Sunday, October 05, 2008

Speak The Truth


The prevailing rules are unspoken, but they nonetheless dominate our lives in nearly every way.

See it for anything, except for what it really is.

Say anything you like about it but never, ever, speak the truth.

There are many ways to avoid getting to the truth. Doing battle is a very popular way. First, see it for anything except what it is, then pick a fight. Artificially create two sides in the argument then be incendiary and blame others for the non-truth. People can't resist jumping into any lame brained argument and so they do. You've then got an entire group of people at each other's throats, exchanging insults and blame, tossing out arguments and curse words, and for all of the tremendous energy that gets expended, there is literally no risk at any time that common sense will prevail allowing all involved to clue into the real issues.

We've become a very "take sides" population, much to our collective shame and failure. We hear some false notion floating by and immediately decide what side we're on. It's just too much fun to hunker down on your spot and defend it with all you've got. It's just too intoxicating to generate as much ill will and intolerance towards those who disagree with you as you possibly can, because hating others is fun. It makes you feel superior and self righteous and that must mean you're absolutely entitled to act like a total jerk to others.

Intolerance, ignorance, arrogance and violence are all hairs on the same ugly wart. Where on earth did we get the idea that this is something to boast about?

Maybe it's just me but here's what I know. If you stop listening, you stop learning anything. If you stop learning, you will never understand. If you think you know it all, you don't know the half of it.

It's much too easy for the engineers of public perception to rig and ignite mutual contempt bonfires, and heaven knows, we've got a whole lot of those blazing all over the place these days. The main anchoring bonfire is the right vs. the left. The right literally reviles the left, and the left truly loathes the right. Only there really is no such thing as left and right. These are terms without definition, they could mean anything, and so in truth they don't mean anything at all. There is no right and left, there's only right and wrong, and you don't need to be a card carrying member of anything to participate in discerning those things. The whole left/right paradigm is a great big fake out, a perfect and enduring distraction that is eternally stoked and fired up to keep the entire country from getting to the truth. We have to get past this big fat lie, else we'll stay pointlessly suspended in it for ever. We deserve better. We can do better.

We have to get to the truth to get at what's really the cause of our imperfect world. The fact is that the real cause of all our common woes are people who don't want the truth getting around. Because of that, truth is a very rare commodity out there.

The truth is the greatest enemy in the world to liars. Liars can't exist in an atmosphere of openness and truth. Truth immediately shuts them down, in a powerful, humiliating way. Truth is such a powerful weapon it really surprises me how many of us are perfectly happy with pretending it doesn't exist. We prefer to do battle over supplied false divisions of opinion, based on incomplete, imperfect knowledge and understanding of the subject, perfectly content to settle for only the surface level information catapulted out here by the media which we absolutely believe is the whole story. It's just pitiful.

We are a people so bored, so cabin fevered, so starved for meaning and substance that we'll grab for anything at all that comes down the pike, and mount it like a dime store mechanical pony ride. We all want our turn on the ride, we all have our dimes ready, we all want to feel like we're alive for a moment now and then. All we've been granted is the pointless exercise of taking sides, so that's what we do, and we do it with all our might. In fact, dragging the truth into the picture would deprive us of our little piece of the action, and so we have no real desire to know the truth. We've actually come to enjoy the lies and believe the games mean something.

Lies and games are the defining characteristics of how our government does business, and since it's all we've ever known, it's what feels normal to us. We've learned to hate and reject the truth as much as they do. We're conditioned to support everything but the truth, to see everything but the point, to hear anything but the whole story. We're not affecting the workings of the government. We're usually just chasing our own tails around and around in circles, like dogs, courteously distracting ourselves with pointless activity to let them continue to perpetrate their private agendas at our expense, unencumbered. No wonder they feel no compulsion to be accountable to the public. No wonder they disdain us and consider us irrelevant idiots. We kind of act like we are. Both irrelevant, and idiots. We're caged and controlled down to our opinions, and we're just sure we're free. Boy oh boy, have we had a job done on us.

The general public has very definitely been conditioned to be the guard dogs of the elite, and we are used as such, led by establishment ordained and owned lavishly paid mass media wind up toys. We're our own worst enemy. There is nothing wrong with asking questions of those who have all of the money and all of the power and are using it all but entirely out of our eyesight and earshot. But tell much of the deeply conditioned public that, and they'll be down your throat, telling you to leave if you don't like it here. They can't even see their own complicity in the crimes being perpetrated against them. They've taken their sides, and those sides are never what they obviously should be: their own.

