Land of the Puppet People

______________________________



American Heroin


It oftentimes boggles the mind to try and understand the ease with which the Establishment can manipulate the American citizenry into another warmongering escapade, this time an ominous foray into the Persian lands of Iran, a nation rich in history, culture, location and most importantly to the Evil Empire, oil and gas. Yet upon further inspection it is easy to comprehend this phenomenon, for we live, as Gore Vidal has labeled it, inside the United States of Amnesia, a country where all semblance of the yesterday becomes but a haze of blatant forgetfulness and convenient whitewash, a black hole of Alzheimer’s-like darkness from where no recollection of past lessons, mistakes, errors or history can be seen or touched.

We live in a nation of gluttonous stupor and comfortable surroundings, easily distracted by the cocktail of materialism that lines our homes. We are trained to live to work, not work to live, sacrificing love of life for love for the Almighty dollar, becoming worker bees and soldier ants, selling our souls to the demons of capitalism in exchange for the happiness and stress-free lives of yesteryear, needing pharmaceutical drugs to escape the depression of our daily lives, willingly choosing to indebt our present and future in order to possess the vast array of adult toys marketed to manipulate our emotions, wrongly thinking this or that product will reincarnate lost happiness. America is the land of plenty, where waistlines expand, stress increases, mental problems grow, work hours increase and vehicles get bigger and bigger, a land addicted to the devil’s excrement, like a heroin user injecting black gold into its ever thirsty veins, becoming a violent, warmongering junkie when the perpetual case of cold turkey arises.

Never before has a society been afforded the wealth and excessiveness that we possess, yet neither has a citizenry been subjected to the consequences invariably arising in order to achieve those ends. Unhappiness, depression, financial hardship, stress, inner demons, anger, dislike, psychological problems, undisciplined and unreared children are some of the costs of maintaining our standards of living. The escapism needed to forget the madness of these costs, accumulated year after year, in daily life, work, finances and society, stands like an idol ready to be worshipped in the middle of our homes, its dark screen awakened with the push of a remote control.

It is the television, that drug of mental escapism and intellectual erosion, the invaluable purveyor of fantasy and fiction, that serves to distract, distort and alleviate the stresses of a life made exceedingly harder by the continued growth of the corporatist state, where profit will always supercede people and the interests of the corporation will always trump those of the People. Yet in the television we also see the greatest tool of mass manipulation ever created, in the last few decades discovered by government and corporate interests for the incredible power emanating from its warm glow. In the span of a couple of decades it has transformed human society, acting as the corporate and governmental invasion of our homes, and into our brainwaves, affecting both the innocent and the old, indiscriminately penetrating the minds of black and white, male and female.

The propaganda emanating from its waves and the fiction produced by its owners has mutated American society into one of slouching couch potatoes, dumbed down ignoramuses, lazy and indifferent citizens, unthinking drones and brainwashed primates, turning a citizenry of creativity, vision, imagination and intelligence into one devoid of each, eroding the minds of experience and altering those of innocence, slowly catapulting America into the precipice of intellectual and knowledge collapse. It is the television that has created the amnesia running rampant from Pacific to Atlantic, saturating us with the brain manipulations of the corporatist world, creating a population needing the sensationalist programming designed to dumb down and distract, feeding into our minds senseless garbage of celebrity adoration and idol worship, introducing us to wave after wave of scheming advertisements and the thoughts and opinions the Establishment want us to incorporate as our own.

Television is the greatest addiction we face, a malignancy that controls entire populations, becoming a drug infiltrating all regions of the brain, altering brainwaves in children, thoughts in adults, creating a population easily controlled and programmed, becoming, over the course of a lifetime, the human antenna receiving the endless stream of propaganda disseminated by government and corporate entities. The effects of television on the human brain have become quite clear after only sixty years in existence. At no other time in human history had our primitive minds been subjected to the rapid imagery, fictionalized programming, brainwashing techniques, ceaseless propaganda, video capabilities and sound distortions of television.

We can now see the results of a decades old experiment, and Americans of today, as the people that most watch the monitor on a daily basis, with our rapid intellectual decline, loss of knowledge, extinction of logic and analytical reasoning, erosion of free thought and our propensity to absorb as our own anything aired on television, are the end result.


Leapfrogging Towards War


Our masters can today do with us as they wish, using the television as the instrument used to implant corporatist propaganda into our minds, knowing that millions upon millions of Americans no longer think for themselves, certain that the anemic education prevalent throughout the nation is succeeding in molding loyal sheep conditioned to obey, consume and produce. Our thoughts are being homogenized; our minds now linger in the assembly lines of corporate propaganda, robbing us of individuality, of different personalities, of various tastes and wants. We are the pawns in the front lines of the corporatist takeover of our nation and most importantly, our minds, with those in power toying with us, making us marionettes whose strings are easily manipulated by the few who control television.

Behind the magic curtain of power we can see that once again America is going on the warpath, getting herself ready for another imperialist offensive preemptive attack, disguised in the full spectrum of colors that are coordinated to hide the real reasons for war. Thus, the conditioning of the War Culture has for a few months now been set in motion with a media blitzkrieg engineered to prepare the nation’s consciousness for further conflict. Gently, slowly, systematically and methodically propaganda is being delivered into our comfortable homes on a daily basis that is designed to mold us into hating another nation, another people, using the same mold as before to deceive and manipulate an always gullible citizenry. The powers that decide the destiny of the nation have very little challenge in brainwashing the American public.

Knowing that Americans have perfected the art of amnesia, easily forgetting yesterday in a haze of distraction and escapism, possessing the attention spans of gnats and the enlightenment existing during the Dark Ages, ignorant to the world beyond our bubble of excessiveness, finding us addicted to television, videogames and prescription pills, relying on ten second sound bites and the subjective drivel of talking heads for information, our minds made distorted by the fantasy and fiction we watch incessantly, with free thought now made extinct by the massive abandonment of reading books, with mental lethargy now the rule rather than the exception, the Establishment can recycle long used and recently implemented blueprints to steer the nation towards the acceptance of illegal offensive war and further crimes against humanity.

The warmonger rulers realize that with such a dumbed down populace, readily accepting as true everything told them by their government, believing everything their television generates, no lie is too big or outlandish, no deception will ever be rebelled against and no whitewash will ever be questioned. Using television, which is today but an instrument furthering corporate control of our lives, spewing only what is of interest to the corporatist world, Americans are bombarded with the propaganda that will manufacture an enemy out of Iran. Without the television, able to reach hundreds of millions of people, able to penetrate our psyches and minds, able to affect our emotions and behaviors, getting our full attention as we sit glued to the set, listening to talking heads and government lackeys, the brainwashing of the masses by the government and the corporatist world would be a much harder endeavor. With it, however, the mobilization of minds is a relatively easy accomplishment, and the conditioning of hundreds of millions of citizens becomes cheap, efficient and successful.

With the same manual as that used to mobilize us for the war on Iraq, the warmongers begin instilling fear into our minds, repeating lie after lie, over and over again, that the new enemy is a threat to America, our way or life, our freedoms and democracy. They realize that most people do not want war, so they must be cajoled into supporting what is already a predetermined inevitability. Thus, exploiting our mammalian emotions and behaviors, using our own animal instincts against us, the warmongers in power envelope us with the fear factor, repeating the perceived threat enough times, in so many different ways and mediums, that most people instinctively begin to believe what their “trusted” leaders are telling them. With Iraq it was the threat of mushroom clouds, of WMD, of terrorists. Similarly, the mirage that is the Iranian threat has been marketed to penetrate our deepest fears, scaring us into believing that Iran seeks nuclear weapons, with the inherent lie that as our enemy, they would not hesitate to bomb one or more of our cities.

War marketers understand fully that rationality and common sense vanish in the wake of introduced fear and hatred. Therefore, the use of fear and terror to condition the masses into believing that only through war can their lives be made safer will once again be used, conveniently attaching the illusion of George W. Bush as the one man that will insure their security. Over the next few weeks and perhaps even months, the propaganda used to vilify Iran will intensify, just as it was prior to the Iraq War. We will be forced to hear, repeatedly, the evils of the regime, the wicked intentions of the new president and the manufactured threat to our security. We will be told over and over again how Iran has been a pariah on the world stage, that they overthrew our puppet dictator a few decades back, held America’s embassy hostage, support most of the world’s terrorists, are a tyrannical regime, want to destroy Israel, are a clear and present danger to our national security and, if we are lucky, that they even harbor the bogeymen of the moment, Al-Qaeda.

The newspapers of importance and prestige, those in New York and Washington, will be used to conjure up false intelligence and bogus news reports, most manufactured by the war marketers using cherry-picked intelligence, the false reporting of reporters with vested interests, concocted documents and reports from foreign intelligence services, and the false accusations by so-called Iranian dissidents and defectors. These newspapers, whose weight is heavy in the media world, will begin pasting on the front pages articles of deception regarding Iran’s nuclear energy program, making us believe in the imminent threat to our security and that of certain Middle Eastern nation whose interests are well protected by the newspapers’ editors.

Stories unfavorable to Iran will appear, making it look like the member of the Axis of Evil, making it hated in the mind of Americans. President Ahmadinejad will become the new Osama, Zarqawi and Saddam, a new evildoer extraordinaire, becoming the new poster child for the perpetual, and fictional, war on terror, just the latest incarnation of America’s enemy. Again, fear and hatred will be used to cloud reason and logic; terror will be introduced to exploit both our emotions and still-fragile post 9/11 psychology.

The lies, deceptions and propaganda first outlined in print will invariably make their way to the televised media, where they will be disseminated far and wide, their content picked apart and dissected by talking heads and media hacks whose only purpose in life is to become the stenographers of the corporatists, as always pushing the idea of war into the mind of the viewer. Partisan talking heads from certain think tanks, many with the interests of foreign nations at heart, will make the rounds, chatting without stop in support of preemption, appearing incessantly in a barrage of subjective opinion and prepared propaganda, as always offering only the views for war and preemptive attack, as always appearing without dissenting views and opinion. Along with partisan talking heads, certain influential politicians, those carrying the mantra of deceived trust, will also appear incessantly on television, making the case for war and preemption using the same failed logic and manipulated lies used to sell the Iraq war, again without dissenting views present to contradict and debate the push for attack.

Like an advertising campaign, where the entire organization at a company’s disposal is used to sell the product, the push to sell the American people into accepting an attack on Iran will be all-encompassing, reaching hundreds of millions of Americans through the television, radio and printed media. The public relations campaign run out of the White House will be relentless and assiduous, in the end convincing millions that an American attack is in the best interests of the nation. Already, for example, over 50 percent of the public has made it known that they would have no problem if Bush attacked Iran, a figure that perhaps reflects the ignorance, mass amnesia and incomprehensible idiocy of half the population. This figure represents a high percentage favoring attack, even before the campaign of propaganda, lies and deceptions even heats up. The percentage will only rise once the campaign hits its peak.

Iran will be made out to be a lawless nation at odds with the rest of the world. Of course diplomacy will be designed to fail, as it was prior to the Iraq war. While shouting that the UN must act, thereby being able to claim legitimacy, America will maneuver its vast system of control and inevitably lead the charade of the UN to fail, granting Bush the excuse to attack. Terror threats will be manufactured, danger to us will be reborn and, in the end, Iran will be attacked and crippled, killing tens of thousands, escalating tensions, creating insecurity, perpetuating an already never-ending war and unleashing human violence upon the globe. Using the naiveté and ignorance of the citizenry to its advantage, the military industrial energy complex will claim to fight for freedom, democracy and an end to tyranny, again jumping on the fictional war on terror bandwagon to excuse its offensive attacks for imperial aspirations and control of the world’s remaining oil fields.

