- No one could quite remember when it happened? Some pointed
to the lies of past wars; others to assassinations, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Kent
State, the Bonus March, TV programming, school shootings, Oklahoma, the
Towers imploding. But they were all wrong.
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- It wasn't really any one event, but the systematic cumulative
layer upon layer that built a Frankenstein people. Doped up, dumbed down,
designer zombies. Apathy, passivity, greed, indifference, indolence, bias,
rage, intolerance, compliance, and fear were insidiously and consistently;
shouted, drummed, conditioned and programmed into this new global plantation
people identified as "human resources".
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- Some of the elders recalled small town living and streets
a bustle of townsfolk meeting and shopping. They spoke of neighbors gathered
on front porches while children played hide and seek in the gathering darkness.
Church picnics, the yearly carnival, fireflies, splashing puddles of summer
rains. There were lots of birds and butterflies then and fields of wildflowers
and scented forests.
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- Clothes danced on clotheslines in summer's glee; with
children busy building race cars, forts, or playing ball. The sick neighbor
was quickly tended to, the grieving widow comforted. They remembered the
laughter of children at play, and real grandmas in flowered dresses with
aprons baking up cookies. Cars all looked different and you could tell
a Chrysler from a Ford a block away. Men and boys worked on and rebuilt
motors in driveways. That ended with generic computer cars that nobody
could fix, purposed to send men indoors.
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- If there were keys to lock up one's house they were long
ago misplaced. There was the corner drug store, the stationary store, the
five and ten, the men's shop, the dairy queen, pizza shop, shoe stores
and little restaurants. Parades had all the folks out, with families on
blankets down by the river to watch the fireworks. Nothing fancy mind you.
Just ordinary folks living ordinary lives, joying in their communities
and one another. The real American dream if anyone should ask.
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- It didn't happen all at once so nobody really noticed.
Oh, some did, but they were quickly marginalized and labeled. People learned,
or rather were conditioned, to keep their thoughts and opinions to themselves.
One didn't want to be thought odd and then there were the neighbors, the
minister and one's job to think about. Others had political aspirations,
deals, and contracts to consider. Everyone had a good excuse.
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- A dread came over the land but everyone pretended it
didn't exist. The President was shot and that seemed to mark the end of
any further leadership that the people believed in. Bang-bang-bang; anyone
seen as a voice, with charisma, with passion was shot. Oh, there was the
silly stories, of this lone madman or that, doing the dirty deeds. People
didn't believe, but they didn't want to talk about it for fear they'd be
labeled "other". Words were put out through the media of conspiratorial
nuts, suspicious crazies etc., and that was that.
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- And then the dope came and came and came. It filled the
ghettos, city streets and small town America. People started killing and
gangs formed. Families were shattered, and more and more jails were built,
and specialty police emerged in scary uniforms. They made a big ta do of
crashing down doors in drug busts. Never in rich gated estates, but in
tenements and poor towns. Lots of times, they got the wrong apartments
or trailer, but since they weren't raiding posh resorts or wealthy enclaves
there wasn't much reporting or actions taken.
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- After awhile people became desensitized. Every night
on the news, it was a body, a shooting, crying, screaming, bombs dropping
shredding foreign people; and then pretty soon people just went on eating
supper, waiting for the sports reports or weather. The Vietnam War ended
and they built another memorial for people to go and touch a name. The
men who survived were poisoned, or emotionally paralyzed, and went to live
under bridges or in parks. The Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, remarked
years later, when writing a book, that it (Vietnam) was all a mistake.
He never went under any bridges and told the guys living with rats that
he was sorry that their lives were stolen and their buddies dead. Why should
he care, he, the President of the World Bank and all, he was warm and well
fed not poisoned with deformed children.
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- And then the downtowns across the land all emptied. One
by one the mills, foundries, and factories closed. No more downtown shopping,
with sidewalks cracked and store windows boarded and empty. Big mega-stores
and malls filled the nation. Malls, everywhere, covered over the fields
of flowers, the clay mines and the waterfalls. Strangers shopped in these
fortress mazes with a glazed intensity, plastic credit cards in hand, delaying
payment to another time. It was all so convenient. No longer neighbors,
but strangers told to shop no matter the crisis.
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- No one, except a few of the elders remembered when there
were no cameras on highways, downtown streets, places of work and in every
store. Soundproof barriers (or so they said) were built along stretches
of thruways, and concrete barriers stood at the edges of the most obscure
roads. People shook their heads, but nobody questioned. After all, the
authorities had everything in hand. More prisons were built and casinos.
