"Yes. I have tricks in my pocket. I have things up my sleeve.
But I
am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion the has
the
appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of
illusion.
"To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period,
the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating
in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them. Or they
had
failed their eyes. And so they were having their fingers pressed
forcibly
down on the fiery brail alphabet of a dissolving economy. In Spain
there was revolution. Here there was only shouting and confusion.
In Spain there was Guernica..."
- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
As a young actor trying to memorize this passage,
one who had paid too
little attention to History classes up this point, I researched the reference.
What was "Guernica," other than a painting by Picasso?
Guernica was the name of a sleepy little village in Spain where Hitler,
wanting to demonstrate the prowess of his Luftwaffe, conducted a devastating
bombing run that nearly wiped out the men, women, and children of a
town that posed no threat to anyone.
I was ashamed of myself that I had slipped through higher education
without ever knowing this. I vowed to study and learn from history
from
that time forward. Nowadays I fully appreciate that Guernica is the
international symbol of what military aggression is all about. For
many
years, Picasso's painting of the screaming women, children, and animals,
has hung like a warning sign in the press room of the United Nations.
It is the very symbol of what the United Nations was created to
prevent. It is Picasso's ugly "truth" in the "pleasant disguise of
illusion."
Now, so that John Negroponte, the war criminal and felon that G.W. Bush
appointed to be United States Ambassador to the UN, will not be
offended, the painting will be covered up whenever news conferences are
held
at the UN which address the coming war with Iraq. And yet I do
overstate the situation here. The likely fact is that Negroponte
has never
much concerned himself with the content of Guernica. The truth is
that
covering the painting helps to keep the sheep from thinking. A thinking
American public might prevent a war that could quite possibly lead,
even according to our own CIA, to the most devastating conflict Mother
Earth has ever known.
History nor current events, without Party revision, are no longer part
of the government approved public information. As yet there is no
punishment for those of us who seek information on our own. There
is only
punishment for those who attempt to distribute such information that
may damage the Little Deserter, and the chickenhawks who surround him.
Such punishment currently is geared toward destroying the career of
journalists who have made their living in the mainstream of US journalism,
and branding as wild eyed radical communists the ones who haven't.
We, among the disapproved, tend to mention nasty things that might
worry folks who have some interest in the democracy left to them.
For
instance, here is a little tidbit that we like to talk about when
supporting our claim that democracy is being subverted in America.
The key Republican senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel, owns the company
which supplied, programmed, and serviced nearly all of the computerized
balloting equipment used in Nebraska for the November, 2002 elections.
And Mr. Hagel failed to disclose any of that interest in his ethically
required financial filings to the Senate Ethics Committee. Hagel
won
the election with more than 80% of the vote, including African-American
communities which have never before voted Republican. Of course we
have to take Mr. Hagel's word for that because Nebraska law states that
there will be no independent audit of the vote count. That would
interfere with the secrecy afforded the corporate patent.
Now, even though the preceding is absolutely true, only a wild eyed
radical communist would question the integrity of Mr. Hagel, such as the
Director of the Senate Ethics Committee. When Victor Baird questioned
Hagel about failing to disclose his interest in The McCarthy Group,
Inc., Baird resigned his post. Mr. Baird has certainly learned by
now that
when a God Fearing Republican claims to be an honest man, you ought to
just take his word for it. Wild eyed radical communists - McCarthy
-
I've learned to appreciate History for her subtle sense of humor.
So, Mr. Hagel is a "God Fearing Republican" just like Dubya, Dubya III
Bush. Neither man is capable of telling a lie, and every "mainstream"
pundit knows this. Of course we are told that the "mainstream"
journalists are "intellectual liberal elitists," who regularly insert liberal
bias into the news. I suppose Hannity, O'Reily, Russert, and the
rest
are demons who have shed their godless ways. Paul Krugman didn't
fully
understand this until he was correctly informed by his recently
enlightened editors at the New York Times that Bush never lies.
