Kali, hand-bult bas relief tile by Tammy Vitale of Tam’s Originals
Warning: This is a political post, not a business post. Or, you could say that art is (or can be) political so it is a business post. You can define it any way you want. I am going to define it as having to say something about the state of the world. If you aren’t ready for a rant, stop here and click elsewhere.
It’s Husband’s fault. He sent this YouTube, New World Lies, video to me and it made me cry and then it made me angry that I feel helpless in the face of the choices being made in my name by a government I did not vote for, that may or may not be legally in power in this country (yes I buy conspiracy theories and no I don’t think the Bush empire is above it – their connection to oil and Saudi families, including Ben Ladin’s family, is enough to make me say: just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean there isn’t anything wrong with this picture).
Do you feel safer now? Do you feel safer now that the architect of the bombing of the towers in New York is STILL out there and has been largely forgotten since we invaded Iraq because "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction" (so combersome a phrase that everyone in the U.S. now knows what the alphabet soup: WMD means). Of course they didn’t, Bush and cronies just needed an excuse.
Now comes the countries who really have the WMDs and where are we? Well, we’re running up enough debt to keep our grandchildren in slave to corporations (the ultimate goal: a giant corporate machine where the only ones with enough money to buy houses are the corporations and the rest of us are indebted forever to the overpriced Company Store?), streched to capacity "keeping the peace" in Iraq and Iran and North Korea are thumbing their noses at us. Do you feel safer now?
And you may or may not pardon me for thinking Israel has used our tactics in it’s latest retaliation against Hesballah, i.e., found a good excuse and is milking it for all it’s worth. No I don’t agree with Hesballa and I think that Israel’s show of force will do as much to cancel out that group as our show of force has done to cancel out ben Laden. In other words: nothing. Do you feel safer now?
That kind of force only creates more hate and counter-retaliation. You’d think that intelligent people would "get" that at some point. Or perhaps the point is that we have no intelligent people in places of power, only people interested in garnering more personal power and money for themselves and the rest of us be damned. Do you feel safer now?
My usual response to other people’s rants is: well, what are you going to do? What is your first step?
My first step is to finally say the above, which is what I’ve been thinking and shoving to the back of my mind for a very long time. And this: no, I do NOT feel safer now. I do not believe this is creating a better, more egalitarian and just world for my grandson. I am not better off than I was before the Bush clan rigged the orignal election that got Bush in. Do you still feel safer now?
Further I cannot understand how the people of this country, arguably as well educated as any constituency in time, cannot see the calculated spin put on events that clearly are, for Bush and cronies, self-serving….until now when the glimmer is starting to come through. Why not in the beginning? Before we killed and maimed thousands and thousands of people and exponentially created hated toward ourselves? You think folks in other countries who hate the U.S. think you and I are any better than who we have allowed to be our leaders? Of course not!
Are we majority wise such sheep and so concerned with our own little stash of gold that we will do and allow anything just so long as we can keep what we have and maybe get a little bit more?
So, DO you feel safer now?
3 Comments
Interesting, you only feel threatened by Arab extremists? What about the likes of Tim McVay or Eric Rudolph? Don't you feel threatened by them, too? They killed innocent U.S. citizens, and while McVay was executed and Rudolph is in jail, what about their "friends"? Do we send in troops?
You say Hezballah is a murder of U.S. Marines. If you asked someone in Lebannon who had been given food and rebuilding materials, they probably wouldn't feel the same.
I hate it that we've had over 40,000 of our troops injured in this war built on lies, special interests and inexperience. I also hate it that at least the same number of Iraqi women and children died because of this. I am a wife, a mother, grandmother and an employee and a student. I know one thing: if bombs rained down and killed members of my family, I would have a difficult time turning the other cheek, and I certainly wouldn't see the people who did that as my "liberators".
When 1/2 million children died in Iraq between 1991 and 2003 from preventable, communicable disease because the infrastructure was destroyed in Gulf 1 and embargos were in place, as a mother – the U.S. would not be number one on my list of friends. What brilliant policy person missed this bit of common sense?
To quote F.D.R. – the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We all get daily doses of fear from the administraiton, from the media – and we react instead of think. We owe it to ourselves, and the world community to stop reacting and start thinking.
I've always known that my right to travel freely within the U.S., to live where I wanted, to work wherever I could get hired came at a price. The price for this freedom is the understanding that we can be vulnerable, and that others may hurt some of us sometimes. It's our freedoms, not our fears that should lead us.
Actually, I do feel safer.
Hesballah murderer hundreds of U.
S. Marines (in Lebanon to save Arafat's rear end from the Israelis)and Hesballah and Iran providing material support to the terrorists who are actively killing U.S. troops (and thousands of Iraqi civilians) in Iraq.
I happen to be a liberal Democrat. I do know that Bush and Company lied and lied and lied to build support for the war in Iraq. I also know that they were incompetent and asleep at the wheel (and firing the generals and CIA folks who tried to wake them up) when they went into Iraq. And Bush II madehis his father look likie a genius for not going to Baghdad in 1991 (becasue Bush II is a f***** idiot by comparison to his not-that-smart Dad).
However, I feel threatened by the Arab extermists. And I believe an unrelenting response to those who sponsor and provide support to them is called for. Glad to have Israel as our proxy in this particular fight.
Lebanon was not just passive. Its military provided material support to Hesballah in targeting the Israeli destroyer. It allied itself with Hesballah. It knew Hesballah was a snake when it brought it in. Now it has been bitten. Lesson: Don't align yourself with the snakes of this world.
http://marathonidiot.blogspot.com/
I share your frustration with the Bush administration. Listening to the Diane Rehm show this morning, it seemed as though all we hear are the same tired argument. Neo-conservatives lying about how and why we got into this mess and why it is all worth it. And past supporters who are finally getting fed up and want to get out.
I think the first step is to do what you are doing and say it out loud: we were wrong when this started, and things have gone downhill ever since.
At the same time, I think it is important to hold on to hope — hope that the Republicans will be voted out of office in the Fall, and that the Democrats will have some idea what to do if they find themselves in power. With all the talk of democratic values overseas, let's try to exercise some here at home (even if the political process does seem totally corrupt and without values at times.)
I also think that you are doing something by creating art. Art has always been the glue that holds people together even in the face of great tragedy. I guess I'm saying that none of us personally can change the world, but if we each do our part, the butterfly effect will take over and who knows what changes will bloom?