It's always the same--those who are responsible at the top are never called to justice. Not here on earth, that is. I do believe they will have to answer for their crimes in a higher court one day.
The Scapegoat's Apology:
Why Did the Chain of Command Suddenly Vanish When They Got Caught?
by Robert C. Koehler
I don't begrudge William Calley his remorse about My Lai, but I'm hesitant to acknowledge his apology for it.
If you steal $10 from your mother, you need to apologize. If, as you carry out orders, you lead a raid on a village that slaughters 500 or more defenseless people, something of a higher magnitude is required before you can have your life back.
"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai," Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Columbus, Ga., last week. "I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry."
It's not that I don't believe him . . . or that I hold him unforgivable. As a matter of principle, I refuse to waste time heaping my allotted teaspoonful of disapprobation on a scapegoat. Calley's "responsibility" for My Lai, though personally enormous, is a minute fraction of the symbolic role -- the Bad Apple in an American Uniform -- he was forced to fill. He was, indeed, just following orders. And the first order of war is to suspend your humanity.
Just ask Lynndie England -- another Bad Apple, another Face of Shame -- who was also recently in the news. She had been scheduled to discuss her biography as part of a veterans forum at the Library of Congress several weeks ago, but threats and safety concerns forced the organizers to cancel her appearance.
England once almost apologized for Abu Ghraib, or for her miniscule but high-profile role in that scandal. "Yes, I was in five or six pictures and I took some pictures," she told an interviewer for Stern, the German illustrated weekly magazine, "and those pictures were shameful and degrading to the Iraqis and to our government. And I feel sorry and wrong about what I did."
The apology came well into the interview, in response to a pressing question about her sense of remorse. It was still tangled with her anger that the photos were made public at all, and was the lamest part of a fascinating interview. Far more interesting, for instance, were her memories of the casual horrors of Abu Ghraib and the moral relativism that was expected of her:
"Of course it was wrong. I know that now. But when you show the people from the CIA, the FBI and the MI (military intelligence) the pictures and they say, 'Hey, this is a great job. Keep it up,' you think it must be right. They were all there and they didn't say a word. They didn't wear uniforms, and if they did they had their nametags covered. . . .
"It was kind of weird at first. But once I started to see the big picture, I thought, OK, here come these guys, the OGAs (other government agencies), the MIs or even officers, and they don't even look twice at it. If they approve, then I'm not going to say anything. Who was I to argue?"
Poor Specialist England. She was just trying to be patriotic -- "as a child I mainly grew up on military gung-ho movies, so that's where I got the idea" (to join the Reserves) -- but she got caught up, like Lt. Calley, in the darkness of war, which passeth all understanding. "Who was I to argue?"
It's always the same darkness, is it not? At his trial, Calley protested: "I was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy. That was my job on that day. . . . I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women and children. They were all classified the same, and that was the classification that we dealt with, just as enemy soldiers."
In both cases, the odd thing was that the darkness got interrupted and they got caught in freeze-frame, enthusiastically carrying out their orders, or perhaps improvising them. But they'd been doing so surrounded by a context -- the chain of command -- which suddenly vanished when they got caught.
And here we come to the excruciating difficulty of any scapegoat's apology. Their personal regrets, whether sincere or wound through with self-pity, hardly touch the enormity of the role they've been forced to play. They can apologize, or try to apologize, for carrying out their orders, but they can't apologize for the orders themselves, or the special interests of war that bear ultimate responsibility for their implementation.
But let us stop playing with that slight word, "apology," and dig at least for a word that approaches the magnitude of the matter at hand. What if Calley had told the Kiwanis of Columbus, Ga., that he intended not to apologize but to atone for his role in the My Lai massacre? What would that mean?
At the very least it suggests a commitment to do more than clear one's name or somehow pay off a debt for old crimes. It suggests a lifelong commitment to reach for wisdom, and to convey that wisdom to the present moment. To atone is to cry out -- with the outsize voice that history has bequeathed the scapegoat -- against the big wrong called war that is still worshipped today, and with one's words cut into present policy. We can't change the past but, by God, we can humanize the future.
Could something as simple as a quick and easy blood test save your life?
Absolutely.
It is called a C-reactive protein test, and it measures the degree of HIDDEN inflammation in your body.
Finding out whether or not you are suffering from hidden inflammation is critical, because almost every modern disease is caused or affected by it.
If your immune system and its ability to quell inflammation in your body are impaired, watch out. You are headed toward illness and premature aging.