The threat of nuclear attack by Iran will of course be exaggerated, as will its failure to comply with international law and its use of nuclear technology. Orwellian newspeak and doubletalk will permeate the airwaves; news reports will be manipulated to fit the predetermined storyline. Facts and figures will be contorted and altered, their true meanings erased, their mirror image twisted. And it will all be repeated, over and over and over again, designed to manipulate, condition and steer us toward accepting further death and destruction in the Muslim world. The plethora of broken UN resolutions of a certain Middle Eastern nation will never be mentioned, nor its possession of 200 nuclear missiles, nor the fact that Iran would be committing suicide if it attacked with nuclear weapons either America or Israel, nor the fact that any nation under the intense threat faced by Iran will inevitably seek to defend itself through nuclear weapons, nor the fact that every nation is entitled to sovereign creation of civilian nuclear technology for energy purposes, nor the fact that Iran possesses roughly thirteen percent of the world’s available fossil fuels, nor the fact that its new oil bourse threatens the stability of the US dollar, nor the fact that we are in the age of resource wars, already engaged in clandestine battle with China, Russia, Europe and India, nor the fact that America has over 700 bases worldwide, including four new permanent bases in Iraq, wishing for a few more in the geopolitical treasure that is Iran, nor the fact that this rebranded offensive strategy and attack is nothing more than pursuit of strategic oil fields close to Iraq, containment of a very potent rival, control over oil and, as always when America interferes in the Middle East, proxy wars benefiting Israel.

Using the bully pulpit afforded the President, George W. Bush will release the hounds of his administration, parading known liars and immoral miscreants, each shouting loudly the case for war. Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Goss, Chertoff, Hadley, the nest of neocons festering in Washington and Bush himself will be given a podium and a microphone from which to preach the virtue of offensive warfare, as usual manipulating our instincts and emotions, as always resurrecting 9/11 to engender fear, hatred and anger amongst the populace. They will grace our television monitors, given all the airtime they desire, their lies and deceptions heard around the nation, never to be contradicted, always to be believed.

It will not matter that they lied, deceived and manipulated the case for war against Iraq. It will not matter that they took America to war on false pretenses, creating a wasted debacle in Mesopotamia. It will not matter that their incompetence, arrogance, ignorance and immorality have made us less safe, not more, creating more terrorists, not less, endangering our “way of life” more by their actions at home than by their ineptitude abroad. It will not matter that their potential actions could engulf an entire region in violence, conflagrating the Eurasian land mass in a very dangerous and long-lasting new Cold War against potent rivals. It will not matter that with each new attack or act of humiliation upon the Muslim world the fire of hatred continues to boil inside the minds of one billions Muslims, threatening to destabilize the entire planet. Of course it will not matter that these warmongers seek to perpetuate the vicious cycle of Muslim killing Westerner and Westerner killing Muslim, thereby giving rise to the perpetual war on terror, now remarketed “Long War,” for they have been wishing for this for a very long time, finally giving rise to their “clash of civilizations,” thus birthing their self-fulfilling prophesy. None of the above will matter, for all has been forgotten and disregarded, for we live in the United States of Amnesia.


Land of Paradoxes and Certainties


This is the America of the early 21st century, a land of paradoxes and of certainties, at once the richest nation on the planet yet offering anemic and dilapidating educations to the bearers of its future torch; a nation rich in technology yet its people dumbed down to the point that ignorance of both the natural world and human civilization prevails; a nation industrialized and modern yet a place where tens of millions remain captive to the theologies and beliefs more in tune to those of the Middle Ages; a country once enlightened by creativity and imagination now eviscerating both through the incessant illumination every night of that disseminator of fiction, fantasy and propaganda called television; a people once shining bright, allowed innumerable freedoms and rights, now extinguished by the same system they protect and defend; a citizenry once active, loud and knowledgeable now made indifferent and servile thanks to the comforts inherent in mass consumerism and materialism; a people at one time questioning and seeking accountability of government now transformed into the acquiescent and complicit serfs of corporatism; a land once fighting for the rights of workers now a land fighting for the rights of slaves; a nation of, by and for the People mutated into a country of, by and for the Corporate World.

Such is the state of affairs inside the borders of the War Culture, with almost 300 million human beings conditioned from birth to become subservient instruments of war aiding and abetting the war machine of the Pentagon. Thanks to the military industrial complex and its vast instruments of control, they have become a nation of warmongers and xenophobes, clandestinely cheering the rumbles of tanks and the cracks of guns, the dropping of bombs and the sadistic torture of Arabs. Like Pavlovian dogs, hundreds of millions of American citizens drool at the sounds of the trumpets of war blasted into their minds by the television monitor, eager to satisfy the destructive cravings of inner conscious propagated throughout the citizenry by an ingenious mechanism of mass manipulation.

When the drums of war commence their thunderous beat the inbred thirst for bloodshed and violence is unleashed, with the population instinctively aware that the Empire’s addiction to war will soon be satisfied. Half of Americans, at once eager to smell the blood of brown-skinned humans, their hidden xenophobia and bigotry having a chance to finally rise to the surface, ingratiated by the sounds of destruction, mesmerized by the pyrotechnics and concussions of military might, are quick to march in lock step behind the tanks and battalions of the Empire, becoming an army of chickenhawks, yellow elephants and armchair generals, as always extolling war yet living in cowardice, preaching Jesus yet practicing Satan, preferring the safety of jingoism rather than the bravery of service, hiding behind the Flag and the charade of 9/11, made deaf by the hymns of that fantasy called American exceptionalism, becoming members of the cult which follows White House incompetence and ineptitude, all the while basking in their debt-ridden comforts and toys of escapism while the less fortunate among us fight their wars and battles.

At the first hints of military mobilization by the state, this half of the population, otherwise decent and law abiding people, jump at attention, ready to become the clandestine storm troopers that will blindly follow those in power into battle, never questioning the reasoning behind the push for war, never wondering why America must again go to battle and never thinking for themselves as to whose interests are being furthered and what ramifications will arise from mass murder and destruction. Without thinking and rationalizing tens of millions of citizens will support the military industrial complex and its sinister designs without ever knowing what the military industrial complex is.

At the sound of war drums these millions blindly align themselves behind the President, regardless of the incompetence, the ineptitude, the chicanery, the criminality, the illegality and the immorality. To these sheeple, the herd mentality is in full effect, in essence eagerly following a wolf dressed in shepherd’s clothing, unable to see the horizon, unable to see the journey, unable to think independently, blinded by fear, needing the diapers of bed wetters and the pacifiers of security, eager to follow and be led to the slaughterhouse disguised as so-called security and protection, unable to see anything except the blind manifestation of ignorant loyalty.

The other half of America, meanwhile, talk the talk but rarely, if ever, walk the walk, preferring instead to protest and dissent from the comfort and security of their keyboard or through the messages on their car bumper, as if that alone grants them entitlement to call themselves self-proclaimed anti-war activist, with many placing more interest and exerting more energy in the asinine, non-important, relatively insignificant news regarding the quail hunting adventures of Dick Cheney than in the much larger issues affecting the nation, with many unwilling to sacrifice time, effort and energy to fight for the future of the country.

They criticize without remorse but cannot bring it upon themselves to mobilize and take to the streets in protest, preferring losing freedoms and rights than being bothered into joining a mass movement. From their pajamas they proclaim vitriol at the chicanery of the Bush Administration yet refuse to take the direct action those that came before once did, voicing their frustrations at the direction America is taking through Internet message boards and simple family gatherings.

Merrily this half proclaims undying and blind loyalty to the impotent and spineless minority party, unwilling to see, thanks to the denial so prevalent among diehard Democrats, that their beloved party is but the lesser of two evils, naïve in their belief that this side of the army of corrupt politicians will ever again have their interest at the forefront, their ideology acting to mask the fact that their cherished heroes are but the prostitutes of corporatism and that their party is an illusion designed to convey the mistaken belief that an opposition exists.

Gone from their core, thanks to the comfortable and pampered existence they have been granted and the conditioning that has enveloped them from birth, is the fire that once lit brightly during the time of another American debacle, thriving inside the youth of a now vanished generation, a fire that granted radiance to bravery and warmth to courage, transforming a nation and a time, bringing truth to power and justice to criminality.

The fire that engulfed the sixties has been extinguished by consumerism, materialism and the glow of television, by an indifference that gives complacency a welcome embrace, by a collective amnesia that forgets yesterday and fails to recognize today, by videogame distractions and unenlightened passivity, and by the dark covers that have virtually eliminated from our consciousness the lost war in the Middle East, with millions of armchair protesters made placid to the cries of an America hemorrhaging to death, unwilling to create a movement, unable to leave the comfortable warmth of their homes, preferring to protest on the Internet, unable to mobilize more than a minute and insignificant number of souls while the nation rots and fascism grows.

Gone are the massive marches, campus insurrections, the defying solidarity, the movement that altered history. A giant tsunami of change that once brought the upper echelons of government to its knees has given way to those who have sold out to principles once held dear, no longer to be bothered by truth, justice and peace, and to younger generations suffering the laziness and ignorance spawned by the excessiveness of living in America. Gone is the military draft and the threat of conscription, once a tinderbox that fed fuel to the peace movement’s fire, for without it middle class America, white America, has no real vested interest in protesting, no loved ones to bring home, no friends to fight for, no sons and fathers to protest over, no funerals to attend, no threat of them being drafted.

In Iraq it is not their sons or fathers or brothers or daughters being maimed and dying. It is not their relatives or friends being psychologically damaged; they do not see the devastation done and the demons spawned. This is a war that does not hit middle class America close to home or inside their sphere of existence, where the heart is, where emotion flows and anger grows. To the great majority, the Iraq war remains an abstract reality, seen in images and in articles, not in the flesh or in immediate suffering. As such, and as long as the lower castes of American society are made to “volunteer” for war, with those from urban jungles or of rural regions comprising the armed forces, as long as middle class America is not conscripted, there will not exist a massive peace movement, the kind that once moved mountains and introduced fear into the halls of power. This the Bush Administration knows all too well, which is why they avoid it at all costs, while at the same time manipulating the system in a myriad of ways to assure itself of enough cannon fodder to continue its war of imperialism and occupation.


Warmongers One and All


The War Culture we are called, birthed from the first images of cartoons our innocent minds are bombarded with, their entire content based on conflict, aggression, violence and destruction, our brainwaves slowly manipulated and altered to suit the ways of war. Conditioned from infancy to accept the sounds of gunfire, the dropping of bombs, the violence of war, the violent conflict of man versus man, we in time become immune to death and violence, suppressing inside us feelings of horror and revulsion. As we begin getting older we are introduced to the magical world of Hollywood, full of pyrotechnic wonder and digital artistry, making us awe and gawk at exploding bombs and reverberating waves of thunderous booms, becoming wide-eyed by the destruction unleashed by the weapons of war and the heroes we fantasize about.

Transfixed by Dolby digital sounds, the concussions of bombs exploding in our ears, the whizzing of bullets flying by, mushroom clouds of fire and smoke emanating on screen, blood and guts spilled throughout, we are made to accept war and violence and destruction as inherent mechanisms of conflict resolution. Slowly but surely we are conditioned to believe that the brutality of man killing man is not as severe as we believe it to be, that blood and guts are but movie magic, that death and injury are as fictional as that seen in the movies. We are made to love mayhem; we are made to love weapons; we are made to accept violence; we are made to believe death is nothing more than the role an actor must play.