More malls and generic fast food junk restaurants, drive through, so you
need never speak to a neighbor, just plastic food in plastic booths for
plastic people.
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- Small town drug-hardware and five and ten stores went
out of business. Lots and lots of cheap plastic junk from China now filled
mega stores. Strangers pushed and shoved, for the newest marked down gadget,
that TV told them they just had to have, or the newest novelty toy. Nobody
cared that the junk broke in a week or two or three. Nobody asked or cared
that this trash was put together in slave labor shops, where people worked
seven days a week-twelve hours a day for pennies an hour. They didn't
care because they didn't have to care and besides there wasn't time.
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- The elders told of how family doctors once came with
their black bags to their homes, and delivered a baby or tended to an illness.
You could afford the needed medicine or a hospital stay. And then that
all disappeared, except for the very wealthy, and the politicians, who
made sure the laws and care they were voting into place, for the "human
resources", wouldn't affect them. And then doctors were no longer
doctors but technocrats. A drone worker far away, in a cubicle with a computer
in front of them, would tell the doctor (with a dozen years education)
that so and so wasn't eligible for any specialty tests or operation. So
people died, but they died quietly out of sight, from medical neglect and
greed. And the men who were once known as doctors never said a word. They
just obeyed like everybody else.
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- The elders in the schools were gotten rid of, and new
change agents put in. No more teaching went on, but something called social
engineering replaced the creativity and enthusiasm that learning once had.
Children were programmed to study for tests not to read, write, and discover.
Those who were more free-spirited, inquisitive, rambunctious (as children
will be) were prescribed drugs to bring them into line. The handicapped
and special needs children, were put into regular classrooms, which resulted
in nobody receiving the special attentions that were required to reach
their highest potential. But to say anything had you "marked"
as intolerant and a trouble-maker. Private schools, had the rich and protected
ones, not having to endure such nonsense. These few received moneyed educations,
the very best, so that they too, would one day inherit the positions and
money of their fathers.
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- Lots of new words came into being. Really meaningless,
but who knew, they sounded important. Public-Private Partnerships (you
pay they play), consensus (a predetermined decision) win-win (lose-lose
for you), due diligence (busy nothingness), Regional (local government
dismantled), Privatization (profits over people), micro-managing (don't
question authorities decisions), etc.
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- Trade Agreements, Summits, the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and armies of lobbyists saw
to the corporatization of the people's business, with the Congress and
Senate, really just props, with lots of perks but little power. They pretty
much turned all the work and decisions they were responsible for, over
to the Executive Branch and corporate honchos, which left them free to
hold senseless hearings, meaningless votes, and fact finding missions (vacations)
abroad. They voted themselves yearly raises, lucrative pensions, and health
care. That's about it. Oh, at election time, they showed up to have scut
work done and tell people they cared.
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- One day the clouds disappeared, and planes flew back
and forth smearing the sky with chemical trails, that soon turned turquoise
sunshine days into dusty murkiness. Nobody looked up, they just kept shuffling
to the malls, the casinos, to vacation, and to work. The few who did, were
quickly put in the category of "others" and that was that. Nobody
wanted ever to be called an "other". No matter who you asked,
nobody, no official nor any politician, could tell you why the sun was
gone? They too were afraid and just shrugged. There used to be lots of
birds and bees but they disappeared, or were found dead, with some disease
or maybe the stuff smeared in the sky killed them? Nobody knew? Frogs were
found grotesquely deformed but that was quickly hushed up and people were
told not to eat the fish because of mercury.
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- NAFTA, the WTO, the IMF, GATT, and Trade Summits, saw
our nation dismantled, brick by brick and town by town. It was a race to
the bottom in setting up this new global plantation, which saw the few
at the top, cleaning up in the newest industries of terrorism, war, waste,
and the plundering and privatizing of the world's resources, even the water.
Still people went shopping, to the video stores and pretended everything
would fix itself. Imagine. Even the taking of the water kept everybody
silent!
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- The oil and gas people, took over the oceans to drill
and despoil, so that ended the fishing industry. They made up lies about
fish stocks being depleted and who could argue with them? The corporate
advisors had written all the rules for the new plantation. Family farms
went under, not able to compete with mega-corporate farms. Trade deals
saw poison fruits and vegetables shipped in, and that wiped out all the
hard work of protecting our nations food/meat supplies. Why there were
so many books of laws and rules, that nobody, especially the politicians
knew what was what? They just voted in the middle of the night the way
the lobbyists told them to.
