Declaration of Dependence

[donhakman]

DECLARATION OF DEPENDENCE.

In the course of human events when hypocrisies rob the human spirit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
there comes a time to recognize the truths of our time and hold these revelations as self evident.
When tyrants invoke the word freedom and institutions of wealth beyond measure insist you must support yet another war at the cost of civil liberties, rising prices and a shrinking paycheck you deserve a truthful answer to the question “Why?”.

The reason is our dependence on oil and the rapid depletion of this resource which has replaced slavery in the modern age.
The great hypocrisy of the largest Virginia slave owner, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights”. This hypocrisy is small in comparison to the cruel hypocrisies of our age.

For Jefferson the cost of a slave provided a lifetime of labor. The price of a slave would only pay a white man wages for a year. Today our inanimate slave is oil. For only $2, the labor gasoline will provide could equal as much as 20 hours of labor by hand. Look at it this way…you could not reliably hire someone today to push your automobile 20 miles for only $2.

Every argument and excuse for the latest hurried war in Iraq is a diversion or simply an outright lie to distract the people from the real issue that diminishing oil supplies will cause the entire global economy to collapse in twenty to fifty years. The price of a barrel of oil rose slowly from $5 to $55 dollars over several decades. The price of a barrel of oil is projected to reach $180 in a relatively short time.
The hypocrisy that the United States of America is not fighting and dieing for oil but rather is fighting for democracy, for freedom, for God, or against imminent destruction by horrible weapons, is the greatest and most successful lie today. We can cover Piccasso's painting of Guarnica in the UN building but we can not hide the war.

If George Bush (either of them) could tell the truth he would be fair and accurate in yelling, “The Truth? You can’t handle the truth!”.
We the people do however deserve the truth that it is in fact too late to switch to any other alternative energy source without a total collapse of the economy and the civilization that is wholly dependent upon oil as its slave. That we have waited too long before exploiting alternatives should not surprise anyone. The most optimistic scenario is subsistence reliance upon 20% of our prior energy use. Wind, nuclear, coal and underground heat pumps are scalable but will never meet the current energy demands today.

To offer a generation of children to fight and die in an oil war will never sound as noble as a fight for freedom or God’s will in the holy lands or to stop an imminent nuclear retaliation by Islamic terrorists. The most imminent threat we have defended ourselves against was to halt Iraq from changing from petro-dollars to petro-euros which would have an additional devastating effect on the US economy if it spread to Saudi Arabia and other great oil producing states. Beneath speeches that democracy is on the march in Iraq is the truth that we are fighting partly for our ability to drive to work. There is an upward price for a barrel of oil that would erase the majority of all jobs in the United States.

Certainly most wars have an underlying hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of the war on poverty has its privatized work fare of welfare, the war on drugs has its liberation of the Afghanistan opium trade, the war on terrorism had its helplessness in the face of two lone snipers. Only a tip by a teamster captured those killers. The war on terrorism is no different except for the amount of media generated fear associated with it. The media fairness doctrine was killed during Ronald Reagan’s term so that all media outlets can now be owned by a monopolistic few and are never required to be truthful, or give an alternative viewpoint. You might recall how Clear Channel radio stations repeated that Iraq only had 3% of the world’s oil. In fact they were the second highest producer of oil in the world, but the blood for oil argument was to be ridiculed and killed despite the facts.

In this Declaration Dependence I believe the American people; both right and left can handle the truth.
When conservatism is redefined as each person’s liberty to be engaged for themselves, and that the competition with others who are in this creation solely for their own best interests, somehow benefits all, including the less fortunate who devour all that trickles down, we find that conservatism has become the slave to a handful of great corporate interests. When religious freedom is redefined with faith based incentives for the certain religions there is only less freedom. When a President claims religious grounds to pass judgment on an ethics and science that saves lives, we must ask if he is indeed an authority of religion, ethics or science. When political voices hurry a nation into a war in the holy lands and hush the mention of spoils, there is a pandering to the lowest levels of man’s nature, spiritual quest and greed.

When liberalism is redefined as Godless communism that oppress all who enter, the highly paid rhetoric of a corporate think tank is evident. When a single or untied voice for even the smallest limits on corporate greed are beaten down without representation in Congress, the untold fortunes of the captains of industry are all that are served in new law and policies. The voices that elevate the social Darwinism of survival of the wealthiest, of a dog eat dog reality, of a reality TV concept of voting out friends to be the sole survivor, we are hearing the voice of great wealth preaching the new gospel according to profits.

We the people are not the enemy but we can be made to be our own worst enemy. We the people are the enemy to the interests of unlimited multinational corporations. We the people have been divided against our own best interests by skillful and organized efforts. They have used religious fundamentalism and patriotic pleas against our own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Corporate mergers will continue to create profits as the economy declines to an inevitable collapse. A compliant populace ignorant to the truth of the end of our oil economy will make it easier for corporations to squeeze every last drop out of them before the collapse.

When cornered by our overwhelming numbers the greedy class will indeed grow most savage. Amid a predicted population loss as high as 90% the common people will also become desperate and dangerous. Any species that is provided an unlimited food source and then has the food withdrawn, will have their numbers rise and fall sharply in what is called a J curve. It is a rapid and cruel drop that bears no resemblance to a bell shaped curve.

Greed is like a promised short cut that is tempting to our nature so we must fight it both within ourselves and out in the world.
Our destiny is best served by developing self sustaining food and personal energy production and is worst served by the virtual tax free corporate Kings without a country whose only goal is to gouge the masses enough to build walls high enough to keep the people out.
We the People and corporate interests can both prosper together, or fight each other for the last resource of energy or the last mouthful of food.

How we handle this coming emancipation should be the most sobering topic that media has a responsibility to discuss.
It has not and will not so I urge you to pass this Declaration of Dependence as far and wide as you are able and then take your first responsible step toward a self sustaining life for you and your family. We the people will die in staggering numbers as the oil agro industry grinds to a halt, of that there is no doubt. Praying for a nearly free energy source to emerge is all that some will do.
It is not enough.
Oil was our slave but we are now its slave and must begin anew our struggle for freedom.

God bless but truth is best.
Don Hakman
Washington DC
10 / 2004

[donhakman]

1. Clearly people do not respond

well to the truth.