Land of the Free, Home of the Slave

On the Road to Another Civil War?

By

Ian Macleod

There is only one race of people on this planet – human. True, differences abound - some are cultural; these have their roots in the necessities of survival in different environments. Some are religious, though too often what people claim as "religion" is a thin veneer both for disguise and for rationalization over a clear and simple greed for secular power. All differences are, however, superficial. Look beneath them and you find that they are no more than the differences between individuals; nature makes no leaps, but it also makes no carbon copies. The adaptability of the human animal and the variety of environment and life experience make differences inevitable, but they should not be mutually exclusive. When they are, or appear to be, look for greed.

Human beings, necessarily, simply because of physiology, are the same at basis. We need air, food, water, shelter from the elements, health; we want safety for ourselves, our mates and progeny, and whatever group we identify with. We want to be useful, respected, and unless we are terminally warped, loved. The differences lie in how different people go about getting what they need and want.

Even now, after a hundred centuries of attempts and experiments at civilization, even with all of them swearing peace is the essential ingredient of a civilization, we seem to be stuck with the guy who has the biggest muscles, the biggest club, the most followers, the most willingness and ability to kill. It seems that the only way to peace such people see is if all other people live and believe just like them – or are dead. No matter how many of us are gentle-hearted and accepting, even desirous of learning from differences, as long as there are those narrow, frightened, greedy, murderous people, we remain at the level of the jungle. The worst of it is that the only defense is to become better killers than the killers. Those who espouse peace at any cost are doomed along with and by their beliefs. To meet a sword with a handful of flowers is suicide – a principled suicide perhaps, but suicide nonetheless. In a country of peace, a few, or even one, conscience-less murderer can tear it all down; the same applies to countries, to the world. It's a tactic as old as life itself, as simple-minded as a single cell: destroy what goes against your interests and nothing remains but what does serve your interests.

Such a view takes no account of the long term or a wider view. It is what permits the destruction of entire ecosystems for immediate gains: setting the veldt on fire to kill and cook the prey with minimal effort. If there is no prey – or veldt – left afterwards, just go someplace else. Because of this, we are running out of other places to go. Too much of what was the balanced biosphere that we came to be in is ashes and dust. When a country with the power of the United States takes this view, the entire world is in danger.

This view is what permits the murder of helpless women and children, the destruction of entire cultures, of the infrastructures of whole civilizations that are then "rebuilt" as helpless and dependent client states as they are robbed in increments large and small of their heritage as human beings along with what should be their own country's' wealth. Call such actions "manifest destiny", "liberation", or robbery at gunpoint, the result is the same: the rape of entire countries, all for the enrichment of a few modern-day robber barons who are happy to keep robbing until the well runs dry, which none of them really believes will ever happen even with the bottom of the damned well in sight.

Judge Roy Bean said, "Control the coinage and the courts and let the rabble have the rest", but he forgot one thing: the media. The government can do horrific things – and does – but it cannot get away with it without limit unless the press is under their control. Show the American people, tell them the truth, and they will hold the government accountable. Show them lies, allow the printing and transmission of only information supportive of the government, marginalize or demonize the few voices not in and of the mainstream media, and the Voice of the People is effectively silenced.

The mainstream media is well under control and feeds the public what the administration wants it to hear. Minorities are herded with economic pressures and empty promises into the military faster than the enemy can kill them – so far. Others are imprisoned and disenfranchised with laws that criminalize nonviolent, usually completely harmless and sometimes even beneficial behavior. There are things we may not do that are no one's business but the participant's, things it is healthier not to say, places in and topics for which we cannot safely meet to discuss, and the list of these things grows larger all the time with less input from us all the time. Clearly, this administration feels that We the People in general are simply not smart enough to make their our own decisions. They are doing their utmost to keep us that way – and it's all getting to be more aboveboard, more accepted. We are acclimating to totalitarianism faster than I ever thought possible.

I hurt in my soul to see my America being hijacked by a pissant Southern fried silver-spoon wannabe Napoleon and his corporate cronies. Real information is getting harder to come by, and even people I thought were intelligent are parroting their catch-words and phrases. Women, children – innocent civilians as well as our own young, courageous, patriotic, misinformed and mis- and badly-used military - are being casually murdered for pure profit and power, and the lies keep coming a la "Mein Kampf": people believe big lies easier than little ones, and there is no longer a medium through which to shout a loud enough warning.

If this election is hijacked too, I foresee Amerika, land of the fee, home of the slave, and no recourse short of another civil war.

I can just hear Kofi Annan after the gassing of the Democrats for a Free America (and, as collateral damage, much of L.A.): "The Commission expresses its solidarity with the US in overcoming the current situation".

Damn them!

October 2003