Fortunately, addressing the causes of inflammation and learning how to live an anti-inflammatory lifestyle can dramatically improve your health.
To read the rest of the article, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/is-your-body-burning-up-w_b_269717.html
What's In The Flu Shot?
The media has been promising a "flu pandemic" for months. Initially, nothing happened. Then a laboratory-produced strain of flu virus that, according to many prominent scientists, simply could not have arisen in nature, was released earlier this year in
Our government, on our behalf, has given the drug makers about a billion dollars of taxpayer money to develop the new vaccines, even though these companies are among the richest and most powerful on the planet. Their expected profits should exceed $50 billion, if their hopes for the coming "flu season" pan out.
Absent any large scale damage from the "new strain" of flu, the World Health Organization (WHO), in cooperation with the drug makers, went ahead and quietly took the step that will change everything that is about to happen. They declared a "stage 6 pandemic." That means the WHO can assume power over all 194 member countries (including ours, of course), superseding each countries' own laws to force injection of every man, woman and child with the chemical cocktails that the drug makers produce.
If you think it is important to personally investigate this issue before injecting this material into your body or your child's, do your homework and know what it is you are about to do. Do not blindly believe the "experts." Your body or your child's may be a "sacrifice they are willing to make." Many doctors recommend vaccinations because it is standard procedure and the belief among doctors that vaccines prevent disease. However, there are many reputable doctors who say vaccines simply do not work, period. In fact, historically there are many instances of massive outbreaks of disease after mass vaccinations and there are many more health problems that occur commonly than simply getting the disease vaccinated against. Some of these problems are serious, even deadly. It is becoming common knowledge, for example, that the current wave of autism in
And high-dose mercury is not the only additive in the new flu vaccinations. Besides injecting live flu virus directly into yours and your child's bodies, these shots will also contain "adjuvants," to make the virus supply for the shots go farther. One of the adjuvants will probably be "squalene." This is a naturally occurring substance found throughout the human body, and might be harmless – if you drank it. But when it is injected, several of the doctors in the references below, believe it will cause the body to produce antibodies which will produce autoimmune diseases in many and compromise their quality of life permanently, and they believe many will die. This is in addition to spreading the very pandemic that has been predicted, not from getting the virus naturally, but from getting the virus by direct injection. That in turn, will give the government a perfect excuse for measures that WHO mandates in their procedures, including incarceration for anyone attempting to refuse the shots (probably 3 per person), and the use of deadly force, if necessary.
Check this out for yourself. Read the article cited below by Dr. James Howenstein, world-renown researcher and MD, whose article on why to avoid the flu shot is backed up by his own research. This issue is as serious as the life and health of your family, so please read these materials, and others you may find, in order to get the whole picture on what is a profitable, but seriously flawed theory that vaccinations prevent disease.
www.freedomsphoenix.com - Daily news, subscribe for free)
www.realityzone.com - Weekly news, subscribe for free
www.healthfreedomusa.org - News on all health freedom issues, get on free email list.
http://www.naturalnews.com/Index.html
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100002_01/08/2009_109461
http://www.infowars.com/voluminous-research-proves-vaccines-are-deadly/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/Swine_flu/article6734056.ece
http://www.newswithviews.com/Howenstine/james.htm
http://www.homefirst.com - Check out all of the previously-held free "webinars" offered by this courageous MD. This is an excellent education in the essential basics of vaccination and specifically the swine flu shot.
Http://www.drtenpenny.com - Another great educational site. This doctor has devoted many years to the study of vaccination and now devotes much of her time to educating the public about the massive damage she sees coming from vaccinations.
http://www.drcarley.com - Dr. Carley has also spent many years in the study of vaccinations and believes the injecting of mass numbers of Americans with this new series of shots will create not only a widespread real pandemic, but will also damage and kill large numbers of Americans and citizens of other countries who are also members of WHO.
Today the greatest senator who ever served performed one of the most valiant acts in the history of the Senate by asking Massachusetts to pass a law giving the governor the power to appoint his successor. This noble move will electrify and rally healthcare supporters across the nation and provide a gigantic booster shot to advocates of the public option.
Virtually none of the pundits have gotten this right. There are two distinct issues: first, the fate of the public option, and second, the fate of the Democratic and Republican parties based on how they handle healthcare and other issues.