In our deluded minds, thanks to years of watching television and movies, lies the ingrained propaganda that everything the military does is benevolent and altruistic, as always fighting for “freedom and democracy,” for “human rights,” for the salvation from “tyranny.” In our distorted view of human reality, the US military is always the good guy fighting the enemy, who is always evil, a dreaded evildoer. This black and white view of the world has been firmly planted into our minds by the happy ending, good-guy always wins bull manure manufactured by the fictional geniuses in Hollywood, where America is always the winner and where the evildoer of the moment always gets killed or caught. In a war such as the present debacle in Iraq, therefore, where reality is hidden and truth suppressed, our instinct will always be to blindly believe, in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary, that the US military has been sent to Iraq for good, altruistic and noble intentions.

The truth, though, is altogether different, as evidenced by the devastation unleashed by the American military inside Iraq. The sadistic images that emerged from Abu Ghraib, the crimes against humanity being committed in Guantanamo and other such clandestine gulags, the death of perhaps 200,000 innocent Iraqis, the complete devastation of Iraq’s infrastructure, the indiscriminate shooting of civilians, the immeasurable level of suffering created as a result of occupation, the destruction of Fallujah missile, bomb and use of white phosphorus, the lack of electricity, sewage, fuel and adequate drinking water, the ongoing dropping of bombs and an increase in the aerial war are but a few examples of the wickedness exported into Iraq by America’s illegal and immoral invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. The complete collapse of society and unfettered chaos in the streets, the civil war now raging and expanding, the insecurity prevalent throughout the nation and the deep seated anger and hate brewing in Iraq are all a result of what our cherished military, at the behest of George W. Bush, has helped birth in a nation once tranquil and secure.

Yet to millions of Americans who either do not care or will never know reality, what we have done in Iraq is bringing “freedom and democracy,” even though women now have fewer rights than before invasion, freeing a nation from its tyrant, even though America has become the new tyrant, that they hate us for our freedoms, when in reality they hate us for our foreign policies, our imperialism and our support of ruthless tyrants, and “fighting them over there so we do not have to fight them over here,” even though there were no terrorists in Iraq before but now it has become a training ground for thousands who will one day use their expertise in order to inflict blowback at the United States.

Lost from the memory of tens of millions of Americans, whether conveniently or from the general amnesia now prevalent throughout society, are the myriad of excuses used to justify the illegal invasion and occupation, from WMDs, mushroom clouds, connections to 9/11 and Al-Qaeda. Lost is the reality that we are the invading Red Coats fighting against American Revolutionaries in the Iraqi version of the Revolutionary War and War for Independence, that the truth behind the Iraq war is freedom fighters trying to cleanse their lands of the imperial invaders intent on dehumanizing Iraqis, raping their women, killing and brutalizing their children, conquering their oil fields and possessing their geostrategic lands. We cheer freedom fighters in expensive Hollywood productions, yet not when we are the invaders and occupiers. Such is the power of propaganda. Thanks to incessant propaganda, however, tens of millions of Americans will continue to live in the illusion that we are fighting the so-called war on terror against Al-Qaeda, that Iraq is the central front in this mirage, that we are the defenders of humanity, pursuing evildoer bogeymen with no interest in controlling the vast oil fields deemed vital to the continued expansion both of our economy and the coffers of the military-industrial-energy complex.

After years of propaganda and conditioning, and thanks to continued and incessant brainwashing by the mainstream media, we readily accept war as an institution, as a product re-introduced every few years for the benefit of the state. War thus becomes a necessary component that we inherently associate, perhaps subconsciously, with the continued health of the nation and its economy. By association, then, war is good not only for the country but for us as individuals, assuring our children of continued excessiveness. Inside our minds exists the charade that without war we would not possess the vast wealth we have or the comfortable lifestyles we live in.

Yet we also know that without war, without our reckless grab for land and exploitation, the nation would stutter and cease to be the power that has allowed us to dominate the globe, pillaging the world’s people and their resources in the process, in wanton fashion exacerbating misery, regional wars, global warming, poverty and thus further imperiling the security of the planet. It is this reality that we are fully aware of yet refuse to accept or openly talk about, becoming the ugly truth that must never be allowed to escape its dark closet. It is better to live in denial and in hypocrisy than in the shantytowns exclusively reserved for billions of our fellow human beings.

Millions of us know we owe our fruitful and gluttonous lifestyles to war, to the suffering of billions and the imperialist mechanisms controlled by us, yet many of us refuse to change our ways, refusing to act in opposition to the Empire, refusing to acknowledge that our lifestyle was born in sin, in human misery and in the invasion and colonization of alien lands. Living inside the belly of the beast, using and exploiting its many riches, living its comfortable reality, yet refusing to alter our standards of living or our comfortable existence, refusing to amend our crimes and stop our exploitation of the planet, we remain, as always, fully complicit in the crimes and destruction and misery unleashed by our government. Remaining silent, indifferent and ignorant to this reality does not absolve any of us.

Through silence we merely acquiesce to everything done in our name. Our failure or unwillingness to alter our ways, our inability or refusal to change the direction of this nation and the continued indifference or complicity to the plight of billions has unmasked us all. This hidden truth lies at the heart of us all, making us a nation of warmongers, one and all, of amnesiacs, one and all, of pampered and spoiled primates, one and all, a citizenry unapologetic in its complicity and acquiescence to imperialism, war and destruction through our excessiveness, comfortable lifestyles and deafening silence.

We are a nation asleep at the wheel, drunk off our self-exceptionalism and gluttony, ramming head on into the massive trunk of unthinking self-destruction, our arrogance blinding us to the giant cancer in our midst, addicted to materialism and television, every day dumbed down further, unwilling to learn about the world outside our infallible bubble, creating a snowball rolling downhill, gaining momentum and growing in size, in its path eviscerating the dreams and hopes of the future as well as an American past that once offered humanity a glimmer of hope in an ever-dwindling and myopic world.

The Bolivarian Revolution: A Movement of Hope and Threat

-------------------------------------


Winds of Change


The warming winds of true democracy have been spreading from the tip of Patagonia to the shores of the Rio Grande, traversing all lands in between, with the will of the People trumping the wishes of the Empire. These winds carry within them elections of hope and fury, marked by loud voices and uncompromised ballots, devoid of charades and mirages, lacking Diebold electronic voting machines and corporate media manipulation. In many nations the masses have spoken in symphony, their united desires echoing long suffering frustrations and near-extinct opportunities, their once-silent calls for justice and equality finally given resonance.

The Bolivarian Revolution these warming winds are called, becoming the last vestiges of People Power in the Americas. Rising in hope and hovering above the homes and lives of hundreds of millions of Latin Americans, the warming winds are giving comfort to a new day, making warm once cold societies, their speed gaining momentum, their power altering governments and economic policies, becoming, in the minds of millions in Latin America and billions worldwide, the inspiration for a new world, a new direction for human civilization, an opportunity to escape that which is destroying both planet and human societies.

Inside its borders exists the hope of positive change, of escaping the omnipotent and corrosive claws of American imperialism, with its devastating, unfettered capitalism, destroyer of Earth’s environments, exploiter of human flesh and energy, and corrupter of our minds, transforming us into selfish, consumerist, materialist, unthinking, psychologically fragile and unhappy greed mongers bred to pray to our new god, the Almighty Dollar. Inside the lands where the Revolution is spreading hope transcends past transgressions, becoming a movement to benefit all people, regardless of wealth, social class or skin color, using the resources of the land and the talents of the people to empower the nation and the communal aspirations of the citizenry.

Inside jungles and forests a movement of justice and equality has begun to replace the exploitation, corruption and abandonment inherent in American capitalism. Slowly eroding from the nations of the Revolution are the inherent injustices and pervasive inequality that befell the vast majority of the citizenry. Free of economic warfare hindering its growth and evolution, not chained by embargoes or sanctions, allowed to become a shining example to observe and follow, nations inside the Revolution have begun to showcase the benefits of 21st century social democracies, where priorities are given not to the profiteering of the military industrial complex or to the Swiss bank accounts of the white elite but rather to the empowerment of the lives of the masses through equality in education, healthcare, opportunity, infrastructure and resources, thereby eliminating the inequality and injustice that is branded on a child at birth, forever to scar him or her, robbing them of opportunity, eroding their talents and eviscerating fates and futures.

A new paradigm shift is occurring in Latin America with the resentment accumulated over decades of government rape, pillage and apathy of the citizenry creating a wave of desired change; the pilferage of their lands and resources, along with the exploitation and enslavement by American corporations has resulted in Revolution peaceful and evolved, with hundreds of millions strong using the ballot over the bayonet, their voices over violence. From the lands of South America a new movement grows, a new Revolution has risen, sweeping across the continent, embracing justice and equality, exterminating exploitation and enslavement.

A transformation of the Americas is upon us, beautiful to behold and admire, its winds of change flowing uninterrupted and powerful, its winds of change flowing from right to left, from American sponsored right-wing puppets to progressive, social democracy, gaining momentum, grasping peoples hopes and dreams, their lives and futures. The voices of the unheard, unwanted and undesirable have been listened to; their will finally allowed to be counted, their votes finally trumping the corruption of the elites and the clandestine manipulations of the Empire.

Like a domino effect each election result in distinct lands inhabited with diverse peoples has sent a resounding thunderbolt of rejection to the imperialistic bully named America, a clear message that its near enslavement and exploitation of both lands of peoples of the south has gone on for far too long. Election after election has demolished colonial proctors and puppets, so-called leaders catering only to their own wallets, that of the nation’s white elite and the market colonialist desires of the Empire. Like powerful blows to the midsection, each clear electoral victory has weakened the interests of America in the region, softening up its legions of exploiters and criminals and puppets now impotent to ruin millions of lives.

The power of the People has spoken, its triumph having become a victory for humanity and a strike against market colonialism, now seen as an inspiration for billions and a threat to America. Contrary to the interests of George W. Bush and his corporatist cabal, the region’s peoples have shown that, when given a real opportunity for true democracy, they will vote according to their own indigenous interests and not those of neoliberal principles and of market colonialist America. They have shown that it is not the evils of neoliberal and American imposed capitalism which they seek, but rather policies that will make their lives better, giving them meaning, happiness and an opportunity to push forward, past insurmountable barriers purposefully erected to hinder upper mobility and into futures full of promise.

The last few years have demonstrated that if allowed to escape the grip of American manipulation and meddling, democracy in Latin American nations results in the interests of the masses quashing those of the elite few, in elections clean and uncompromised, not those fixed and corrupt, altering the balance of power and giving hope to those tens of millions for decades subjugated by the rich few to the margins of society, relegated to live in shanty towns and shacks, making anywhere from two to eight dollars a day, their lives devoid of futures and opportunity, their existence marginalized and ignored, their children destined to never escape and always live in perpetual purgatory. Now, thanks to democracy true and honorable, there exists the hope, the possibility of a better life to millions upon million of Latin Americans, giving birth to new energy and vitality, new chances at escape from hell on Earth, becoming an opportunity for a better and more fruitful tomorrow.

Today there exist the winds of change, flowing freely from Caracas to Santiago to La Paz, from Argentina to Uruguay to Mexico, traversing mountains and canyons, forests and jungles, toppling puppets and criminals, becoming a power threatening to liberate an entire continent, eviscerating the shackles of labor exploitation and incessant poverty with the hammer of justice and equality, becoming the fire burning inside the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of Latin Americans whose lives have forever been made destitute of life, energy and wallet both by the corrosive grip of American imperialism and the enslavement and marginalization by the minority white elite.

