Last time we listed the following 3 ways out of 100 to destroy what’s left of democracy in America:
1. Comingle issues of Church and State.
2. Insist on prayer in the schools.
3. Invoke the Almighty when justifying acts of war against other sovereign nations.
So we begin this next part of this exercise by lying to the people about what is really going on behind the curtain of government. Which brings us to the fourth way to destroy our country:
4. Lie to the people. It has been proven that lies work wonders when trying to sway voters and even a nation to go to war. We here in the USA, the land of the free, are not without our historical warts and transgressions when it comes to lying to the people to justify spending billions of dollars and killing thousands of people who did not harm us. Consider our attacking Iraq and occupying the country for the longest war in our American history. Tell the people that Saddam Hussein has WMD’s pointed at American cities and it is a piece of cake. Roll out the Tomahawks and give ‘em the old “Shock and Awe.” 5 trillion dollars later that we borrowed and spent and tacked on to our National Debt, Iraq is still in shambles.
The Iraq War is the gift that keeps on giving in that the cost numbers go up with time and the death toll is enormous: 4,485 Americans were killed, and numbers of Iraqis dead and related fatalities of others is staggering. The link below has several ways of looking at the casualties, and you the reader can be the judge of the rest of the story in the link below:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/14/iraq-war-cost-more-than-2-trillion_n_2875493.html
Terrorist groups have run wild since the U.S. departed Iraq. And you got to ask yourself in the immortal words of the Gipper, Ronald Reagan: Are we better off? Did we in fact bring democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people? Or did we enable the flood gates to open wide so the country would become a shooting range for terrorists and unlawful gangs of Shiites and Sunnis ‘til the end of time?
Was our causing 100s of thousands of civilian deaths necessary? What did our soldiers die for? The 4,485 Americans, remember them? They were mostly from the military ranks of weekend warriors, you know, the National Guard units all over the land who signed up to get some extra college tuition money to better themselves and help their families rise to a higher standard of living. But George W. Bush used his swaggering Unitary Executive Decider-In-Chief office to commandeer the Reserves all over the country to fight in combat in Iraq. Is that legal? Not really. Technically? Not even. Is it immoral? Does the Pope live at the Vatican?
Reserve troops are under the command of every and each governor of the state in which the Reservists live. Can the president of the United States use Reserve troops if he wants to? Yes, if he gets no flak from Congress about it. He did and Congress didn’t. All Bush needed to do was to invoke the Executive privilege part of his authority which is legal, lawful, and allowed. But only IN TIMES OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY. But was it a National Emergency? No. Iraq did not harm the United States. Was America in imminent danger? Hell no. We had no reason to attack Iraq. Or see the killing of thousands, including our own uniformed men and women who were trying to make ends meet by signing up for the National Reserve in their state of residence.
The irony weighs heavier than 100 elephants. In the Viet Nam War when there was a military draft George W. Bush, thanks to Poppy Bush, Sid Adger, Texas Air Guard Commandant General Rose, and Ben Barnes, was allowed to join the Texas Air Guard as a pilot in training. Bush leaped over 100s of other applicants to get this position. Didn’t even have to go to boot camp, much less officer’s training to get his commission as an officer. The irony is that back then Bush knew that he would never see combat duty if he was a member of the Texas Air Guard or any other Reserve Unit. Reservists just did not have to fight in combat.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/bush072899.htm
Fast forward to 2003 when George W. Bush was president of the United States and needed boots on the ground to fight in and occupy Iraq during his ignorant Iraq War that he based upon lies. Not enough soldiers to put boots on the ground in Iraq? Not to worry. Just invoke the term “National Emergency” and as Decider-In-Chief you can commandeer ALL, yes you heard it right, ALL of the Reservists from every state in the Union to serve as combat soldiers in a full-blown war like the one that lasted 10 years in Iraq. And if you can manage to buffalo the American people into believing that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden (the leader of al Qaeda in 2001) just fresh off his crashing jets into the Twin Towers and killing over 3,000 innocent Americans, all the more convincing it would sound. The American people will swallow anything. They will react in a knee-jerk style to subconsciously or consciously feel that all Muslims are like Osama bin Laden in their hate for Americans and Christians and Jews, and so got get ‘em George. Bypass the rest of the world and the opinion of saner sovereignties. Just do it. And later on when no WMDs were ever found just slip into the dark corners of memory loss of how we the American voters just slipped into a coma of memory-loss about what was our darkest hour in history.