Regarding the parties, any pundit who claims this is a defeat of the Democrats or a victory for the Republicans deserves the response Barney Frank gave in a town meeting: "What planet are you living on?" In the NBC poll the Republicans have a negative rating on healthcare that rises above 60 percent and a positive rating that has shrunk to a humiliating and disastrous near-20 percent, which is lower than George W. Bush at his lowest. In the new Pew poll, Democrats have a general favorable rating of 49 percent while Republicans have a favorable rating of 40 percent.
For any pundits who think this is good for Republicans, please sign up for my math class. You flunk. F-minus is your grade. It is astonishing and laughable that any pundit can call a negative rating of over 60 percent on healthcare anything but a debacle for the Republicans. It is amazing that any pundit can claim that a Republican Party running 9 percent behind the party of Obama, Reid and Pelosi is anything other than a disaster for Republicans.
The pundits are also wrong about Obama and the public option. The fact is, that Obama never publicly waged a defense or support for the public option. Even when he said it was essential, it was a mention in passing. I wrote a post here many weeks ago asking whether Obama was preparing to surrender.
Of course what we witnessed last Saturday and Sunday was an attempt by Obama and the White House to surrender on the public option. It was so crude and poorly handled, as much of their case on healthcare has been, that it outraged huge numbers of Democrats throughout the nation and in the Congress.
Having attempted to surrender on Saturday and Sunday, the White House surrendered their surrender on Monday, saying they still support the public option. Then, on Tuesday, they put out the bizarre, ridiculous and obviously untrue spin that "nothing has changed.” Of course, the village idiot knows exactly what changed: everything changed.
From Saturday, when the president did not even mention the public option once in his New York Times op-ed, to Sunday, when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs distanced themselves from the public option, to Monday, when they reiterated their support for the public option, to Tuesday, when the progressive outrage mounted to ferocious levels, it is laughable to say nothing changed when the White House was twisting and turning and changing by the hour.
The quote in The Washington Post from a "senior White House adviser" criticizing "the left of the left" for actually promoting what we thought was the president's program on the public option, means this:
There was panic in the White House from those who wanted to sell out the public option, so they ridicule and demean and slander the overwhelming majority of Democrats in America, and in the House and Senate, with the bogus smear that they are "the left of the left.”
I sent a formal request to the White House asking whether the "senior White House adviser" meant that the Speaker of the House is the left of the left. No answer yet. Is Kennedy the left of the left? Are a majority of Democrats in the House and Senate the left of the left?
I found this reprehensible for the same reason I found Lanny Davis's recent post on The Hill’s Pundits Blog reprehensible. They equate rightists who bring guns to town meetings, who lie about major provisions in the bill, and who yell and shout and disrupt town meetings with those who support what we thought was the president position in favor of the public option.
The senior White House aide, and Davis, use the language of the right to make the attack of the right, against the heart and soul of those who supported the president and supported the president's plan. This is not about any left of the left, which is the kind of nonsense that has gotten the president in trouble. And no, Lanny, there is no equivalence on this between alleged extremists on both sides.
The extremist tactics and the dishonest claims have not come from both sides. Of course, individual liberals have said things I might disapprove of, but in toto to equate those who support the president’s plan for the public option with the extremist tactics of the right, or to refer to those who support the president's public option as the left of the left, is a slander and defamation of many of the president's most loyal supporters and a major reason for the growing outrage among them.
Now Ted Kennedy, the poker player with a mastery of Congress and the fighter for healthcare for the people, has made the master move at the perfect moment.
God bless this good and great man and senator. He has called everybody's bluff. He is putting the big card on the table.
Let the Republicans brag about their 62 percent negative rating on healthcare.
Let the Democratic capitulationists try to capitulate.
Let the president tell us where he stands.
The master has made his move, and it is a whole new ballgame. Now the fight begins in earnest.
All but two states — Alaska and Wyoming — have issued fish-consumption advisories because of mercury contamination. Some of the streams studied already had warnings.
STUDY FINDS MERCURY IN FISH WIDESPREAD, BLAMES MINING, COAL PLANTS
By Susie Madrak
I found this cheery news over at my pal Dr. S.'s place. This is a handy piece of information to remember when the administration and congressional leaders start pushing (and they will) for "clean" coal:
WASHINGTON — A federal study of mercury contamination released Wednesday found the toxic substance in every fish tested at nearly 300 streams across the country, a finding that underscores how widespread mercury pollution has become.
