THE VIRAL NATURE OF EVIL MANIFEST AS POLITICAL BULLYING

Politics, religion, news, science, education – the venue does not matter; evil wins every time. The more salacious the content, the more likely it spreads, or maybe “infects” is a better choice in wording. Newspapers have known this for years by luring readers with incendiary or licentious headlines. It is the mainstay of politics. An opposing viewpoint is dismissed in the most derogatory terms, cajoled and mocked until any who hold the opposite viewpoint blush with shame. How incredibly effective this bullying tactic is.

Remember the “spotted owl”? That was a propaganda campaign launched by the timber industry to discredit those who wanted to save the forests. They took one minute detail from among the forest of reasons to curtail clear-cutting and turned it into a national campaign that brought mockery to the entire “save the trees” effort. And those who sought to enlighten others with regard to the delicate balance that constitutes a thriving forest were derided as “treehuggers”.  The nation was once again unevenly divided between those infected with the virus of hatred and those who were not.

The Peace Movement of the ‘60s was boxed up and derailed with a few words, “dirty hippies”. Although peace was ultimately achieved with the conclusion of the Vietnam War, those who were derisively known as “peace-lovers” continued to be dismissed as unbalanced fringe elements. Ponder that for a moment, those who embraced both “peace” and “love” were mocked.

Viruses learn. Viruses adapt. Fast-forward four decades to 2001. After the preventable destruction of the Twin Towers (and building 5), our country was at an impasse.  The issue was not why did this happen, but how to achieve retribution. Vengeance overrode intellect, analysis, investigation. Wanton murder of innocents is universally condemned and perpetrators punished - but this mass murder was accomplished by a clandestine group. How does a nation declare war on a group whose members might be anywhere in the world? One solution might have been to engage with other nations of the world to ferret out the masterminds of 9/11 at the propitious moment when international expressions of condolences were ubiquitous. The solution seized upon, however, was viral, “Shock and Awe”. The loss of American life in 9/11 was requited with the deaths of innocent Iraqis. It was known that those who hijacked the planes that caused the destruction of the Towers were almost all Saudi; yet, somehow, the Iraqis became the targets of our vengeance. Infected minds were convinced that this was an equitable solution. More than a decade later, the true nature of that decision, proclaimed to the world by one who wrapped himself in the flag and religion, would most aptly be termed “evil”, motivated by greed and fueled by a blood lust twisted with religious overtones.  

Viruses don’t intend to destroy the host unless they are in the lysogenic cycle. Viruses in the lytic cycle reside in the host without destroying the host until they enter a lysogenic cycle.  Along with most of the world’s nations, America remained in the Lytic Cycle, harboring the virus of hatred and evil for over two centuries. In 2001, that virus entered the Lysogenic Cycle, during which the virus activates, multiplies, and destroys the host. That is the current state of America. The election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008 represented a mass acknowledgement that we were somehow on the brink. That we, as a nation, required strong medicine to destroy the virus before it destroyed us. Barack’s medicine came in the form of hope and promises of change. Three years into his presidency and it is obvious that he, too, is infected. Add to that the virulence of the Republican Party that stands ready to sacrifice America to impede any progress for which a black man in the White House might receive credit. America, on its 236^th birthday, is on its deathbed, about to succumb to the virus that has festered within it since its inception.

Viral hotbeds such as the political party created by the Koch Brothers and Fox News, voter suppression laws, rescinding laws that guaranteed a woman the governance of her own body, political pundits and politicians who lie knowing that there is no media to challenge their lies and also knowing that if you tell a lie often enough, it is perceived as truth – these infections have brought the nation into the Lysogenic Cycle – virused, impacted, filled with such hatred that it will soon burst and unleash the virus to cascade from nation to nation.  The DNA of our democracy has been corrupted, altered, unraveled, and absconded by the viruses that infect it and now rule it.

There are those of us who continue to hope, believing that at some point our numbers will multiply enough to overcome the virus, but time is the deadly determinator. How long can a democracy exist when the leaders forget the simple and most important responsibility of leadership: take care of your people.

The Meaning of America

Part One 

 It’s hardly been subtle. But it is increasing at an exponential rate. The meaning of America. And it’s getting meaner every day.

