ravan

I'm sorry.

The country where I was born, where I live, and where I will die, is presently being led far, far, far away from its ideals. The current administration of the United States of America has no respect for the rule of law, international or domestic, except when, where, and if it suits the neoconservative master plan. The current administration, and its lapdogs in the US Congress, have not only disregarded our Constitution, but they have symbolically ripped it up and pissed on it.

The average American no longer cares, because he or she either
a) has swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the spin and propaganda put out by the neoconservative corporate lackeys that own our media,
b) is so busy trying to survive in the Bush disaster of an economy that they can't think of anything else,
c) is so demoralized by the obvious defection of our own government from the principles that made this country what we love that to care hurts too much, or
d) feels and fears that nothing can be done to srop the neoconservative machine and the corporations that underwrite it.

Even those of us that do care find there is little we can do in the short term to stop the madness. Our only hope is to wake enough people up to throw the bastards out at the ballot box in November. But I doubt that will be enough. Closing that door will only prove to inspire the rats to crawl through the hundreds of windows they have "opened" and holes they have gnawed since the 80's in the fabric and principles of the United States.

All I can say is I'm sorry. The dream was a good one: to provide a system and a place where the rule of law and human rights ruled supreme over the rules and whims of a few men or some single religion (or branch thereof), to provide a system of governance that generally obeyed the rule of law and the will of the majority while protecting the rights and freedoms of the minority.

Now the executive branch has made it plain that it considers itself above all that. We now have a king, and his cabinet, with Congress as a rubber stamp and show opponent. And we have the most WMDs on the planet. Iraq and Abu Ghraib are only the begining, I fear.

By all the gods, I'm sorry.

Ravan Asteris, 6/17/2004
crossposting or republication ok, with attribution

Dear Ravan...

I quite agree with you...I think that many would also agree if I said that your point "b" is perhaps at the heart of the matter,

"b) is so busy trying to survive in the Bush disaster of an economy that they can't think of anything else,"

...but I agree with *all* of your points as valid.

The reason I cite "b" as key is that, as I'm sure you know, via using Maslow's Theory of Behavior Modification, once you control someone's livelihood, by threat of losing same with mixed stimuli that are chaos and panic-inducing, you have a polulation by the short and curlies.

It's amazing how firebrands are so easily quenched, when suddenly one's job is threatened = family out on the street. And like Communist countries would do, when putting Maslow's theory into practice, once enough unstability is created, then you can have said population eating out of your hand, accepting the state religion, et al, Little Red Book, whatever, en toto.

In a country where its own citizens decrying prostitution of the Constitution are referred to by the Neoconservatives as "terrorists", isn't it interesting that such people used to be called "freedom fighters", back in 1776?

I'll bet if they'd thought of it, the British likely would have used the word "terrorist" for the founding fathers.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I am not a patriot, I am a US citizen. And while this country remains under siege, my flag is considerably darker and more "bone-y", and will likely stay that way.