The study by the U.S. Geological Survey is the most comprehensive look to date at mercury in the nation's streams. From 1998 to 2005, scientists collected and tested more than a thousand fish from 291 streams nationwide. While all fish had traces of mercury contamination, only about a quarter had levels exceeding what the Environmental Protection Agency says is safe for people eating average amounts of fish.
[...] Mercury can damage the nervous system and cause learning disabilities in developing fetuses and young children. The main source of mercury to most of the streams tested, according to the researchers, is emissions from coal-fired power plants. The mercury released from smokestacks rains down into waterways, where natural processes convert it into methylmercury — a form that allows the toxin to wind its way up the food chain into fish.
Some of the highest levels in fish were detected in the remote blackwater streams along the coasts of the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana, where surrounding forests and wetlands help in the conversion.
Mercury was also detected in high concentrations in western streams that drain areas mined for mercury and gold. At about 59 of the streams, mostly in the West, mining could be contributing to the mercury levels, the researchers said.
"Some ecosystems are more sensitive than others," said Barbara Scudder, the lead USGS scientist on the study.
All but two states — Alaska and Wyoming — have issued fish-consumption advisories because of mercury contamination. Some of the streams studied already had warnings.
| Obama on Drugs: 98% Cheney? Source: gregpalast.com | |
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From Bill Maher on his show tonight:
New Rule: If Mitt Romney, Karl Rove and Sarah Palin all think America has never done anything wrong, we must be doing something wrong. Look at them: an empty suit, an empty heart and an empty head. It looks like the news team on Good Morning Hell. And what they've been competing about lately is who would not apologize the most. America is infallible, and apologies are horrible things that must never, ever be given. Except by me when I make a joke about the Pope. "We're perfect -- deal with it," is their new handshake. But I say, what's wrong with America occasionally saying, "I'm sorry"? Because these are the three sorriest white people I've ever seen.
If in your eyes America can do no wrong, you should really look into Lasik surgery. There's the rational, mature assessment of our country: that it's a great nation -- especially if you like fried foods -- but it also has its faults. And then there's the Republican view: that it's perfect and pure in every way and it's always right all the time, just like Leviticus and Ronald Reagan.
If the founders were alive today, Republicans would be giving them shit because the Preamble to the Constitution says, "In order to form a more perfect union? Hello, it's already perfect! Why are you suggesting American apologetics, Ben Franklin?"
One of the things that makes Republicans furious about our current president is their idea that Obama is always apologizing for America's biggest mistakes. Unlike President Bush. Who was one of America's biggest mistakes.
In his first week as president, Obama did an interview with Arab TV in which he said, "We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect." Thought crime! And then he went to Cairo and violated one of those absolute eternal rules the Right Wing is always making up out of thin air: "The president must never apologize on foreign soil. Lest our allies begin to doubt that we're assholes. "
But what did Obama actually say to make Karl Rove's head explode and the popcorn fly out? Cover your children's ears: When he was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism, he said he did, the same way "the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism." Yes, our so-called president actually said people in other countries might like their countries better. I was so shocked I nearly dropped the Bible I was using to help me masturbate into my gun.
In her farewell speech -- if only -- Sarah Palin kept telling us "how she's wired." Now I'm not a doctor, or an electrician -- but this is faulty wiring, this world view that, in her words, "we should never apologize for our country." Really? Never? Not for slavery? Or Japanese internment camps, or if we tortured the wrong guy at Guantanamo? The Indians? Nothing, Sarah? "The Real Housewives of Atlanta"? Shouldn't John McCain apologize for... you?
When did intractability become a virtue? Mitt Romney's new book is called No Apology: The Case For American Greatness. You can find it at Borders, in the "Suck-Up" section. It's such a perfect title, combining paranoia with arrogance: "No one has yet asked me to apologize but, if someone ever does, fuck them."
Conservatives think apologizing is a sign of weakness. It's what liberal pussies do, when they're not busy driving electric cars and feeling empathy. When in fact it's the weak and the scared who are too insecure to apologize. Apologies are actually a sign of strength. That's why six-year-olds hate them.
In Rwanda, after a genocide that killed a million people, they set up special courts where people stood up and said, "Hey, sorry I macheted your entire family. My bad." And believe it or not, in most cases, that was enough. That's the power of an apology. A recent study reveals that doctors who are willing to apologize to patients for their mistakes are sued for malpractice about half as much as doctors who aren't willing to apologize.
Apologies can do great things, and they can enable great things. And if you still don't believe me, I have three words for you: make-up sex.