This 850 billion dollar insulting criminal rip off of the people is just another example of seeing anything but the point and calling it anything but what it really is. It's as though Congress would rather die than just stand up and tell it like it is. In this scandal is all the proof there is that letting the rich be in control of everything that happens is utterly suicidal. They're too selfish, self-interested and depraved to be allowed to have free reign over anyone else's lives. The Federal Reserve is a private bank that is now bailing out the very same private banks that are in its own conglomeration of private banks. The selfsame bankers who have just ripped us off are coming back to pay themselves some more. Conflict of interest doesn't even begin to describe it.

What about the double standards being exposed here? When the rich do evil, they don't pay. When they are successful, they don't give back. When they lose, we pay their bill.

Who bails us out when we do evil? No one. Who helps when through no fault of our own, we are at risk of losing everything we've worked for all our lives? No one. Who blocks and prevents our financial success? The rich who act like it all belongs to them. When we lose, who pays our bills? No one.

We aren't even granted the right to file bankruptcy anymore, in a system that is specifically designed to bankrupt us. But when the richest people on the face of the earth claim the need to file bankruptcy for one of their various enterprises, their bill is simply handed to us. On who's authority? Since when? Who came up with that stupid idea? Yet, they are not put in court before a judge like we would be. They are not required to divulge their every single possession and watch it all being carried away by judgment of some court. They aren't bothered at all. They aren't scowled at, or criticized or in any way harassed, denigrated, shamed, or marginalized for the rest of their lives by all business and government alike. They won't have any trouble finding a job or getting health insurance or buying or renting a home based on their financial history. They won't be hounded to pay up with endless phone calls to them at home, at dinner time, on weekends and holidays. No one will ever say a word to them. They can just hand us the bill and walk on by. Why does this bizarre, unjustifiable double standard exist?

The questions of September 11th have grown to the point that a great many people have finally succumbed to hearing the facts. The facts don't add up. They don't match what we've been told. We know there is something very wrong here. And yet the very people who we pay billions of dollars to, who's job it is to get to the bottom of this very thing, are all acting as if we are simply nuts for believing all of these questions deserve answers. Of course they deserve answers. If power and authority is not interested in answers, then obviously, it is not in their interest to get us answers. They don't want to get to the truth. It is only logical to see that they are complicit in the crime and/or its cover up.

It's all right there in our faces but nothing will ever be done about it because the people who make our laws will not speak the truth and the media that covers it all will not allow the truth to be spoken.
If we just spoke the truth it would make it very difficult for the liars to lie, and the cheaters to cheat, and the thieves to steal. But our whole system is created and run by liars, cheaters and thieves. The laws favor them and crush us. Nothing makes sense anymore. The government is corrupt. They cannot be trusted. The media is corrupted by censorship and propaganda, keeping the truth from the public. They are responsible for much of what's gone wrong in this country today. Still, for whatever reason, the truth must never be spoken. The corruption and destruction that is the will of the elite and the rich and the powerful shall be done.

What answers could be given to justify the slow mass robbery and destruction of the nation so that rich people can keep getting richer?
Why does human life come after profits, if at all?
Why is it considered repulsive in the extreme to live in a country where no one has to go hungry or homeless or uneducated?
Why is it considered reasonable to give trillions of dollars not to the people to create security and prosperity with, but to the rich to pocket and hoard, to reward them for their repeated crimes against us?
Why has the EPA just released yet another bee killing pesticide when other countries are banning these products?
Why does the FDA concern itself with our vitamins and whole foods and their health giving properties and want to eliminate not only these products, but the legal right to talk about them as health giving?
Why does the government aggressively block the testing of cows for Mad Cow disease?
Why is the media a worthless piece of crap?
Why does our education system turn out the most uneducated people on earth?
Why is our water poisoned?
Why is our air poisoned?
Why is our food poisoned?
Where are all of the alternative energy ideas?
Why are Americans working harder than anything that even makes sense?
Why are American wages at slave wage levels?
Why are prices so high and quality so poor?
Why aren't Americans entitled to health care and good health?
In the richest country in the world, why are we bankrupt?
Why does the government crush alternatives to the Federal Reserve note?
Why are we forced to pay so many taxes at gunpoint for nothing in return?
Why don't the rich and the corporations pay all of the taxes?

