This is Dick.
My cousin He-Dog suggested the idea that he could use cloning to “breed” a super-intelligent super-human that would be able to solve all the world’s problems by virtue of his or her super-intelligence.
My immediate gut reaction to this was to say to him, “Don’t waste your time. We don’t need super-intelligence to figure out how to solve the world’s problems. We all know the answers to the world’s problems. What we need is the will to employ those solutions.”
He-Dog didn’t quite accept my lack of enthusiasm for his plan, but I couldn’t really describe it either. Then I got to thinking about it. I’m sure the lack of a super-genius is not what’s keeping the world on the brink of destruction and a place where people are starving in the streets while others spend millions on living luxury lives. Surely, we know how to end wars – hot and cold wars. We know how to feed and house starving people. Surely, we know how to end suffering, we just don’t want to make the sacrifices to do so.
This is a matter of what, social contract? It’s ludicrous to think Communism is the answer. The idea that the state can be trusted to take in all the country’s wealth and dole out a fair share to all its inhabitants. You’d have to be a child to believe in that. States are run by people, people in power are easily corrupted. As they said about Nixon, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” So that’s no answer. Besides so much of the progress in the world seems to be driven by greedy entrepreneurship, so why destroy that with communism?
So, what about another form of social contract. You know, in most of the world, the citizens of a country realize they all benefit if the more wealthy help to take care of the less wealthy. In Britain, Europe, Canada, health-care and college are provided by the state (by taxes). This, in turn, benefits all members of the society. On the simplest level, if less well-off people are not driven to desperation, then crime drops (crime against all, especially the more well-off). Organized universal health care reduces costs. Restricting run-away corporate profits reduces costs. We’re talking about better lives, longer lives, and fewer wasted dollars. So, we’re talking about social systems of support. Social is an aspect of society. The word has been demonized as part of the “red menace” of socialist communism. Still it works in every industrialized country in the world, but not in the U.S.
So, it’s not a lack of He-Dog’s super-genius that is making the US and the world suffer, it’s the will to implement social support programs and make the world a more equitable, safe place to live. Who’s will? The will of the people, the majority of the population that would benefit from these programs? Well, if I’ve learned one thing in this life it is that people will ALWAYS do what benefits them and eschew that which harms them. That is the one universal truth.
So, does it take a cloned super-genius to figure out what is good for us? Hell no! That’s the last thing I need is some putz, super-genius or not, telling me what is good for me. No, we don't need that. It’s ironic that the idea came from He-Dog since he doesn't listen to anyone telling him what to do. He’s genetically incapable of it in fact. Some cloned super-genius wouldn’t get very far in telling him anything.
No, I don’t need that help. I’m perfectly capable of doing what is in my own best interest. We all are. In fact, we’re genetically predisposed by our successfully handed-down, i.e., naturally selected, DNA to choose what is in our own best interest. It may actually be the only thing we are capable of doing.
So what’s going on here? Do the math:
1. We’re all humans carrying around selected DNA for self-serving choice-making.
2. We live in a Democracy.
Democracy, even representative democracy like we have in the U.S., is defined as:
“government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.”
3. We, therefore, have “supreme power” to be “exercised directly or by [our] elected agents.”
4. Our “democratic” government must reflect our "supreme power" and do exactly what we all collectively want with our self-serving DNA.
Therefore, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = Our self-interests are served.
Right? No, wrong.
Our self interests are not being served.
The self-serving interests of the US public are not being served by the US government. How do we know this? Example, over 65% of the American public, according to polls, were against the invasion of Iraq. Then we invaded Iraq. Are the polls wrong?
Example, over 70% of respondents to polls favored full withdrawal from Iraq in early 2007. We didn’t withdraw. Are the polls wrong?
Everyone earning minimum wage in America has to pay for the lates in a long, long line of banking scams - this one the creative mortgage lending scams and the bailout of Fannie Mae. We also had to pay for the Savings & Loan Scandal, Iran-Contra, the 2, count them 2, invasions of Iraq, and the rebuilding of Iraq.