A backlash in the progressive base — which pushed President Obama over the top in the Democratic primary and played a major role in his general election victory — has been building for months. The fight over the public option involves real policy substance, but it’s also a proxy for broader questions about the president’s priorities and overall approach.
The idea of letting individuals buy insurance from a government-run plan was introduced in 2007 by Jacob Hacker of Yale, was picked up by John Edwards during the Democratic primary, and became part of the original Obama health care plan.
One purpose of the public option is to save money. Experience with Medicare suggests that a government-run plan would have lower costs than private insurers; in addition, it would introduce more competition and keep premiums down.
And let’s be clear: the supposed alternative, nonprofit co-ops, is a sham. That’s not just my opinion; it’s what the market says: stocks of health insurance companies soared on news that the Gang of Six senators trying to negotiate a bipartisan approach to health reform were dropping the public plan. Clearly, investors believe that co-ops would offer little real competition to private insurers.
Also, and importantly, the public option offered a way to reconcile differing views among Democrats. Until the idea of the public option came along, a significant faction within the party rejected anything short of true single-payer, Medicare-for-all reform, viewing anything less as perpetuating the flaws of our current system. The public option, which would force insurance companies to prove their usefulness or fade away, settled some of those qualms.
That said, it’s possible to have universal coverage without a public option — several European nations do it — and some who want a public option might be willing to forgo it if they had confidence in the overall health care strategy. Unfortunately, the president’s behavior in office has undermined that confidence.
On the issue of health care itself, the inspiring figure progressives thought they had elected comes across, far too often, as a dry technocrat who talks of “bending the curve” but has only recently begun to make the moral case for reform. Mr. Obama’s explanations of his plan have gotten clearer, but he still seems unable to settle on a simple, pithy formula; his speeches and op-eds still read as if they were written by a committee.
Meanwhile, on such fraught questions as torture and indefinite detention, the president has dismayed progressives with his reluctance to challenge or change Bush administration policy.
And then there’s the matter of the banks.
I don’t know if administration officials realize just how much damage they’ve done themselves with their kid-gloves treatment of the financial industry, just how badly the spectacle of government supported institutions paying giant bonuses is playing. But I’ve had many conversations with people who voted for Mr. Obama, yet dismiss the stimulus as a total waste of money. When I press them, it turns out that they’re really angry about the bailouts rather than the stimulus — but that’s a distinction lost on most voters.
So there’s a growing sense among progressives that they have, as my colleague Frank Rich suggests, been punked. And that’s why the mixed signals on the public option created such an uproar.
Now, politics is the art of the possible. Mr. Obama was never going to get everything his supporters wanted.
But there’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line. It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Senator Charles E. Grassley feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will “pull the plug on grandma,” and two days later the White House declares that it’s still committed to working with him.
It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.
Indeed, no sooner were there reports that the administration might accept co-ops as an alternative to the public option than G.O.P. leaders announced that co-ops, too, were unacceptable.
So progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it. And now he needs to win it back.
Think Progress has the whole nightmarish scenario:
Former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will participate in the upcoming season of “Dancing with the Stars,” facing off against pop singer Aaron Carter, actress Melissa Joan Hart, and former Dallas Cowboy Michael Irvin. According to DeLay spokesperson Shannon Flaherty, “Anyone who’s seen him on the dance floor at convention parties or weddings knows he’s going to surprise a lot of people — and in a good way. This is going to be a fun campaign, and at least we know he’ll make it as far as Tucker Carlson.” (Carlson was the first contestant eliminated in the 2006 season.)
ZOMG! Apparently this is step one of the Delay Reputation Recovery tour so that he can someday have as much gravitas in the national arena as his similarly scandal-ridden cohort in the House, Newt Gingrich. I'm sure that next will be a Very Special Episode of 24, in which Delay saves the world with Jack Bauer.
I have actually never watched this show and this *guaran-damn-tees* I never will.
After Barack Obama's convincing win over John McCain, it was clear the Republican Party was at a crossroads. The Grand Old Party had to decide what ideology was going to guide it in the post-Bush era: a philosophy rooted in conservative ideas or a credo based upon fear and anger. Unfortunately for America, Republicans turned to the dark side and chose the road to fascism.
By "fascism" I mean a national political movement that rejects democracy, embraces nativism and racism, and promotes violence. The Ku Klux Klan is an American fascist movement. The German Nazis were another example.
