Image courtesy of Liz Henry under CC BY-ND 2.0.
Truth hurts. When evil people come to power, a lot of people who are trying to fight the evil have to suffer. That is true the world over and it is true in the United States. What hurts even more is when people who are trying to restore our nation to some semblance of sanity and constitutionality are demonized, relegated to the dinosaur house, and mocked when they speak out about the direction our nation is headed.
This dilemma is as old as mankind’s civilizations. The evil come to power and oppress those who want nothing more than peace and an opportunity to live amidst the ordinary struggles of life as best they can. The sole purpose of nations, and national sovereignty, is for peoples who think alike, speak the same language and have common interests to have a common bond of government within a defined boundary. They mark out their territory and draw imaginary lines on the globe, and within those lines they seek to just live their short lives (and all life is short) as free of trouble as possible.
But there’s a bully in every village and there are a group of them in the Global Village.
Yet some folks fail to understand globalism, its elitist rulers and their own internecine struggles for control, and how these abstract people and programs affect individual and national freedoms, their safety (real or imaginary) and rather than learn the truth, they wring their hands about why evil befalls them. They look blank even when a person or many people write it down and put it in front of their faces. Sometimes nothing is stranger than truth, it’s an old saw, but people really would prefer a comfortable lie than to deal with the truth of times, trends and events.
Another truth people fail to appreciate is cultural differences and religious fervor in some peoples. There is such as thing as “east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet” in the areas of long-rooted cultures and religious beliefs. To say that these people, whom we consider as relics of the dark ages, have no right to be themselves, or to be anti-western when we in the US believe they should catch up with the times, is anything but “tolerant” in a nation that is stressing tolerance at its own convenience. And for its own political purposes.
Another truth that hurts is that people, no matter how good they may seem, are intrinsically infected with evil, and it crops out in strange ways. We see it under certain types of mob psychology, ingrained hatred, and in the acts of abominable rulers against the helpless or the opposition who dare not speak. We see it in the earth’s history of bloodshed and torture. Man’s inhumanity to man is notorious, and his acts of depravity are legion.
We in the United States wish to carry on the illusion that we are, above all else, a “good” people, full of the kind of heroism that manifested itself on nine-eleven in the heroes who gave their lives to save others on that day. Well, in ordinary life we aren’t really that way, or at least few of us are. When it comes to imposing our American will on the rest of the world, the US leadership doesn’t look either heroic or altruistic. It looks greedy, mean, and arrogant, holding its own WMD against all others who would build the same type of weaponry. Is it any wonder that those of eastern culture look upon us as satanic?
By the standards of our founding fathers, they might think we’re all drunk with power and pride also.
It’s much easier to follow our leaders and cheer them on to victories that are hollow trophies in a hall of infamy than it is to ferret out the underlying motives, the money trails, the ultimate goal of each act of repression. It was that way in Germany in 1933, not primarily because of Hitler but because Goebbels understood how people think, emote and react. And he capitalized on that weakness in mankind, and in particular, in Germany. He served his master well. But what went around came around, and eventually Herr Goebbels met his fate.
And so it is.
The truth may be a hard and very large pill to swallow, but it is a lot better than meeting the fate of those trapped in error and delusion about the facts.
Americans are notoriously “asleep at the switch” until a Pearl Harbor or a World Trade Center attack wakes them from their slumber. However, only political junkies seem to keep up with times, trends and events, crying in a noisy wilderness of frenzied pleasure-seekers who do not want to be disturbed.
It’s hard to tell the average American that we’re losing our freedoms because the midnight knock has not come to his or her door, and nothing looks unusual on the commute to work. There are no troops in the streets, the courts are open, and life goes on. Yes it does … and all the while, one law at a time, these same folk are losing their freedoms and cannot even understand that eventually, there won’t be any freedom in America.
They will cheer on those who are spreading “American freedom” abroad, without realizing that American freedom means one thing to the average American and quite another to America’s ruling elite.
Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II and for many years thereafter, perhaps saw it in the easiest form to understand when he observed:
“Men occasionally stumble over truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” —Winston Churchill
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”