|
Mein Country
Unforgivable
By Norma Sherry
03/08/06 "ICH"
-- -- If any business was run like the government of
the United States it would have been out of business long ago. No
business could run as a deficit without its board uprising and
firing the lot that ran the business. No business would permit
blatant false statements and assurances that all was well without
serious repercussions. Furthermore, no customer would continue to
buy products or services from a business that had a history of poor
quality, or poor workmanship, or awful customer service, or a
business that was reportedly running in the red and continued to do
so.
So, how is it that we are so complacent? Why are we so willing to
allow our elected officials to heap lie upon lie and not be
accountable? If it were our children that were so dishonorable there
would be hell to pay. At the very least, they’d lose their right to
play their favorite game or confine them to their room where they
could no longer wreck havoc.
But not so with our government and its elected officials. Nay, we
seem to be long on suffering, patient beyond comprehension and
errant in our condemnation for righting wrongs. There is no
accountability nor are we demanding it. Why is that? Have we become
comfortable with the status quo or just ignorant? Have we turned the
other cheek so many times it’s become an automatic reflex?
Allow me to pose some questions. What if you were up for a promotion
but one of your co-workers was more than just a schmoozer. In fact,
this person wanted the promotion so badly that he or she made
certain that promises were made to the right people, that monies
even exchanged hands. Do you think you’d sit idly by and do nothing?
Hell no. Your anger would be unquenchable. You would do whatever you
needed to do, or could do, to find justice. More than likely you
would report this illegal wrangling to the agencies that oversee
employee injustices. Some of you might even bring about a lawsuit.
But one thing is for certain: you wouldn’t sit still and allow your
future to go down the drain.
Now, what if you were a corporation interested in participating in
the rich business of rebuilding a country our country had desolated
but you were not allowed to negotiate the possibility? What if the
decision of who would reap the financial rewards was decided long
before the ruins? Before the attacks even. What if these
exceptionally lucrative contracts were assigned to bosom buddies and
never even opened for bid? Would you have any recourse? Would you
consider this the way business is done? I think not.
What if you were an indigent or disabled or an elderly individual
who couldn’t afford to buy your expensive prescription medications,
but the pharmaceutical companies offered a program that gave you the
ability to get your prescriptions for free? However, even though the
pharmaceutical companies were exceedingly rich; rich, in fact,
beyond the concept of most folk, they no longer wanted to play the
role of humanitarian. So, they put their best minds to work and
devised a program that would confuse and befuddle and in the end put
gold back into their coffers. They created a plan – and sold it via
their savvy lobbyists – to offer a drug program that on the surface
would appear to be magnanimous. But, this is where the best part is,
they fooled them all. No longer would they be obligated to “give”
their expensive drugs, which actually cost them only pennies, to
those poor folk. No! Now, they could get their just due. But, where
does that leave you? Twenty-eight dollars, or eighty-four dollars,
or a hundred and twenty-eight dollars is still way out of your
ability to pay. You tell me, who’s the winner here? Surely it’s not
the patient on a limited income. So, what’s a little guy to do? Who
is going to help him fight city hall? Not his elected official
that’s for sure.
What if you were a curious kinda gal or guy? You read every thing
you could get your hands on. It isn’t enough that you scanned the
worldwide web to read what was being written and talked about all
over the world in many different lifestyles and cultures, but your
insatiable thirst for learning even brought you to your local
library where you would take out book after book, topic upon topic.
Well, low and behold, it seems your curiosity caught the attention
of those who seem to know what’s bad and what’s good. Next thing you
know there’s a knock on your door and there’s men in grey suits
coming in your home, your private abode. “Why”, you ask. “Shut up”
you’re told. You’re taken away. To where you don’t know, nor do your
loved ones, or anyone who knows you for that matter. It takes a
while but you find out your considered an endangerment to your
country: a subversive, possibly even a terrorist or a person with
terrorist connections. It appears you are deemed so because of your
reading material on the worldwide web and your town library. What do
you do? Who do you tell? How do you free yourself from this
unwarranted imprisonment? And where oh where are the principles that
our fair land was built upon?
Think these are unlikely scenarios? Think again, my dear friends.
Every day in this fair land of ours our rights guaranteed, we
thought, forever and ever, we thought, by our founding fathers;
guaranteed to us as inalienable rights of our Bill of Rights and our
Constitution. But little by little, day by day, our liberties, our
precious rights are being dwindled down to a precious few.
The truth is right before our eyes if only we open them to see. The
fear of seeing I know is almost too great, but if we don’t before
too long there will be nothing of memory to see. As we sit on our
comfy couches mesmerized by the latest Survivor or Apprentice or
handsome Bachelor, we are being dissolved, extinguished. Our jobs
are going to China and India and Pakistan; our freedoms are being
abolished; our air polluted; our waters putrefied; our forests
fallen; our wildlife exterminated; our culture obliterated.
The fear so palatable that we are on the precipice of losing all
that we believed was ours: our dignity, our honor, our precious
freedom that I can barely breathe at all. The atrocities are piled
high and wide and yet we sit comfy and watch our TV’s. All the while
poor innocents die horrible, starving deaths, men and women are
tortured in the name of national security while agents of our land
are outed for retribution on the highest order. Citizens are
wiretapped, personal phone calls are listened in to, private
communications are spied upon, here, at home, in the United States
of America. How is this possible? How are we allowing this to happen
before our very eyes? In America, in the land of the brave, business
is business as usual.
The ink is dripping red, the debt growing exponentially and in
numbers unfathomable and incalculable, enlisted men and women are
dying needlessly, our foundation is methodically being hacked to
death and we are doing nothing. We appear to believe the lies were
fed. It’s either that or worse: we don’t care. Our children’s
destiny is uncertain. So, too, is their freedom, or notion of
freedom. Destitution, disease, illiteracy, and incivility are
commonplace. Pain and suffering, abuse, and injustice are in every
neighborhood, on every block, and yet we do nothing. In America, in
the land of the brave, business is business as usual.
We have but to open a newspaper or better yet search the Internet to
read Katrina, Abramoff,Plame,Haliburton,NSA wiretaps,Abu
Ghraib,Guantanemo Bay,EPA, US Patriot Act,Homeland Security, Dubai,
US Ports,eavesdropping, Mission Accomplished,Tom DeLay, Election
fraud,Chertoff,Brown,lies,deception,Weapons of Mass Destruction,
Iran, Korea,Outsourcing,tax refunds,prescription drug plan, civilian
spying,medical malpractice caps, AFTA,FBI, CIA, FCC, FDA,CDC,
deception, lies,Sadaam Hussein,Downing Street Memo, Tony Blair, New
Orleans, FEMA, levees, contribution reform, AIDS,
homeless,healthcare,Osama bin Ladin, FISA,electronic surveillance,
stem cell research,Roe vs Wade, corruption,lies, deception,election
reform,campaign reform,WMD,abuse of power,Cheney shooting, airport
security,Christian coalition,anti-abortion rights, deficit, gasoline
prices, terror alert, Enron, Worldcom,
conspiracy,indictments,lies,deception, corruption, The words
colliding in a maelstrom of horror and a fear I fear.
Norma Sherry is an award-winning writer, co-founder of Together
Forever Changing, an organization designed to enlighten and
encourage citizens to fight for our liberties. She is also the
producer and host of the weekly Norma Sherry Show on WQXT-TV. Norma
welcomes your emails:
norma@togetherforeverchanging.org
© Norma Sherry 2006
Click below to post a comment on this article
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