The Republican dance with fascism dates to the Nixon era when the GOP recruited Southern Democrats alienated by passage of the Civil Rights Act. When George W. Bush first ran for President, rabidly racist and sexist groups became major campaign players. The Bush White House encouraged nativism with its imagery of America the Christian nation leading a worldwide crusade against infidels. And, Bush fed distrust of reason - another hallmark of fascism - with his fear-based propaganda and anti-science agenda.
Since Obama's election, we've seen the Republican Party tighten its embrace of fascism. First, they made the decision to oppose whatever Obama proposed without offering contrasting ideas; their hope was that the President would fail and this would work to their advantage. Republican leaders rooted for a collapse of the American financial system, wanted the current recession to be as severe as the Great Depression, so their Party could take advantage of the chaos.
Second, in the absence of strong internal leadership, the GOP looked to demagogues - Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity - to represent the Party. Republicans adopted Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels' "big lie" tactic, where Party spokespeople could say anything so long as it advanced their cause. Limbaugh denied there is a healthcare crisis, called Obama a racist and compared him to Hitler. Beck, Hannity, and O'Reilly took the same path as Limbaugh and claimed the Democrats' healthcare bill supports euthanasia.
Third, the GOP embraced nativism and racism by supporting border vigilantes, opposing the Supreme Court nomination of Sonja Sotomayor, and spreading lies about Obama's birth. In effect, the Republican Party rebranded itself as the White People's Party.
And finally, in their advocacy of disruptions at Congressional town hall meetings, Republicans have explicitly supported violence. Beginning with the lie that the Obama Administration wants to suspend the second amendment and deny Americans the right to bear arms, Glen Beck has promoted armed resistance. Falsely claiming Obama has "surrounded himself by Marxists his whole life," Beck proclaimed the Obama era is reminiscent of ""the early days of Adolf Hitler" and suggested America is rapidly becoming " a totalitarian state." The Republican Party and closely allied lobbyists promoted thuggery that disrupted town hall meetings. Now the Republican Party teeters on the edge of the signature tactic of fascist movements: sponsoring paramilitary groups.
It's time for Americans to call the Republican tactics for what they really are and launch a counter-attack against fascism.
(1) Encourage Democratic members of Congress to vote for the Obama healthcare plan when they return from their August recess. Republican leaders understand that healthcare reform is vital for the American people and the economy and its passage will further diminish GOP influence and credibility. So long as they are united, Democrats don't need Republican votes to pass healthcare reform.
(2) Show up at town hall meetings, support healthcare reform, and object to the mob violence espoused by the Republican Party. Ask GOP leaders to denounce thuggery. Send letters to your local newspaper supporting healthcare reform and condemning Republican fascism.
(3) Donate to progressive groups that pledge to combat fascism; for example, Organizing for America, Democracy for America, and Move On.
(4) Support Democratic Representatives from swing Congressional districts; those holding seats that might be jeopardized by a vote supporting the Obama healthcare initiative. The Cook Report lists 18 Democratic incumbents at risk.
(5) Demonstrate against hatemongers - Beck, Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh, Malkin, O'Reilly, Savage and others - and the Republican leadership that supports them - Boehner, McConnell, Palin, and Steele. Send them disapproving emails and show up at their public appearances.
(6) Boycott sponsors that advertise on the shows of hatemongers. Fox News Boycott has a complete list of Fox sponsors.
(7) Demand that the FCC or Congress reinstate the Fairness Doctrine to limit the power of Fox News and hate radio. In 1987, the Republican-dominated Federal Communications Commission suspended the fairness doctrine, which required holders of broadcast licenses to report on controversial issues in an honest, equitable, and balanced manner. This action opened the door for Fox News, the Rush Limbaugh show, and other conservative outlets to spew Republican propaganda without having to offer the opposing perspective.
This is a critical moment for healthcare reform, the Obama presidency, and American democracy. In their ill-considered scramble for power, the Republican leadership is feeding the fires of fascism. It's time for all of us to do what we can to ensure meaningful healthcare reform legislation is enacted and the GOP tactics are rebuked.
