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The players in the
current U.S. administration are devoid of the humanity that defines the
species as being sensitive to other members of its kind. For all the
blather about "compassionate conservatism", the phrase remains
an oxymoron. Instead of compassion for those less fortunate in the
human condition, there is a callous disconnect and disregard, a
trivialization of life not blessed with wealth. The common experience that makes us
human is not membership in the investor or owning class. It is,
rather, the affinity and solidarity of those less fortunate
of which the vast majority of earth's people belong. The
common people's experience is
inconsequential to the champagne and butler set. The wealthy have,
with few exceptions, separated themselves from the commonality that links
fellow homo sapiens to each other. They live in gated communities,
protected by silver spoons and paramilitary protective services, with
nannies sending their children to elite private schools while taking
sustenance produced and served by the working class through which all wealth is
created. The wealthy have no time for such trivialities as standing
in line at the super market. Nor are they burdened by the necessities of selecting
the lowest per unit cost product. Choosing between
prescription medication and paying the rent is not a consideration for
them.
Multiple home ownership and dental care are assumed necessities minor
expenses both. The rich, ruling elite as exemplified by the Bushites
have no time for consoling the families
of the dead soldiers returning from Iraq (or anywhere else), nor for
comforting the maimed and limbless bodies, the mangled, and the
blinded. My friend Peter reminds me that,
There
are more than 1,478 US military dead who deserved his (George W.
Bush) greeting them; and there are 14,000 who deserved his honoring and
thanking them for their lifelong debilitating injuries.
The administration has no
desire to uplift the poor-in-spirit, the returning veterans incapacitated
through the horror inflicted by its war-first doctrine. When a
hundred thousand civilian deaths are considered worth it, then of what consequence are the thousands
of maimed who return from war? The year or longer waits at the Veterans
Hospitals and the diminished veterans benefits are telling answers.
To this administration, patriotism means never having to say you're sorry,
never having to admit making a mistake, never having to take responsibility, and
never having to look the mother in eye who asks, "Mr. President, why
have you killed my son?"
Both Democrats and Republicans are equally complicit in
trivializing the suffering and death produced through their war of choice
on Iraq. Let us not forget that the Democrats, including Senator
John Kerry, voted in October 2002 to authorize war. In
reality, this vote was a reauthorization for war on Iraq since the 1991
war never ended. Greenbacks are thicker than
blood. Party loyalty is always trumped by class loyalty.
Capitalist class loyalty requires the setting aside of any doubt. Above all else, the integrity of class commitment must
be maintained. However, the wealthy class exhibit a paranoia
that any perceived crack in their solidarity, no matter how small, might
lead to its collapse. The
investor class' diversified portfolios include large arrays of human beings,
mere line items in the balance sheet of world-wide power
accumulation. What does it matter to the investor class if the
expendable line
items in their portfolio are someone's father, husband, brother, mother,
wife, sister, son, or, daughter? The question itself is as pointless
to them as is the expendable asset itself. The powerful have no problem with
losing human assets in the quest of attaining long term imperial
goals and huge profits as long as the assets being expended are someone else's
flesh and blood. How else to explain the lack of commitment in supplying
their own family members to the pool of cannon fodder? If spreading
democracy and freedom are such highly prized values then why are so few of
the nation's wealthy in the battlefield? Why are so few rich people
or Congress member's children in uniform? The answer is
obvious. Rich people and the ruling elite are significant.
Everyone else is not. The rich know the score and are not about to digress into systemic
insignificance through becoming casualties in wars relegated to be fought by someone
else. Their destiny is to rule. The destiny of everyone else
is to serve them, even die for them, so they can continue to rule. The
wealthy, by virtue of their wealth, separate themselves from those
not as privileged as they. They then project and profess that
separateness onto the separated. To them the struggling masses are alien. The reality of the rich is unlike the day-to-day
experience of the six-billion
working class people of planet earth. The definition of what is alien is, however, backwards and is a common misperception
exacerbated through the manipulation of media owned by the wealthy. What we
perceive through the plug-in-drug (television) is what the manipulators want
us to
perceive. The boob tube's programming is designed to
instill what we are to believe, think, and how we are to behave.
Thus, a fetus has more rights than a child born into poverty.
Bombing pregnant darker-skinned women, killing both the mother and fetus, is
acceptable collateral damage while reproductive rights are branded as
murder. Tell us what to fear and we will fear it. Tell us what
to hate and we will hate it. Tell us who to blame and we will blame
them. Tell us who to kill and we will kill them. Tell us what to
die for and we will die for it. Tell us what matters and we will make it important. Tell us we are insignificant and we make
ourselves insignificant. But never tell us that we are
ignorant pawns in the game that profits those that do the telling.
Never tell us that our lives and the lives of loved ones don't mean squat
in the imperialist's drive for global hegemony. Deep
down inside, the wealthy know it is they who are the
aliens, foreigners, cocooned in spaceship estates and private clubs.
