Forgive me, but I can't take it anymore! Call me a nut, but for the millionth time, I wake up to Bush's America with my stomach in knots, grinding my teeth, my heart so heavy I feel like I am going to have a heart attack... and I look out into the nation, and I see us doing a lot, but not nearly enough to stop this insane drive toward theocratic fascism. I want it to stop now. Today.
We have the power to stop it. I believe that. But it will take live bodies doing it. Collectively. So I ask: Is the Internet our real friend?
**first diary; not sure about the html tags and spacing; and not sure if the piece is too long to warrant anyone reading it.
more after the fold
When America relatively calmly said, "Okay, okay, George Bush is President" in December 2000, my heart sank. Aren't we going to rise up? I can't get to Florida. I am way over on the left side of the nation. Five people who happen to be on the US Supreme Court appointed a guy to the highest office of the land, and the people are just going about their daily business. (I didn't even know about the protesters on inauguration day 2000 till I saw Moore's F-911 movie in 2004.)
So I resigned myself to the fact that we had a president who didn't even read.
Then there was the immediate submission and passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
Then there was the passage of the first thing to be called a `reform' on Estate Taxes. In 10 years, there would be no estate taxes to speak of. The 3nd Bush Court just reduced that to five years, as in NOW.
Then there was the trillion dollar treasury give-away. Wow, $300. That is going to put me into the big leagues.
Just wait it out, I told myself. 4 years. Just wait it out.
It is 5 years later.
Let's survey where we are:
- We have a Congress that is so bold as to pass legislation that will literally bury our countrymen. And they do it in the light of day! (bankruptcy bill. The medicare `reform.' No Child Left Behind will leave behind a wake of moral decay so great that it will take another generation to even begin to repair it.)
- Instead of working on a bill as lofty as the Voting Rights Act of 1964 (which very well could be retired this year), our free election system is being decimated. And Jimmy Carter - the man who took on the Georgia election fraud thugs and who devoted his post-presidential years to working for free elections internationally - will have a special hand in killing any and all election reform on his Carter-Baker Commission? Which crazy parallel universe am I in?
- Our band of thugs are literally on a lynching tirade against the third branch of our ever so carefully crafted checks and balances system! The judiciary - already heavily populated with some real kooks from Reagan's reign of terror on the judiciary in the 1980s, isn't `conservative' enough for these thugs? Oh my. The Supreme Court which effectively appointed a president isn't good enough for these thugs? Five people picked a president! Oh my, oh my.
- The substandard healthcare for our most vulnerable citizens (the elderly and the disabled) has been nixed. It was not that great of a deal before our band of thugs decimated it; but now it is effectively a dead program. And Soylent Green seems to be around the corner.
- Social Security is next up on the chopping block, as we all know. What we don't know is how our band of thugs will kill what amounts to the only retirement and program for the disabled and terribly sick to allow people to actually live? Investing it in the stock market does not seem to be a wall that even our special band of congressional thugs feel emboldened to tackle. But the program will be decimated. What killing field has the Bush Administration not successfully implemented?
- Science is considered a half-cocked conspiracy theory. I am not even able to think and write about what has happened to our food supply and the environment the past five years without wailing, cussing and breaking things. But we in the movement know the facts. The Internet has helped to keep us apprised.
- We live in an oppressive state where our band of thugs can listen in, record, infiltrate even our houses without probable cause or a search warrant and steal our DNA to make a case against us that could land many in cells with the keys thrown away, without the liberty of legal counsel; where our band of thugs are showing up on innocent Americans' doorsteps to let them know in uncertain terms that they are being watched and that Der Fuhrer is not pleased with their `thoughts' or their bumper stickers.
- We have created a new trend in military aggression; well, it isn't new. Hitler was very fond of it; so was Ghengis Khan. The Bush Doctrine of Preemptive War. Wow. So, a president, appointed by five people, can just mobilize our troops and invade another country with a justification made up by lies (lies millions knew were lies even before the first bomb was dropped), and keep our troops there and loot our treasury while our domestic lives crumble before our eyes. 100,000+ innocent Iraqis and an untold number of Afghanis have been murdered by an imperial greedy country. And the stacks of dead bodies continue to mount.