On the other hand, Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein always lie. There
are other standards and rules to live by, of course. Anyone who defends
and supports the fratboy king is a Patriot. Anyone who defends and
supports the Constitution of the United States of America is a name
calling, ACLU, "red diaper doper baby." These are the tough-but-fair
and
consistent standards that I find whenever I wake up in the new Amerika.
When Bill Clinton took a perfectly legal college deferment from the draft,
that was proof that he may have well been a Soviet agent provocateur.
On the other hand, if one questions where George W. Bush was during
the last 18 months of the tour in the Texas Air National Guard that his
daddy got him to avoid danger in Vietnam, it is part of the "politics
of personal destruction" that Bill Clinton invented. When a picture
of
Chelsea Clinton holding hands with her boyfriend at a sporting event
shows up, it proves that Chelsea is a morally bankrupt little slut who
was raised by a morally bankrupt man. When multiple pictures are
revealed, along with arrest reports, of Jenna Bush, half dressed and falling
down drunk, and she subsequently has the taxpayer funded Secret Service
bail her boyfriend out of jail, she is a "normal teenager," and any
question of that is part of the campaign of "personal destruction,"
invented by Bill Clinton.
My parents were born in the heartland - one of the "red" states, actually.
They have a saying in Missouri. "Show me!" I'm wondering if
this saying,
which hasn't seen the light of day lately, has been obscured by the new
standards.
For those of us who have been banished to the margins because of our inability
to abide by the new standards, the saying is still alive and well.
Chuck Hagel stole the 2002 election in Nebraska by rigging the election
system, preventing an audit, and attempting to cover up any involvement
in the company that installed the balloting system. So there it is,
Chuck Hagel. I believe that you are a liar and a criminal.
If you won
the election in Nebraska, show me!
George W. Bush intends to wage a war on Iraq that will get thousands of
America's children killed, destabilize the Middle East (thereby destabilizing
the world), and "glass" hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (in the name of
liberating them), for oil. The idea is to strengthen the US by controlling
the
world's oil supply (with the side benefit of untold riches for the Bushes
and
their oily friends). This strictly is a strategy of murder for profit.
Tony Blair
is going along because Great Britain is the 2nd largest refiner of oil,
and if he
fails to support the Bush doctrine, Great Britain will be reduced to a
third
world economy. This, of course, is being furthered by HW family friend,
Dick Cheney, as Junior is an incompetent moron without so much as the
ability to eat a pretzel during a football game. Junior and Cheney,
you are
about to commit armed robbery and murder on a global scale. If Saddam
has weapons of mass destruction that threaten this country any more than
they
did in 1991, show me! Of course, since I can count on one hand the
times
between you that you've told the truth, whatever you show me must be
verified by an independent source.
It may be odd to hear this from a wild eyed radical communist, but it
appears to me that every day brings this nation closer to life under the
Stalinist Soviet Union, and I don't view that as an improvement.
We
have a "free" press that reports no more nor less than what the government
tells them to report. We have "free" elections that no one is allowed
to verify.
We have multiple parties, but only one is the party of sanity and morality,
while all others are the incarnation of evil. We have people who
merely
disappear, never to be seen again by their families or friends. Our
"leadership"
doesn't just believe that religion is "the opiate of the masses," it attempts
to
prove it by using the approved interpretation of God to sedate the people
with undying faith in George W. Bush.
I wonder if Americans are no longer capable of questioning their
leadership. I wonder if Americans understand the difference between
air
strikes and a war. I wonder if Americans still understand that freedom
is
not a gift, but something that every American generation has had to
earn anew. I wonder if American eyes can see the changes around them.
I wonder if they are merely anticipating the adventure of it all.
"Adventure and change were immanent in this year. They were waiting
around the corner for all these kids. Suspended in the mist over
Berchesgarten. Caught in the folds of Chamberlain's umbrella.
In Spain there was Guernica! Here there were dance halls, bars, liquor,
hot swing music, and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier…
All the world was waiting for bombardments." - Ibid.