It has been through the ballot box, through the principle of one person, one vote – that great invention of times past – that today’s Bolivarian Revolution can be seen and felt, with little blood spilled on the streets, with little violence impregnating our humanity and with the human condition contained, its many insidious demons refrained from possessing the human animal. The Bolivarian Revolution is an enlightened revolution, an evolved form of human change, growing out of frustration and resentment and anger, yet achieved peacefully and in solidarity, using the power of the vote over that of armed resistance, toppling puppets and Empire’s proctors not by violence but through the united voice of the People. In nations where democracy is not yet a charade or a hollow mirage hiding inside the corruption of electronic voting, revolutions of this kind are still possible.

At the dawn of the 21st century the Bolivarian Revolution has been born, altering the landscape of Latin America’s tomorrow, growing out of economic deficiency, natural resource pillage, government inefficiency, human exploitation and near enslavement, the reality of life for hundreds of millions of human beings and from American imperialism, slowly but surely eroding the devastating scorched earth and people policy of American capitalism along with the neoliberal mechanisms that act only to institute market colonialism on the nations of the south, replacing it with a system designed to make better the lives of countless millions through policies paid for by the profits of the nation and the resources of the land, creating a society based on sustainable development and human prosperity, both of happiness and fate.

Having morphed from modern day socialist thought, from the reality of failed neoliberalism, from lessons learned and mistakes recorded, from untarnished democracy, from today’s communalism and yesteryear’s capitalism, the Bolivarian Revolution has become a beacon of hope to hundreds of millions whose lives and futures have never been allowed to prosper, perhaps replacing America’s ever-dimming light as the new oasis of optimism, becoming the new system of governance for the 21st century, one for the People, not the Powerful, for Humans, not Corporations.

This new beacon on a hill will in the next few years and decades change societies and the lives of millions, taking national profits and the wealth of resources and giving them, not to the elite, but to everyone, offering hope to the indigent, opportunity to the talented, a future to the innocent, health to the sick, education to the ignorant, food for the hungry, homes for the homeless, justice to the marginalized, equality to all and increased prosperity to the nation as a whole. Its evolution might one day take humanity on a voyage we never thought possible. This is the Bolivarian Revolution.


The Sorrows of the Americas


For five-hundred years Latin America has been the stomping ground of the region’s elite, the vast majority descendants of Europeans, white in skin color yet dark in empathy, lacking the will to care for tens of millions of fellow human beings living in destitute surroundings and insufferable consequences. For centuries this elite has been a slave driver, using and abusing the masses for its continued control and power, using the energy and labor of peasants to increase its wealth. For centuries the oppression has been relentless, only changing in its mechanisms and in its evolution. This is the story of Latin America since 1492, a region whose peoples and lands have for centuries been exploited for their energy and pillaged of their wealth for the benefit of the elite and northern colonial governments and businesses.

From the very beginning white elites, tracing their lineage to Europe, were granted the keys to prosperity, their ethnicity granting them preferences to wealth and power, access to business and governance, over the years passing down their wealth and power to new generations. Thus, white Latin Americans never saw poverty, never suffered hunger or thirst, never toiled in miserable work and never earned their wealth. From the beginning of their ascendancy, their wealth was born in sin, in the dispossession of land and the exploitation of human energy, in the destruction of land, in the abuse of human beings and the exportation of slave products. Given huge tracts of land, possessing enormous resources, owning all aspects of government and business, white Latin Americans became owners of the Americas and masters to its inhabitants, destined to forever expand wealth, exploit humanity, control government and have possession of all aspects of Latin American society. Since Conquest, nothing has changed.

Meanwhile those born with indigenous traces, in skin color or facial features, were condemned to become the slaves of the wealthy, toiling, bleeding, sweating and crying for the fortunes of the few, miserably surviving day to day, fed the crumbs and the bones left behind by the elite, chained to castes created to serve the interests of the rich, forever passing onto their descendants the burden of perpetual indigence and the fatalism that their kind would never leave the destiny placed at their door by governments whose sole function was enriching the white elite that controlled the nation.

Hundreds of millions of human beings have purposefully been kept indigent, both in mind and resources, the control over their lives as pervasive as the level of poverty they must endure, from cradle to grave. Like tranquil cattle they are corralled into shantytowns and cesspools of poverty, unable to escape thanks to enormous yet invisible walls of segregation designed to separate the elite few from the poor masses. Hundreds of millions in the region are kept in perpetual squalor through the inability to escape their allotted caste, whether through anemic education, brainwash Catholicism and incessant employment discrimination.

The system has always been and is still designed to maintain the delicate balance between a very small minority of elite and a giant wave of poor peasants. This balance is protected by government itself, created, controlled and operated by an elite that has never relinquished power and control. As such, the elite keep getting richer, with wealth coming from the sweat, blood and tears of the masses, while the poor keep getting poorer. In fact, the vast majority of Latin Americans live on an average of less than six dollars per day, with tens of millions living on less than two dollars per day.

Latin American societies are designed to give the masses as little education as possible, thereby enabling the elite complete control of the people of a nation. Education budgets are purposefully made anemic thanks to the pillaging of government money by corrupt officials, mismanagement of funds and misallocation of resources. The emphasis on educating the children of the masses is nonexistent, for they are to remain the indigent slaves to the elite, forever ignorant, servile and obedient. Thus, millions of people are from birth condemned to schools lacking adequate books, well trained and motivated teachers, and acceptable infrastructure, their short lived educations ending anywhere from the third to the sixth grade, in the end becoming but one more citizen abandoned by their government, forgotten by society, dependent on private television owned by the elite for information.

Granted a minute fraction of money compared to American per capita investment in education, schools and teachers naturally start off at the depths of learning, condemned to remain bottom dwellers in education and knowledge, seriously lacking the resources of the much richer north, doing as best they can to enlighten children, yet knowing that undereducated most students will leave, forever captured by indigence, slave labor and slave wages. By age ten millions upon millions of children stop attending school, forced by the circumstances of their lives to begin working in order to feed, shelter and clothe their families. Sadly, most will never again pick up a book or return to school, instead remaining loyal members of the lowest castes, living in shacks and inside shantytowns, becoming susceptible to the propaganda of the wealthy, maturing into the ignorant minds bred through under education.

Through immovable castes of indigence and the under funding of education the elite are able to contain the masses, making millions of poor dependent on the crumbs, morsels and bones thrown them by the rich. Imprisoned in the dungeons of rotting existence, millions of poverty-stricken Latin Americans will never escape their predetermined fates, becoming babies born unequal, living entire lives following the footsteps of parents, grandparents and great grandparents, repeating a cycle of indigence designed to exploit and subjugate their entire lives. This vicious circle is perpetual, creating an insurmountable barrier of escape, breeding ignorance with poverty and malnourishment, leading to the brainwashing by religion that condemns the poor to eternal fatalism and constant hardship, inevitably trapping tens of millions to lives of squalor and lost futures.

Through religion hundreds of millions are told to be fruitful and to multiply, for that is what God desires, not realizing that by having many babies women become servile and dependent creatures to their husbands, forced to rear and raise, remaining trapped housewives robbed of opportunity and enlightenment. Brainwashed by religion and lacking the reason, logic and knowledge that comes with education, both parents will invariably condemn both themselves and their children, forever remaining trapped in poverty, with more mouths to feed, more bodies to clothe, more resources needed to survive. Forced to subsist, they will pull their children out of school at any early age, sending them to work for long hours and meager wages. With little money to be spread to many family members, malnourishment increases, education is eroded, healthcare disappears, slave labor increases, misery is spawned and perpetual poverty triumphs. It is Catholicism, that enabler of primitive and conservative thought, that condemns the use of contraception and abortion among its followers while espousing the procreation of multiple children, thereby becoming a culprit in the ever-increasing numbers of human beings living in perpetual poverty, assisting in ruining lives, exacerbating hardship and tarnishing fates.

For those few that succeed in graduating from a state college, the discrimination inherent in the business world is omnipresent. Top business and government jobs are reserved for the children, relatives and close acquaintances of those already in power, with the elite controlling all levers of who is allowed entry and who is to be relegated to the lower echelons of employment. With employment and salary determined by nepotism and not merit, going to those of white skin and not brown, those of upper class and not lower, a large segment of barrier-escaping jobs that would otherwise be available to anyone become the sole possession of the elite.

It is this world of white collar employment that does not welcome brown-skinned individuals, extending not a welcome floor mat but a “Closed” sign, becoming an exclusive club for the elite and their progeny, a place not welcoming to the sub-human classes engineered to become the maids and gardeners and cooks and nannies of the rich. The mestizo masses are forced through discrimination and segregation to remain inside their allotted place, offered great opportunity not in money-making positions but in the world of blue-collar slave labor, forced to toil under extreme stresses, working unbearable hours in bottom-dwelling environs making the wages that offer only the most basic level of subsistence.

For the mestizo, this is a barrier that talent, ability, drive and mental strength cannot defeat. Even if able to escape the myriad of barriers to entry, driving a stake through indigence, under education, the imprisonment of slave labor, lack of resources, discrimination and ingrained racism, there exists the ultimate and most subjective barrier to entry: the elite themselves, possessing the keys to unlocking the gates of escape. They are the gatekeepers of society, always closing the door to the always long line of brown-skinned unwanteds and undesirables seeking a better future, yet always eager to allow easy access to the always short line of white-skinned elites and wealthy patrons seeking to maintain their past into the present.

For centuries this has been the reality in Latin America, a region of two different worlds, of two different groups, one born into privilege, the other into exploitation. Ten percent of the population owns or controls ninety percent of the region’s wealth, while ninety percent of the population lives in poverty, forced to live in shacks or tiny bee-hive looking homes, chained into shantytowns oftentimes lacking basic infrastructure and services, forced to share a small patch of land with an ever-increasing population, packed like sardines, competing for few jobs and low salaries.

Meanwhile, living like modern day feudal masters the elite few bask in enormous mansions of comfort, protected by twelve foot high walls and armies of security guards, living in exclusive and posh neighborhoods, possessing all the wealth in the world, able to afford maids, gardeners, cooks and nannies, seeing in their relationship to the mestizo the shadows of slavery, not the conviction of equality, the entitlement of exploitation, not the obligation of providing opportunity. To the elite, the mestizo has always been and will always remain a being to be considered below them, a person whose destiny is to serve the interests of the rich. The mestizo is to be forever restrained and shackled, unable to rebel or resist, his progeny engineered and molded to follow the dictates of wealth. He is, in short, to be the slave of the elite, remaining what he has been for 500 years.

For centuries both the fruits of the labors of the mestizo and the Indian, along with the resources the lands provided were owned and controlled by the white elites, to be shipped directly to the colonizing mother country and to markets abroad. Revenues and profits seldom, if ever, returned to the masses. Instead, they filled the pockets of the already rich, used by the elite to build feudal estates and personal empires, the wealth acquired exacerbating an ever-widening vicious cycle of social class and income disparity.

Using the mechanisms of governance and the acquired wealth of exploitation mestizo and Indian lands were expropriated and granted to the white elite. Lands seen promising or rich in natural resources were taken away from peasants, towns or Indians, used to further enrich the growing white aristocracy as well as make more comfortable the lives of European elites. Whether unpaid slave or seldom paid worker, the masses were impoverished and oppressed while their masters enjoyed the fruits of both free labor and resources. Over centuries the vast wealth of the Americas was pillaged, making certain European nations incredibly wealthy, transforming some into Empires, others into powers whose vast wealth would disappear with the arrival of Latin American independence in the first half of the 19th century.

