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Thank God It's Them,
Instead Of You

By Michael Goodspeed
12-10-4
 
"There's a world outside your window
And it's a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing
Is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring
They are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you..."
 
--Bob Geldof's 'Do They Know It's Christmas?'
 
From the beginnings of my adolescence to the present day, I have had one recurring nightmare. This rancid chimera revisits my sleeping consciousness like the ghost of Christmas past in the chamber of Ebeneezer Scrooge. It is not merely a psychic hiccup or expurgation of unconscious muck clogging up the engine of my anima. It is the uttermost of bad dreams, the sum total of all that Homo sapiens dread and fear down to our very corpuscles.
 
I am locked in a jail cell, facing imminent execution for a crime that I did not commit. I have no memory of how I arrived here, but know beyond doubt that I have done nothing to earn this ultimate castigation. I protest my innocence to anyone who will listen, but no one seems to care. I implore my Creator to intervene on my behalf, but this plea also seems to fall on deaf ears. When the day of my execution arrives, I beg for the right to call a loved one and say my goodbyes, but curiously, I cannot remember the phone number of a single person. I will die alone and forsaken, my life brutally cut short by an unspeakable injustice.
 
To date, I have yet to experience my own "dream death." I awaken moments before it happens, trembling with relief and gratitude that the nightmare has ended. Its reality is always visceral, choking. I feel no shame in admitting that I often weep in wake of this dream. I cry in joy to be free and alive, and I cry in grief because I know that in the real world, countless others have not been so lucky.
 
To steal the life or freedom of another human being is the greatest of all crimes. And every day on planet Earth, untold numbers of innocent people are jailed, tortured, and killed for daring to live as free individuals. The only "crime" they've committed is to think and act in a manner contrary to the wishes of the State. These atrocities are fed to Americans as innocuous sound bites on the evening news, not really enlightening or informing us as to the plights of our brothers and sisters in other countries, but certainly reinforcing the widely held belief that the U.S. is the greatest and freest nation in the world.
 
At the risk of sounding terribly naïve, as a born and raised red-blooded American, I have always FELT free. After all, I've spent much of my adult life publicly lambasting the most powerful people in this nation, and I have never been greeted by a gun-toting Gestapo at my front door. I speak and act and worship precisely the way I choose, and no ill consequences have ever befallen me. If asked, I suspect that a majority of Americans would say the same thing.
 
I FEEL free, but I still consider my freedom to be the most perilous of all my God-given rights. That is why I am so very frightened. When I look at the United States, I see a people who understand neither the value of freedom, nor the enormity of the threat it is constantly under.
 
Our concept of freedom is inextricably linked to physical imagery. We are convinced that to "live free" is to literally walk around in the world, fulfilling our impulses and desires, buying and doing and eating what we want. But there are less tangible, though no less important, aspects to freedom that most Americans rarely ponder.
 
Freedom does not exist without personal choice, and choice is often the most illusory of all freedoms. We see this demonstrated most profoundly in the "democratic process" in the U.S.. Americans overwhelmingly believe that they actually CHOOSE their elected officials. Of course, when one is faced with the choice between a "turd sandwich" and a "giant douche" (as were the boys in a hilarious South Park episode), one's freedom has all the value of a three-dollar bill.
 
Even if one believes that elections in the US are not outright stolen through tampering and vote fraud, democracy ceased to exist long ago in this country. When was the last time the Republicans or Democrats have supported a candidate who has truly wished to affect radical change? Someone who would tirelessly work to correct the inarguable injustices perpetrated at every level of our government? E.g., the deliberate dumbing-down of our children by the socialist/fascist elite in the NEA, the deliberate cessation of basic rights and freedoms by the Patriot Act, the open-borders policy creating an endless stream of illegal aliens, the perverted U.S. foreign policies that give MFN status to China while "punishing" other governments by withholding life-saving funds, the perpetual war machine eternally assaulting oil-rich, Muslim countries, the deliberate poisoning of the water with fluoride, the deliberate poisoning of the air with chemtrails, and the deliberate poisoning of our bodies with an untold myriad of toxins in the form of vaccines, drugs, genetically modified foods, aspartame, and countless food additives that have rendered us fat, sterile, cancerous, obliterated.
 
