Tales of Angst, Alienation and Martial Law: Roasting Marshmallows on the American Reichstag Fire to Come

In this summer of angst and grim foreboding about what further assaults against common sense and common decency the Bush Administration might inflict upon the people of the world, how many times during the day do those of us — still possessed of mind, heart and conscience — take pause, hoping we’ve seen the worst of it, then, fearing we haven’t yet, attempt to push down the dread rising within us, so that we might simply make it through the day and be able to rest at night? Accordingly, those who have been paying attention are aware that the outward mechanisms of martial law are in place. We shudder knowing that Bush has issued an executive decree that grants him dictatorial power in the event of some nebulously defined national emergency. In addition, the knowledge nettles us that a vast network of internment camps bristle across the length of the U.S., standing at wait for those who might raise objections to the fascistic fury unloosed by the American empire’s version of the Reichstag fire.

Moreover, a closer look would reveal that the inner processes by which an individual begins the act of acceptance of authoritarian excess — the mixture of chronic passivity, boredom, low grade anxiety and unfocused rage inherent in the citizens/consumers of the corporate state that primes an individual for fascism — have been in place for quite some time within the psyches of the American populace, both elites and hoi polloi alike. Although, don’t look for torch-lit processions thronging the nation’s streets and boulevards; rather, look for a Nuremberg Rally of couch-bound brownshirts. Instead of ogling the serried ranks of jut-jawed SS soldiers, a contemporary Leni Riefenstahl would be forced to film chubby clusters of double-chinned consumers saluting the new order with their TV remotes. In the contemporary United States, the elation induced by the immersion of one’s individual will to the mindless intoxication of the mob might only be possible if Bush seized dictatorial control of the state while simultaneously sending out to all citizens gift certificates to Ikea.

After the catastrophes spawned by the rise of European fascism in the 1930s, a number of brilliant, original thinkers (including Hannah Arendt, Roberto Freire, Wilhelm Reich, and R. D. Laing) set out to study the phenomenon in order to learn how future calamities might be prevented. Although the methodologies and conclusions of these thinkers varied, each noted that alienation and dehumanization festered at the core of the death urge of fascism.

Nowadays, in contrast, the elites of the corporate media have proven themselves useless in this regard, believing, as they do, they constitute the thin line between the rabble at large (me and you) and the chaos begot by freedom. At present, mega-churches attract alienated suburbanites. Right wing talk show hosts misdirect their listeners alienation towards so-called illegal “aliens” and exploit their audience’s sense of powerlessness (created by the rigged system of corporate capitalism) against elitist liberals (who themselves, ironically, benefit from the present system and who only want to change it to the degree that their own privilege will not be affected. In other words, not at all).

Combine the above with the American character trait of being hostile towards introspection and it becomes evident that the present disaster has been building for quite a while now. And it can (and most likely will) get worse — far worse.

Most Americans alive today have been trained since birth to adapt to and serve the corrupt corporate structure by means of the shunning of critical thinking and have been conditioned to be in constant (empty) motion or in the thrall of mass media distraction. We have been taught that passivity is for losers, yet we find ourselves nearly powerless before the corporate/consumer/military/police/entertainment state. In this way, we serve our corporate masters; it serves the corpocracy that the lower orders refuse meaningful self-awareness. If one were to glimpse one’s own illusions, then it follows one might begin to question collective delusions — and this would upset the social order.

Those who have studied the dangers of authoritarian rule have advised us to be wary of people who carry an inner emptiness. Of course, these unfortunates yearn for the void to be filled. But with their hearts and minds mortared closed — what makes it through the self-constructed prison is loud, stupid, and fascistic. At present, what penetrates is: Fundamentalist Sermons on Armageddon; violent video games; the empty spectacle of steroid-induced professional sports hype; the lethal fantasies of American exceptionalism; the exercise in Rock and Roll imperialism that U.S. foreign policy has become. In short, all the banal Sturm und Drang necessary to pierce those protective walls and penetrate the pervasive inner emptiness.

