Can we cultivate a caring, courageous community?

[Kailassa]

The present neocon ruling class do not regard themselves as having any more in common with Americans than they have with dead Iraqis. In their world view there is Self, Family, Other Members Of The Ruling Class, Useful Fellow Travelers, and Vermin.

They will tolerate the "vermin" for as long as they need them as a slave-pool, but they don't regard them as actually human. The race issue is a red-herring, just their divide-and-conquer distraction from their contempt for all the poor. This is not to gloss over the terrible way Blacks have been treated: it's to warn everyone else that they are on the same list of expendables. Whatever we let be done to the Blacks will next be done to the rest of us.

What we need to know, is "what side are our leaders on?" Does the Democrat Party have leaders who are truly concerned about every American? It's time to reread the stories of America's earlier leaders who fill us with pride, and compare those leaders with what we have now. Why have we stopped asking for leadership with idealism and vision?

Have the last vestiges of courage gone gurgling down the plughole, or do you still see courage in people you admire, in friends, and in your own mirror?

At the moment the Fitzgerald Inquiry is backing into the corner a president who has already declared his wish for martial law and dictatorship. His crass stupidity, ignorance and failing health can lull people into a belief that he can't do too much. But never forget, he is the clown-mask for a group of cold-hearted, greedy, powerful traitors.

The first thing we need is a deeper sense of community. It's time to start pulling together groups of like-minded people to support each other and discuss ways to effect change. Then we need communication between groups. Doing this online is not enough, people need to get together in every town to show others that there is an alternative. The big rallies have been incredible, now we need to follow them up with rallies in every town.

We need to start influencing others to join the movement with us, a welcoming movement with room for a great many different approaches and beliefs. Just as radical Christianity became popular by fulfilling a need in people, a need for inclusion in a community providing rules and safety and self-justification, we can see what society is now craving for, and we can find ways of our own to provide it.

(OMG, I just had a vision of FUCK FOR FREEDOM rallies spontaneously erupting all over America, with Bill Clinton admirers kindly handing out cigars for the more restrained participants.)

Ok, perhaps we don't need to go quite that far. But people are looking for the things that are missing in modern society. People are desperately needing to be part of a group that does not judge each other, a sharing, caring group. Make Cindi Sheehan's smiles and laughter as she was arrested our example. It is time to see what is wrong with the selfish, arrogant, me-first society, and to become the opposite of what we despise.

And it's time for the hardest one, forgiveness. For as long as we cannot forgive others for their selfishness and stupidity, we cannot expand, because we cannot draw them into our fold. Do you remember the hippie demonstrators, who would pick out the most bullying police and give them smiles and flowers? Even the guys in black Halliburton suits are human, we can connect with them. Remember, each was once a baby needing love, and that need for love never really dies.

The most frightened people in this world are not the destitute who are homeless and starving. No, the truly frightened are the one's who have always had wealth and power, who believe they have everything to live for and that the world belongs to them. They have no conception of themselves as individuals apart from their position and belongings. In their own minds they exist only as an adjunct to their wealth, and would be worse than dead without it. Excessive greed breeds excessive guilt, and from guilt comes fear. They are always aware that we are many, and they are few, so they seek to assuage their fear with drugs and sex, and cruelty to those in their power. And then it is all balanced out by some self-serving and widely advertised act of charity.

Violence is out of the question, not only on moral grounds, but because in this case it won't work. Their favourite tactic is to drive people to violence, to turn other people against them and provide excuses for violence of their own. When we don't react with violence to their actions, they will use agent provocateurs amongst us, as I suspect they did on October 16, in Toledo. We must not provide the administration with any excuse to impose martial law, because once we do, rebellion will have a terrible cost.

There is only one non-violent way to fight such people, and that is to isolate them. To do this we have to have something to offer, a better way of life that will draw their people-base to us. We must each look inside ourselves, each find our own sources of love and joy and nurture them until we glow. We must cultivate empathy, practice living by our own ideals, and see ourselves and all of humanity as belonging in this brilliant swirling river of life.

The world is ready for a change, and when we have changed ourselves, we will find we are changing the world too.

[PowerToThePeople]

1. Beautiful.

:hug: