Forget the exploits of John Brown. His violent efforts for a virtuous
cause are but distant memories in the Land of Oz. Here in
contemporary Kansas, many socially conservative uber-patriots fastidiously and
�peacefully� adhere to an American sociopolitical system which is becoming
increasingly hostile to science, peace, human rights, the environment, and
minorities. Yes, the �American Way� has become rife with many of the truly
vulgar and destructive aspects of humanity.
Since 1998, pro-Evolutionary forces have been grappling with
anti-Evolutionary forces for control of the Kansas State School Board. In the
recent election, power changed hands for the fourth time in eight years as
Darwinists reclaimed a 6-4 advantage on the board. It is virtually a foregone
conclusion that the board will again rewrite the science standards to restore
Evolution to its proper stature. Thankfully, reason will again prevail in
science classes from Overland Park to Dodge City.
Those of us who believe in the validity of scientific inquiry, draw a
distinction between faith and science, and recognize the dangers of
state-validated religion are celebrating progress.
Yet as I pondered the situation more deeply, I realized that Evolution
represents but a minor skirmish in a much broader conflict. And at the same
time, reflecting on the notions of evolution and change conjured thoughts of
how, in many ways, the United States has followed a plummeting moral trajectory
as it has evolved over the years.
While it is reassuring to know that our Kansas public school children
will learn one of the most widely held and accepted theories in the biological
sciences (and at least for now, their spiritual education will be left to their
parents and clergy), there are much larger stakes to consider. Stepping back
and examining human existence from a global perspective reveals countless
disturbing images of unmitigated suffering thrust upon a majority of the
Earth�s inhabitants.
Ohio, Georgia, and Pennsylvania are still struggling to inject religion
into their science classes under the clever guise of the �theory� of
Intelligent Design. Recent legislative initiatives, amendments to state
constitutions, and actions by a variety of activist groups (like the Minutemen)
clearly demonstrate that many of the Western European immigrants to Turtle
Island still suffer the spiritual diseases of homophobia, xenophobia, hubris,
and racism.
Preying upon these spiritual maladies, the opportunists in DC and on
Wall Street (who reside at the peak of the capitalist pyramid) blitz us with
propaganda readily disseminated by their partners in the corporate media to
fuel �culture wars.� Like a blacksmith with bellows, they super heat raw
emotion to a white hot state that leaves human reason in cinders.
As we wage slaves run the rat race, fighting over the scraps so �charitably�
tossed our way in America�s �ownership society,� we claw each others� eyes out
over issues like Evolution, homosexual rights, and abortion, enabling those
leading our depraved social and political institutions to plunder the world�s
wealth with little or no constraint. Aside from the numerous seductive
distractions they provide through television and consumerism, what better way
to manipulate the masses than by perpetually thrusting contentious issues into
their faces that splinter them into warring factions?
Remember December? When Iraqi and American body bags were filling up
faster than Santa�s elves could pack his sacks of toys? And Christians in the
United States were beside themselves because some stores weren�t saying �Merry
Christmas� to customers? It boggles the mind!
It is widely known that the Bush Regime has heavily courted radical
Christian elements in the United States to garner much of its political
support. Ostensibly bearing the cross of the Christian God who blesses only
America, George Bush is on a sacred mission to fulfill Manifest Destiny around
the globe.
With the backing of Diebold, Katherine Harris, the Supreme Court, and a
heavily mobilized base of extremist Christians who stampeded to the polls to
support Bush�s eagerness to fulfill their apocryphal prophecies in the Holy
Land, elect a degenerate individual many apparently believed was an Evangelical
who manifested the virtues of Christ, and to empower a group willing to
proclaim that Christianity is the official state religion, George Bush and his
cronies blatantly subverted our Constitutional Republic by taking office twice
without winning the electoral or the popular vote.
Astoundingly, now that Mephistopheles has revealed his true identity, he
and his fellow Neocons, Zionists, Fundamentalist Christian leaders, and
plutocrats still garner support from amongst their subjugated masses.
Admittedly, he has been on shaky ground lately, but Bush still has enough
adherents that he has avoided impeachment and prosecution for his crimes
against humanity.