When the people of a culture have been conditioned to worship power — but feel powerless — there’s trouble ahead. The elites must displace the public’s rage by a demagogic sleight-of-hand such as the demonization of marginalized groups. In the US, we’ve been inundated by years of state and commercial propaganda that has degraded and demonized the country’s permanent underclass by the labeling of them as welfare parasites and career criminals.

It has been noted that the mindset, methods, and procedures of America’s punitive, profit-driven prison-industrial complex was a prototype for the systemic cruelty of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib; furthermore, it is a given that those institutional affronts to human decency will have served as prototypes for the methods and procedures that will be practiced upon those who are swept-up in the purges and detainment mania following the declaration of martial law in the United States.

We push this knowledge away from us, fearing we will be paralyzed by its crushing implications. Worse, what is nearly impossible to admit is, most likely, the system crushed us long ago. Apropos, R. D. Laing averred that being able to adapt and function within an insane, authoritarian system renders one for all practical purposes insane — only insane in a manner acceptable to a power mad ruling elite.

This is the knowledge we push down, every hour of everyday. Otherwise, we would be driven to admit outright that the system has crushed our individual hopes, aspirations and yearnings. We must, at all costs, keep these feelings concealed; otherwise, we might be compelled to contemplate what we have forsaken, what passions and truths we have traded away for the false sense of security that the corporate order offered us when we tacitly agreed to surrender what was most sacred, vital and alive within us. One psychological manifestation of this phenomenon is the incessant chanting of that mantra of the American corporate workforce: “I’m not my job. I’m not what I do all day long.”

For a moment, meditate on the calamity implicit in such a sentiment. Because If we cannot locate and engage our true selves during our waking hours — then who the hell are we anyway? This is a profoundly troubling circumstance. Moreover, if we’ve condemned our daylight selves to a void of non-being, what then remains of us?

We experience this dislocation of the life force as a sense of nebulous dread. Everything, these days, the architecture and accoutrements of our lives seems so fragile and unreal; it feels as if everything could just fly apart, at any given moment. The world and our place in it seems so flimsy: an empire built of eggshells; it could all shatter in an instant.

Living on credit, the house of cards of the real estate market, jobs evaporating, most of us languishing only a couple of paychecks away from ruin: The empire is coming undone. As it is, it seems the nation is only being held together with hydrogenated fat, wheat gluten, over-extended credit and particle board. Ergo, there is one law the lawless Bush administration and their keepers from the plundering class cannot flout: the second law of thermodynamics. They won’t be able to claim executive privilege to avoid the consequences of negative entropy.

In a similar vein, we, the underlings of empire, stand helpless before the prevailing madness. Individual reason rarely acts as a countervailing force to stem a drowning tide of cultural cognitive dissonance. Because the more epic and all-compassing the mistake, the more epic and all-encompassing come the rationalizations, the scapegoating and the compulsion for do-overs. If the surge isn’t working as fantasized, then we’ll double-dog surge you and then bomb Iran. If police state tactics fail to alleviate a sense of anxiety, then we must construct more detainment camps, more maximum security prisons, enact more federal death penalty statutes. “Bring back the electric chair; being put to sleep, like stray pets, is too good for the traitors,” the mob will rage. That’s the solution, but (cognitive dissonance being what it is) we need to go bigger — we need an electric sofa — yet, bigger still — an electric dining room set! “Aahh … the smell of deep-fried dissidents in the morning.”

And over the smoking corpses, let us pray. We need to pray for … what? … more prayer. These prayers would work, the homicidally faithful will insist — if every single doubter was induced to drop to their knees and pray. Hence, we need prayer in the public schools. We need prayer on public transportation. We need prayer in public restrooms!

Animus, ignorance, and magical thinking are a tragic mix — and I’m afraid that vintage of mind is the hideous wine of our times. The social criteria that gives rise to fascism is in place in the U.S. and those in positions of power have a strong interest in seeing things remain that way. All we can do is what folks (a minority) have always done … exile or resistance.

