by Starman » Mon Aug 08, 2005 2:31 am
I don't see anything in this article that suggests it is discouraging the Truth movement. I agree with it, and don't even see anything esp. controversial about it. Saying, "Democracy works only as well as its people are capable of keeping themselves informed, active and brave," I think it cuts thru the primary problem of an electorate that have allowed themselves to be distracted, decieved, propagandized, disenfranchised, manipulated, sold-out, victimized, and made superfluous. Of COURSE we've all been subject to ultr-sophisticated, methodical and intricate programs and systems, ie. of dumbed-down educational 'learned' incompetance that bypasses critical thinking, media-disseminated models of faux American 'values' and situational 'get yours!' morality keyed to zero-sum game expectations, social codes of fake-bravery substituting for personal sacrifice and integrity, and pounded with the messages of self-indulgent materialist conformity lacking empathy and compassion, and a mass-media culture of homogenized, anthropocentric fables where Orwellian contradictions such as War is Peace have effectively supplanted plain-talking tell-it-like-it-is.<br><br>I'm not as apt as Biskeborn to attribute the present democratic crisis of political illegitimacy to a citizenry that have been rendered politically impotent through the fear and trembling of terrorism as much as a deliberately induced cynicism and the contemptuous consequences of a thoroughly corrupted and subverted electoral system dominated by the military-corporatocracy. My read is that a LOT of people are flat-out disgusted by the corruption and hypocrisy and special interests that have taken over Government. But essentially, I hold that it was citizens who sold-out, let themselves be lied to and cheated and bribed, who didn't demand accountability for all the excesses and atrocities and horrendous crimes and injustices that have occurred for the last 50+ years. If we ARE victims, it's only because we have been complicit, to the extent that we didn't resist or challenge the status-quo abuse of power.<br><br>Just as its taken decades for the rot and corruption to infect government and industry so thoroughly, it won't change back very quickly to something we can again recognize as standing for principles we can believe in and support, even with tremendous sacrifice and suffering, and laying our lives on the line.<br><br>But NOBODY can do this for us -- I fear we're gonna have to learn the true cost of liberty and justice all over again, the lessons we have squandered and forgotton.<br><br>Starman <p></p><i></i>