No longer are we our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Americans today shout “Let them die” at town meetings rather than let them allocate another tax payer dollar for adequate health insurance for all. Legislators obligingly cut the safety net provided by Medicare and Social Security even though it is so porous that huge segments of the population fall through to oblivion. Children are easy prey as school breakfast and lunch programs are sacrificed to squeeze out a few dollars more to provide tax cuts to the wealthy. They will still sleep soundly burying the knowledge that hunger reigns in the lives of so many innocents. After all, it is their own fault. They have no one to blame but themselves (and being born to poor parents). They do not pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, no matter that they have no boots. Their children suffer. Why did they have children they obviously knew they could not afford to feed? Oh. Yes. We deprived them of birth control and made a woman’s choice in the matter a sin. Collateral damage. Reversing the clock does not occur without a price. And that clock has been running backwards since the presidential years of Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan. The myth builder. The dispenser of faux truth. The one who painted portraits of the poor as masters of deception, driving Cadillacs to pick up welfare checks. “Liberating” the mentally ill so that they could live free lives pushing grocery carts laden with their worldly possessions. Reagan gave birth to the first “Bag lady” with that onerous budget cut. He suffered no labor pains, although his budgetary “offspring” have been suffering ever since. It’s good to be greedy. It’s good to be callous. Jesus would have wanted it that way. Ronald Reagan’s “let them eat cake” moment came in the form of “ketchup is a vegetable” and “if you’ve seen one tree, you’ve seen them all”. Although never seen as a bully, he was a master of the bullying ways. Mockery. Disdain for a person’s station in life if it was lower than his. Show no compassion. All of it conveyed and instantiated in the minds of upper class America via the bootstraps.  Not give to the poor, but give to the wealthy and they will throw a few crumbs to the poor. “Trickle down” economics is the appropriate moniker. But after a while, Americans realized that the “trickle” was a drip. The drip became an occasional drop. And during Bush’s presidency, the leak was sealed.

FDR’s vision of the government was benevolent; that vision fostered by the programs he created. The government was there to “promote the general welfare”, to help and care for the least among us. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Reagan turned that vision of a government committed to the health, happiness and well-being of its citizenry upside down with his famous “Nine most terrifying words…I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” The government is to be feared. The government is the enemy. The government can do no good. Translation: we don’t need government. We don’t need to financially support the government. The government must be diminished. The Small government ideal enabled Reagan to decrease taxes on the wealthiest from 50% to 28% (although the bottom rate was raised from 11% to 15%). 

Edwards' Lost Message

Why didn't John Edwards' "Two Americas" resonate as he thought it would? Could it be that our values are so twisted from the moral contortions of the Bush administration that we continue to scorn the poor? How Darwinian it is. The least among us no longer garner our sympathy; instead they bear our contempt.

I have never overheard a conversation about the contempt felt for the wealthy CEO whose salary is $30 million annually; but I have heard over and over again the welfare Cadillac-owner story first generated by Ronald Reagan to sew the seeds of class contempt that would become the hallmark of his administration. People no longer needed assistance; they needed only bootstraps and the will to pull themselves up out of their apparently self-inflicted plight. People WANTED to believe the welfare Queen story. They wanted reality blurred. Poverty was a fault that poor people simply did not take the initiative to correct. The victim became the perpetrator. After circulating this meme for decades, our society is now so firmly striated that it is easier to move up in India's Hindu caste system than it is for an American born into poverty to escape to a higher class. Our tax system, our judicial system, our education system; all are geared to keeping each person in their economic class. The poor stay poor and the dying middle class will take their dreams of wealth with them to their graves along with their class.

Before Ronald Reagan, the homeless class did not exist in this country. Before Ronald Reagan, there were no “bag ladies” or veterans sleeping in Oleander bushes, constructing cardboard shelters. Before Ronald Reagan, a person working one job could raise a family, buy a car, own a house. Before Ronald Reagan’s “reforms” there was a burgeoning middle class. Then the “reforms” began. The interest paid on credit card debt was no longer tax deductible. There was no enforcement of the usury laws that should prevented credit card companies from trapping people in a never-ending cycle of debt with ever-increasing interest rates. People were “freed” from mental institutions across the nation, freed to wander the streets and sleep under bushes. The final economic “reform” that created the impassable fissure that is the two Americas, occurred on George W. Bush’s watch. Before Bush, bankruptcy gave people a second chance, especially those whose debt was incurred by loss of employment or medical expenses. But Bush’s bankruptcy law cleverly titled the opposite of what it really is (The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005) ensured that credit card companies would never be abused and no consumer could ever escape debt. All that is missing now is a “Feed Poor Americans Act” that would incarcerate all those who can no longer pay their ever-increasing credit card debts. Corporate America would no longer have to move their factories overseas with the wealth of free labor provided by a “Debtors’ Prison”.