In my opinion, both are honorable. The other options are varying degrees of “little Eichmann[ism]” — Ward Churchill’s much scorned, career purge-inducing — but never-the-less accurate phrase. If one does the “soul work,” to appropriate archetypal psychologist James Hillman’s term, it is still possible to resist complicity. Training yourself to avoid lying for provisional gain is a time honored means of prevented alliances with exploitive assholes. They will avoid you, fire you, curse your name from the darkness of their inner abyss — but this will solve the problem of dependence on them — and you’ll be forced to live by other means. Generally, one is more adaptable than one believes.

Keep yourself as healthy and as sane as possible: we’re going to need you around after the inevitable collapse of the present system. Also, beware of those reductionist demons of the mind who diminish the soul-making possibilities of “mere” words. The acts of writing and reading are seen as passive; to crackpot realists, these activities seem useless, unproductive — the feckless indulgences of a class of the thin-wristed effete.

Accordingly, Americans have all but ceased reading. Worse, they displace their feelings of self-loathing borne of their own corporately induced passivity upon writers and thinkers. If the tenets of democratic discourse are to survive, it is imperative that writers and thinkers begin to engage in a passionate defense of themselves against the kvetching armies of crackpot realists that have encircled and laid siege to our collective hearts and minds.

But don’t expect to be lauded with praise for the effort. It’s doubtful our adversaries will be moved by our entreaties. There cannot be a rapprochement with reality for those who have never had a relationship with it in the first place. Yet verbal imagery and depth-inducing insights are the DNA of compassionate engagement. It is not a coincidence that George W. Bush is an inarticulate oaf. Conversely, there are many things in this world that require being touched by words, for there are occasions when words alone can suffice to take us deep and lift us up and serve to ameliorate our alienation.

It is in this spirit that I offer the words above to you; I’m traveling light; they’re all I’m carrying with me, at this late hour, in these dark and dangerous times.

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living now in Munich, Germany. He may be contacted at: philrockstroh.scribe@gmail.com and at Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/phil.rockstroh. Read other articles by Phil.

14 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. Hatuxka said on July 26th, 2007 at 7:54am #

    Yes, it’s so “out there” to refer to Bush as a Nazi, yeah sure. Nothing he has done was not predicted in at least general terms and very often in very specific terms. Thus, I fault his “opposition party” for their ineffectual response to him from the day Gore shut down the election 2000 challengers in Congress right up to now where Conyers does a 180 on Bush impeachment.

  2. Rob Thomas said on July 26th, 2007 at 8:09am #

    Hi Phil,

    Very interesting article. I feel much the same on a daily basis. Funny how folks are willing to trade their lives for conveniences, so that they won’t be bothered with reality. I, myself, have left the US. The contradictions were too much for me. Th0ugh I fear that the situation will become worse as the “thinkers” leave, I cannot be a part of what is happening there. There are many people leaving the US with their minds and money. Deconstruction might be a good thing in the end. The big problem is that the “crazies” have billions of dollars of possible debt to employ and nuclear weapons at hand. If these folks really believe in the “end times” they can actually create that reality.

    The past has shown that the dissidents usually flee so that they can agitate from abroad. They eventually come to power from the outside, with mixed results. Is that the future for the US? I do not know. I do know that things must change.

    Thanks,

    Rob

  3. Myers said on July 27th, 2007 at 8:06pm #

    Dear Phil,
    Excellent as ever! It’s been a long time my friend, I hope you’re well?
    You’re article got me thinking of Robert Lansings or Walt Lippman’s description of the masses… ‘are an ignorant and bewildered herd and should have no dealings in public affairs’; at least then the herd was comparatively free.
    Now, they’re all individually micro-chiped lab rats, obediently scurrying round the maze of corporate retailers, repeatedly pressing buttons and buying consumer crap with money they can’t afford to pay back – Pavlov would be so proud!
    How on earth can we start to free society from this ‘Matrix’-esque entrapment when so many of our number are so blind!? Our strenght is in a united society that understands, the inconveniences that come with change are worth suffering and that the enemy is not race, religion or each other for whatever reason, but the board members of Wal-mart, BP, Tesco, BAE etc and their lobbyists; in the UK the worst of these are Lawson Lucas & Mendelsohn. Look ’em up, cut and paste.
    Best wishes,
    Myers