Did Americans vote on this? Did we ask to borrow a trillion dollars from China and other countries so that Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Northrop, and the rest of the big corporations in America could get rich leveling and then rebuilding Iraq. Our children and grandchildren will be paying interest on these massive loans. Does that serve our best interests or does it serve the interests of the top execs and shareholders of those companies and the politicians they pay to elect?
Did we vote to give $80 Billion dollars in aid to the pharmaceutical industry? Well, we did it, and we paid for it. That was the first legislation passed by W. when he first entered office. Is the US Pharma industry in trouble. Are they not already posting billion dollar profits every quarter? Yes, they are, so why do you have to pay them and their executives and their lobbyists $80 Billion?
Why? What's the matter here?
I saw an interview that quoted an Al Qaeda member as saying there were no “innocent victims” in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. “America is a democracy,” he said. “It is a country run by the people.”
He went on to say that Americans had all voted to invade Iraq twice; had all voted to create CIA-backed coups in Iran and Iraq and all over Central and South America to destroy the “democratically” elected governments who didn’t align with what Washington wanted and to replace them with American puppet despots who did our bidding in the region. Of course these despots always ran governments of oppression, which always included serious human-rights violations against their own people. These include Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and Chili’s General Pinochet. Americans had voted for that since America is a democracy and that is what America did; therefore, all American citizens were responsible for the genocide and aggression carried out by their agents - the CIA and these despotic dictators (like Saddam Hussein).
Maybe he's right. The dictionary definition of democracy, again:
“government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.” Our elected agents empower and run the CIA and the CIA-backed dictators. We're free to stop them if we want to according to the definition of democracy, and we spend all our lives bragging about what a great bastion of textbook democracy the US is, so maybe the rest of the world is listening. When we do international terrorism, we're actually boasting that we, as citizens of a democracy, are all responsible for and proud of it. Are we?
So, according to at least one member of Al Qaeda, retaliation on 9/11 was justly directed at the people responsible for the aggressions of the US. Is he right? And if not, why not? Are we not free to stop these acts? Are we?
But, wait a minute. I don’t remember voting to depose the democratically elected moderate government of Iran in 1959 and to install the despotic Shah.
I don’t remember voting to have Reagan take Saddam Hussein and Iraq off the terrorist list in 1982, so that US arms makers like Halliburton and GE could sell weapons and technology to build weapons of mass destruction, and chemical and biological weapons to him, so that he could attack Iran. This was right after our despot in Iran, the Shah got deposed by an uprising of his own citizenry.
The Shah of Iran and his family fled for their lives to the US and, of course, were granted asylum by the country that created them. They ended up living in Miami Beach, where I grew up.
I was sixteen years old when the Shah and his family arrived there after forty years of torturing and brutalizing and murdering his own countrymen and women (like we wanted him to; like Saddam Hussen did with our help). I remember reading about the Shah's 16-year-old son’s privileged life in the Miami Herald.
I don’t remember the details of the article, but I remember the tone – it was a fluff celebrity piece admiring the grand lifestyle of the Shah and his family as they tried to make do with their chauffeured Bentley’s, modest mansions, and private jets – quite a step down from the palaces and luxury in which they were accustomed to living in Tehran, Iran. (Much like Saddam Hussein's palaces in Baghdad.)
The piece in the Herald was written the way they’d write about Paris Hilton or Versace spending a million dollars on a birthday bash – admirable, fawning. I remember my dad admiring the Shah and comparing me, quite cruelly I must admit, to the Shah’s son, who was my same age. I immediately felt inadequate compared to that 16-year-old, who had his own Porsche and played tennis with tennis champion Chris Evert – like why didn’t I do that? That’s how we Americans collectively looked at this brutal dictator and his 40-year despotic reign over oil-rich Iran. He was just another celebrity on Miami Beach.