Edwards is aware of the Two Americas and what that portends for this nation, this ailing democracy. He wanted those of us on the other side of that economic chasm to unite behind him and support his crusade to champion the middle and lower classes. The problem is that Edwards’ message was never heard. A carefully controlled media ensured that he received minimal, if any, coverage, regardless of primary results. How many Americans are aware that Edwards earned more delegates in the Iowa primary than Clinton? Headlines should have read “Obama and Edwards Take Iowa”. Instead, they read “Obama Beats Clinton” with no mention of Edwards. The second place showing that should have propelled Edwards as a viable contender was concealed. The media succeeded in manipulating the voters into believing there were only two candidates, Obama and Clinton. Edwards’ message, the message of the two Americas, was successfully stifled. The democratic candidates were media-propagated and media-propelled. And the media is controlled by that other America, the one way over there on the other side of that impassible, cavernous ravine.

You Want My Vote? Then earn it!

I may not vote for any presidential candidate in 2008. So far, the only one who has earned my vote is Russ Feingold, and he's not even running!

If you are an average American, like me, living from paycheck to paycheck, then before you consider voting for a presidential candidate, ensure that these basic employment requirements are met:

1) The candidate must advocate an end to this senseless waste of human life called the War in Iraq. Oil is just not worth the life of one child, let alone the hundreds of thousands sacrificed so far.
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2) The candidate must adovate the repeal of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. How dare they call this abomination a "consumer protection act"?! This bill was the death knell for the middle class. If you lose your job, get sick, you now have no protection. You WILL lose your house, your auto, anything you own because, as the Republicans know best, the credit card companies need YOUR money, regardless of your situation. Not even Seniors are exempt from this travesty.
3) The candidate must promise to author usary laws that will protect consumers from the piracy of banking instititutions that pillage our earnings and turn the middle class into indentured slaves, indentured to the astonomical, UNCHECKED interest rates, late fees, etc., charged by the very same credit card companies the Congress so readily protected in 2005. Where is the protection of the American Citizenry?!!!

Bush's Nation - Of the Corporations, By the Corporations, and For the Corporations

A Millionaire's Club Congress whose members voted for a bill that ushered in unprecedented and unregulated usury that has turned the average American with credit card debt into little more than an indentured corporate servant; a President and Vice President dedicated to the profits of big business; an Attorney General who believes the ends justify any means including torture; a political party besieged with scandal after scandal from imprisoned Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff to the most current sex scandal (Republican Senator Vitters and the D.C. Madam) - we, the 99%, are without representation. There is no one in the executive, judicial, or legislative branch of this government looking out for OUR interests. NO ONE. Bush's war is fought with our blood, our social security and medicare funds, our grand children's tax dollars. The war continues with no hope of ending as long as there is money to be made for Bush's corporate friends. This never-elected president continues to give corporations and contractors carte blanche to pick our pockets. We are being robbed, bullied, and bludgeoned by a government that used to be ours, but now is a government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations that through the power of Presidential Directive #51 will not perish from this earth.

How to choose a President - IF you get another chance to vote in this country

Have you been listening to the Republican-owned media's attempts to manipulate Democrats into believing we have two candidates - Hillary and Barak? They know that if either of those two are nominated, there will be 4 more years of suffering through another Republican in the White House.
Before you say you're supporting a candidate for the next presidential election, do your homework. At the very least, check how they voted on the following:
the War in Iraq
and
The Bankruptcy Bill

These two votes are windows into the judgement of the candidate. Anyone who did not have sense enough to know that you do NOT attack another sovereign nation unprovoked, does NOT deserve to be in Congress, let alone the White House. And a vote for the bankruptcy bill means that they'd rather help out corporate America than help out Americans, even if it leads to creating Poorhouses again. The bankruptcy bill's passage was the re-beginning of indentured servitude in this country. You may be fighting cancer and have medical bills that won't quit. If you file for bankruptcy, your home is no longer protected from your creditors AND your credit card debt will NOT be erased. There is no forgiveness of debt, only payment of debt regardless of your health, employment situation, even if you are a victim of a natural disaster. Any one who voted for that piece of sell-out legislation is not presidential material.

National Intelligence Test

Just how stupid are the American people? Have they any reasoning capabilities left at all? Bush and Cheney and the rest of the war profiteers have decided it's time to seize Iran's oil fields, except that, just like last time (Iraq, in case you forgot), they will tell you that they need to attack Iran to keep you safe. If you agree, you have failed the intelligence test but passed the "Tail-between-the-legs" Cowardice Test with flying colors!