- The march to an invasion against Iran is next up. The same lies told by the same liars will be the justification for that invasion. Iran's economic friends around the globe will probably be the first real answer to America's wanton aggression. And it won't be pretty.
- Women, children, the elderly, the disabled, GLBT, middle and lower class working people - are all under attack by this administration.
IS THE INTERNET REALLY OUR FRIEND?
How did MLK and Malcom X and the Flower Children and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War `manage' to incite millions to oppose the repressive United States government with such fervor?
They didn't have the internet. I can't imagine that they had stellar coverage on the nightly news. I can't imagine that there were multitudes of books detailing ad infinitum the atrocities being carried out by our government.
How do we - millions upon millions of concerned Americans of all stripes, colors, classes, ages - compare to the `60's movement'?
We have the internet which should prove to be a major boost in spreading the `awareness' of what is happening in this country. We can run down to Barnes & Noble and pick any number of 100s of books that present a prima facie case that the present powers that be need to be run out of town, post haste.
But what have we really accomplished with our high tech revolution?
I am discouraged. People in our movement far outnumber those who fought for civil rights and against illegal war in Vietnam. We come from all walks of life: young and old; rich and not so rich; and the used to be rich (I don't think many poverty stricken people have joined the movement; they are looking for bread for their tables and avoiding their landlords);We are also armed with far more information than those in the 60s movement ever had -thanks to the internet.
I would like to be able to say that we are also more connected to our countrymen from coast to coast and with our sympathetic foreign friends than the 60's activists ever could have been. But I can't make that assertion, even if I did just get off an invigorating online chat session with 50 people spanning the country discussing the latest assault by our band of thugs which effected a plan that will certainly elicit at least 200 letters to the editors in protest (a good thing). But I cannot and will not say that we are more connected to each other in this movement because we have the internet! I will not be lulled into a false sense of security that we are connected and bonded to fight the good fight. I refuse.
If I may be so bold, might I suggest that because of the internet, we have not had much of an impact at all in the movement for social and economic justice?
I take a cursory look at what our band of thugs has accomplished and compare it to what the movement with its high speed internet access has accomplished thus far. And, kind people, we are losing. And losing badly. Oh, wait, mid-term elections are around the corner! Well, our band of thugs have launched a serious next phase of its preemptive attack on election fairness.
WHAT TERRI SCHIAVO TAUGHT ME ABOUT THE INVIRILITY OF THE INTERNET
I looked on in horror at the Terri Schiavo protest debacle. Was it two weeks of relentless non-stop protest beamed into every American brain? Sure, it was a fraudulent protest. Paid protesters, pundits and priests, and even a few faux monks for color and zip! Quack `doctors' and `nurses'. It was also a constitutional crisis - for Congress to remove one pet case from the state courts, and it was done with the votes of THREE SENATORS. Three men paved that road to no return.
To the movement's glee, the American people did not budge on what we all know is right - the right to die and the right to do it without government intervention. Seems even the masses whose civic nutrients come only from Fox News even refused to buy into that egregious act by our band of thugs. But our band of thugs marched on. Our band of thugs completely WON the Schiavo battle. They did. Why? Because the American people did not run them out of office. In the America I grew up in, overreaching egregious acts by politicians tended to force such politicians out into the streets under a cloak of utter shame that only a good horse-hair shirt loving puritan could appreciate. And what is happening? These same political thugs are on their way to emasculating the entire judiciary.
The key element that helped the radical right win the Schiavo battle
There is one key element that I think the movement has missed in regard to the theatrical protest outside of Terri Schiavo's hospice center. It is a major blind-spot for the movement. A blind-spot that could very well cost us our country. Paid or not, sane or not, sincere or not... the Schiavo protesters did not LEAVE. They would not leave. They stayed the course. Sure, our band of thugs paid handsomely for the non-stop press coverage and the protesters. They did. Did our 100s of 1000s strong protests on the second anniversary of the Iraq invasion even get on the nightly news? Not really. And so we lament to ourselves on our internet blogs about what a shame it is that the whore corporate media won't give us equal time, or any time for that matter.
