My inoculation and motivations: When I thought I might never see Hawaii again

          For me, after a nasty bit, there was no gigantic retribution for having done so, the greatest threat to Low Fruit. But then yet there are always every day endless new potentials for other yet-to-be invented new shoes which might drop, so all I know that it did for me was to open up a little space in time where I could write a little while longer.

         Constitution Cola, the second one I mention above, was written out of anger. It was passionate, and was very well done, but that I can pretty much say had no effect whatsoever. It inspired no one. It made no difference to have written it, but it made me feel better. The anger was in at the Supreme Court’s throwing up a blockade against whistle blowers against Bush/Cheney. Not that the Republican and then Democratic Congresses where not all too eager to join them and make all the bad accusations of "crimes" go away and make the "crimes" not even crimes anymore.

          Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had at that time recently been accused of blackmail by the Speaker of the House Dennis Hassert, a Republican no less, and the mainstream Press, the veritable Fourth Estate of government, the safeguard of Democracy, well they just sort of yawned.

          Well, maybe they just knew they only had left their right to remain silent because he had just also warned/threatened reporters that he would arrest them if they pursued the illegal wiretapping program allegations, or any other ongoing illegal programs. And not too subtly let it be known their cell phones, among other things, had been tapped all along.

          The third thing I mentioned that I am most proud of, and will include an excerpt of below, is When I Think I Might Never See Hawaii Again. It was good, it was from the heart, and it was trying to imbue a perspective that our glorious leadership cannot for the life of them fathom, what if this is all there is? What if they never see their hometowns again, their children again?

          For people (Congress) supposedly reacting out of constant fear thrown at them, fear of their constituents thinking they are weak, fear of a right wing press that even Republican lawmakers admit being terrorized by, fear of terrorist attacks, but seemingly completely without fear of handing over every last scrap of power the mythical magical wondrous "Founders" gave to their positions and legislative bodies.

          Seemingly their jobs now are to tear the Constitution to shreds, put little pieces of it into things called "bills" to send to the President so he can veto them and make its destruction, piece by piece, the new law of the land.

          Habeas Corpus? (The right to some sort of charge and a trial before being imprisoned (and tortured), not even now, "indefinitely") A bill, not a writ, not a "self-evident right," or according the Attorney General, not even a right at all. Congressional approval needed to attack Iran? A Constitutional mandate or directive, and a foundation of our Republic? No, sing it from School House Rock, "I’m just a bill, a little ol’ bill, but I might be a law, … someday." Smack down veto threat, and little ol’ bill (and Separation of Powers) goes away. Not today thank you, can’t tie his hands. Can’t let a Declaration of War make the world an unambiguous place without undeclared wars, unrecognized occupations, and unmentionable, literally, US war crimes.

          The fear that motivates Congress and America these days is not even good fear. What are good fears you ask? Good fears make you act to eliminate what you are afraid of. Common sense you cannot eliminate terrorists if terrorists can become anyone or anyone can become a terrorist.

          You cannot spy on everyone all of the time (though they will make a ton of money trying), you cannot control every country’s government (though they will kill a lot of people trying), and you cannot make everyone afraid of your weapons, not even while you are using them on people. You can, when you are done with an orgy of death, that attempt at making the world submit to your non-existent authority, ditch the fear by trying to make peace with them. That is how you kill fear, at the source.

          The source of fear is not people. The source is, as many have countlessly said before, and will say later, fear is created by what you do not, cannot, and choose not, to understand or acknowledge. The fear we have is real and warranted because somewhere, in the back of our minds, we as a nation are aware of the truth of the terrors we are giving the world while claiming we do not see it ourselves.

          The greatest fears we have, and rarely as Americans will we admit, is that our fears are justified. That just because our Washington Press buys the fact that if the White House does not admit something, it never happened, or is left in a less-defined gray zone between what is real and what is not. That there are things we are doing now, things we are responsible for, which we should not, but will not doing stop either. And that it will come back to haunt us if it is not already on the way.

          Waking up and confronting THAT fear, that good fear, that can inspire people to wake up and do something to counter it, that is always just around the corner. ...

          Yet reality is never shut out completely, even in the most extreme instances referred to above. One must know and constantly be working to suppress what one knows but is choosing not to acknowledge. This knowledge becomes fear, becomes dread, becomes the dark recesses of where we choose we ought not to look at what we as individuals or as groups, societies, countries, or cultures, are doing to others. And worst of all, that knowing or acknowledging that we have surrendered our right to question it openly and effectively without fear.