Bush claims Iraqi insurgents (a quaint Bush euphemism for Iraqi patriots) are using bombs supplied by Iran. OOoooooooo - are you quaking in your boots yet? They even have photographic PROOF! Bush, Cheney, and Karl Rove figure that Americans are so stupid, you can tell them anything and they'll believe it because THEY said it. It doesn't make a difference that the writing on the bomb casings they show as PROOF of Iranian complicity is in ENGLISH. They believe Americans are too stupid to catch that, or to make any connection. They further believe that if the connection is pointed out to the American public, they can bullshit their way out of it - just as they did with their Iraq proof of weapons of mass destruction. Remember that? First we had to invade Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction - WMDs - and those weapons were gonna get YOU! BOO! When no WMDs were found, they decided we had to LIBERATE the Iraqis from Hussein. When Hussein was captured, they said we had to bring FREEDOM to the Iraqis. Freedom is on the march! Can you hear the drumbeat? All the while Bush and his cronies were rallying the American people with their phony battle cries, they were robbing us blind. The American treasury is broke. Not just broke, in debt to China, Japan, anyone they can get to buy our bonds to float the debt that is called the Iraq War. Didn't you even wonder why the money to fund the war was sent IN CASH??? Billions of dollars in CASH. It took several transport planes to make the first shipment. There was no accounting. The cash was simply wrapped in plastic "bricks" and "distributed". If you knew that, give yourself 5 points.

Were you ever in favor of the war in Iraq, of invading another sovereign nation without provocation, thereby destablizing the entire world - sending a message to the nations of the world that they can attack any nation they damn well please if they think that nation might pose a risk to their national security? If you were, you lose 80 points. If you were not in favor, give yourself 80 points

Were you in favor of the Patriot Act? If you were, subtract another 80 points (don't feel bad, Bush has a negative IQ, too). If you were not in favor of the Act, which trashed our Constitutional rights and showed no respect for civil liberties, then give yourself another 80 points. (you could be a genius by now)

Were you ever in favor of holding people at Guantanimo Bay without due process and with no regard for respecting and upholding the Geneva Conventions? If you were in favor, you are officially brain dead. If not, you are a thinking, reasoning human being, capable of discerning right from wrong even if you are made to feel afraid and insecure.

This could go on and on and on - that is how bad it is, yet this subhuman and his cronies continue to rule, and they do rule. Make no mistake about it. The election of 2000 was a coup. The votes have all been counted, folks, and Al Gore won both the popular votes and the electoral college. We are in the midst of a despotic regime. Search the news, read, explore BBC, CNN, find OBJECTIVE news and become part of the informed citizenry. When you are ready, write your Congressional representatives. E-mail them. Call them. MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD! We have not been a democracy since 2000, but people are waking up now. Our representatives are awakening. Make sure your representatives know your views so they really can represent you! Don't let Bush bully your representatives! Let them know what you think and what you want them to do. If you have done your research, you will want only one thing: impeachment of Bush and Cheney NOW.

The Latest Erosion of Your Privacy - or How the U.S. Became Soviet Russia

The latest erosion of your privacy - or How the U.S. Became Soviet Russia

In case you missed it, Bush just tightened his grip on your freedoms with his latest signing statement - or did you know about signing statements? Bills that have been passed by both houses of Congress and sent to Bush for his signature, turning them from bills into laws, have taken a fascist turn with Bush's ego-tripping. As the "decider", he feels he has the right to "tailor" the bills to his liking by adding signing statements that say what part of the bill he'll obey, and what part of it he won't obey. The latest travesty is his signing statement on what should have been a status quo postal bill. The bill promised to keep our mail private, among other U.S. postal issues, but when Bush signed it, he added a signing statement. This statement gives him the right to open your mail without your consent, and read it, without your consent - without ever letting you know that your mail was intercepted and read! It used to take a court order to invade your privacy in this way, but now, all Bush has to do is say that national security is at stake. Once again, he plays on the cowardice of Americans to take away another freedom. When I was growing up, these were the stories we heard about life in Soviet Russia - no privacy, no individual freedoms. The government had all the rights. Now I see Bush turning America into what Soviet Russia used to be when we were bitter enemies with the country because they denied their citizens any rights!
$13 million an hour of taxpayers' money is going to fund a war that WE started and no one wants. At the same time, our rights and freedoms are being ripped from us one at a time while Halliburton subsidiary builds detention camps for those who will soon rebel against this fascism.
WAKE UP AND SCREAM!!!
They listen to your phone calls. They read your mail. Soon, they will take away the Internet.
WAKE UP BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!