happy new year 2011, part two  

the worst part is how passive, how tolerant, how accepting of so much bullshit the american people have become. while the vast majority wallows in the easy emotional bonding with one political party or the other, eschewing actual thought for the warm and fuzzy joy of 'red bad, blue good' (or vice versa). that majority includes the just as bad segment that unthinkingly shrugs facts and feels, 'well, blue may be bad, but they aren't nearly as bad as red, so i'm supporting blue. and in the process, tolerates, accepts and even embraces the web of lies that passes for news and political discussion today.

so many really severe outrages committed by those in power are just shrugged off. the tsa debacle is a recent example. ridiculously abusive bullying at airports, illogically justified as necessary to prevent lame attempts like the christmas bomber, are just joked about and accepted as part of the times instead of demanding that such abuse stop immediately.

the christmas bomber. who boarded a plane in a foreign city, where the tsa has no activity or jurisdiction. who boarded a plane without a passport. these two obvious facts are clear and in the open. just beneath the surface is the description of how the dude was shuffled past that foreign airport security by some well-dressed accomplice. and instead of a demand that these security breeches be investigated and corrected, the tsa introduces groping and intimidation as a response. and people by and large shrug and say, ok, that's fine.

and the new nude x-ray machines, introduced at a cost of about half a billion dollars, justified by 'the christmas bomber'. and one of the executives in the company that builds these devices is the last chief of homeland security, chertoff, that dude last seen fucking up the katrina response. he cashed in millions of dollars. and people just say, ok, that's fine.

illogic, corrupt profits, and infringement on personal privacy. ok, that's fine.

a quick list--a war entered into by lies from the president, prolonged and expanded by a putative anti-war president who was given the nobel fucking peace prize. the enrichment of a handful of financial firms by the national treasury, with the leaders of those banks giving themselves literal billions of dollars in bonuses, with nothing more than a few scolding words from president obama. a 'patriot act' that results in personal telephone conversations and emails being monitored by the government, and the secret surveillance operations of our government constantly growing larger and larger. the torture and imprisonment of dozens of innocent people at guantanamo and elsewhere, unpunished, and a promise by the antiwar president to stop such crimes, institute trials, and close the notorious prison, but the promise is broken.

ok, that's fine.

the reaction of so many people to the wikileaks story to me marked a disturbing and dangerous stage in the acceptance of tyranny by the american people. wikileaks revealed a ton of what would've been disturbing acts by our government--video of murder of civillians; orders to ignore torture and war crimes; state department employees instructed to spy on diplomats at the un; details of secret wars in yemen and pakistan; pressure on foreign governments to suppress investigations of torture.

jeesus, in 1970 when evidence of a secret war in cambodia became known to the public, 300 college campuses were shut down by anti-war protesters. and people don't even remember kent state and jackson state, much less what sparked those protests that were quelled by the us army.

and the reaction today, by way too many informed and intelligent americans--'what wikileaks did was wrong. governments need secrecy in order to function.'

i was shocked at how many thoughtful adult citizens expressed this sentiment, just shrugging off the actual facts revealed by wikileaks.

and that is not even getting into the corporate acts to coerce and shut down wikileaks, by amazon, paypal, mastercard and visa. or the international police manhunt and imprisonment of assange for sexual assault. with not one single charge or indictment, much less a conviction in a court of law.

i never thought fascism was possible in the usa. i thought the breaking point of the populace would have been far short of the outrages accepted thus far in the 21st century. sadly i see not only are such government outrages against freedom and justice not only acceptable with an 'oh, that's ok'; many infringements of personal and economic freedom and justice are actively welcomed, even cheered, by far more citizens, left and right, than i ever imagined.

the worst part, every corruption of our leaders, the politicians and the financial/economic system, has been ushered in by a population of us citizens that fails to see the most simple and obvious facts in front of their eyes. lots of reasons--conditioning by schools, tv and media advertising to feel rather than to think critically; satisfaction by the rising material wealth of the past 30 years while believing it is consequence free and destined to last forever; fear of a big bad terrorist coming to rape our white women and blow us all up; growing comfort with growing dependence on the big benevolent government to fix all the problems from providing unlimited medical care to instantly removing 20 inches of snow after a blizzard.

the people of the usa have surrendered their politics and their economy to the few who are destroying and stealing the wealth of the nation. we have exactly what some of the wisest founding fathers feared (franklin, jefferson and adams in particular); we stopped paying attention, and gave away control of our nation, in return for a bunch of feel-good lies and deceptions. and we got exactly the leadership we deserve.

too bad, we are gonna get the rest of the consequences we deserve.