Since Discovery and Conquest Latin America has been exploited and subjugated, its peoples of darker skin perpetually castigated and abused, enslaved, exploited and kept at the lowest margins of society, its beautiful lands torn and destroyed, its air polluted, its rivers made toxic, its resources stolen, their revenues and profits given to northern corporations and governments, its environmental regulations relaxed, enabling foreign corporations to pollute without hindrances.

From the very beginning Latin America has been, like most nations of the south, the supplier of natural resources and raw materials for the rich north, its people both the slave labor and the consumer for northern corporations, toiling under bottom dwelling working conditions for meager wages. The people, it must be told, work slave hours for slave wages, and are charged exorbitant prices to sustain their already anemic standard of living. They make third world wages and must pay first world prices. In truth, the great majority of Latin Americans see very little capital or wealth in return for their natural resources, the majority of it transferred by elites to bank accounts outside the nation or kept by multinational corporations under unfair and one-sided contracts signed by American controlled puppets.

While the nations and peoples of the north enjoy the benefits, and cheap prices, engendered from stolen resources, unfair trade agreements, market colonialism and slave labor of the south in order to sustain lives made excessive, gluttonous and greed infested, most citizens of Latin America subsist on what Americans would consider the crumbs, bones and morsels of a normal life. Millions are from birth destined to remain entrapped in the social caste social engineering has placed at their door, living from cradle to grave unable to penetrate the insurmountable barriers to escape. To the people of the north who have never seen, touched or lived in such poverty, empathizing with Latin Americans can become a very difficult endeavor.

This is the tragedy of Latin America’s past. Sadly, this is also its present. If left unchanged, it will also be its future. In this region, the more things change the more things stay the same.


The Seed of Revolution


In Venezuela a leader of vision and promise has risen from the shantytowns and the misery, born to poverty and to the masses, over the years rising through the ranks, reading and learning, gaining knowledge and philosophy, slowly yet surely engendering justice and equality, becoming a man of, by and for the People, not of the elite.

Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, has become the seed giving rise to the Bolivarian Revolution, a social democratic philosophy evolved into 21st century conditions, sweeping across Latin America, molding the interests of the people with those of the state, creating a new beacon on a hill for hundreds of millions of human beings for too long abandoned and forgotten.

Mr. Chavez, full of energy and optimism, has become a beloved man at home and an inspiration abroad, able, in the span of a few years, to introduce into the collective consciousness of humankind an entirely different political philosophy than what at present exists. He has lifted Venezuela out of the malignant mold for centuries infecting it, creating an example for the world to see and follow. His governance has inspired Latin America to shift away from neoliberalism and the unfettered capitalism of the American Empire and toward the balance of helping the masses, so many of whom live in perpetual levels of indigence.

A new paradigm shift is occurring in Venezuela, a nation rich in oil yet troubled by centuries of injustice, inequality and oppression by the few of the many. With a sudden shift of political tectonic plates, the voices of the poor and unwanted have become heard, their cries for justice and equality answered. In a few short years, Chavez has transformed Venezuela into a nation helping itself by helping its people, using the profits from its large oil fields, which once went into the pockets of the elite, to remake a society for too long familiar with Latin America.

Suddenly, profits and resources once thought extinct, or fatalistically thought of as stolen by elite officials, are making their way into Venezuela’s poorest districts, allocated to help the vast majority of Venezuelan citizens, most of whom are poor. Money flows once reserved for the elite are now making their way into the lives of the masses, giving hope and raising enthusiasm, constructing the bridges of optimism all nations need to thrive. Using benign forms of capitalism to his advantage, though embedded in principles of modern socialism, Chavez has – instead of pillaging money or misappropriating funds – shifted much needed capital into projects designed to help the masses. For the first time in the nation’s history, the majority of Venezuelan’s are reaping the rewards of the oil that lies below.

In a few short years education, once anemic and abandoned, left to rot by the elite, has been revamped, with investments being made to strengthen and improve the instruments of learning and the mechanisms of knowledge. High school and university educations are being offered free of charge to whomever wants to further their education, all the while all other grade levels are beginning to see vast improvements in infrastructure and attendance. Where once millions of children slipped through the cracks due to indifference, leaving school in order to work or simply to become troublemakers, now emphasis is being made to keep children in school, creating an intelligent populace that will help make Venezuela a better country. Slowly, ignorance is being replaced by enlightenment, and millions of citizens are freeing their minds for the first time, able to think for themselves, able to make wise decisions, able to escape the traps of society and humanity.

Venezuela is making great improvements in healthcare and in infrastructure, as well as in justice and equality. More and more people are receiving better medicines and are being examined by better trained doctors. Roads, sewage, electricity, potable water and buildings are being improved, as are government institutions and the malignant levels of corruption that affect every Latin American nation. People eager to work are able to find work, their chores not relegated to the slave labor that once permeated throughout the nation. Inefficient or run down private businesses are being nationalized by the government, with investments being made and expertise being introduced to reclaim these businesses with the hope that their profits can add to the growing economic viability of Venezuela, their revenues used to benefit all the people, not just a few. Land that has been mismanaged, abandoned or claimed illegally is being expropriated from businesses and incompetent landowners and being repartitioned to those with the skills to work soil and desire to own a small parcel of land. Huge tracts of property, once stolen or claimed by elites or corporations decades and centuries ago, having once belonged to indigenous peoples, are being given back to their rightful owners, making them stewards of the land.

All around Venezuela the Bolivarian Revolution is improving the lives of millions, creating what was once thought impossible in Latin America: prosperity for the masses. Through revenues acquired from oil sales – most of it coming from America – Chavez is transforming his nation’s economy, increasing its annual growth rate while improving the lives of ordinary citizens. By fighting the endemic corruption once prevalent in Venezuela, by taking power away from the white elite, by sharing the wealth of the nation’s resources and profits with all citizens, by improving healthcare, education, social services and infrastructure, by making more equal Venezuelan society, by fighting neoliberal policies of the north and by raising the standards of living of the masses Chavez is remaking the face of Venezuelan society, lifting it to new horizons through the emancipation of the masses.

Yet it is this very success that has become a most ominous threat to Latin America’s elite and to the Evil Empire itself. The very accomplishments of the Bolivarian Revolution, with its abundance of positive changes, have sent shockwaves of fright throughout the mansions and estates of the elite and the hallowed halls of power in Washington. For both Latin American elites and American corporatist officials, social democracy has always been a most ominous concept, for in their successful hold on power lies the exploitation and subjugation of the masses through American imposed capitalism, market colonization and neoliberal strangulation. It is through these mechanisms that the elite maintain control and increase their wealth. It is through these instruments that America pillages resources and exploits slave labor with reckless abandon.

The entire concept of control over Latin America rests on the premise that the masses must never be allowed to free themselves of the chains of bondage placed at their feet. They must always be made to remain in perpetual poverty and ignorance, impotent to exert any power over the elite and against American interests. The profits and revenues from the state must never be used for their benefit. Their wages must be exploited to pay the high prices of privatized utilities and of northern goods and services. The resources of their nation must be exported to the north, their profits stolen, never to be used for the common good.

The elite, along with American corporations, have for decades and even centuries placed insurmountable barriers to entry on the masses. Both entities have lived in symbiotic relationship with each other for many years, and have fought together for their shared interests as well. For years throughout Latin America, the elite few, in conjunction with America, have sponsored, protected and financed right-wing dictatorships whose sole purpose was the destruction of any power belonging to the masses and working classes. Their duty was always to enforce American imperialism and market colonialism, making sure the nation they governed and the people they ruled over obeyed the dictates of authoritarianism and of clandestine colonization. No left-wing dictator or leader was ever selected, for this went in direct contradiction to the interests of the elite and American corporatists.

In unison, both groups have for decades done a masterful job repressing the masses while enriching themselves at the expense of the state. The elite give comfort and support to American corporations, writing laws and rules favorable to the ceaseless pillage of resources and goods. In exchange, America helps to enrich the elite through neoliberal policies and capitalistic corruptions, using its power and influence to maintain the elite in power. To both groups, American imposed capitalism and neoliberalism, otherwise known as market colonialism, are the instruments used toward the attainment of wealth.

These corrosive systems are designed to further the interests of those enabling them, never those of the masses. Exploitation of the masses and the perpetual poverty of their lives is the mechanism used to maintain power and control. The policies that have for decades made miserable the lives of hundreds of millions of Latin Americans are designed to suppress, exploit, impoverish and oppress. They are not altruistic mechanisms designed to alleviate the problems of the majority. On the contrary, the masses are but pawns, easily expendable sub-humans replaced with ease by the assembly line called human procreation.

What Hugo Chavez is attempting to do is break away from the policies of the elite and of Washington, trying to free his country and his people from the bondage of the Evil Empire, finally escaping the exploitation of both man and land that has gone on for the last 500 years. Chavez is attempting to help the people through the same profits sought by the elite and by Washington, and herein lies the reason for conflict. While Chavez wants to empower the masses, the elite and Washington want to retain it. While Chavez wants to redistribute wealth through principles of equality, the elite and Washington want to keep it for themselves. While Chavez wants to improve his nation by maintaining revenues and profits inside Venezuela, the elite and Washington want the pillaging to continue. While Chavez seeks to distance his country away from the raping policies imposed by America, the elite and Washington want undying obedience to them only. While Chavez seeks to purge government institutions of the rampant elitist cronyism, incompetence and corruption that only favors the wealthy, Washington wants to destroy his mandate and return it to the elite.

The example of Venezuela is a grave and gathering threat to American corporatists, for if it is allowed to succeed a great, shining beacon will be created, and hundreds of millions of human beings will want to recreate in their own nations what they have seen in Venezuela. The danger to the Evil Empire is the threat the Bolivarian Revolution is having on American imposed capitalism and market colonialism. If Venezuela is able to successfully escape the claws of American imperialism other nations will want to follow suit, using Venezuela’s mold to free themselves of continued pillaging and exploitation by America. Bolivia is already one such example of this, yet it will not be the last. Venezuela is at present the exception and not the rule, yet the possibility exists that if it is allowed to continue on its successful journey, more and more nations will want to emulate it, thereby dealing severe blows both to American imperialism and the continued perceived wonders of capitalism.

Already other Latin American nations have jumped the Bolivarian Revolution bandwagon, with more sure to follow. Today South America, tomorrow Mexico, can Africa and Asia be far behind? Only time will tell but everyday that the Revolution continues is one more day social democracy thrives, spitting in the face of American imperialism and capitalism, proving that a nation can prosper by bringing prosperity to the masses. Every day Chavez is seen on the world stage extolling the virtues and successes of his Revolution is another blow to the Evil Empire’s dominion over peoples of the south.

With Venezuela prospering as it is, using social democracy as a model, eroding neoliberal policies and unfettered capitalism from its backbone, empowering its people through principles of justice and equality, there exists the possibility that like a domino effect nation after nation will want to replicate the Bolivarian Revolution inside their own borders. Slowly but surely the poor, the unwanted, the masses of the world are becoming aware of what is transpiring in Venezuela, opening their eyes to the possibility of the impossible, dreaming of the same opportunity now present in Hugo Chavez’s country, of replicating its growing prosperity, justice and equality, awakening to the wonderment of a nation actually empowering the majority of its people through the profits of its businesses and resources. In the movement and awakening of the masses, however, the elite and Washington see a tremendous threat.

