Posted by pancho from customer-148-233-71-66.uninet.net.mx (148.233.71.66) on Friday, March 21, 2003 at 10:37AM :
That´s why it breaks my heart to see us go this way. Remember...this isn´t the America it started out to be. Say it often, say it loud...I am an American, and I am proud. Don´t get painted with the brush of being anti-American by these same cheap shit fundamentalist bastards...THEY are the disgrace and shame...they and their Saddams and Noriegas and Batistas and Somozas...thugs put into power or maintained by them, to be used and manipulated and disposed of when no longer necessary...with the added advantage of making America seem to be the Liberator...allowing us to play both sides of the street.
The Second World War wasn´t fought so that Americans would all be forced to wear one type of T shirt...or be afraid to voice their outrage and dissent.
I know countries need businesses...I know we need work and resources and trade agreements...but the people who provide these things are proividing a service, that´s all...a service to us and the nation for which they are handsomely, even obscenely, rewarded...and that´s as far as it should go...of course people are greedy and businessmen will very quickly go hyper and need profit upon profit...and if you let them, as they have always tried to do, they will seize the reins of government because government by the people and for the people puts the PEOPLE first...not the businesspeople, and they resent that...you can´t blame them...they have to grow up and train themselves to be willing to neglect sleep, normal pleasures, family time and everything else that makes living really worthwhile...and their compensation for all they forego of humanity and emotions and feelings of completeness and satisfaction as human beings...they have to make up for in profits...and when is enough enough...if you sacrifice your own children...how much is enough...what are they worth...will you put a cap on their value...or do they have to become "priceless" in about the only way you have of showing their worth to you...by never settling for enough...by not being satisfied with ten zillion...why?...are your children, your own soul...only worth that much? Better to leave it open-ended so that at the very least...when you´re alone at night and haunted by the sense that you failed every measure of what it means to be human...at least what you sold was "priceless".
The corporate types will do what they do, you can´t expect them to moderate their behavior...they´ll work even longer and harder to remove all obstacles in their path...longer and harder than they´ll ever work to come up with new product or build up that factory, or top the next year´s sales quotas...they´ll buy politicians...hell they´ll even BECOME politicians and judges and ambassadors and heads of departments and commissions...people like that are frightened of life...they´re afraid that the other side has the same kinds of rat bastards and they KNOW what that means...so they´ll stop at nothing...they´ll gut the education system...they´ll encourage homelessness and social dislocation and they´ll fix wages and prices so that both parents are so harrassed and harried they can´t "afford" to take the steps they need to in order to really protect and enhance the lives of their children....and if not for the children...then what is the point of all of this? We were ALL children people! So were our parents...so were our wives and husbands and boy and girlfriends and grandparents...what IS life if not caring for children...which is another way of saying US!
It has always been this way...democracy gives way to oligarchy and tyranny after which, after enough misery and cramping of the human spirit, there will come rebellion and revolution, anarchy even...and then the people will go through strong-man rule till they cry out for greater freedom and democracy and the cycle will begin again.
It´s in the hands of us...those of us who´ve been content to leave the details to those "qualified"...but more than that..to those whose ONLY interest has been power and profit. THEY did their job...did it well and they´re reaping their "rewards"...and they´ll leave us to pay the bill yet again...and we deserve it...cry and complain and protest all you want to...it was in OUR hands and we let it slip away. Hell... THEY DIDN´T WIN THE ELECTION!
These people have taken over the America we all know and love and that the whole world used to admire, even when they suffered at its hands. We cannot stand alone...the illusion that we are a powerful empire is a very shabby one and liable to be shoved down our thraots very quickly. You can only pick on so many weak people and nations before they realize it is in their interests to band together and not only resist, but fight back.
As poor as the African nations are and disorganized...if they decided to come together and fight America...we would be dead. We could kill more of them than they could of us, but the dead are gone and at rest, what becomes of the living, how many more measures for "our security" you think you could stand? Our people and our systems of government could not withstand the attack...in the end we would cease to be what we were...we would "win"...a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.
The Constitution has become a hindrance because it was NEVER INTENDED for this kind of an America.....but for another one entirely, one in which rule of law would dominate and where we would see the wisdom of using that blessed document to increase the protection of that rule of law to include everyone...as we will eventually have to do or else suffer more and more of these kinds of "wars". Those who profit from war, from divisiveness, from people at each other´s throats and stifling and locking themselves up in order to "live"---those kinds of people have seized power...we didn´t give it them legally...and for them, the Constitution and the America that was is the ultimate enemy.
I love America...and I hate what these people have done to it...with my indifference to help them along.
-- pancho
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