Horror in your own home

Horror in your own home

Ignore what your children are learning at your peril

By John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net

This is a note to parents. You could consider it a warning, but it's
really just a congratulatory note, reminding you what you have done to
your children, by not paying sufficient attention to the world around
you.

    I myself receive many notes from people telling me they can't watch
the TV news anymore. It's just too depressing. And confusing. I also
especially get this in conversations with many people I consider less
politically aware than myself. They know something is wrong with the
newspapers, or the stories they hear on the boob tube, but they just
don't have time to analyze their own confusion and sort out the wheat
from the chaff. It all sounds so much alike, one false claim after
another, and besides, who has the time?

    And even if we did have the time, what could we - as ordinary
individual citizens - actually do about such doubts. Amid all this flag
waving and these terror alerts, who would listen?

    There are more important things to do, aren't there?

    I mean, so what if children are being blown to bits for reasons that
are lies in some faraway country! Life must go on, and we don't have to
hear about that, do we? As long as we're not forced to see the
photographs, a few deaths over some abstract political debate don't
really bother us. It's not our problem. Hey, we have a problem with a
neighbor's renegade dog that is far more important to us.

    I mean, so what if the corrupt and insincere thugs who run for
public office have done away with all the laws that made our country a
free society. It hasn't really affected our lives, has it? We still have
our bills to pay, our obligations to meet, our kids to get to school. So
what if the cops can now come into your house without ever telling you?
How does that affect us? We obey the law and have nothing to worry
about, right? No big deal.

    I mean, we have our lives to live, and if the elite billionaires who
dominate all our public institutions want to create situations that
simply make more money for themselves, what has that to do with us? We
still have our jobs (maybe), our friends (if they actually are our
friends), clothes to iron, school pictures to pay for, school board
meetings to attend, church charity drives to contribute to ... the
minutiae of one's life, particularly if there are kids to be considered,
are just endless, and in our drive to get the best of what we want for
our offspring, we have to focus on the here and now, in our immediate
neighborhoods, to make sure they fulfill their obligations and get the
best of what is available to set up their futures, right?

    News from some far off land, or partisan ravings from some
disgruntled political observer really don't fit into the pragmatic
schedules we set for ourselves. And we must stay focused on those, lest
our whole lives suddenly veer off course. After all, abstract political
arguments don't pay for four years of college. Or braces.

    Yet, there are moments, often when our kids are asleep, when we
wonder why and what we are doing all this for, all this running around,
all this planning and execution of trivial details. Often at these times
we often wonder what we ourselves are doing, and what our kids are
actually learning. Who will they turn out to be?

    And when we really think about those things, sometimes the
epiphanies that seize us are shocking indeed.

    Consider what kids are learning today by observing the current
public dialogue.

    Growing up in America today, our president and our leaders are
teaching our children that it's OK to kill someone if you suspect them
of harboring ideas that the United States of America is committing
crimes in other countries. No more of this right-to-a-fair-trial,
innocent-until-proven-guilty crap. Just kill them if you suspect them of
opposing American ideas. Just blow up their countries and kill whomever
you like. If you have the weaponry, you really don't need a reason.
Might surely makes right. That's the new reality. Just listen to all the
new presidential candidates. That's what virtually all of them are
saying.

    And that's what are kids are learning today, plus the finest people
in our communities - the judges and doctors and lawyers - are all in
agreement that this is the way we should be behaving. So show your flag
and get with the program. It's how you'll get ahead. America committing
crimes against other countries? How absurd. We would have heard about it
on TV if it happened.

    Hey, it's what the American government has done, is doing, will
continue to do. If the American government says someone is a terrorist,
well hell, they are a terrorist, and they can be put in jail forever
with no trial, no lawyer, no appeal, no visitors, and never get out.
They can even be put to death by a 2-1 vote in a military tribunal. None
of this appeal crap, where convicted killers can hang onto life for
years with tricky legal maneuvers. Just kill them. Get it over with.

    President Bush recently showed us how people on Death Row should be
treated, when during a radio interview, he ridiculed a woman who had
been condemned for participating in a long-ago crime that had resulted
in a killing. "Please don't kill me," Bush squeaked in a falsetto voice,
mocking Karla Faye Tucker, who had become a prominent Christian advocate
during her many years in jail.