For years both the elite and Washington have combined forces to try and eliminate Chavez from power. They have orchestrated a coup, only to have failed. They have used the vast resources of the elite controlled media to trash and tarnish Chavez. They have conducted acts of sabotage on vital infrastructure. They have waged a campaign of destabilization, orchestrating a massive strike inside the national oil company. They have sought for and received referendums on Chavez’s policies and leadership, only to be outvoted and outmaneuvered. They have conducted extensive spying operations inside the country, using America’s embassy as a CIA operations center, trying to recruit Venezuelan military personnel for important national security information. They have orchestrated a public and media smear and disinformation campaign designed to brainwash Americans and citizens of other nations, trying to stop Chavez’s popularity from spreading. They have plotted assassination attempts, only to be discovered. They have escalated the rhetoric and war of words, leaving Venezuela no choice but to purchase defensive weapons in case of an American invasion. Chavez is decried as a dictator yet he is the one democratically elected multiple times. He is accused of subverting and altering democratic institutions, yet he is doing nothing more than what George W. Bush has been doing in America.

The popularity levels in Venezuela for Hugo Chavez have never been higher. He is beloved by the masses – though hated by the elite and their lackeys – and has become a national hero, a man changing history and opening trenches. His movement has spread to various South American nations; his ideas are resonating with untold millions. He is defying the Evil Empire, unflinching in his desire to improve the lives of his people. Showing us that a better system is possible, he is bringing prosperity to Venezuela, proving that socialism and capitalism can function side by side, showing us that an evolved form of governance is the wave of the future.

Mr. Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution is a monumental attempt to introduce a new approach to humanity, proving that in the 21st century new ways of thinking are needed if we are to survive as a civilization. Venezuela is a shining example of what is possible if the desire exists to help all the citizens of a nation, not just those already made wealthy. The triumph currently taking place in Venezuela, in the wake of tremendous odds, is a triumph of the human spirit, a story of one man and an entire population seeking to rid themselves both of market colonialism that has for years robbed them of an opportunity at better lives and of a corrosive system of castes that gives wealth and privilege to one group while subjugating and oppressing another.

Never in Latin America has democracy tasted so sweet, its nectar helping to give birth to an enthusiasm and an optimism seldom, if ever, seen. The Bolivarian Revolution spawned by Hugo Chavez has given hope to countless millions, granting millions more the bravery to confront America and its vast tentacles of market colonialism that has devastated the entire region. No longer scared of America’s might, no longer afraid to challenge the status quo, many leaders adopting Chavez’s Revolution are changing the rules of the game, pursuing the interests of the nation, not the multinational conglomerate, thwarting the rules of trade imposed by America, establishing laws to protect the indigenous population, nationalizing what was once threatened to be privatized, rewriting contracts that were once one-sided and vastly exploitative, resulting in the complete pillage of natural resources and their revenues.

Chavez has stood up to the bully from the north, standing upright and never relenting, unafraid of Bush and his corporatist friends, becoming a pariah to millions and a hero to billions. He continues his Revolution under constant threat from America, sacrificing his energy and possibly his life for a movement he strongly believes in, furthering the cause of justice, fairness, solidarity and equality. It is those leaders that selflessly confront dangers and threats to both life and limb that are true heroes, becoming the torches chosen by destiny to carry the light that guides our way, becoming the messenger of a change in the human condition that must inevitable come. Chavez is one such leader.

Into history’s navel has Hugo Chavez been born into, becoming a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale and dank environment. Hated by the wealthy for being a brown-skinned mestizo and not a member of the European elite, hated by America for eroding its market colonialism, born into poverty and hardship, the democratically elected president of Venezuela has altered the landscape not only of Latin America, but of the world as well. His vision and movement continues to gain traction, becoming the domino effect always feared by America. He is pushing into new horizons, changing the landscape of social class and hierarchy, granting opportunity and education and health and escape to hundreds of millions of people.

Finally in Latin America a personality has emerged willing to alter the status quo, fighting for the rights of the majority, equalizing a field that for 500 years has been anything but equal. Into history has his Bolivarian Revolution entered, gaining traction, extending its existence, becoming a thorn in the side of America. Will it survive the attacks from the Evil Empire that will surely and inevitably come? Will it establish itself as a new philosophy for a new millennium or will it quietly disappear with the passage of time? Will Hugo Chavez live to see what becomes of his wonderful Revolution?

The answers to these questions are sure to come in what appears to be a grand moment of tectonic rumbling between two diametrically opposed plates of belief rapidly headed on a collision course that will in the next few years show us what we are and where, if anyplace, we are headed. In this coming clash of philosophies, either the one that has ruined the lives of billions will declare victory, or the one that offers hope and a future for all will triumph. Either the Revolution will continue to evolve, or it will cease to be televised.

We can only hope the will and the voices of the People prevail. After all, freedom and democracy are, according to George W. Bush, inherent rights guaranteed to every nation and every citizenry, even to those that do not obey and bow down to the decrees of Empire.

The Pestilent Presidency

--------------------------------


A Nation Conditioned


The continued dismantling of America’s very essence, the decimation of its founding core and its evolving surface, has been a product of both purposeful malevolence as well as incompetent ignorance. While the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans continue to deteriorate, each day losing more knowledge, freedom, democracy and economic survivability – though with many remaining ignorant or blinded to their actual plight – the other America, that of the elite and the corporate world, has risen in exponential fashion to take the complete reigns of power away from the rest of us. As a result, the America of times past, where the People still ruled, has given way to the America of tomorrow, a corporatist ruled land where citizens are pawns and corporations kings.

In the five years since George W. Bush was anointed to the presidency a pestilence of decrepit efficiency has overtaken the nation, accelerating and magnifying what was already an empire in rapid decline. Since early 2001, very little has gone right in the America of working and middle class citizens, both of progressive and conservative beliefs, young and old, hundreds of millions strong, divided by differing opinion yet bonded by economic and social interests. At the same time, however, the reign of George Bush the Lesser has become a bonanza to the corporate and elite world as the nation is plundered of treasure and altered from deep within the halls of Washington, its wealth and resources reallocated to and misappropriated by the Establishment, thereby transforming a government once of, by and for the People into one strictly and efficiently receptive only to the interests of corporations.

The America born in 2001, first with the ascension of Bush and later with the psychological war on Americans begun on 9/11, has degenerated according to plan, methodically and perniciously engineered by entities intent on corporatist control, molded into an immovable ship on a collision course with a giant iceberg. In order for America to sink its people had to be molded to one day accept the fate awaiting us. Our brains had to be programmed and altered, our minds controlled and conditioned, our beliefs brainwashed and engineered. For years this has been achieved by the systematic evisceration of education, gutting knowledge and reason and learning in schools, transforming young sponge-like brains into rotting grey matter devoid of free thought.

Millions upon millions of citizens never stood a chance as the decrepit state of American education gutted all semblance of knowledge, our innate ability to learn manipulated instead to follow, obey and never question, with schools slowly but surely creating a nation of soldier ants and worker bees, teaching us historical propaganda and patriotic drivel, programming us to place unyielding devotion to flag and country, instructing us about the vast consortium of lies and fictions that comprise American history. We were brainwashed into always placing blind faith and trust in government and leaders, told to never question or dissent or protest the actions rising out of Washington.

Over years of anemic education, lacking the tools that makes the human mind free, devoid of reason, logic and analytical thought, with parental roles having become extinct, indoctrinated, taught and reared by the warm glow of television and the corporate world that controls it, our brain waves reprogrammed to the fictions and fantasy radiating from our monitors, with the brainwashing and controlling manipulations of our church, and with our minds becoming the receptive antennas to the voices and opinion of paid talking heads and media hacks tens of millions of us became, naturally, the very essence of the automatons our upbringing had systemically sculpted.

With schools under funded, subsisting in financial abandonment and teeming with reckless indifference, the state and the corporate world were free to educate us and our children through the monitor at home and propaganda laced schoolbooks, teaching only what was necessary to mold and create an army of unthinking drones through the purposeful evisceration of enlightened classes and curriculum. Over decades of discarded education, parenting and rearing, millions of children became the conduits and tools to power, enabling, through their large numbers, the continued decimation of the nation and giving rise, after years of patient lurking, to the debasement, corruption and corporatism that was resurrected with the appointment to power of the ultimate instrument of corporatist control, George W. Bush.

We became, over a series of subsequent decades, what we had allowed ourselves to become, following the blueprints of corporatist control, from birth mesmerized by the familiar warmth of television, absorbing the sounds and images carefully concocted by the corporate world which, as always, worked its magic, molding, caressing and reprogramming brainwaves along with the eventual destinies of millions of people. Over the years we allowed ourselves to be programmed and conditioned, engineered to become a society more and more willing to serve the interests of the powerful, in the process unknowingly sacrificing our own interests and becoming, by early 2001, a readied army standing silent, prepared, at the sound of corporatist trumpets, to march lockstep towards blind compliance, corporatist control and an ominous future.

Those trumpets calling Americans to arms would sound the last throes of the America of yesterday with the horrific implosion and subsequent destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Like a giant hypnotizing pendulum, 9/11 became the psychological instrument that brought life to an army molded over years of careful manipulation and conditioning. Falling towers and psychological operations thus acted in unison to enthrall millions who instinctively and blindly followed the emotions and behaviors that naturally arise from years of programmed conditioning.

Suddenly sprung to life after years waiting in the wings, millions of engineered Americans began doing what they had been taught to do for decades, becoming the rabidly patriotic and xenophobic citizenry unable to see forward because of myopic views and cloud covered thoughts, becoming the bed-wetting and fright-smeared beings gravitating to the only entity they had been taught was capable of protecting them from the evil bogeymen: the president.

Thus came to pass that George W. Bush, weak in character and in mind, failure in life and born to privilege, unlearned, unwise and incurious, corrupt and incompetent beyond repair, was thrust upon a paradigm shift of time, where differing dimensions crashed into each other, creating parallel universes and alternate realities, transforming America into a nation whose past would never again be allowed to thrive. In the engineered Americans he would find absolute power, along with the ingredients necessary to manipulate the fear and terror that have invariably become the oxygen-rich air feeding his oil thirsty veins. Thus, into the dawn of corporatist America George W. Bush stepped in, assuring the world that nothing would ever be the same again.


Bush’s Past, America’s Present


Upon the trail of tears following in the footsteps of democracy lost, a curse was birthed from Atlantic to Pacific, its dark fog covering the light of enlightenment and reality, replaced instead with the blackness of ignorance and blind faith. Into our lives has risen a most contemptuous figure, a man whose immorality knows no bounds, whose ability to lie in perpetuity is as great as his inability to competently lead a nation.

A man who was destined to become but a small herpes pimple appearing but once on history’s ass was granted a gift that has only kept on giving, becoming, since 9/11, the sustenance springing forth an oasis of political power to Republicans and to George W. Bush in particular. Without the horrific events that transpired on that fateful day, Bush would have been a certain one-term president, remembered more for his stolen election and both his subversion and contempt for democracy than for anything he could have ever done in the Oval Office.

Even before 9/11 his incompetence and lack of intelligence were readily apparent; yet his corruption was growing and evolving; his hunger to appease the corporatist world was evident. Hugely unpopular in his first few months in office, his administration was sinking even before sailing, for tens of millions of informed Americans had quickly realized the criminality of a man willing to selfishly place his stolen election over the interests and will of the People.

