Keeping Up with the World

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Suddenly it's not funny anymore: suddenly our desire to be taken seriously by the rest of the world is becoming only a vision to be cherished, but never to be held. At least not anymore.

The United States of America is fast becoming an oddity in today's world. Once on the forefront of technology and civil liberties, the fundamentalists, creationists, radical religious right, the neocons and others in this country have turned our country into only a shadow of its promised self.

Our founding fathers would be shocked to see religious whackos settling into the chambers of power, to see PACs run by fat cats managing to use their power and wealth to leave out the "little guy" and pummel individual rights, to see how ignorant and apathetic our citizens have become, and how corporations have become the most powerful force in our country. They would be shocked to see companies like Diebold, Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, MCI, and so many others taking over to the point where the tax burden which should be levied upon these companies is now taken up by the poorest and the middle class citizens instead. They would cry to see the greed, the insensitivity of our leaders routinely gloss over the horrors within our country and sink money into foreign wars and war profiteering.

They would roll over in their graves to see the lies, the scare tactics and the scandalous strategies used by the right. And most of all, they would weep to see the budget of our country turned into such a massive debt that even a half a century might be necessary to relieve what was a surplus only 4 years ago.

But you know what? We have become a joke to the rest of the world. Most of the nations on this planet Earth, our home, watched this past election with bated breath, believing that the 2000 election was undermined by powerbrokers, and given to the least suitable politician, but hoping that 2004 would rectify that mistake. Instead, the world watched in horror as 1/2 of our country let that same politician and party confuse, bewilder and scam our population again into bringing that same unsuitable, same lying, scheming and totally reprehensible politician rise to the seat of power again. The rest of the world laughs at us--as we as a nation criticizes elections in other countries, saying how those elections are not honorable, at the same time those hypocritical enough to make comments about other nations seduce and connive to make the elections in our own country just as filthy, just as crooked and just as suspect as any election in a battered nation can be.

The United States surprises the world with its stupidity. The rest of the world is seeing 4 past years and 4 future years of the worst regime ever to run a country into the ground. They see a nation filled with gullible people taken in by the lies of the right. They see a nation so spooked by its own shadow that they would trust a coward instead of a war hero to run the once greatest nation in the world. They see people shirk when the psychological tactics of raising the terror level occurs--never too often, but never rare enough to allow people to see that it's psychological warfare and nothing more.

One half of the former glorious United States has tried over the past four years to show they aren't taking the bait, but the other half refuses to see the truth. They allow themselves to be overwhelmed by fear and loathing, allow themselves to be taken in by the confidence games played by the right. They see the measures enacted against an entire group of people as justified, regardless of how many of them are truly "terrorists" in the long run. The amount of intolerance, the amount of work we have put into the past four years to get rid of this regime has failed, because the United States is filled with people who are blind, deaf, dumb and wholly ignorant.

It is appalling, even now, a month after the election, to think that we are fast becoming the butt of every joke told in other nations in the world. Our country is laughable, and most of us here know it's true. We are filled with confusion--we know we were winning--at least we thought we were. We figured that the lies, the corruption, the dirty deeds of the right were so glaringly obvious to others in the country that we took for granted that we would--and could win in the final outcome. Somewhere we failed. Perhaps we failed to see the corruption on the right could and would rig the election, since they knew they would not get away with the mistakes of 2000, especially in Florida. They used every trick they could to gain their targets, and counted on several major swing states to gain their foothold. It was rigged and won before any of us even had a chance to vote a month ago.

The whole world is watching as the United States of America becomes more and more the Divided States of America. The country has a great chasm that neither right nor left wants to cross, nor does either side want to give up their side of the battle. We side ourselves with the rest of the world, and perhaps in four more years there will be more people finding a bridge to cross to our side, but what if it doesn't happen? What happens in four years when all the lies come into the open, should we win then? Are we still going to try to reconcile with those on the right who allowed this regime to continue to occupy the white house and run--and ruin--our country, until it is nothing but a shell of its former self?

We have to decide NOW what our path is going to be. Are we going to remain optimists, fighting pretty much as we've done for these past four years with the goal of getting rid of these people? Or are we going to finally learn how to guerilla fight, and use infiltration and strong-armed tactics to show the rest of our unwitting country's citizens the truth behind the masks? Are we going to fight fire with fire, and show that we are not the weak, whining wimps that they have portrayed us to be?

We have many goals, many things we must do over the next four years, regardless of anything else that happens. We must show, most of all, that the left is filled with people who are as much patriotic as anyone on the right, and perhaps even moreso: we are not into this to be selfish and self-profitting, we are in this to make our country once again as powerful as it once was, when religious whackos didn't run our country, when corporations paid taxes and ran honest businesses, when the middle class meant you were at least managing to do more than merely survive, that even the poorest among us had the opportunity for a good education, when "Made in America" actually meant something. We are in this because we still believe the same dreams our grandparents and great grandparents believed--that there was a dream of accomplishment to be part of America, that someone could come to this country and do great things, regardless of the color of their skin, regardless of their religion, regardless of whether they spoke english or not.

Emma Lazarus's poem helps us to remember the raison d'etre of our country's beginnings:

(The New Colossus, words of Emma Lazarus as written in 1883):

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Isn't it time, don't you think, that we become the same as the rebels of the 18th century--those who risked more than life and limb to take our country back from those who seek to oppress us? Isn't it time we took to arms, whether they be of quill or battle iron, to save our citizens once again from those who seek to take away our liberties? Isn't it time we helped those who are unable to help themselves, to retrieve our nation from the hold of those who are using their power to keep us in chains, figurative though they might be? I think it's time, one way or another, that we become the same determined spirits that raised our country out of the mire of tyrants two and a half centuries ago, and bring that same spirit of liberty to our fight now. No more will we allow them to make us look like fools--the rest of the world is watching, and it is THEY who are looking more and more like the ignorant, the corrupt, the fools that they truly are.

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1. No one has comments? eom

[VioletLake]

2. bookmarking it for later... n/t

[VioletLake]

3. I like your analysis but

but I don't agree with your solution. It is time to do extraordinary things, but it's not time to suspend our principles.

add: I consider your essay to be an "extraordinary thing."