That’s how we looked at Saddam Hussein back in 1982, as well, when Donald Rumsfeld, special middle-east envoy to Reagan’s state department, personally flew to Baghdad to seal the deal to sell arms and biological weapons to Hussein. The same weapons we trained his army and aided his army in deploying with our helicopters against the Kurds and against Iran. I was too young to vote then, but I don’t remember anybody voting for that. Did you?
Those very same actions, supported and aided by Rumsfeld in 1982, and condemned by Rumsfeld in 2002, were what we tried and hanged Saddam Hussein for in 2006. Hussein is estimated to have killed about a few hundred Iraqi Kurds with our US-provided biological weapons back in 1982 (right after we took him off the terrorist list and armed him with those weapons and loaned him the helicopters to use them).
We’ve killed an estimated 1 million Iraqis in our efforts to bring Hussein to justice at the hangman’s noose. Even in junior high school, my math skills would have made that sound like a ridiculous proposition, not to mention the three thousand US and allied soldiers killed to depose Hussein and punish him for those few hundred Kurds - not that the lives of the Kurds aren't valuable, they are, but 1 million lives for a few hundred. Of course, those Kurdish lives were not valuable to our democratic government, so by the definition of democracy, we killed them.
Of course, Hussein, with US backing, also killed an estimated 100,000 Iranians. We helped him do that, too. Did any American vote in favor of any of these activities? How about the Reagan-era Iran-Contra deal where the CIA was selling arms to Iran to finance Contra rebels in Central America – rebels that overthrew, yes, you guessed it, democratically-elected governments in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.
I can remember my dad laughing about these issues. It was pure arrogance. We’re America. We don’t like governments, democratically-elected or otherwise, that don’t do what we want in our backyard; therefore, we have the power and the right to do what we will with them. Forget the rule of law - forget the U.N. and the Geneva Conventions, we're going back to pre-Magna Carta dark ages - might makes right. The powerful do what they want. Well, 9/11 is when we got paid back. I don't like getting paid back like that.
Well, if that’s the attitude of most Americans - that we do whatever we want because we're powerful, then that Al Qaeda guy was right about 9/11, i.e., there are no innocent Americans. We all deserve whatever retaliation is visited upon us. Is that so?
The U.N. condemned W's invasion of Iraq. The US vetoed the UN Security Council and announced, "We don't come to the UN because we have to, we come because we want to." In other words, forget the rule of international law, forget the precedents set by almost a hundred years of history of the UN established by Bush's predecessors in the White House. Forget all of it. Maybe the Al Qaeda guy was right. Of course the US justified its invasion of Iraq partly with the fact that Iraq had not heeded the UN's ruling to prove it had no WMD's, but then the US did not heed the UN's banning of the invasion. Convenient, isn't it?
I don’t think most Americans would vote in favor of all these illegal international war crimes and atrocities carried about by the CIA if we knew about them. We may choose to watch The Simpsons and the Super Bowl and discuss Janet Jackson's bare tit for weeks on end, and we may follow the latest gossip about Paris Hilton or Britney Spears panty-less crotch and hair-less skull instead of following what our government is doing, but if we had to actually vote, would we vote for these things?
When our own National Security Advisories warn that invading Iraq will lead, not to a decrease in terrorism, but to an INCREASE in terrorism against the US, would we vote for invasion anyway – without proof of 9/11 linkage, without proof of WMD’s? I don’t think so. Would we vote for continued economic sanctions and boycott of Cuba? I don’t think so. Would we now vote to invade Iran? I don’t think so. But the Washington propaganda machine will make us think Iran is the next country to threaten our very existence, and then maybe we would.
So, why do these things keep happening? Are the polls wrong? Do we live in a democracy? If third-world, poor countries like Guatemala can have a democratically elected government, why can’t we? We ‘re the richest country in the world with a million times the natural resources of most countries, so why is our economy in trouble? Why is the dollar dropping like a stone? Are we broke, or something?