Yet his appointment to office was never designed to benefit the People, for inside political theater of compassionate conservatism chicanery festered and deception thrived. His was to be a presidency of, by and for the corporate world, an ascension to absolute power by the elite in control of corporations. He was to become the puppet of corporatism, doing the bidding for the powerful, his last name used as a marketing ploy to manipulate the minds of millions of voters. With a dynastic last name, an ignorant mind and an ever-weakening character, he became the perfect tool for the corporate world to clandestinely insert their powerful tentacles inside the highest office in the land.

Born to wealth and aristocracy, with a silver spoon in his mouth and a dark-skinned maid to acquiesce to his every demand, Bush never learned what life was like to the vast majority of Americans. Protected from the reality of the “real world,” the world of you and me, he never learned the lessons or the harshness of life difficult and unexpected, never suffering hunger, thirst, cold or the uncertainty of living paycheck to paycheck. He never experienced difficulty paying bills or sacrificing happiness for health.

Sequestered in the life of royalty, hidden from reality by his attending elitist prep schools, he was unable to empathize with anything other than the society he was born into. Needing the affirmative action of influence and legacy in order to attend Ivy League universities, he became a complacent and spoiled fraternity boy, growing from male cheerleader to partier extraordinaire, as always looking down upon the rest of America’s social classes with contempt, feeling himself superior by birth, failing to understand our ways of living life and our struggles, our needs and wants, forever devoid of a humanity and an understanding of life at the opposite end of the tracks.

Preferring to dwell in the spirits of the bottle instead of the philosophies of books, yet possessing all the resources needed by which to pursue a truly enlightened age of reason and age of discovery, he instead subsisted trailing behind his much more intelligent father’s footsteps, living off the laurels of his parents, in time branching off on his own, though as always using the vast resources of the family, not to mention the powerful influence of his last name that instantly opens doors and transcends the inertia of business, that would be the envy of any seemingly competent entrepreneur trying to succeed in life.

Yet even with the incredible opportunities granted him throughout his life, Bush could never succeed on his own. Time after time he needed the salvation and money of his father to bail him out of the trouble that usually followed him around. With the powerful influence of Bush the Wiser, Bush the Lesser, in spite of all his shortcomings, inevitably always found partners and business opportunities. It can safely be assumed that these individuals took in the son as a favor or to gain favor with the father, always knowing how incompetent the son was yet wanting to secure friendship with a man whose influence in Washington only grew.

In time, exploiting his last name, his family’s wealth, his father’s influence and the corruption and lack of integrity by which he has become well known today, he amassed a small fortune. Meanwhile, sinister demons lurked about, and over time, a fondness for alcohol developed, haunting him for years until he became a born again Christian, a natural result befalling truly lost souls possessing weak and vulnerable minds. It was in Scripture that he found meaning, it was in the Church structure that he found comfort, needing, like all lost souls, to find meaning to life both through control of his impulses and by placing blind faith in an unseen and unknown god.

His born again belief in the Almighty was in part a consequence of his psychologically fragile mind that had resulted after years of being unable to duplicate the success of his father, knowing that he would never surpass a legacy set in wisdom and intelligence, in better genes and talent. The deep psychological manifestation between an overachieving father and an underachieving son, so full of insecurities, an inferiority complex and internal conflict, resulted for Bush in a contempt for life only drowned either by filling the mind with alcoholic spirits and the high of drugs, or from kneeling down in subservient obedience to a metaphysical god demanding complete control and power over the individual.

One can suspect that it is this deep psychological vacuum – of a desire to be greater than his always competent father – that has driven Bush the Lesser during his presidency, trying desperately in every way possible to become a better president than his father. This quest, however, has been fruitless, resulting in even greater incompetence and in a further fogging of logic, reason, decision making and analytical thought, becoming a growing threat to the Republic, as can be clearly seen over the last five years, for Bush the Lesser is fighting a lost cause, demons that cannot be exorcised, his mental faculty never being able to reach or surpass that of Bush the Wiser.

It was this utterly weak-minded individual, bereft of inner strength and strong will, haunted by the deep insecurities of never being able to surpass the talents and abilities of his father, that would go on to become governor of Texas and later, President of the United States, once again using and exploiting his last name, not to mention the reputation of George Bush the Wiser, to carry him into power. For Bush the Lesser knew that his assets were not his mind or his talent, but something much more superficial, the legacy and reputation established by his father, the human infrastructure loyal to his father, the family wealth and the ever important Bush family name.

Even though he could not carry the weight of his father on his shoulders, Bush nonetheless exploited every mechanism established and left over by his father, knowing that if he could not surpass him, he could at least use his legacy to reach otherwise unattainable heights. Using all these weapons at his disposal, even a complete incompetent and buffoon such as Bush could achieve success. It was this infrastructure of assets established by his father that would eventually condemn America to a Pestilent Presidency and the world to an increased sense of threat and insecurity.


Bush’s Base


Nobody has benefited more from the tragedy of 9/11 than George W. Bush. He has exploited its emotions, its deep scars and its echoing voices from the grave. Without it he would be nothing, an insignificant one term has-been troubled by the psychological fragility his limitations engender. Yet because of his incompetence, and some would say willful negligence, America’s new Pearl Harbor was allowed to occur, as ever under his watch, as ever under his disastrous leadership, or lack thereof, that has followed him since birth. Because of 9/11 tens of millions have become addicted to his existence, to his smirk and his strut, mesmerized at the charade created by marketing geniuses, of a Napoleon-like being leading the herd through the forest of ghosts and goblins, with sword in hand slaying evildoer Arabs trying to destroy the sacred lands of America.

He is perceived by his base, tens of millions of individuals sharing many characteristics, composed of Christian fundamentalists, the conservative, the unenlightened, the selfish, the apathetic, the easily led, the weak-minded, the unthinking, the ignorant, those blinded by flag and cross, those more likely to hate based on race, gender and sexual preference, the xenophobic, the extreme patriotic, the war mongers, the greed addicts, the super wealthy, the corporatists, the neocons and the elite, as the father figure destiny has chosen to protect and defend them and their rights in these most “hideous times of trouble.” It is these individuals who blindly swear allegiance to a man of embarrassing ineptitude for various reasons, voting for him in droves, not wanting to listen to reason or logic even as their nation crumbles from underneath their legs and as their cherished freedoms and liberties vanish right in front of their eyes.

Even as he appeals to this collection of self-destruction and self-exploitation his interests lie in protecting, defending and expanding the powers of those like himself, namely, the elite and corporatists among his base. While courting the rest of his followers, he promises heaven and delivers hell, forever weaving and dealing and conniving in a clear pattern of deception. In Orwellian fashion, Bush uses terms for policies that signify the exact opposite of what he intends to do. He makes the unthinking in his base come to the conclusion that he has their best interests at heart.

Yet the blind and the deaf and those that cannot think for themselves fail to understand that they are but pawns in the game of power, used only for their vote, contribution and political power, never to see the benefits of what the Dear Leader preaches. In time he grants them the morsels and crumbs and bones of what is left over, enough to appease their illogical minds. These bits and pieces keep the base at ease, happy enough to chew on their given bones, content that a small sliver of what they asked for has been given them.

For years they are kept servile to the interests of Bush’s real base, yet they think themselves the true recipients of power. Deluded and easily manipulated, they feverishly support the myriad of policies that will, in the end, be of great detriment to their lives, wallets and future of their children. Blinded by the incapacity to understand or to read policy, knowledgeable only in the ten second sound bites shouted out, thirty second advertisements saturated with lies and the slogans written in cardboard propaganda, and possessing the attention span of a gnat, the majority of those that support Bush will invariably shoot themselves, and their children, in the foot, their lives made worse thanks to the ardent following of a man that undoubtedly sneers behind their backs, pillages their wages, robs them of jobs, increases their many expenses and sends them or their children to war. Even as they blindly follow, even as they sign loyalty pledges, Bush is working to eviscerate their country and their lives.

In reality he cares not an ounce for their plight or their lives, seeing in them only the exploited energy to be used by his corporate allies. The average American is alien to people like George W. Bush, enigmas that never encompassed the elitist lifestyle of families like the Bushes. George W. Bush only saw the masses through a looking glass, in small timeframes where by happenstance two differing social classes would meet. We were the hired help, the fish beyond the six inch compressed glass, the beings represented by television, far removed from the mansions and estates of northeastern aristocracy. To Bush the common man might be seen and touched for periods of time, but we are never understood and never seen as equals. We are the peasants to the ruling class, our lives made better if only someone like Bush would look our way.

The façade of Bush as a Texan cowboy, wearing his hat and his boots, strutting around with his cowboy demeanor, is but a clever public relations campaign designed to give Bush the appearance of normalcy. His Crawford ranch is but a hollow illusion created to make out of this pampered east coast elite a common folk that appeals to the masses. Yet most of his years were spent in Connecticut, living the life of luxury, attending institutions of prestige and landed gentry. It is this group of people that Bush represents, for they have been present throughout his bubble existence. He is them just as much as they are him. The rest of Bush’s followers lie far, far behind, walking where footprints disappear to an approaching wave, to be used and abused, like they have throughout American history, by the upper echelons of America’s hierarchy.

It is the corporate world, and the corporatists that control it, that are Bush’s true constituents. To this group he has been a raving success, one of the greatest presidents to ever take office. Through him they have hijacked the White House and the entire nation, transforming government into a prostitute for the corporate world. He has appointed a multitude of corporate executives, hacks, lackeys and talking heads to the middle and highest levels of governance, creating, inside Washington, a nest of corporatists gorging on a once-proud government of the People from the inside, mutating it into a breadbasket containing the tasty and succulent pastries making obese the bank accounts of both corporations and the elite. The halls of governance are littered with cronies and criminals, inept and talentless individuals whose only abilities are incompetence, donating money and smearing their noses with the fecal matter of power.

Since his anointment, Washington has become a bordello of cheap prostitutes, a red light district where government officials eagerly wait in street corners, ready to exchange money flows, anticipating unbuckling belts, bending over, spreading cheeks and selling their souls to corporate demons. The Beltway has become a city of corruption and debauchery, of greed and love of the Almighty Dollar, a perfect place for corporate interests to prevail. Laws, rules, regulations and appropriations have been written and rewritten, altered or created, amended or clandestinely introduced, the vast majority of which favor in some way, shape or form the corporate world. Science, education, reality and truth are being suppressed in order to grant favor to corporations whose profits rely on truth not being made public.

The nation’s treasure has been pillaged in one of the world’s greatest heists, a highway robbery that has left the nation and its economy close to imminent collapse. Untold billions of dollars have disappeared, given to cronies or to corporatist buddies, their companies made vastly wealthy thanks to the misappropriation of a treasure earned by the blood, sweat and tears of hard working Americans. Meanwhile, Bush has orchestrated, along with the Republican Party, one of the largest tax cuts to the wealthy in our history, at the expense of the middle class, making the rich richer and the poor poorer, leaving the nation without adequate funding and severely compromising the future economic prospects of the nation.

George W. Bush has declared that he is a ‘war president’ and indeed he has become one. The only problem is that he has declared a war against the American people, along with his ill-conceived war in Iraq, in the process inflicting severe damage to both working and middle class citizens, in a preemptive strike against the very foundations of America. This war has been planned for years, becoming a platform for Republican success. By robbing the nation of its treasure, by indebting America so severely, there will come a time when we will be forced, in order to maintain economic stability, to eviscerate the many social programs that are the hallmark of American principles of justice and equality.