Speaking of our bodies, the most inalienable of all freedoms is the right to control one's physical self. It is an inarguable fact that this right NO LONGER EXISTS in the U.S.! We have an FDA working hand in hand with the Food and Chemical giants to ensure that Americans DON'T KNOW what they are putting into their bodies. According to our government, you have no need and no RIGHT to know if you are eating genetically modified foods, even though the long-term consequences of consuming these products remains a complete UNKNOWN. The FDA is demanding that we put 100% trust in their competence and ethics, even though the credibility of both have been completely shredded in recent years. (The enormous Vioxx scandal alone is evidence enough of this.)
 
We accept these affronts to our freedoms not because we don't care, but because we are pathologically distracted. In a society where mercenary selfishness is both encouraged and rewarded, it is difficult to see the big picture beyond one's immediate, tangible, physical concerns. I don't claim to be above this, either. I can't say that I spend most of my days worrying about freedom in this country. But every new moon or so, my nightmare of wrongful imprisonment and execution re-visits me, and I can't help but wonder just how close to reality this "dream" might already be.
 
I say that I "feel free" largely because I can "mouth off" to the Mighty Elite without fear of consequences, but upon reflection, a terrible analogy arises unbidden in my mind. I see myself in a large and luxurious suite, replete with mini-bar, flat-screen TV, king-sized bed, and mint on the pillow. But when I open the door and try to walk out, my nose touches huge, black, impenetrable steel bars. I see the Warden in the hall on his Majestic throne, and I bang a tin cup against the bars, screaming, "Hey, jailer, jailer! Hey you fat fuck! I want OUT!" And he leans back with his thumbs twiddling, grinning like a Cheshire cat. He knows that I can bellow and holler until my throat is raw, and it won't make any difference. Because he has the key, and no amount of bellyaching will change this. And anyway, my little suite is so comfortable, why would I feel any need to break out?
 
Our mothers and fathers told us to clean our plates at dinner because there are "starving children in China." I always thought that the lesson behind this statement was, "Be grateful for what you have." But there is an ominous subtext just below the surface of this inane platitude. It is a suggestion that, just maybe, we're not nearly as damn special as we think. In fact, the only thing differentiating us from those "starving Asians" half a world away is a little geography, and a little luck.
 
How do we know that 50 or 100 years from now, mothers in China won't be admonishing their children about those "starving Americans?" The very notion seems absurd, because we are absolutely convinced of our own grandiosity. America is the BEST and the FREEST country in the world because...well...we have a CONSTITUTION and BILL OF RIGHTS! But other countries with constitutions and laws just as noble and rational as ours have managed to descend into Hell on Earth. It doesn't take very long, either. All that is required is a subversion of the democratic process by a few powerful people who maintain their stronghold by rigging elections and relentlessly oppressing the opposition. President Mugabe...President Castro...President Bush...is there really that big a difference?
 
Let's say that a situation arises in America that is identical to the one in the Ukraine (and never mind that most intelligent people believe it happened in '00, and again in '04.) Will Americans leave the comfort of their homes and jobs and take to the freezing cold streets, risking life and limb in defense of democracy and freedom? Or will they remain in their cozy little suites, watching their flat screen TV's, and maybe yelling at the warden once in a while purely for the sake of form? My God, but I don't want to know the answer to that question.
 
It is absurd for Americans to look at the world's citizens living under dictatorships with the attitude of, "Thank God it's them, and not me. It can never happen here." Just like "them," we are living in a figurative prison, one where the only real "choices" we have are trivial, inane, and of no consequence to the wardens who hold us. The difference is, in America, we are just a little too comfortable to notice or care.
 

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