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- Since there were no jobs, you had a choice of going to
prison or off to war. The exceptions were the money people's children.
They still went to Ivy League colleges (nobody else could afford), off
to Europe, for that well rounded life and spring break. Prisons were built
everywhere. More prisons than schools. Those who weren't locked up for
non-violent offenses, watched the ones who were, for poor wages. Everybody
beat everybody else up to keep them in line. Corporate America moved a
lot of their jobs into the prisons, because it was much cheaper having
slave labor and no benefits or salaries to pay. Other jobs were taken by
the special guest visas that the lobbyists had the politicians vote on.
The corporate lobbyists, also made it convenient for the ones making all
the money, to have off-shore tax free accounts and special subsidies to
ship all the jobs in America, off to places that paid the least and had
no messy environmental standards. Everybody talked about special treaties
protecting the environment but that was a lie since the Third World countries
were conveniently exempted.
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- Nobody knew what to do so they did nothing. They just
waited but they didn't know what for? More and more laws were made. Searches
at airports (not for the elite or politicians) had people conditioned and
programmed to obey. This was kind of silly, seeing all these educated people,
made subservient and shuffling to people with GEDs who were paid minimum
wage. Meantime planes were packed with cargo that nobody checked so it
never was about security but about obedience to the rules. On Sept 11-01
the towers, one other building, and the Pentagon all imploded or had things
crashing into them. They said some Arab men trained on crop dusters did
this fancy maneuvering of giant planes. No skyscraper buildings had ever
imploded from fire before this, and nobody seemed to think it was wrong
that all the steel from this "crime scene" was shipped to China?
Anyway, after that all Americans became Arabs, because that was the newest
group targeted to fear. Everyone became suspect, Arab or not. Who watched
the watchers nobody knew? Everybody just followed orders, all the way down
the line, and searched their neighbors, demanded triple ID, put them on
lists, or if they protested anywhere; gassed them, hit them with clubs,
shocked them with stun guns or arrested them. Everyone just "followed
orders" but nobody really knew the identity of the Wizard behind the
curtain issuing these orders? Some of the ones dressed in helmets, with
shields and fancy equipment, enjoyed their new jobs of beating people.
Now they were important, and they were the boss. This is very important
when you've always been a nobody or bullied. Power, even beating people
up power, is like an aphrodisiac. Everybody felt depressed, sad, frustrated
and powerless. They couldn't exactly tell you why, just that they knew
everything was changed and ruined forever. No more grandmas in aprons,
downtown streets filled with neighbors, no more factory whistle or friendly
peace officers. No more college education for the auto worker's boy, or
the home that people always dreamed of owning. The global plantation owners
wanted the whole earth for themselves and so they took it. They wanted
all people as slaves working and working till they dropped dead. It really
wasn't about money, but a perverse power, that made some men quite mad.
The people felt frightened, because they knew in their hearts that the
inmates were in charge and they had the keys. Nobody said this out loud
of course. Yikes, then you would be called "other", and told
to move out of the country if you didn't like things they way they were.
Of course, there was no other country to move to, since it was a global
plantation, but most people were still very dumb (kept deliberately so),
on the real business of the power brokers of the world. Why, heck, everyone
still thought there were two parties to choose from and that a new President
would save them all. They really did.
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- People became mean-spirited, suspicious, or just disappeared
into their cocoon lives. Streets were silent and echoing at night. People
lived their lives vicariously through the movies or as voyeurs watching
from a distance. But then something magical began to happen. No one knew
from whence the song came or the light? It wasn't just the one song or
the one act of love, but the cumulative acts, that took place daily throughout
the world.
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- It wasn't a heroic act or great speech. Great happenings
never are. It was that one last song on a back country road, that a man
sang- thinking it was just another lonely yodel. It was the meal served
in a city soup kitchen, the elderly woman who bathed her paralyzed husband,
the women with their protest signs against polluting a community, the social
worker moving a widow, the bird on a faucet given as a gift. It was the
lighted candle in a darkened church, the woman who saved a whale, the
man who laid down his gun and said, "I will not kill another."
And then one day--the final act of unselfish love dispelled the darkness
and made it light. No act however removed, however small, is unimportant
and unheard. Yours may be the one act today, that brings the love and peace
that wipes away every tear and makes a fearful people strong again. You
are the most important person in the world today. Your act may be the one.
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- Once upon a time, come with me I'll take you there. Once
upon a time, so many stories we can share. And who knows what we'll find?
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- Once upon a time.
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