  4. s h a r o n said on July 27th, 2007 at 11:20pm #

    Off the scale, Phil. Outstanding (if wrenching) analysis. So much of what you say echoes my own thoughts–about cognitive dissonance, about the lack of critical thinking–both of which plague the rationale for schooling. We school individuals to eschew critical thinking (teachers certainly cannot abideit in their K-12 classrooms); but to eschew the major root of the problems you so eloquently describe–by seeing schooling for what it is–ensures that cognitive dissonance will loom and protect the majority from such inclinations. (I have written about these matters on my website–which is not as tidy as yours, but there, I can work out my thoughts and use the practice of writing to hone my critical thinking, a healthful suggestion of yours.)

    Thanks, as always.

    s

  5. Joe Ayer said on July 28th, 2007 at 1:32am #

    My gawd, Phil, were you never breast fed as a baby…wheat gluten sensitive, or what.
    Once again you have encapsulated the capitulation of the American psyche in a meta/materialistic deconstruction of the unhinged hubris and cognitive dissonance associated with our national megalomania. A unilateral megalomania spawned of a spiritual void and fear from the loss of the promised land of the American dream and now vulnerable to Fascist seduction.
    “Torch-lit processions of a Nuremberg Rally” are replaced today with American Idol and America’s got Talent TV shows.
    After you offered the restricted choice of either exile or resistance, which didn’t sooth my ozone depleted soul, you then rallied the patriots with compassionate engagement. Man your battle stations, all fingers on your keyboards.
    I do vivaciously disagree that George W. Bush is an inarticulate oaf. The fact is his clumsy delivery diabolically disarms and distracts the public from the evil neo-con end run of herding our neighbors into a docile and manageable flock.
    One of my favorite R.D. Lang quotes is – “(Uncle Sam’s) Family is the seedbed of neurosis.”
    Phil, thanks, we’re counting on you to energize the peripheral disgruntled members of the social flock.
    Joe

  6. Paolo said on July 28th, 2007 at 7:23am #

    I dropped out a few years ago, refusing to sell over-priced equities and investments to over-leveraged suckers, with the regret that I should have become something useful like a doctor, a plumber or a dental technician.

    Yes, there are adaptable and resilient people such as I, but our nonconformity comes at the cost of family and friends and certainly lifestyle. I too divested myself of the exploitative assholes, but these are the people that run, that feed the entire economy, and to avoid them creates much solitude. Noone is as lonely as an awakened intellectual at a fourth of July suburban block party, watching debt ridden gluttons proudly displaying their procreated cannon fodder while celebrating not justice or freedom, but their own fleeting, largely undeserved prosperity.

    The kinship of like minds, dissidents if you will, is preserved via the internet, as long as this technology is allowed. For we do represent an enlightened minority and as Phil implies in his ever prescient and erudite essays: we will be needed to put together the pieces of a humane society.

  7. Ben Franklin said on July 28th, 2007 at 7:53am #

    Bravo! What a supremely articulate editorial.

    If ‘human relationships are reciprocal’ and ‘that which we resist persists’, I wonder if there isn’t a third option, an anti-‘little Eichmann’?
    Practice peace, cultivate compassion and develop self awareness.

    To the tyrants I say, “you can do what you want, but it is not going to get you where you want to go.” Since freedom is our true nature we will always have the freedom to abuse and persecute. The problem is that human relationships are reciprocal. We teach others to do likewise, or the opposite. What goes around, comes around.

    Tyrants are people have succumbed to fear, abusing their humanity as they abuse others. They are paranoid cowards who surround themselves with weapons and armies and spies creating a world that eventually really will be out to get them.

    Tyrants assemble the greatest earthly powers to pit against change and diversity and freedom, collectively known as “the Unknown”.

    It is no contest. They have already failed.

  8. Jay Janson said on July 28th, 2007 at 1:15pm #

    Phil Rockstroh’s biting analysis like “Reichstag to Come” is necessary for education, however, if we want change through citizen action a journalism of emotional guilt awakening is also necessary. Example below.

