After reading through many of my old posts, and a lot of the posts here on the site, I have noticed one thing, most are editorials. Now, don't get me wrong, I love writing an editorial, however, I think that the problem is, it does open the writer up to a lot of attacks. So, bare with me everyone, I am going to try a new format. I want to discuss several issues, and hopefully, just come out of this situation with more understanding than when I entered it. So here it goes.
First off, I would like to bring up the topic of the war. Yes, I know this has been beaten into the ground. But I do have a few questions that need answered. Let us back track. The original premise for this war was WMDs, was it not? Sadaam could nuke us in under 45 minuets if he wanted to. Yet he never did. We invaded, and yet, still, nothing. We never found any type of WMD in the country, nor did we really uncover a threat. So here is my thing, why are we not holding those in power accountable? Why does it matter which party affiliation the person belongs to. We were lied to and misled. We have been duped, and Americans are still paying the price. When any leader lies to us, we should hold them to it, and force them to own up to the mistake. Why did we let this one slide?
The next issue I have is the economy. I have turned on the news day after day hearing how great it is. However, being in the job market myself, I can attest to the fact that it is not. There are no jobs out there, no matter how many figures a politician spews out. Prices are skyrocketing, so are interest rates, taxes, and unemployment numbers. Why are we buying into the shtick? We know that it is false, yet we continue to take the bait, and with it, the hook. When will we ask the government to cut tax cuts to major companies who outsource overseas? When we will demand that the tax breaks for the top 1% of income earners be overturned, so that way, lower income families have a shot at being able to support themselves? When will we start looking after the majority, rather than the privileged minority?
Civil rights. Wow, yeah, there is a hot button issue. But why? Why are we so adamant to oppress others? Is it because we are oppressed ourselves so therefore we must oppress anyone who is different from us? Yes, this does include any type of gay issue, from marriage to adoption, however, it includes abortion, freedom of speech, religion, everything. We live in a free nation, no one here has the right to tell someone else what to believe, how to live their life, who they can love, and what god they can worship. So why is it that we are so hell bent on trying? When does the day finally come where we can be enlightened enough to quit bickering, and just realize that we must accept each other for the people that we are, and learn to enrich our culture from the differences?
I think the prevailing theme here is obvious. We are so entrenched in turmoil that we are turning it around on each other. We get lied to, we see things falling apart, and are attacking our fellow Americans because of it. We have become so consumed with hatred and bigotry that we are not able to differentiate the issues from the facts. We have to start extending a hand, rather than shaking a fist if we want things to progress and improve. Otherwise, we are all doomed to this cycle.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 13
You are a good, (maybe great), writer. You are probably a great person in many ways. However, you are clueless about what is happening in America and the World.
We had the psyop of the Millennium pulled on us.
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 - 1964)
We do not want peace, we want to WIN!
The second thing is governments will never agree to anything and or make anyone accountable unless it is them caught with thier pants down and then and only then do they use the backup plan and WHAM! SCAPEGOAT, you seen that alot from Nixon to Bush we seen that!
Now as for oppressed people are only the ones who ALLOW themselves to become just that and victims too! I see no oppressed people, only in their imaginations are they oppressed because they choose to limit themselves to living on that fine line and do not want to better themselves. Yes, I agree on alot of things but hand shakes and smiles, I just don't trust anyone who is too eager to shake hands, it means deception and hidden agendas. Good Job on this article!
I love the article, but as a response, I reject your premise, which I will restrict to the statement you make "We live in a free country..."
From any reasonable, logical basis, there is no metric by which we can make this claim. Neither from the libertarian sense, nor marxist sense, we are not free, certainly not the free-est. If you established a set of criterion by which to measure freedom, we may end up in the top 10 of industrialized countries, but like math scores, I doubt it. A complete conjecture on my part, but I think all the references to freedom in our songs, in our collective narrative inherited from the founding of the republic, they actually meant: Freedom from the tyranny of england's monarchy, freedom from King George, freedom to make profits, and not be unreasonably taxed as white land-owning men. It meant nothing more than that. It did not mean: Freedom to define oneself, express oneself, freedom of self-determination. And repeating the mantra "We are free," "Freest country on earth," etc. simply does not make it so.