Through its denial of civil rights to gays, opposition to abortion and
stem cell research, unwavering support for Israel (and its heinous ethnic
cleansing and war crimes), dedication to preserving the dominant role of White
America, and creation of a nationalist furor that is beyond being obscene, the
Bush Regime has garnered the support of enough Americans to empower them to
unleash Hell upon millions of human beings to further the interests of US
multinationals, the military industrial complex, Israel, and the rest of its
cohorts.
Strauss�s disciples learned their art well as they are clearly
demonstrating with their virtuoso performance. And Kansas is a microcosm of the
stratum of American society that is entranced by the Neocons� euphonious
symphony. A symphony they brilliantly composed to drown out the sounds of their
abuse of power, exploitation and murder.
As 60 Minutes revealed, the Bush administration heavily edits the
findings of its own scientists to minimize public awareness of the dangers of
phenomena like climate change. Employing lawyers to water down admonitions
drafted by NASA and EPA scientists, the Bush Regime seriously limits what would
be well-founded citizen and congressional concern about abusive environmental
practices by the amoral profit seekers of corporate America.
Capitalizing on their paranoid belief that they are somehow facing
persecution by evil secular humanists, the wealthy elites are steering
Dominionists and other Christian extremists down a path to the tyranny each
group craves. Removing prayer from public schools was not about abolishing
Christianity. Eliminating mandatory prayer was to prevent our government from
endorsing and potentially mandating a specific religion. State-imposed religion
is a powerful element of virtually any despotic regime worth its salt.
In blaming Hispanic immigrants for �stealing� benefits from
tax-supported social programs while providing �nothing� in return; perpetuating
Black American poverty, under-education, and crime by isolating many of them in
inner-city ghettos or warehousing them in the prison industrial complex; and
vilifying gays for �destroying the moral fabric� of the United States, our de
facto oligarchs abuse vulnerable populations already despised by many other
Americans and scapegoat them for the ills plaguing our nation. Another block in
the foundation of a �successful� fascist state.
[Note: Fascist states are generally characterized by authoritarian rule,
extreme nationalism, corporate domination, anti-liberalism, and militarism.
Starting to look and sound awfully familiar, eh USA?]
In granting federal money to tax-exempt religious entities for
�faith-based initiatives� to aid the growing numbers of impoverished in the
Twenty First Century Gilded Age, the plutocracy gains the dual advantage of
currying the favor of its Fundamentalist Christian base amongst the �commoners�
and creating a subterfuge for eliminating �wasteful� federal spending on public
social programs to benefit the poor. Many of those resting comfortably atop the
financial summit, whose wealth exists thanks to a deeply corrupt system, which
impoverishes billions of human beings, despise the elements of �liberalism�
which serve to limit their boundless greed and visions of unrestrained,
Dickensonian Capitalism.
Reducing taxes and privatizing have become the mantras of the Bush
Regime�s economic policy. At the end of the day, who doesn�t want to pay less
in taxes and see a reduction in poorly managed government bureaucracies? The
problem is that the tax cuts are providing massive benefit to the super-rich
(like the Walton and Mars families) while putting very little money back into
the pockets of the working class. Meanwhile, military expenditures continue to
rise to more insane levels as programs to benefit children, the elderly, the
sick, and the impoverished are reduced or slashed rather than redesigned or
improved.
What was that definition of fascism again?
Not even public education escapes the rapacious attacks of the ruthless
wolves at the top of the food chain. The No Child Left Behind Act furthers
their goal of strengthening the Fourth Purpose. John Taylor Gatto defined the
Fourth Purpose in an interview about his book, Dumbing us Down: The Hidden
Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling:
Throughout the 19th century, a new Fourth Purpose began
to emerge, tested thoroughly in the military state of Prussia in northern
Europe. The Fourth Purpose made the point of mass schooling to serve big
business and big government by extending childhood, replacing thinking with
drill and memorization while fashioning incomplete people unable to protect
themselves from exhortation, advertising and other forms of indirect command.
In this fashion, poor Prussia with a small population became one of the great
powers of the earth. Its new schooling method was imitated far and wide, from
Japan to the United States.
Some conjecture that the ultimate goal of social conservatives is to
eliminate public education. I disagree. The ruling class realizes what a sacred
cow they would be slaughtering. Besides, as Gatto�s insight indicates, the most
effective way to control human beings is through their psyches. And what better
time to capture human minds than when they are young and malleable?