          Dying is easy then, when having to live daily in denial at the obvious and increasingly frequent greater and growing injustices, and with the ever changing definitions of the official Newspeak insanity, and still yet choosing to think or consider oneself a rational being. It becomes then, the living is what is hard. Unless of course, you batten down the hatches, forget about any or all possible consequences, and try to let out on (what you think are) the right occasions what you know that others, by choosing not to acknowledge will get themselves, and possibly yourself too, killed.


RCP and Two Years After, the Very Changed World Continues
TruthRevival.org, November 4, 2007

[What motivates me]


    This site was pretty much born, lived, and died between April and November of 2007. It puttered along after that, but my heart was not in it. A few posts a year after that, and not with any general frequency. It was "fear of Armageddon based" and when that fear subsided, the Bush presidency was rapidly becoming saner (leaving out how insane by comparison this some of this administrations actions may seem), and I could no longer say I felt it was that important. I covered the "rehabilitation of torture," the elimination of a right to trials, open spying on cell phones of just about anyone (back in 2006/2007), rendition and assassination before and after drones became chic, and the "war of choice" of Iraq needing to eventually be wound down, and repeated ad nausea how dangerous I thought attacking Iran would have been, (really, it was worked into many to most posts). But that new greater middle-east war was seemingly no longer in the cards and I moved on to other things less important but what I thought also needing doing which I may mention here soon (bearing in mind what I mean by soon is relative regrading the wide spacing of these posts in time.)

    In the "Obama Era" I revisited and updated some of these themes, especially the "rehabilitation of torture." When he became president, US support for torture was less than 10%. A year ago it was over 50%. I just heard this month Australia or New Zealand has passed a law allowing torture. Oh the joys of leading by example. Imagine that compounded many times over in many more countries with less a history of human rights and less compunction about such things. My best Bush years posts on these topics were The Truth Is Never Off-the-table In Any Redeemable Society (July 13, 2007), The Rise of the Peacemakers (October 15, 2007),  Open House at US Torture Sites, If We Do It, It Is Not Torture Giuliani (October 26, 2007) and What's Different: The New Norm, Your "Right" to remain silent while being Waterboarded (November 12, 2007).

    But under Obama, though officially "ending" torture, it was back, thoroughly rehabilitated and even made chic, thus its meteoric rise in public acceptance. Not that anyone really had a choice, but all the more reason to keep your mouth shut if you don't agree with "that new norm." The best of these were "New Hope Falters In the Torture 'Debate' (April 26, 2009), More on Obama's reducing Torture to merely bad judgment, certainly not a crime (April 27, 2009), Still More on Obama Decriminalizing Torture (for Americans only, feel privileged yet?) (May 3, 2009), Bill Moyer's 'Extra' biased take on the Torture 'debate' (May 3, 2009), and The Cheney-Obama Dance to Rehabilitate Torture in the Public Conscience (May 14, 2009), as well as a repost of Rep. Ron Paul's Speech- Torturing the Rule of Law  (May 25, 2009).

    I had a lot of hope for change when Obama was elected but it did not take long to see which way the wind was going to blow. As I mentioned here this year and other times previously, "Constitution Cola" was written directly because of a Supreme Court ruling that national security whistle-blowers were exempt from protection, and I went off on that rant that came out pretty well in May of 2006 about that. Before Obama got elected I was hoping that what I had phrased "the worst" of what was done during the Bush presidency would come out and America would then be able to move beyond it, as in the first post here which stated I believed would be the case given that, despite that Supreme Court ruling, the sea had changed toward sanity and away from the worst of what was going on during those years. But as those who are familiar with the term of Obama's "War on Whistle-blowers" may realize, that wasn't exactly what the hope and change the "Sunshine" president was leaning towards. The other alternative I saw was that the (thumb) screws would come out en mass, and that all such abuses would both become buried and also "bipartisan" and eventually accepted in a double-think kind of way. And I think most can guess which direction was chosen.

    Not that many, many things have not come out during the Obama reign, but they seem to be not only against the wishes of this administration to be discussed, but almost with a willingness to throw out any protection of  the press, of whistle-blowers, of just about anyone in favor of keeping the worst things "secret" though they never really were, and that faux secrecy means, as I said above, America will not soon move beyond them back to more more firmer "humanitarian" or even human, grounding of our policies and our relations with the rest of the world. Or even enlightening our most honest own citizens who simply want to know what our government is doing. And it if is so unspeakable that it cannot be told, perhaps looked at so we would not have to fear it's revelation so much, that "good fear" that I mentioned above that may yet prove to be our saving grace, instead of the fear of terror pushed on the public incessantly which only pushes us further towards, and eventually further into, the abyss of being controlled by our buttons being pushed by ever fewer in number marginal groups with increasing ability to drive us into knee-jerk self-destructive actions. Our corporate press and those behind them do us no favors by whipping up hysteria and proportionately decreasing our ability to think and act rationally because of our worse fears ever driving us toward our most basest instincts to lash out in haste because of those fears ever stoked in us and by us, ultimately against us.

