas guzzling monstrosities, rather than enacting conservation
measures. Americans have the habit of doing the opposite of what we
should. Our so called leaders think our sensibilities are too
delicate to expose us to truth—so reality is omitted from our diet
as if it were a plague. Rather than receiving nourishing truth, we
are given the opiates of propaganda that affirm and reinforce our
odd self destructive behavior. We are held captive by the lies that
are deftly woven from the threads of capitalism, and persuaded to
act against our own interest, as well as the public good.
Propaganda is like a powerful and paralyzing drug that induces the
most bizarre social behavior. In the mind it acts like an opiate
that provokes psychotic episodes of self harming conduct. We are a
nation addicted to oil and violence; a people grateful for our
chains of ignorance and servitude to the gods of consumerism and
unrestrained capitalism—the very gods that are our undoing. The drip
bags of propaganda are permanently attached to our veins to assure
that we never awaken from our news-induced coma. Mind control is
more subtle than the open use of coercive force in shaping human
behaviors. No one is more effectively enslaved than those who think
they are free. Witness the glee with which so many naïve and witless
conservatives cheer on the neocon cabal in the mistaken belief that
their policies do them good. The paradigms of our time, which drive
our behaviors, have been deftly marketed to us without our
knowledge—subliminal advertising’s finest frenzy. So effective are
these media campaigns that few of us even bother to question their
authenticity. The result is a virtually comatose culture of
consumption and waste that is incapable of defending itself from the
predation of wealth and power. Propaganda marginalizes and renders
us useless as citizens, by affecting our ability for self examining
critical thought. We can no longer add two plus two and get four.
In this land of uncommon grace that is blessed with fabulous wealth,
mantras are repeated over and over, without regard to validity,
until they become ingrained in the public conscience and assume the
authority of truth. They become our cultural paradigms, the bedrock
of society, whose moral authority is rarely revisited. Centuries of
self deception have led us unerringly to the present moment.
Everything that contradicts our version of reality is expunged from
the public record. Americans do not like to confront unpleasant
realities. Let us not hear about the abuse of captives of war.
Rather than take action to correct the gross injustices we routinely
heap upon the world, as demanded by conscience, we simply deny their
existence. We turn our backs on any reality that assaults our
conscience and suppress the evidence. We go on as if there were no
consequences. Cause and effect is not something we wish to ponder,
so we sweep it under the carpet.
In a world where other cultures respect human rights and cherish
some notion of justice, America’s sociopathic behavior is seen as
the belligerent obscenity that it is. Our actions on the world stage
are justified by fallacy and drip with a hubris that has no basis in
truth.
There can be no justice without truth; no peace without justice. If
we truly reap what we sow, we are in for some hard times in the
years ahead. When our government behaves irresponsibly and with
violence toward the world, it is incumbent upon the people to
restrain it, to remake that government in the image of the people,
rather than the elite. But this is only possible with an aroused and
wakeful electorate. Revolution requires an informed and militant
citizenry. Awakening is the first step in the long and difficult
journey to self liberation. The people will not rise until they
awake. If they are to awaken, we must get them off the opiates that
make them comatose. We must get them off the commercial news.
Progressives and conservatives alike recognize that we have an
obscene and belligerent presidency that is buoyed by a frightened
and timorous congress. They see that the institutions of government
are not servants of the people—they are the servants of their
corporate pay masters. Depravity and concentrated wealth hold sway
in the halls of government. The White House is a brothel teeming
with corporate lobbyists, whose fornications are conducted beyond
the pale of public view. Congress is as awash in corporate money as
maggots on a corpse. The Bush cabal has to go. However, we must also
recognize that the cancer extends well beyond Bush. We must
recognize that the system itself is the malignancy. Effective and
conscientious citizenship demands more from us than paying taxes and
exercising our right to vote. It demands that we act for the common
good with conscience and tenacity of purpose. Let us finish the
revolution that was begun here in the 1700s.
Real democracy cannot be served by paying homage to freedom through
garish displays of trinkets—flags and plastic yellow ribbons. These
symbols are shallow, superfluous, and disingenuous. Anyone can
administer them. To do so requires neither courage nor effort—real
patriotism requires an abundance of both. Unlike real patriotism,
the symbols of patriotism do not require thought or
understanding—they are a conditioned response to the choreographed
propaganda that oozes from our televisions and radios, the words
that drip from the nation’s daily newspapers. Real patriots do not
encourage the champions of Manifest Destiny in their grim work of
conquest and empire—they actively oppose them and resist. Those who
uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights when the government
does not are the real patriots. They are America’s dissenters and
protesters. They do not require flags and ribbons to demonstrate
their patriotism. Their every gesture, their very lives, is an
expression of the patriotism that might have made America a
different place than it is now—if only there were more of them.
Charles Sullivan is a photographer and free lance writer residing
in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments
at earthdog@highstream.net.
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