Profits, property, and power trump humanity in the sociopathic value
systems of the vicious malefactors at the helm of the United States. Witness
the willful neglect leading to the tragic death and diaspora of tens of
thousands of Black Americans in New Orleans. Consider the slaughter of over
100,000 Iraqi civilians, the liberal distribution of depleted uranium
throughout Iraq�s countryside, the wanton destruction of much of Iraqi infrastructure,
the death of over 2,5 00 American military personnel in Iraq, the sacrifice of
almost 3,000 American civilians in the Neocon�s Pearl Harbor on 9/11, the
torture of human beings, and the suspension of basic justice for those
suspected of �terrorism.�
Their willful refusal to employ the power the United States clearly has
to enforce an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon provides yet another overt
example of Neocon moral bankruptcy. The United States has deliberately stymied
UN intervention efforts in order to give Israel time to finish destroying
Lebanon with funding and equipment we furnished. Israel has displaced a million
people, killed over 600 innocent civilians, and destroyed over $2 billion worth
of infrastructure through its invasion of a sovereign nation. This in
retaliation for the capture of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah, a powerful
group of militants over which Lebanon has virtually no control. In contrast,
Israel has suffered the loss of some 30-40 of its civilians. While tragic, these
losses pale in comparison to the devastating horror the Israeli war machine has
inflicted upon Lebanon
A sane government concerned with human welfare and justice would have
put a stop to these blatant crimes against humanity long before the situation
escalated to this point. But the Bush Regime has justified and encouraged the
Israeli atrocities. They obfuscate well, but it does not take much critical
thinking to see the true agenda of our malevolent leaders.
Virtually all citizens of the United States have been deceived by their
government to some extent. While I remain a tenacious dissident against many of
the United States� political and social institutions because of my passion for
social justice and human rights, my choice to manifest my dissent through
writing and publishing burdens me with a degree of complicity in the schemes of
the Bush Regime. As I research, analyze, write, and publish, I serve humanity
as writers have throughout history. I educate, inspire both support and
opposition, amuse, comfort, provoke thought, agitate, anger, and in some cases,
win hearts and minds. Yet at the same time, by asserting intellectual arguments
which are mostly opposed to the American Empire because of my personal beliefs,
I participate in the intellectual civil war the ruling elites love to
perpetuate to keep those of us in the �lower classes� from achieving solidarity
against them.
Contrary to our patriotic programming, dissidents in the United States
are not free to exercise their First Amendment rights because millions of poor
wretches fought and died in wars of imperial conquest under the pretext of
�protecting� or �spreading freedom.� For now, our leaders allow domestic
dissent because they want to keep their populace at odds with one another, they
know that their stranglehold on the psyches of many of their citizens is
virtually unbreakable (if people start to see through the Reagans and Bushes,
the ruling elite come up with a �liberal� Democrat like Bill Clinton to pacify
the �Soccer Moms,� yet still maintain the status quo of de facto plutocratic
rule), and they are not ready to shed the thinning veneer that they govern
according to the Constitution.
Yet despite my unintended contribution to the intellectual wars our
overlords use to distract us, if I stop writing and publishing, I will
surrender a significant means to contribute to the struggle for social justice
and human rights and to counter the lies of the corporate media, government
propagandists and history revisionists.
The answer is not to stop thinking, debating, or writing. Regardless of
how we contribute to the struggle or how much we differ in opinion, we of the
poor and working classes need to �agree to disagree� and unite against those
who prey upon us.
Two hundred-thirty years ago, the United States was founded by valiant
rebels who shattered the manacles of colonialism. Sadly, the nation they
predicated on constitutional limitations of government power with significant
emphases on the rights of individual humans (admittedly marred by the denial of
rights to Blacks, women, and Native Americans), has evolved into one of the
most violent, narcissistic, and oppressive empires in the history of humanity.
Sorry Dorothy, but the Wicked Witch of the West is alive and well. But
don�t despair. Human beings possess an uncanny ability to Evolve, especially
for the better.
Jason Miller is a 39-year-old activist writer
with a degree in liberal arts. He
is a member of Amnesty International and an avid supporter of Oxfam
International and Human Rights Watch. He welcomes responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com or comments
on his blog, Thomas Paine's
Corner.