It is not allowed to ask these questions of our government. To answer any of these questions can result in very negative consequences, or it could result in a well rehearsed blast of divisive bull shit. These are all things that don't make sense and cannot be justified. Things that are easily parsed into right and wrong. It's all very simple. All of these things are the way they are because it makes rich people richer at our loss and expense. No one cares that it harms us, robs us, and denies us. The truth, were it ever allowed to prevail, would bring a speedy end to injustice and elitist government. It would vastly improve the lives of every American. It would generate production and prosperity, ensure our freedom, and give our lives meaning and diverse choices.

And the truth is, they just don't want that. Which is why we will never hear the truth in the places where it most needs to be spoken and shoved into the faces of those who are so greedily destroying this country for their own personal pleasures. In the absence of truth, the sociopaths take power and they will slowly but surely destroy it all for everyone, but themselves.

The truth would bring all of that to an end. Is it time yet, to speak simple truth? I think so. We can't help but do better and be better off for it. But I sometimes wonder if I'm in a sad minority. What I'm afraid of is that the truth is so resoundingly rejected, so totally unwelcomed, so completely censored, that it quite literally is ceasing to exist.

But as a simple truth, well spoken, can obliterate an entire illusion in a moment, then we have the only real power there is that cannot be taken from us. We can only forfeit it but it cannot be destroyed or taken from us. We must use it then and understand it and speak the truth every chance we get.

Will it help? I don't know, but it couldn't possibly hurt. And I do know that if we don't speak the truth it really could cease to exist and no one will ever know what truth is, ever again.

I've been coming to grips lately with the unpleasant fact that we've crossed over a midpoint, an exact moment when things could have gone either way, for better or for worse. I no longer hold any illusions along those lines. Crooks, thieves and brutal thugs stole truth and justice and decency and replaced them with drunken selfishness and power. Lies prevail over our lives. Lies prevail inside our heads. Lies prevail in government and law enforcement. With unprecedented callousness, deceit and obstruction of truth, lies are destroying this country and seek to destroy the world. Also under deceitful attack our own morality, values and humanity, and even life itself. There is nothing I can do but reject the lies every time I hear them spoken, and to counteract them by speaking the truth without apology. Change can only come from us, from all of us who have been lied to.

I am saddened and at times even depressed when I see the depravity and injustice that is now so rampant in this time and current evolution of society. It will bring exactly what comes of living a lie, of living so many lies. It will hurt a lot of innocent people. There will be a hell of a hole to dig ourselves out of, if and when such a time finally comes about. My fear is that it will come about only after the worst of all possibilities come to pass. After every stupid mistake is made, after believing every pervasive lie told to us by officialdom. We still just don't get it that authority figures are just people and this batch are the filthiest bags of scum on record.

As we hold on to our need to believe in the benevolence of those who take our money at gunpoint, those who send us off to die in their wars for private profit and dominion, those who poison us with drugs and toxic chemicals in our food and water and air, those who undermine our education, those who tax us when we earn it and again when we spend it, those who prevent us from having the freedom to create our own world and lives for ourselves, those who take it all for the rich and powerful and pay no mind to the fact that it belongs to someone else; as we somehow strangely believe these people would never hurt us when all they do is hurt us, as we stubbornly refuse to see the truth blatantly in front of our faces, we only continue to assist the most dangerous, criminal people in the world in their misguided quest to destroy us all in the name of some idiotic concept of ideological victory.

All any of us can do at this point is speak the truth about all of it and not worry about who gets their panties all in a wad over it. It's way past the point where anyone's misguided, misinformed sensitivities matter. We don't have time to hold anyone's hands and sit and listen to them spewing ignorant tripe. We need to tell them so. We need to tell them to get up off their butts and go get themselves informed so they can catch up and get a grip on reality. It's not our job to hand it to them on a silver platter. What's at stake is literally everything. Telling the truth is an absolute necessity and it may not seem like much but it will come to matter more than we can possibly guess right now.

I can't do anything by myself to stop the tidal wave of lies and oppression beginning to descend on us all, but I can choose not to assist its successful arrival and uprooting of what little is left of truth and humanity. That is the choice I've made. In spite of my flaws, in spite of my many weaknesses, in spite of not knowing everything in the world, I can still discern right from wrong, and I can try to live it the best I can. I just hope I'm not alone in reaching this conclusion. I hope that a whole lot of other people see what I see and decide to do the same. For no other reason than it has to be done, and for this truth: that if it is not done, it really can come to being all over.