    Some people, even some Christian Republicans, criticized the
president for behaving so heartlessly, but hey, that's the way it is
now. The president was simply showing our kids how they should behave.
You're either for us or against us. If you're against, you know what
you'll get. Clarity is a good thing.

    That's the way it is now, our kids our learning. We shouldn't have
compassion for those who have reformed. If they're convicted, we must
punish them. Just kill them, and don't think about what they might have
become. It's not relevant. Just kill them.

    The same with those blown-up kids in Iraq, especially that boy, Ali,
who lost not only his whole family but also his arms.

    What do they matter? Iraq is far away and we have our lives to live
right here. It doesn't matter that our president used lies to justify
the invasion of a nation with a pathetic army. They have oil we want. We
have power. It's the law of the jungle. We have the right to go and take
it. It's just being realistic. It's the way the world is.

    That's what we're teaching our children. If you wave the flag and
have enough money to operate in the "right" circles, you can steal
anything you want (because you can buy a judge to get you off if
somebody tries to catch you), or kill anybody you want, regardless of
what they might have done. Life is now all image, and you can get away
with absolutely anything if you have the right connections. Do something
wrong if you like; then just shape the image to make it appear right. In
this day and age, that's all that counts.

    Long ago, my father told me this is the way the world is. I refused
to believe him, and as a result have no valuable possessions in this
world except a rather large and cherished circle of noble friends, most
of whom are just as poor as I am.

    How we view the world all comes down to money, is what my dad said.
That's why politicians go corrupt, why people betray their friends, why
real stories of what's happening in the world are not shown on TV.

    What most people don't realize is who they are and what they do
actually is reflected in the world at large. Since a large majority
feels they are powerless and have no influence over events in the larger
geopolitical sphere, this is exactly the case: they are powerless and
have no influence.

    Take 9/11. For more than a year, no one has dared to speak about the
embarrassing fact that the official pronouncements on those tragic
events that took place do not add up. Wars and laws that were planned
BEFORE that sad day were blamed ON those horrid events. But it has not
been politically correct to ask those questions. To do so has been
considered unpatriotic in this time of national emergency, this War on
Terror. But what if the official version WAS a lie? How does that affect
us? Do you think more of these things will happen if we fail to catch
the grand manipulators in their lies?

    And does that matter? Heck, life goes on. All the old sayings are
relevant. Go along to get along. You can't fight City Hall. All the
noble philosophy in the world doesn't mean a thing when your belly isn't
full.

    So we are raising a generation of kids to whom morality and
fairness, as well and truth and honor, are no longer important. They are
inconvenient distractions in the lifelong drive toward the acquisition
of material wealth. Philosophy is now a superflous exercise; what really
counts is connections. Allegiances to friends and causes are hopelessly
out-of-date and quaint but useless relics of a bygone era of
civilization.

    Now all that counts is leeching onto those in power and getting what
one can in the great ripoff that is always taking place - this is what
our kids are really learning in school, and the future we can all look
forward to.

    I am reminded of those long-ago stories about Nazi Germany, when
little kids were forced to wear junior SS uniforms and report to
authorities on the political activities of their own parents. So what if
their parents were taken away: the kids were serving the greater good of
the state, and besides, they got extra rations of chocolate to go with
their lessons about the glories of the Homeland. More recently, these
stories have manifested as incidents of kids who had been put through
school-sponsored drug awareness seminars who turned in their own parents
for smoking pot, and other affronts to fascist civilization.

    So the lesson is - in these times when people ignore what's going on
around them, when the greater human values of compassion and
understanding have been buried by widespread media conditioning that
truth and justice no longer matter, but only adherence to officially
approved norms deserve our allegiance - that you better get a grip on
what you've done by not paying attention to what has been going on in
the world.

    The lesson is this: Don't turn your back on your own kids. If they
have been absorbing the facile rhetoric they hear every day on TV and
beneath the fluttering flags of their own schools, you may no longer
know who they really are, or, on this sad day in Nazi America, what they
have become.

    John Kaminski is the author of "America's Autopsy Report," a
collection of essays soon to be published by Dandelion Books.

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