Suffering is sustained by the belief in the reality of the separate, independent, limited self. This concept is the root of all the other self-centered thoughts and beliefs. We picked these up in the "years of ignorance" when our natural and innate identity was unclear. This lack of clarity led us to assume that the conceptual "I" or self-image was true, that this mind-created person and all of its identifications was who we are. The arising of the self-centered thoughts and belief in the reality of the "I" thought as our actual identity is itself what suffering is. As long as the "I" is assumed to be present and true and, most importantly, to be what we are, the root of suffering is alive and we will fall victim to belief and interest in the self-centered concepts. It is not a matter of waiting for "conditioning" to fall away. This is a common but misguided view. It is not the thoughts per se that constitute the suffering. It is the belief in them. It is the continued tendency to look into the mind and take its images to be valid definitions of ourselves that sustains the suffering. Often, this basic mechanism is not clearly understood, in spite of whatever other understanding we may have. This leads us to misperceive the cause of suffering and fail to understand it. But once this is clear, the ability to believe in the concepts falls away and the basis of the suffering is removed.
The clarity of those words rings like a bell within me -- and helps me to laugh as more of an observer of the human scene than as a strongly involved participant. I still observe and participate as a seemingly separate person, but am no longer involved in a suffering way. I am forever grateful to my friend John for pursuing his own spiritual search until he found the answers that rang true within himself -- and then felt he could share this with his friends (no cost, no organization, no hierarchy, nothing but good conversation and simple, clear truth). I do feel blessed to have discovered this in this lifetime. And I would like to share it with friends who also feel drawn, as I did, to find real truth in what appears to be a confused mish-mash of a world.
For spiritual seekers who have been searching in the "marketplace" for years, the following warning comes from an amazon.com reviewer of one of John's books, that I think is very helpful advice:
If you are "enjoying" your spiritual life-- reading spiritual books, watching videos, going to satsang, following teachers with funny names about, getting enlightened, developing your psycho-spiritual being, opening your chakras, consciously evolving, going deeper, understanding more, then don't read this book! John's books are not about feeding "your" spiritual life but rather ending it by the simple and direct recognition of your true nature, this Light Behind Consciousness which is prior to the conceptual mind and yet completely illuminates it.
Because this recognition is so simple and direct, there is nothing the conceptual mind can do with it or about it. There are no practices, no philosophy, no beliefs. There is nothing in this pointing for a separate "me" to do.
Fortunately, John has infinite patience dealing with the confusion and questions of the mind as he helps the "reader" recognize what they always already are. As 'Sailor' Bob says, "This is simplicity itself."
AMEN.
What we're seeing in these angry town halls these days is the last gasp of the angry white man. He's not quite sure what he's angry about, but he knows he's angry. It's not the world he used to know. He gets the disquieting feeling that he doesn't rule the roost anymore. And it's driving him crazy.
One of the chants at the town hall events was, "No national healthcare!" Okay, mission accomplished. No one has proposed such a thing. So, I guess they can go home now befuddled at what they were yelling about.
The reality is that what they have been manipulated into arguing against is a public option that would give them more choices, not less in health insurance. It wouldn't nationalize health insurance at all, let alone any part of the rest of the health care industry.
But this isn't about health insurance. It isn't even about health care. You think those people are really this animated about having less health care options and making sure it costs more for them and their family? No, this is visceral for them. And it has nothing to do with their perceived choices on health care. This is about the sinking feeling in their stomach that they are losing power in this country - losing control. That the reigns of power are slipping out of their hands and they don't know what to do about it, except yell, really loud.
One guy famously shouted, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." Everyone is understandably amused by this. But there is a larger point here. They don't care about the logic of the issue at hand. I'm not convinced they even care what the issue is. These are the same people that were yelling at the Palin rallies. They were screaming just as loud then, and it was different issues, or no issues at all. Just name calling and fear. Pure, unadulterated fear.
At a recent Tampa town hall people were yelling at the top of their lungs, "Hear Our Voice." Ironically, that's all we could hear. No one could hear the congresswoman there. Or any arguments that were being made or any issues debated. All they could hear was the loud, angry voices demanding to be heard.
And who is stoking these fires? Encouraging and egging on these screams, this anger, this fear? Conservative talk hosts all across the country (and, of course, special interest groups funded by the healthcare industry who are relishing using these poor schleps as fodder for their effort to kill health care reform). They're telling them the proper response is anger. Don't wait your turn. Don't listen to the congressman. Shout. Be heard. Be angry. Obama is taking this country away from you.
The woman who now famously stood up in a Delaware town hall and demanded that her congressman recognize the illegitimacy of Barack Obama's birth certificate, said something telling in her rant. She said, "I want my country back!"
Indeed. Where did it go? Of course, the country is still right here. It's the "my" part that's missing. She doesn't want this country back. She wants her country back.
