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The Failure of
Citizenship
Reprinted article
from the Information Clearing House
02/04/06 "www.InformationClearingHouse.Info." By Charles Sullivan
The Bush State of the Union address the other evening offered the same
mediocrity we have come to expect from this illegitimate regime. It was nothing
less than fascism incarnate and it was palpably evil. Consider it a heaping
helping of dung soup served on a silver platter. It was cloaked in language to
create the illusion of substance and truth. Its message was received by
corporate America, by the fat cats on Wall Street, and the congressional
millionaires club with applause. The remaining eighty to ninety percent of the
population—those of us left out in the cold and exploited—listened with disdain
and incredulity to the sickening miasma that oozed through our speakers.
As Bush himself has stated, the elite are his political base. That much should
be obvious. The wealthy have been handsomely rewarded for their loyalty since
the little dictator’s first inaugural, while the rest of us receive a sadistic
back hand to the face. Behind the customary lies and garish displays of
nationalism, beyond the euphemisms of empty meanings, lie austere truths that
must be brought to the public conscience. One wonders: What planet is this man
from? Where is this America described by George Bush?
In Bush’s America, truth has been so distorted, so utterly turned on its head
that America is no longer a real place. It is the packaging that contains
fascism, skillfully concealing the horrid product within—George Bush’s
Plutocratic America. It is place devoid of real meaning; a cesspool of sorrow
and disgrace, the home of a demoralized and timorous majority. It is a place
sharply divided by two classes—the predator class and the prey class. Upwards of
eighty percent of the population are daily preyed upon by the wealthy minority
and they do nothing about it. The ignorant even welcome the rape and contempt
with a smile upon their face—grateful for the chains they wear, glad for the
abuse they receive. This is nothing less than a modern form of slavery; it is a
true master slave relationship.
Evidence that the rich are fleecing the poor abounds. The cost of insurance for
a family of four rose seventy percent during the past six years. The insurance
companies and the pharmaceutical industries are reaping enormous windfall
profits at the public trough. High premiums combined with high deductibles
render the cost of health care unattainable to millions of lower income
families. Insurance companies can and do arbitrarily and capriciously drop drug
coverage at their sole discretion. The robber barons might as well be holding
guns to our heads.
Bush’s health insurance plan provides additional evidence of criminality coupled
with a paucity of ethics. The plan removes every ceiling for limiting the cost
of drugs. It provides the pharmaceutical industry carte blanche by prohibiting
Medicare from bargaining with drug companies for lower prices. Who benefits?
Private insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry—the very people who
write the legislation!
Meanwhile, Exxon-Mobil reported record profits in 2005 of thirty-six billion
dollars, even while increasing fuel costs fifteen percent. These are the highest
profits ever recorded by a corporation. Venezuela’s Citgo oil should not be
lumped in with the American oil companies that are driven solely by profit
motives. Hugo Chavez’s Citgo is offering deep discounts on heating oil to the
world’s poor (I put only Citgo gas in my car). This demonstrates a clear
delineation between Capitalism and Socialism. Adding further insult to injury,
the oil companies received four billion dollars in tax relief last year. How
much did you get?
Despite the baroque words uttered by Bush, his every action speaks contempt for
ordinary people living from pay check to pay check—Hurricane Katrina proved that
beyond all doubt. With that familiar sickly smirk on his face, Bush and his ilk
are not only stealing our treasure, they are distributing it to the wealthy even
as they spit in the face of the poor and the middle class. How could anyone be
more openly contemptuous of working class people? Why do we tolerate such abuse
and, in so many cases, actually welcome it?
We are witnessing an all pervasive mediocrity in government that has come as a
result of a spectacular failure of citizenship. We are a people that value ease
and convenience over self education, sacrifice and truth. We do not demand
evidence in support of our views. We believe what we are told; and we do what we
are told by authority. We do not like to make trouble. Asking questions requires
self examining critical thinking, a skill that is rapidly disappearing from our
culture of fluff and ease. We want the kind of life where the decisions are made
for us—a life that does not place demands upon us. We want to be entertained,
not informed by burdensome truths that may assault our conscience and cause
psychological injury. That is dangerous knowledge because it would dispel the
myths about what America really is. It would force us to think differently about
who we are as a people. We would see us as the rest of the world sees us.
George Bush’s Orwellian vision of America did not just happen. It is the result
of the influx of enormous sums of money by the wealthiest people in the world.
The return on this investment is that the financial and social interest of the
very wealthy is represented at the expense of all others. If you are a
republican of ordinary means and you think that George Bush is looking out for
your social and economic interest, I feel sorry for you. You are a damned fool
who is unwilling to confront the evidence, afraid to see what is really there.
You are encouraging and cheering on the very ones who are raping you. Easily
swayed by empty rhetoric, you do not examine the betrayal of rhetoric through
hurtful policies. You are a pathetic specimen of humanity.
The long nightmare emerged from sinister minds lusting for unlimited wealth and
unrestrained power. It was aided and abetted by the commercial media every step
of the way—a media owned by the wealthiest corporations. All of us are
complicit. We were not vigilant in protecting the Constitution and upholding our
civil rights. Through pervasive apathy and indifference we prepared the ground
for fascism to germinate and to flourish. Now we are reaping the bitter harvest
that may last a century or more.
Thus we allow the most atrocious lies uttered by political and moral prostitutes
to go unchallenged. These lies are endlessly recycled in the commercial media
until they become ingrained in the public conscience as truth. Worse than
burying our heads in the sand, we bury them up our collective ass. How do you
like the view?
The disgraceful and cowardly capitulation of the Democrats to the neocons in the
confirmation of Alito to the Supreme Court demonstrates that the system does not
and cannot work for just purposes. There are no viable opposition parties to
compete with the Republicrats. We must be the opposition with our bodies; and we
must do everything in our power to disrupt and subvert the cesspool of
corruption that boils and festers in the nation’s capitol, or it will consume
us.
When will enough people with courage and conviction rise and fight? When will we
drag the criminal Bush cabal kicking and screaming to the gallows? How much
worse do things have to get? Let us stop kidding ourselves by trying to work the
system, by trying to appear reasonable to authority. The fascists own the
process that gives them power and wealth. Political reform is too weak to
dislodge those whose tentacles are wrapped around the planet and injecting it
with poison. Nothing short of filling the streets day after day with massive,
unrelenting protests will dislodge the prostitutes from their seats of power.
Massive rebellion is the only thing they have to fear.
Let us refuse to give this illegitimate government our cooperation. Let us
disrupt and take possession of the economic engine that enslaves us. Nothing
short of revolution will dislodge the fascist rulers from power. Either we fight
or we passively accept what is coming.
If we continue to capitulate to our oppressors—the apostles of Plutocracy—let us
remove the lines from the National Anthem: “The land of the free; and the home
of the brave.” They will no longer apply here.
Charles Sullivan is a photographer and free lance writer living in the
Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. He can be reached at
earthdog@highstream.net .
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