Forget that George W. Bush hired private soldiers, nee Blackwater and paid Erik Prince a Billion dollars a year to provide the extra guns and helicopters needed to fight his war against intelligent thinking and decency. Forget that Erik Prince was a Bible-Thumping Fundamentalist who thought that eliminating those Muslims who wanted us dead, might just be the work of God. And forget how Blackwater hired guns were paid 5 times the amount that a uniformed soldier made. And forget that we taxpayers picked up the tab for that, too. And that our president sneaked it all past us.
Piece by crumb, it is easy to see the fabric of our nation and our democracy go up in smoke and wither away. If America seems less concerned about the individual, remember that we allowed many of our freedoms to evaporate and made no attempt to head the gunslinger in the White House off at the pass. Habeas Corpus, the right to privacy, and next? Maybe the right to bear arms, whataya think? Would that even frost anybody’s ass? How about you, Billy Bob? It would be hard to tell with a nation collectively out to lunch 24-7. Did anybody have a twinge of regret when Obama and Congress won by landslides in 2008 and immediately did a 180 and took impeachment off the table? Does it take a rocket scientist to see that at every twist and turn we take, that America’s government and laws and human rights are either threatened or crushed under the tank treads of ignorance? That those we elect strive to preserve and embrace the wrong choices our leaders have made? So we can go on without addressing real problems and inequities in our system of government?
The lies told to the American people are numerous and effective. Such is backed up by Billions of dollars in propaganda money, and the Joseph Goebbels School of Human Thought Reform is still alive. It is still king.
5. Give the people ‘Circus and Bread.’ This measure was implemented by Caesar Augustus in 60 BC and later where the great arenas provided the circus by having gladiators fight each other and lions and tigers to the death. Meanwhile, the people enjoyed the “bread” provided by Caesar to enjoy while watching the “entertainment” of that day. Further Rome provided free bread to all its 250,000 citizens in those days. So if the Emperor kept you entertained with blood sport and kept your belly full which assured you that you and your family would never starve, why would a citizenry ever want to revolt? They wouldn’t. That’s the idea.
An additional advantage for the Emperor (of ruler of any nation) for that matter would be the distraction of the masses. If the masses are busy watching say, the Super Bowl or the World Series games, after working and driving to work all day long, who would want to study what our government was doing all that carefully? If you answered nobody, you are on the money. Who would know that our rights and liberties under the Constitution were being eroded if we were distracted by sports events or government tax cuts and rebates?
Who among us would pay attention to the Iran Contra Scandal and know that Ollie North was convicted of 3 felonies and sentenced to 3 years of prison time, only to have it commuted and restructured to make his shredding incriminating documents, cover up, and lying under oath to the Senate seem just peachy keen? How could a convicted felon become such a national hero? Perhaps the American people just weren’t paying attention. (BTW Don’t try to convince me of the truth; my mind is made up.” Does that thought ring any bells?
A few years ago Ollie North was to speak at a church in the little town of Humble, Texas where I lived at the time. It was the big Baptist Church north of town with enough parking spaces to handle a Super Bowl crowd. So thousands of people gathered to hear North speak. But why? Well the circus of millions of dollars of propaganda dollars had catapulted North to hero status because the machine that liked and supported North billed him as the first American to demonize Osama bin Laden as a real threat to the United States. This was before 911 of course, so Ollie became sort of a prophet. To be sure we hated bin Laden and had come to suspect all aliens from that part of the world. For the first time Billy Bob took an interest in reading about how bad the Muslims hate us and all, and how the Koran tells its own to kill us for the glory of Allah, etc. Baloney. Yet many smart people did not care to check it out because they were distracted by what they thought they knew about something. And all they knew was that Ollie North was a damn-sure great American, and even Sean Hannity of Fox News said so. So the result was that on the day of the Ollie North speech to the congregation, there were maybe over 5,000 vehicles there with some still trying to find a parking place by the time the session was to begin.
Due to other considerations, propaganda, and distractions, America has become famous for glorifying the grotesque. In swallowing the Lie. For saluting the ‘Shadows’ among us because they come billed as heroes. One could go on about circus and bread and how the bribe and distraction causes people to act as crazy as a peach orchard boar, but why continue? You get the picture. Your choice is to believe it or not. And don’t worry about our government spying on us and our loss of privacy and right to habeas corpus. Ifen you ain’t done nothin’ wrong, no need to worry, right? M-hm. For more see:
http://www.progressivewritersbloc.com/BW/BreadAndCircuses.htm