With a war that will cost a trillion dollars, with tax cuts for the wealthy and for the corporate world, with almost $500 billion going to the military-industrial complex yearly, the corporatists in power will declare that in order to maintain a reasonable budget, social programs such as education, healthcare, welfare assistance, work assistance and any policy to help the poor will have to be gutted. We are seeing this already. For years social services have been hated by a Republican Party that has no empathy or understanding for the plight of the less fortunate. A party ideology that believes in social Darwinism and in the power of unfettered capitalism has wanted to do away with social safety nets for decades, as usual ignorant or unconcerned to the ramifications to their actions. Bush, ever the Jesus lover and conduit of the Almighty that he is, is helping to destroy these very foundations.

Almost every law and regulation enacted benefits corporations at the expense of average Americans. Today, corporations are free to run unobstructed as they race to make as much profit as possible, caring nothing for the people they harm in the process. Corporate profits today, along with CEO salaries, have become a ridiculous display of arrogance, with some companies earning profits of $10 billion per quarter. Thanks to Bush, war has been declared against average Americans, as corporations do as they wish, lowering wages, raising prices, cutting thousands of jobs, outsourcing their employees to bottom dwelling nations, using cost cutting mechanisms to further exploit workers or compromise customers. Pensions are being cut, healthcare is ever-more expensive, prescription pills are not affordable, gasoline is as expensive as ever and all around, laws are being enacted to further the interests of the corporate world at the expense of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Is it any wonder why companies in the oil/energy, pharmaceutical and defense industries have had some of the highest profits ever recorded? When your representative lives inside the White House, when his job is to empower and enlarge corporate control over America, all the while destroying the middle class and its freedoms and liberties, making hundreds of millions of citizens slaves subservient to the corporate world, you can declare mission accomplished. This, to all who can see clearly, is the reason for Bush’s ascension to the highest office in the land. The most powerful man in the world has as his objective the rise to total control of the corporate world, altering the balance of power away from We the People and towards the direction of corporatist control. This is Bush’s true base and to them, he has been a rousing success, a truly great President.


Rise of the Dictator


Since Bush took the reigns of power, corruption has become endemic in Washington. With the love of the Almighty Dollar running rampant throughout the corridors of governance, with politics becoming more important than policy, with public relations given more precedence than truth and with charlatans, criminals and callous destroyers of human life prevalent and in control, the ingredients exist to make of Washington a putrid cocktail of immorality representing everything that is wrong with America and the rise of unfettered capitalism.

The secrecy of government has never been as noticeable as it is today. With an arrogant contempt for the People’s right to know that has seldom been seen in our history, the Bush administration has sequestered, hidden, whitewashed, trashed, covered up and made to disappear what it does not want known. Whistleblowers are ruined, investigations are squashed, investigators are promoted away from their investigations, reports are quieted, science is trashed and true patriots are prevented from speaking truth. Transparency and accountability have become things of the past, as the activities of the executive have vanished from the public record. They do whatever they want, trash the Constitution when they so feel, creating rules and laws beneficial to their interests, hiding their criminality behind layers of newly concocted opinions and Constitutional interpretations by their hired cronies and lackeys.

Since 9/11 Bush has eroded many civil liberties, freedoms and rights, enveloping the nation into the grip of corporatism, more commonly called fascism. Wherever Bush travels, to give a speech or a fundraiser, is turned into a police state, with so-called “free speech zones,” with mandatory “loyalty oaths” to those attending Bush’s propaganda-laced speech and with a small army of police and secret service bullying and frightening. As opposition to the Iraq war has grown, suppressions of dissent and protest has increased, with police forces becoming the brownshirts and blackshirts of the Administration, intimidating and threatening peaceful protesters. Free speech is a dying right, and inside Bush’s gatherings, where he sits comfortably in his infallible bubble, only those who agree with his policies or support him are allowed inside.

With the arrival of Bush into office thanks to his illegal anointment, the erosion of democracy since 2000 has only accelerated, with questionable election results in 2002 and once again with the presidential election of 2004, where millions of votes, it is now known, were manipulated in favor of Bush. With two stolen presidential elections, easily provable and apparent to anyone with half a brain, American democracy has ceased to exist, becoming an archaic antique in the minds of those still able to remember the last clean election. The use of electronic voting, using Republican controlled machines such as Diebold, has cast an enormous cloud over the continued vitality of American democracy. For now, with electronic voting machines becoming the rule rather than the exception, their numbers growing throughout the nation, what we once knew as democracy has died, buried six feet under the crumbling foundations of what was once America. The question, then, becomes: Why does Bush hate us for our democracy? Why does he fear the principle of one person, one vote?

He has done more damage to America in this so-called war on terror than Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, destroying our freedoms and rights, severely compromising habeas corpus and due process, allowing for arrests without probable cause, surveillance of peaceful anti-war groups and unlawful wiretapping of American citizens. He has granted the right to spy on us as well as the right to enter our homes without warrants or permission or knowledge. Our computers can be hacked, our libraries can be asked to provide private information and private companies, it is now known, are cooperating with the government, providing private information regarding the accounts of Americans. Yet he has failed to adequately protect our ports and borders, our nuclear and chemical plants. The question should now be asked: Why does Bush hate us for our rights and freedoms? Does he want to destroy our way of life?

More importantly, Bush has introduced a reign of terror and fear upon the American people. Like a darkness that does not dissipate he has imported perpetual fear, perpetual war and perpetual terror to our shores. He has become the ultimate terrorist, greater than any Arab bogeyman, greater than any ghoul or goblin lurking in our closets, much more dangerous than any Muslim. Injecting fear into our consciousness, making millions feel insecure and unprotected, making them dependent on him and on government for psychological comfort enables Bush to expand his powers and his dominion over the citizens of the nation. It is the only way he can govern, and the only way he can maintain power. Both he and 9/11 were born on the same day, creatures of symbiotic affection, one unable to survive without the other. September 11, 2001, with its memories, engendered emotions and massive exploitation, is his twin sister.

Thus he, his handlers and his marketers terrorize the American public, manipulating fears and emotions and psychological fragility, eroding our inner strength and confidence, making us willingly sacrifice our remaining freedoms and rights. Through our fear his power grows, through our trust in him our nation is destroyed more each day. Little do they care about our health, our stress and our worries, preferring to continue haunting minds rather than alleviating them. To them, 9/11 remains manna from heaven, the essence of their power, the darkness enveloping and hiding every one of their lies, deceptions and manipulations.

Fear and terror must be maintained in the national spotlight, creating a nation of bed-wetters, underwear-soilers and cry babies asking Father Bush for protection. The Dear Leader belief must be kept alive. It is this fear that sustains and feeds George W. Bush, becoming his opiate, his new drug of choice. Without it he would be finished, his popularity eviscerated, his lies exposed, his ego trampled, his purple robe burned. With it he rules like an emperor, a dictator whose arrogance to ignore checks and balances becomes ever more dangerous the longer absolute power corrupts. The fear of tens of millions of Americans allows him to lie and deceive and manipulate and whitewash and escape all accountability, granting him powers never granted an executive, making him, to millions of rabid and blind supporters, a living god.

It is the terror he exposes and markets that makes submissive to his grip millions of Americans, robbing them of free thought or reason. It is the terror that he manufacturers and exaggerates that suppresses our freedoms and rights. It is the power we cede him that grants him the ability and desire to torture, kidnap, imprison and bomb, killing over 150,000 thousand innocent Iraqis and over 2,200 American soldiers. Our fears and insecurities have allowed him to build a network of gulags around the world, beginning with the concentration camp in Guantanamo. How many people have disappeared in these prisons, never to see daylight again? How many people in Iraq have been tortured, raped and sodomized, with Bush’s silent consent?

It is the terror he unleashes on the Arab world that is making our lives more dangerous, increasing our insecurity and the risk of further attacks. He has contributed in mass murder and devastating destruction, maiming, injuring and causing incredible amounts of suffering. He has completely and utterly destroyed the nation of Iraq. Under international definitions of terrorism, George W. Bush is the greatest terrorist alive today.

The Jesus he claims to follow is not the Jesus that guides him as a politician. Claiming to converse with the Almighty, claiming to be a conduit of the Almighty’s path for humanity, Bush as President has acted more like the God of the Old Testament than the one of the New, unleashing death, destruction and untold suffering on hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom are the descendents of those that first concocted the myth of Bush’s god. He has shown no remorse, no pity, no forgiveness and no love as he has unleashed the instruments and weapons of war upon millions of innocent civilians, waging his own personal jihad against Arabs and Muslims. And people by the millions think him a Christian?

He is an amateur dictator enraptured and corrupted by absolute power, depending on the army of conditioned Americans to continue his devastation, both in the Middle East and in the United States. Nothing he has ever done has been a success, and now he is sending one more business venture, the nation called America, down the precipice of failure. Never succeeding, always failing, forever bailed out by Bush the Wiser, he has never learned what it is like to suffer hardship and pain, never experiencing hunger and struggle. He is a callous and cold-hearted individual with deep psychological problems, weak-minded in character and a bully in spirit. His arrogance and hubris will be the demise of us all. Unfortunately, his father cannot save him, or the nation, any longer. He will fail on his own, becoming a curse upon our land, a pestilence infecting our principles and our virtues, our rivers and lands, our children and future.

Nothing has gone right since the curse called Bush entered office. His is a Pestilent Presidency, a rotting manifestation of corruption and immorality, a fraud and conniver, a most unethical human being incapable of honor or integrity. When we should be running away from scum such as this we instead allow him to steal two elections and remain the pestilence that he is, creating a diseased society devoid of the freedom it once possessed and the civil rights it fought so hard to attain.

George W. Bush is a corporatist without intelligence, an unknowing, incurious, detached and ignorant human being, a puppet to much brighter individuals, a tool for the corporate world. He does not care for the unenlightened souls that see him as Dear Leader, nor the soldiers he sends to either die or sacrifice mental health. In reality, he does not care about America, at least the America of you, me and everyone else. He is changing our lands, our society, giving our government to corporations and the corporatists that run them. In time, and with reflection, after the hypnosis of this most devastating of Presidents has passed, he will be seen for what he presently is, namely, the worst person to ever occupy the White House, becoming, through infamy, the mistake that was and the lesson learned.

The Pestilent Presidency was given all the tools in life to become a success, yet throughout his life, he has failed at everything, only succeeding in politics thanks to his last name and the power of his father. Born to wealth beyond our dreams, he became not a competent and able leader, but a man devoid of talent and ability, a person squandering the opportunity given him. Wrapped inside a bubble of luxury and elitism, he failed to understand the mass of humanity, seeing it as easily exploitable, easily suppressed and easily controlled. In his upbringing can we see the destruction he has unleashed upon our nation. In his failures can we understand today’s most troubled times.

The Pestilent Presidency has been a malignant tumor to the America of you, me and everyone else. He has been a grand success to the corporate world. Who do you think he represents? Whose interests does he help further? Only when he departs and exits our lives will the curse of Bush lift from our country, dissipating like a long, permanent haze, and perhaps only then can we try and reclaim what has been lost, if it is not already too late. The ruins of what George W. Bush will leave behind after he leaves our reality will be strewn all around us, rotting and eroding, the whispers of a better America barely audible, yet its horizon ready to be radiant once again.

With him gone we will finally try to rebuild and move forward, trying to erase memories of the Pestilent Presidency from our midst, trying, desperately, to make right the direction of America, trying, as much as possible, to never again allow a pestilence to destroy what we stand for, in the process inoculating ourselves with the antidote of harsh lessons learned, finally eradicating the diseases and fears that most ail us.