Instead of blaming, speak the truth.
Instead of raging, speak the truth.
Instead of staying silent, speak the truth.
Instead of killing, speak the truth.
Instead of joining, speak the truth.
Instead of arguing, speak the truth.
Instead of demanding to prevail, speak the truth.
Instead of taking sides, speak the truth.
Instead of conforming, speak the truth.
In spite of who likes it and who doesn't, speak the truth.
In the face of oppression, speak the truth.
In the presence of ignorance, speak the truth.
In the grip of tyranny, speak the truth.
In the face of every wrong, speak the truth.
It is the absence of truth that allows every wrong thing to prevail.
If we need anything at all right now, we need to speak and to hear the truth.

---

As is so often the case, synchronicity appeared in my lap after I finished writing this post tonight. It's beyond interesting how this happens, but it does happen, and it happens a lot. What's on my mind and in my heart is exactly the same thing on the minds and in the hearts of a lot of people in other places doing other things, people I have no contact with at all.

Today, one of those people is the man who promotes himself publicly as Reverend Billy. He's in truth an actor, who happened to find himself a role that worked so well that he's become it. I think that's a hoot and I love it. I like his politics and his passion. I like the unique niche he's carved out for himself. I like his courage. Even though he is based in New York and I am in California, and even though I've never so much as met the man, I've been signed up on his mailing list for a while now. Usually what's in his newsletters regards local matters, and as such, don't hold much in the way of pertinence in my life. Today is the exception. I will leave you with the contents of that newsletter so you can see the synchronicity today, on the subject of speaking the truth.

Excerpt from a recent sermon by Reverend Billy, on tour in California-

"Where are the Leaders?
Check the person to your left.


Both candidates in the debate were trying to normalize what's happening. In fact, the financial partnership of Wall Street and Washington has now been revealed – it is absolutely breathtaking - and we have an opportunity we haven't had in generations.


Look Left


In USA Today there was a riveting graphic. The names of legislators next to dollars they received from the companies they are supposed to regulate. The head of the Senate Banking Committee has received tens of millions of dollars from banks. What? Common sense conclusion: The lawmakers are business partners with Wall Street, and there it is in the paper that everybody reads.

If we had leaders they would teach us now. They would be as smart as we are in our common sense conversations. Why don't the leaders ask the radical questions that we're all asking? "What the hell IS Wall Street anyway?" "What is the connection between the money markets and everyday life?... between markets and actual services, skills, work." Sitting in a diner on the lunch break, staring straight ahead, cradling our bad coffee in our hands, we're asking the most common sense questions. And then – these extreme statements come out of our mouths. It's not that we have an ideology or a hero or an apocalypse. We are saying radical things by looking at the world and having a common sense response, that's all. These are radical times, and common sense, if we acted on it, would be a revolution.

It is time to place value on our own unmediated talk. The necessary revolution is here in our everyday talk. It is talk without a career. Talk without ethicists, soft-ware, or art forms. This is talk with the power to save us all. Yes, this talk - we remember it from somewhere. It's the same thing we said when we knew we couldn't let the British god-monarchy have his way with us, when we knew we had to abolish slavery, when we knew we would defeat fascism... We've risen to great heights, and it started with listening to each others' plain talk.

So Obama is on that TV and he's a centrist. That's his gambit. He seems to be stifling his own instincts. Obama is playing it safe. I hope he gets elected – when he does we have a responsibility to give him radical American action, just the way that Dr. King forced the hand of the Kennedys. We know, and Barack Obama knows – the revolution won't be televised. Not only that – political experts won't be able to predict its arrival or where it will come from. It waits inside ordinary Americans, sitting here drinking bad coffee, talking..."


http://www.revbilly.com

...

That is what it all boils down to. Talking to each other. Deciding what's being done is wrong. Connecting with our fellow citizens on the basis of common sense, of knowing right from wrong, and demanding what's right. We can do that.

Speak the truth.



2 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:34 AM

    What's wrong with YOU? No cable TV? No beer? C'mon, dummy up like you're supposed to. See your doctor about a prescription for Fukitol, and get back to the couch.


    http://pissedoffcabbie.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous5:36 PM

    God bless you Ang..I am always inspired and pissed off when I read the truth here...Alas it is but a sad wish of mine that if planet X and 2012 truly await us...I can only wish for one of those fascist GERKs to end up in the same foxhole during the pole shift....for this seems to be the only way to get any revenge on the bastards anymore...

    ReplyDelete