Ahh, I am finally getting to my point. Until we go out into the streets and stay put until our grievances are properly addressed, we will never make any headway in the movement. The intellectual edification that the movement attains on the Internet is unrivaled. We are heavily armed with the facts. And the level of passion and concern for what is happening is encouraging. We have written and recited the criminal indictments for our band of thugs many times over. But, sadly, knowledge without action will get us no where - except perhaps a new prescription for anti-anxiety drugs to deal with `reality' and for which most of us will not be able to afford anyway.
We must take to the streets... not for some designated two to five hour "scheduled appointment" to yell and wail about what grieves us. We must take to the streets and stay there - refuse to leave. Refuse to leave until our just grievances are addressed. We don't need a free press to make that happen. We need an unrelenting mass determination to simply NOT LEAVE. And that cannot be effected on the Internet - even if Ted Koppel runs a story on the power of blogs. Even if.
Does anyone think for a minute that Yuschenko would have gotten another election if the people there had gone out for a rally "scheduled" from, say, 5 pm to midnight? No way in hell. They came, they stayed, and they demanded that their grievances be properly addressed until the ruling powers that be had to cede to the wish of the people. Not even Vladimir Putin was able to quash that movement. Not even Mr. KGB himself.
So, I sit here in my hovel at my keyboard daily - waiting, watching for the spark that will move us to action against our band of thugs. So far, no flickers or sparks. What will it take for us to band together and do the only thing that history rightly teaches us WILL effect change? Popular uprising - unscheduled!. How long? Or will we just wait for our band of thugs to round us up and take us to the gallows and the train cars?
The Internet is a great friend for us. But at this point in the movement, the Internet is a fair weather friend. The only purpose it can serve is to arm us with the facts of the horror that is our government. It makes us `feel encouraged'. It makes us `feel connected'. It makes us `feel' like we are accomplishing something. But, seriously, all it does is keep us transfixed like zombies ... effectively separated from each other and doing anything and everything but running our band of thugs out of town. Our children and our children's children deserve so much more. We deserve so much more.
The Internet is the very, very, very BEST FRIEND that the radical right could have ever hoped for. And their best friend is my enemy. Unless I can befriend him and use him to do what really must be done: countrymen lined up shoulder-to-shoulder in protest with no end until grievances are properly addressed.
Postscript: And once the people use the Internet to elicit a mass physical emergence from our hovels to demand justice, do any of us in the Internet world really think that the radical right will leave the Internet on? Do we really think for a minute that radical right will just continue what seems to be unbridled access to the Internet? I don't know how on earth I would connect with those on my listserve? How do you find Mr. JusticeforAll at yahoo.com who lives somewhere in the Ohio Valley or NotSoHappyCamper at comcast.com, who never really did say where she lived? How does Ben Cohen launch a petition without the Internet?
But, more importantly, how will I know what the hell is happening beyond my neighborhood?
Our sense of connectivity is false and it is not a guarantee. We need to be many steps ahead, people. I envision a future that will sound very much like a dial tone of a disconnected phone call.
How will we find each other in the future if we don't use our means to band together now?
How do we make finding each other in a future fog of fascism not even necessary? By amassing and activating and demanding that such a future not become reality. And, to do this, we must speak out now - in person, unscheduled, and relentlessly until our grievances are properly addressed.
YEAH, THIS IS A CALL TO ARMS (NON-VIOLENT). I AM SICK OF WAKING UP IN KNOTS AND BEING ABLE TO SLEEP ONLY WHEN I AM EXHAUSTED FROM BEING ANGRY AND FRUSTRATED. SICK TO DEATH OF IT. I WANT CHANGE. NOW. AND I NEED ALL OF PROGRESSIVE AMERICA TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.