Us, and them
And after all we're only ordinary men.
Me, and you.
God only knows its not what we would choose to do.
Forward he cried from the rear
And the front rank died.
And the general sat and the lines on the map
Moved from side to side.
--Us and Them (Waters and Wright), Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd
They took it over from the inside. It took them 30 years. If this was a banana republic, we would have been shot in the streets and herded into stadiums. We should find new love for the Second Amendment, and wonder now how many Kent State-like massacres of our peaceful protesters it may have prevented.
But they were much more clever and resourceful than to use iron-fisted violence. What could be better than a population conquered by its own choice, and never even realizing the truth? The coup culminated in the illegal decision of their Supreme Court majority in 2001, installing their Prince of Idiots and making a mockery of our Rule of Law. They were aided by a media controlled at the highest levels, and it continues to aid them.
It has not been a bloodless revolution, however; death and destruction has been exported as part of their plan. Armed forces personnel and contractors, many of them poor and desperate in their own right -- our people -- who died in Iraq were their pawns, dying not while defending the barricaded palace but by being duped into defending their ideology as part of a perception machine chugging away in a distant land.
By their actions, and by their inactions, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis are dead, including Iraq's own armed forces, which were trying to repel their unjust invasion -- something everyone overlooks. Then the "liberated" people of Iraq were thrown into misery by their imbecilic figurehead of a ruler and his controllers and sycophants. Workers imported into neo-slavery in Iraq have died. Innocent Lebanese and manipulated Israeli forces died in a surrogate war. Death and destruction still comes in the now-botched occupation of Afghanistan for under-manned and ignored troops, mere stepping stones and now afterthoughts to their ultimate planned conquest. Forces from allies in both countries are dead thanks to their misadventures.
They brought death to New Orleans, victimized by a hurricane, then its people -- our people -- were victimized by their ruling junta.
Let's not forget their "asleep at the switch" homeland defense policy that precluded any chance of preventing 9/11.
And finally, 18,000 people die each year, our people, for lack of health care, according to the National Institutes of Health, a problem they virtually refuse to recognize.
Their so-called government is responsible for somewhere between 500,000 and a million fatalities, plus untold numbers maimed physically and emotionally. Millions are displaced most likely forever, in the twin refugee crises of their making from homes in Iraq and homes in New Orleans.
Our Constitution, which they reject in the name of power, has been dealt one body blow after another, the judiciary, and even justice itself as embodied by the Department of Justice, has suffered. Abu Ghraib murdered our international credibility and moral authority.
But we are clawing back, in the best Ghandi style, with knowledge, passive resistance and the power of our alternative voices.
Keep it up. Teach your children. Resistance is not useless! It's all about us and them.
Haven't you heard it's a battle of words
The poster bearer cried.
Listen son, said the man with the gun
There's room for you inside.