Think in terms of many aspects of life we would consider a "right" granted by a creator, or simply granted by very nature of being enlightened humanistic rational people. Most of those are actually not rights (at least anymore), if they ever were, but privilages granted by the state. The right to marry is actually a privilage, granted to those who adhere to the social engineering plans of the state.
The right to vote? Same thing. Which is why blacks, women, minorites have had to fight for it. If it was a naturally occuring right, and not a state granted privilage, there would be no need to have a civil rights movement, those rights would have existed and been exercisable.
Or something as trivial as driving, again a privilage granted by the state, in fact explicity said when you go to get a drivers license.
And abortion. The supreme court had to make reference to, or create a non-existent right to privacy, though there is none. Nor is there a right for a women to either control her health or her reproductive decisions. Certainly there should be - in my opinion, right there codified in the bill of rights, but it isn't, which sucks.
As far as we've come, I think we are still inherently, a tribal culture, biting and scratching for access to, and control of, resources, wealth, land. This means the tribes that have power, will do anything required to maintain their access to resources, to maintain control.
Finally, its easy to assume that we can fight for rights, fight for freedom, with reason - with appeals to logic, or humanistic philosophy - because most people actually make and hold there belief's based not on reason, but emotion, on fear, on insecurity. You can make an argument, fairly easily, based on reason and logic, with appeals to self-determination and freedom for why anyone, anywhere, should have the right to marry anyone they love, why gay marriage is absolutely reasonable, and in fact that the state has no granted authority to decide who can and can't marry. But that would be based on reason. Their response -- some tribal, pre-reason reference to a religion, to there faith.
So my question is, how can any reasonable argument be made against faith? There is none.
Sorry this post is so disorganized - its 6am, and I haven't had enough coffee.
-W
The link references a lengthy essay on "restoring the public trust" by Bill Moyers. It sheds a lot of light on these issues.
It used to be that we identified ourselves by skin color, physical features, tattoos, dress and other visual signs. These forms of discrimination have all been outlawed. We still do, but not so emphatically.
However, it is perfectly legal to discriminate using labels that reference ideas, beliefs, and lifestyles. This form of discrimination is being played out in politics.
It used to be that a tribe was a geographically consolidated group of people with common goals and ambitions. Now, with ease of travel and modern communication technology, tribes are no longer identified geographically. Rather, branding identifies tribes. Brands commonly used are: "right to life;" "right to choose;" "born again;" "moral majority;" and so on. These tribes are held together, not so much by a common identity, but by a common enemy. So, much of their activity is antagonistic. It is also important to note that the branding used is often fraudulent, at least to some degree. Right to lifers, for example, often are supporters of war and capital punishment. And, my guess is that most of the promoters of these brands could give a damn about the core belief, but rather use the symbolism of the belief as a tool of power and control.
This is a very good piece, and I commend you. But the comments it has elicited are even more outstanding. As I read the article, I thought, "Yeah, but..." And then I read Will Evans excellent comments, and he said almost everything I would have written. But, I thought...and then I read Gary's post. I always read Gary's posts, because they are invariably thoughtful and well-reasoned. Shoot! There's nothin' left to say. They said it all. This is the best comment thread I have read on Gather. Kudos, guys.
Don't you think some of the new Branded Tribes are taught early in a Hyper-Consumer, Media Saturated culture - Kids that wear Ambercrombie in middle school, the Goths, Geeks, Jocks ... I agree about how when you move away from a community where your "Us" is regional and geographically defined (or by parish or faith), to as an electric village, fragmented yet always connected -- then we need different passwords and signals to identify your safe group.
A long time ago, I spent some time among very hard core goldwater-like conservatives, which used all kinds of language clues to identify whether you were in or out -- very similar, though a dying breed, to syntax of identity used by real Blood Bloods here in Boston (subtlly different uses of common words - but easily distinquishable)... most of that seems to have fallen away - but I still hear these verbal secret handshakes from time to time.
I know we have strayed off Jonathan's original post - and should "Find A Room" so to speak :-)