    FOR SURVIVING KIN, EVERY DAY IS MEMORIAL DAY
    Lets make Memorial Day be inclusive of non-Americans fallen in American wars.
    On our very American Memorial Day, as we remember fallen family and friends, let us be careful lest any tears in our eyes be selective.

    Let our remembrance and compassion not be limited to our own. In our space age of instant communication, there is a growing awareness of one planetary humanity sharing our single world and its resources.

    Let us remember that the non-American families and friends of non-Americans who have died in American wars have the exact same painful feelings of loss and bewilderment.

    The millions of Indochinese killed by our fellow Veterans also bring tears to my eyes.

    A million Koreans, thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan women and children – every one of them is worth remembering on Memorial Day as well. Maybe even more so, because they died in their own country, most in their own towns, and many in their very own homes.

    I surely want to remember those fellow veterans who gave their lives. But I believe the sincere American will want to remember everyone who died in these many foreign wars,including the ‘foreigners’.

    Life has taught this seventy-year-old veteran to reserve my deepest compassion for those of us veterans who followed immoral orders, and didn’t have the presence of mind or education to refuse to follow those orders. Like the poor pilot who dropped an atomic bomb incinerating almost a million civilians in Hiroshima, and went half-crazy afterward. He did not serve his country well, nor the cause of freedom, and certainly not his own human conscience.

    I have compassion for Veteran, now Senator, McCain who flew 29 bombing missions knowing that Eisenhower had written in his book that if there were an all Vietnam election (blocked by the US) that Ho Chi Minh would have won by a plurality of more than 80%. But McCain was just following military orders like an unthinking automaton.

    Compassion for a Veteran and presidential candidate, John Kerry, who said he killed South Vietnamese before realizing it was wrong.

    Compassion for former Governor, Senator, now President of New School University, Bob Kerrey, who on “60 Minutes” was exposed by his own point man of having had his Seals gun down 19 young women and children, after seeing to the throat cutting of an elderly man and his family, compassion for his having accepted a medal for doing it, under the report of ‘enemy’ successfully killed.

    Did these three now highly placed Americans serve us when they killed? They all had a college education, which must have included a history of colonialism, especially the brutality of French colonial subjugation of the Vietnamese. They must have known that Ho Chi Minh was decorated by our OSS as a dedicated ally of ours against the Japanese and Vichy French. They must have known that Truman, against Roosevelt’s promise, had brought the French army back in US ships to fight an 8-year war against our former allies, the Vietnamese. All this, because Ho Chi Minh was a communist? I don’t think so. A top cabinet minister of our ally, the French government was also a communist, but that was OK.

    My heart goes out more to these famous American fellow Veterans more than for those Indochinese peasants they killed. The dead — especially those who died innocently– they must be free now. They are honored by their relatives, and any compassion from us for the Vietnamese comes horribly late and is even suspect.

    Six of my bunkmates in basic training are buried in North Korea. I can shed tears for them, they were young men – they wanted to live just as all the Korean relatives of my Korean students would have rather lived than die in a war over the economic confrontation of our country with the Soviet Union.

    Veterans who loved their country enough to know what the fighting was about are one thing. Veterans who gave their lives fighting for injustice and against human respect, blindly following a leader are quite another.

    The world has become increasingly complicated and yet our corporate conglomerate cartel of a mass entertainment media has become increasingly reductive, simplistic and antidemocratic, and I have compassion for those who work to make war acceptable, even attractive to their audiences.

    Right now the news is filled with people who will someday become veterans like Lieutenant Calley of Mai Lai fame. They tortured in the name of freedom, of democracy maybe, of truth, or even God.

    Or maybe they were just having fun. Now when they are discharged and officially become veterans, I will shed some tears for them, for the Karma they have put on their souls and the danger they have put us all in as retribution is sought in the name of their victims.

    I once asked the guard in the rotunda of the Russian Veterans Monument in Berlin if there was anywhere a monument to the fallen German soldiers who fought the Russians and Americans. “No”, he answered, “they were fighting for the wrong reason.”