I want everyone to be heard, too. I hated it when the Bush handlers would keep out dissenting voices from their town halls. If conservatives are frustrated with some of the policy initiatives of the Obama administration, I think it's an appropriately democratic reaction to show up at town halls and ask questions. In fact, if they did it in a way that asked their representatives interesting and tough questions, I'd be proud of them.
Some of them are holding up constitutions. They finally got them out of the drawer where they were collecting mothballs as the Bush administration ran roughshod over that sacred text. They didn't seem to demand loyalty to that document as the Bush team eviscerated the Fourth Amendment.
But bygones be bygones, if they want to hold Obama responsible for his signing statements for example, great. You can argue he is impinging against Article I of the Constitution just as Bush did.
Do you think that's the argument the town hall screamers are making? Come on, can anyone really discern an argument? Could they point to one clause that they think Obama has violated? My guess is if challenged they would scream out the Second Amendment. Except Obama has not only not done anything to impose gun control, he has gone out of his way to reign in his Attorney General to make sure he also does nothing about it. It isn't about the Second Amendment. It isn't about the constitution. It's about the anger.
It's a self justifying anger. The angrier they get the more they feel the imperative to get angry. What is it? What's really eating away at them? I don't think it's a conscious racial thing for them. It's more a feeling of their way of life slipping away from them.
Think about it. If you worked at the local shop and in the old days you could get your son hired there, things were pretty good. Now, they tell you that they have to give the job to someone else's son. Someone that doesn't look like you, someone that you've never met or ever talked to. There's been a lot of generations of that now.
You think those guys are going to inquire into the history of racial prejudice in this country and why it might make sense to increase diversity in a workplace when some groups have been excluded entirely? No, all they know is that their son couldn't get the same job that their dads got for them. They want their country back.
Of course, this has been building up for quite awhile. But now they have lost their political power. Now the epitome of what they were fighting against is their new leader. His first hire for the Supreme Court is a Hispanic woman, who they hear is racist against white men and was only picked because of her race and gender.
And when the president is talking about a confrontation between a white man (a cop trying to do his job) and a black man (another one that got to be a professor, though God knows if he earned it), he immediately chooses the side of the black man - without even knowing the facts. Man, they're angry. This is the guy they were warned about.
Whether their perception is true is not relevant. It's the intensity of the perception that is relevant. And on top of all this, they feel the whole system is rigged against the average guy (and they're right about this one).
The bankers get all the money. The government spends a ton of cash, but they feel like it never comes to them. It feels like the guys at the top are the ones who always make out like bandits (the fact that their anger against this is being used by those same guys for their own interests is of tremendous irony).
But then add on top of that, their team lost. They don't feel like the president is "one of them." Maybe that's not even malicious, or at least consciously malicious. But that's how they feel. The world is changing around them and every time they turn on the radio or television (which, of course, is glued to Fox News), they are being told they're right to be angry. And that their anger should be directed primarily at one man - Barack Obama.
That's where the trouble comes in. It's starting to feel like a third world country around here. In developing countries there are organized mobs. There are disruptions of political gatherings. There are angry crowds and talk of gathering weapons. Talk of revolutions (one man in South Carolina told Rep. Inglis that "there is not a day that goes by ... that I don't hear talk of revolution in our country.").
We're America. We're supposed to be better than this.
We're supposed to resolve our differences peaceably and civilly. We're supposed to listen to one another. We're supposed to have the best democracy in the world. As it stands, we're one burning tire away from Haiti. We have to dial this thing back down.
Of course, the problem isn't the progressives here. Their side won. The moderates and independents aren't necessarily boiling over with anger. No, in this case, it's the right-wing. And there's the problem. Because there does not seem to be anyone on that side who is capable or inclined to bring down the volume of the conversation. If anything, their response is more shouting, more disruptions, more rancor and more accumulation of weapons. As one local Republican nominee in Virginia put it, "We have the chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box." So, what happens when they keep losing at the ballot box?
It's beginning to smell a lot like banana republic around here. And there is no answer. If you try to suggest that they bring it down a notch, they scream censorship and warn their audience that their rights are about to be taken away from them. And so is their country. If you say it might not be such a good idea to have all of these weapons in the hands of all these angry men, they scream about the Second Amendment and tell their audience to hold on to their guns even tighter. And many have held on so tight that some of them even pulled the trigger.
How many more will? When does this stoking of anger and fear stop? And who would stop it? I really don't know. Here's one more thing I don't know. What happens if it doesn't?
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