    As mentioned in the excerpt above, this post below is one of the things I am most proud of having written. Many months before this site was imagined, I wrote this essay from the heart at my other blog which covered torture and wars, the media which promotes them, and the fear I had that I might never get back to Hawaii (where I have been ever since a few weeks after writing that). It touches upon so much that motivates me, and was written out of a love of the place I most call home, and feel most at home at, in the world. It was short but powerfully worded using one of the best, and most tragic speeches any American leader has ever uttered, and now, as then, so few of our leaders have heard it or have really listed to it. Yet still those words survive more than a hundred years later to "hear, to know, and to feel, and to guide us back from the brink by remembering the slaughters we have done in the past, and are about to repeat again."

Sunday, September 24, 2006

When I think I might never see Hawaii again

        There are a lot of ways things can go where I would never get back. It is not that important, not most important anyway, that I do get back to what I consider home, to be there one more time or one last time. I was there and it is in my heart, a glimmer only sometimes facing these dark days ahead, but as yet unvanquished. I have my Hawaiian music, my memories, and still yet, my hopes for the future, where that is but a mere part of them. Selfish maybe, yet not at all because it fuels all the good things I do, much of what I have done, and much that I might still yet do in time.

       What comforts me is that one of my heroes, one of America's greatest leaders, wanted only to see his home state one last time before he died, but was forbidden to. It is not to take comfort that someone else had a worse pain, suffered more, for if I return, I still will feel sadness that he did could not. But I have found what he felt, a connection to a place, a sense of homeland, a connection to a spot on the Earth at a given place in time to wish to reunite with, and a longing or sadness if that cannot be. His place of choice, his place of home where he longed to go but could not return was the Wallowa Valley in Oregon, and hopefully those who go there can appreciate it for him, and remember what little he asked for, and how great a price was taken. If you cannot tell what great American leader called that place home, then I will be glad to be the first to remind or inform you of him, Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, otherwise known to most as Chief Joseph the Elder of the Nez Percé.

        Some may think me unworthy to speak of him, others would condemn me for calling him a great American leader, yet if he was not an American, who can say they are? If American's are not a race, as we like to point out, but many races, then why cannot an American be one outside of a government? Governments come and hopefully will go and give way to better and more just ones, but people and places remain. There was no doubt he was a good leader and an American, therefore it is not wrong to say he was an American leader to which any could be proud of.

        I have mentioned him before in my writings, and mentioning him now is because so many have not heard his most famous words, now dead in the hearts of Americans, many but not all, and need rekindling now more than ever. All that was great about America, the government at least, that small portion of what is America, has gone terribly wrong. Former President James Carter's belief in a self-correcting mechanism is unfortunately seemingly misplaced at the moment. We have been fed illusions of our worth, blinded to the suffering we are inflicting all over the world in the name of values it is apparent to all all over the world we are not living by and seemingly no longer believe in except to use as an excuse to take what we wish and do whatever is our will.

        Nothing can I remember having moved me more deeply than when I read the words below. It is not just words, not just pain or agony at the reality of war we have been sanitized from, protected from, and because of which, that distancing, we watch men and women without hearts advocating things on television to us and to children, what they are teaching to a new generation, advocating avoidable attacks that would cost thousands of innocent lives, without guilt over what they say, without hesitation in what they are advocating, and without regrets. Joseph's pain inoculated me against thinking like that, and his words will outlive the hate mongers, the torture advocators, and those who scorn diplomacy and the avoidance of war as "weak".

        These words, his words, will outlive those people because the world they advocate cannot endure, would not survive. A world which not only remember's these words but learns from them, takes them into its heart as I have into mine, that is a world which can endure. That is the future I work for, hope for, would live and die for, but the future we are creating now, what our present leaders wish to give the world, that is nothing I would want to be a part of. That world in which we have already recently killed tens of thousands of innocents in cold blood unnecessarily, and would kill millions if not billions to prevent the world from growing beyond the systems we have now, based on the need for war, the rewarding of aggression, and the sanctity of mass murders beyond scale in the name of country and in the name of God. May their notions not be passed on. Humanity could not long survive it if they do. The goal and the means to take us to that better world are found in the words below for any to hear, to know, and to feel, and to guide us back from the brink by remembering the slaughters we have done in the past, and are about to repeat again.

        "It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are -- perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."

10:04 PM