    My tears go out to those of all countries who fought for the wrong reason and for the flags which they dishonored.

    Shuttering anguish is what I feel for the leaders who knowingly sent them to kill (and die, though dying is less tragic than wrongly killing) for a wrong cause.

    Actually, tears of joy come to my eyes quite easily when I see the newsreel of Mohammed Ali proudly saying that he would not participate in an unjust war against the Vietnamese. History will show that Ali is a veteran of that war as much as those who participated in the violence of genocidal terrorism. Ali had the courage to stand up for an honest America.

    Very Sincerely on Memorial Day!
    Your American Veteran
    Jay Janson, who was during eight years, Assistant Conductor of the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra in Hanoi and on tour playing all the Brahms symphonies, and Beethoven, Prokovieff, Shostakovitch, Haydn, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, dozens of Overtures and concertos including both Chopin concertos with the only Asian winner of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, Dan Tai-son, who practiced for it in a Hanoi bomb shelter. The orchestra was founded by Ho Chi Minh, and it plays most of its concerts in the Opera House, a diminutive copy of the Paris Opera. In 1945, our ally Ho, from a balcony overlooking the large square and flanked by an American Major and a British Colonel, declared Vietnam independent. (By the way the little hotel, where I stayed in the 90s, lay just across from our American Embassy in Hanoi, and the Ambassador was just so happy to be arranging business contracts with the same government our Veterans died trying to defeat, by killing as many of their patriot soldiers and volunteers as possible.) Everyone in the orchestra lost family, “killed by the Americans”, they would mention simply, with Buddhist un-accusing acceptance.

    Again, happy Memorial Day, and lets dedicate it to contemplating investigating wars in memory of those who died in them. Life is too beautiful and brief to kill it off early, and stop the music.

    PPS On a positive and humane Memorial suggestion:

    Nothing could be better to honor our fellow veterans’ having given their lives, than to turn this nation around into morality and honesty, and forgoing pompous and ridiculous attempts to praise ourselves indiscriminately, announce our intention to arrange compensation to Vietnam War survivors of our now admitted ‘MISTAKE’!

    That would impress the whole world, and gain the next president some moral high ground for leadership of this nation.

    The current compensation ‘sympathy payment’ for wrongful death of innocent Iraqis who file complaints with the US led Coalition Government is about US $6,000, according to a report published in the Christian Science Monitor in March.

    Put ourselves in their shoes. The shoes of Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Iraqi and Afghan bereaved families. Could we even imagine such bombings upon US towns and countryside? We can improve the whole world and ourselves with such imagination.
    copyright All Souls UnitarianUniversalist (non God preaching) Church Lexington Avenue at 81st Street, New York City

  9. Adam said on July 28th, 2007 at 4:26pm #

    thanks again for you’re great writing!

    “the nation is only being held together with hydrogenated fat, wheat gluten, over-extended credit and particle board” … and Juy-zusss!

  10. john rodriguez said on July 29th, 2007 at 7:53pm #

    Dear Phil
    Thank you for your recent piece: “Tales of Angst, Alienation and Martial Law: Roasting Marshmallows on the American Reichstag Fire to Come” which, together with Dave Lindorff’s piece: “Martial Law is Now a Real Threat – Declaring the US a Battlefield”, provides a clear, if disturbing, picture of the present US government policies at home and abroad. In Oz, as you probably are aware, we are also suffering a similar fate, witness the detention and inhumane treatment of Dr Haneef. Even though all the charges against him had been dropped by the relevant authorities, our executive, in the person of the Minister for Immigration, still persists in blackening the doctor’s name and reputation. And is doing this with total impunity and, presumably, the support of our Prime Minister! What is happening to Dr Haneef can happen to any of us under the anti-terrorist laws introduced by this government.
    In solidarity
    JR