These entrenched fortresses are homes and breeding grounds for the
predatory class. The power of wealth, however, does not come from within. Nor does it come from their mythological creator
that they would have us fear. Deep down the wealthy know that their lives are
no more significant
than the lives that grant them their power. Their power comes from the willing multimillions who
sustain them and their corrupt system. The working class at the
bottom of the capitalist pyramid holds up the wealthy class through willing
obedience. The working class prop up the wealthy as long as workers
continue adopting the cause of the wealthy as their own. The willing enablers are in essence
hoodwinked into toeing the line presumably out of free will and in their
own interest. This worker devotion to the cause of the wealthy is a
consequence of blaming the victim for their own trials and
tribulations. If the working class blames itself then it preoccupies
itself with guilt. Why blame the rich when everything in our culture
tells us that the culprit is always someone else? There is the flavor-villain of the week, villains
chosen by psyops specialists of the ruling elite. The enemy thus
constantly changes. Reds. Commies, socialists, hippies, welfare moms,
the homeless, liberals, gays, atheists, people with disabilities, etc. Take your pick. There is always someone to
hate and someone to tell to hate. The enemy is always other than the
ruling elite. So, the ruling class supports dictators worldwide (including
Saddam), makes foreign policy, creates war and institutes police states,
passes laws that serve the ulterior motives of the few. The few demand from
the many. The significant minority steal the assets, life and well-being
from the majority. The majority are, after all, slugs, in the
grandiose scheme of things in the world of the rich and
powerful. Justin
A. Frank, M.D. in his book, Bush on the Couch, Inside the Mind of the
President, talks about George W. Bush's overextended self-importance
where he and by implication his administration are above all law.
Frank writes,
No limitations, no
accountability. It's a recipe President Bush might
recognize. "The interesting thing about the president,"
he explained to Bob Woodward in Bush at War, is that "I
don't feel like I owe anyone an explanation...He remains outside the
laws of history and responsibility".
George Bush's
hyper-extended self-importance projects an aboveness, a significance
over everyone and everything else. This self-inflation goes
beyond never admitting to making mistakes. It is believing that one
is incapable of making mistakes. This self-exaltation projects
insignificance onto everyone else who is not with the self-exalted.
In turn, we, the insignificant people of planet earth, take on an anxious reality.
The philosopher and existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger writes,
The
insignificance of the world, disclosed in anxiety, reveals the nullity
of the things of our concerns, or in other words the impossibility of
projecting oneself on a can-be that is primarily founded in the things
of our concerns.
Thus,
anxiety becomes our day-to-day reality. We exist in a state of fear
that prevents action which otherwise might liberate. Our anxious
existence is, of course, well calculated and implemented by the Karl
Rovean master planners. Blaise Bonpane in the Pacifica commentary of
April 14, 2003 stated,
...how do
you get the masses of the people to ignore the failure of government to
do its job of providing for the general welfare of the people of the
United States? That is done by allowing Carl Rove to be the master of
fear manipulation to frighten the people so much that all they will ask
from government is protection, not performance.
Exploiting the masses
through manipulating their anxiety and internalized insignificance cannot happen
if the masses become unwilling of being exploited. Therein
lies the Achilles' heel of the
purveyors of paranoia. War cannot be
fought with soldiers unwilling to fight. Corporate greed cannot
continue if personal greed ends. Exploitation cannot continue if
people say, "No!" Gandhi
taught that power rests within each person. Our power comes by virtue of
being able to make choices. We can choose to say
"No!" to being
insignificant. In the quest for India's freedom from Great
Britain, the insignificant masses remained so only so long as they
perceived themselves so. How can a simple man in homespun cloth be anything but insignificant? How can we,
slugs in the
ruling elite game plan, be significant? Gandhi shows
how. Gandhi shows us that breaking the
chains of insignificance can liberate. Insignificance is an adopted idea and therein lies
hope. Insignificance is implanted in our psyche through Big Bother's media
manipulation, the glorious public school education system, and the marketing temples of Madison Avenue.
Non-cooperation
is powerful, but as long as people internalize their insignificance, they
will continue doing the bidding of those that profess and inculcate their
insignificance. Empowerment comes through breaking the chains of
internalized insignificance. Just say "No!" to the ruling
elite. Say, "No!" to their lies and distortions. Say
"No!" to their killing. Say, "No!" to the military-prison-industrial-media complex that controls what
people think and say. Say "No! to sending our youth
to kill and be killed for the profit of the wealthy. Say
"No!" to accepting the neo-liberal model of
maximized profits at the expense of people's health and the
environment. Watching less television and
being exposed less to corporate media hype and brainwashing frees us from
envisioning ourselves as not being good or important enough. Saying,
"No!" and saying it often to a system corrupted by money, greed
and power creates small cracks in the wall that imprisons people in the
cell of insignificance. A few cracks in the wall empower and
establish confidence that the wall is not impenetrable. Many cracks
reveal that far from being insignificant, the free thinking human being is
empowered by virtue of being free. Beyond saying "No!", we
change how we behave. We can become activists in our own
significance casting off the cloak of someone else's supremacy.
Moving beyond saying, "No!" we become politically
active. Gandhi said, "Be the change that you want to see." Be the crack in the wall that ends the insignificance of
mostly everything.
All alone, or in twos
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall
Some hand in hand
Some gathering together in bands
The bleeding hearts and the artists
Make their stand
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall after all it's not easy
banging your heart against some mad buggers Wall
The
Wall
Pink Floyd
(Outside the Wall)
Rise like lions
after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake to earth your chains like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many, they are few! Masks
of Anarchy, 1819
Percy Byssche Shelley ©
2005
Jozef
Hand-Boniakowski
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