  11. Colin said on July 30th, 2007 at 12:35am #

    This article by Phil Rockstroh is interesting. However, there are a number of assumptions made about the collective mindset of Americans. It seems, from the article, that we are all deluded slaves of corporate capitalism and that if we just realized how deluded we were, everything would change for the better. This is a mistake. For the most part, I think people realize that the economic system is unfair, that imperialist wars are morally wrong, and that work in our society is not fulfilling. To write an article about how deluded the masses are in America is itself a delusion, as if a single writer can interpret the problems of hundreds of millions of people. I also would disagree with the idea of characterizing religious affiliation, whether it is with the Christian faith or not, as magical thinking. Throughout history, religion has been the path to finding meaning in life, under repressive social conditions, or just in general. It’s true that American society could be better, that greed and violence are rampant, but evil is a part of existence. The “non-being” that Rockstroh refers to could be ameliorated from within, by finding, in Heidegger’s words, “the Being of beings.” That work is not necessary social in nature, not a question of changing society, but of changing oneself. In that case, everyone has a lot of work to do, myself included.

  12. miker said on July 30th, 2007 at 3:55pm #

    Phil, Very well done! I agree with the not-so-pleasant aroma… this onion peeling exposure of reality…our collective mindlessness! (or mindlessmess?) Critical thinking has taken so many blows to the head in the last 150 or so years that it is often doubtful if a true “recovery” can occur short of a do-over… However, we all need hope ! we have the ability within us to ask and find answers…(technology,resources,need for freedom etc.) but do we have the” tummy”? Do we have the humility to admit our mistakes? “test all things and hold on to that which is good”? and “have I become your enemy because I tell you the truth”? We have been repeatedly lied to! We need to stop trusting in man! The Christian believers…the non-believers…the Republicans and Democrats …the “left and right” have all been decieved…and have decieved! IF we are to stop the insane slide into history’s outhouse…We will only succeed by looking out of the box for the answer! The churchs has been infiltrated/corrupted…down but not out! Both Republican/Democrat…”truth seekers and the peace movement”…all have had the cool-aid! Those of us who remain with our brains intact must learn to stop living in the isolation of the criminals design! They only grow worse because we “feed them”! Every false flag operation follows the same sick, ever increasingly gut wrenching pattern of fear and hate producing propaganda! What happened to Cristopher Bollyn? Why isn’t anyone in the “truth movement” discussing it? Is it because he was exposing Zionists? Why is everybody focused on Bush and Cheney as if they were the ringleaders? Is it to shift the light away from the Zionists? They are… relatively speaking a pimple on the hiney of a rhiny! Remember, “it’s a cookbook”! not a new world order…. They have successfully fooled us all for so long! But the internet has blown up in THEIR face! The secrets out! Wake up! God Bless ALL of Gods creation! (not just america) and NOT THE CRIMINALS WHO MURDER AND STEAL AND DESTROY THE EARTH! Let’s take back what is left for the children… Thanks for your words! Miker

  13. poiuytr said on August 2nd, 2007 at 4:05pm #

    Hey Phil:
    Just got to the article. Emailed you back. Later.

  14. dougwin said on August 4th, 2008 at 12:32pm #

    Phil-eloquently put. I’ve been hanging out in a backwater of the empire for a while now, after hightailing it out of Florida in the Reagan era. Since, I’ve been a bit of a drop-out since the Vietnam War, I understand the extent of alienation that’s going on. Luckily, the U.S. government helped me decide to leave the system, after having been blackballed from ever holding a regular job after I’d been discovered running a successful pre-school in the New Bedford ghetto in the late sixties. Actually, I personally didn’t run it. The kids did. The local bureaucrat was quite honest with me, when he used his power to shut things down. He said, listen, America is not a meritocracy. These kids are not supposed to succeed, to have self-esteem, autonomy. They will either work in factories, collect the dole, or rot in jail. I’ve had almost forty years to rethink strategy. I wish that I could honestly say I’ve found an answer. Whatever we can do to de-mystify the rich criminals who run the show is a start in the right direction. Another thing, don’t be fooled about the alleged mystification of religion. Social Darwinism is the prevailing religion and has been for over a century, whether it’s preached from a pulpit or by the academic and scientific priesthood, along with the fawning sycophants in the corporate media. The mystification of “experts” is the biggest threats, the men in white coats, the so-called scientists who have long ago sold their souls to the industrial death cult.