Why? Are we poor? Do we not have a vast agricultural export business stretching thousands of miles from Sacramento to Maine? Why are our banks failing and our mortgages and jobs leaving us? Why?
Are the actions we are taking in our own best interests? Are we so stupid that we need He-Dog’s cloned super-genius to smack us around and make us do something in our own best interest, like brushing our teeth? Are we not capable of wiping our own assholes? None of this makes sense. If we live in a democracy.
But what if we don’t live in a democracy? Does it all makes sense then? Yes, it does.
What if we just think we live in a democracy, when in fact an elite portion of our society, say, less than 5 %, actually creates laws and international policy to benefit just themselves? What if they’ve gotten the power and kept it and they use that power to separate themselves from us, to create an ever-wider divide between them and us – between the haves and have-nots? What if they’ve re-rigged all the rules and tax laws so that their corporations can get their hands on all our tax money and use it to make their owners richer and richer?
Is there any evidence of this happening?
Well, yes, there is. For the last 25 years the public record will show cut after cut to tax rates for the wealthiest sectors of our society - people making over $200,000/year. Is that you? It ain't me.
Cut after cut for taxes on corporate profits, cut after cut on estate taxes. None of these celebrated "tax cuts" benefit the 95% of Americans leading average lives, but they have serious benefits to the rich elite who run the country. What would you do if you ran the country? Would you protect your own interests, the interests of your family and friends? Would you use your power to make sure your family was set for the next few generations? Would you? I would.
Or would you take a $1 salary the way JFK and RFK did? They said they were already wealthy and were there to serve the people. There is some evidence that that is true. They did do a lot for the civil rights movements and welfare programs for the underprivileged, but JFK was also responsible for CIA illegal terrorist attacks in Cuba (like Al Qaeda did at the WTC) and for invading Vietnam in 1962. So maybe he wasn’t as altruistic as his $1 salary would indicate.
What would you do? Would you set up your family, your friends, your corporation to stay wealthy after you left office? Would you try to keep the power in the hands of your allies, your friends, your sons? What would you do? Remember, power corrupts. Would you be able to maintain an even head when you could easily wield that power to get what you wanted even if it was possibly to the detriment of other countries and other Americans? Could you?
If power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, who can we count on? Can we even trust ourselves with that power?
Wait, you say, didn’t Jefferson and the other founders create checks and balances in the government so that it wouldn’t be corrupt? Yes, they did, but do you think it’s foolproof? Some people wearing seatbelts die in car accidents; even when the car has airbags. That’s life. No system is foolproof. Systems need constant monitoring. How good are you at policing yourself? I’m not good at it. I speed every time I drive a car.
So, who should police the government? The government? Doubtful.
The New York Times? Laughable. The media is part of the elite 5%. The newspaper owners are going to do what makes them money. Going along with the powerful people in Washington and their pet corporations makes them money. They’re not going to help you. You’re a nobody, remember?
Who then? Big corporations? You mean like Halliburton, GE, Boeing, and Lockheed? Yeah, they’re going to help you keep an eye on the government and make sure the government is acting in your interest. No, they’re keeping an eye on the government all right, in fact they pay lobbyists millions of dollars to keep an eye on the government and to make sure the government is doing the right thing and selling arms all over the world and creating wars and “police actions” all over the world so that their shareholders can get rich. They’re not going to help you.
When was the last time you bought something from Lockheed? Do you think there’s a Lockheed store at your local mall where you can go in an buy a 60 Million dollar attack jet armed with all the latest satellite/laser guided missile systems. Maybe you and your drinking buddies can pool your poker money together and buy a $7000 toilet seat that was reportedly made for the US Air Force. Doubtful.
Who’s going to do it? You ever see that sign in a restaurant – bathroom is for customers only. Try taking a piss at the Lockheed store. "You ain’t a customer, get out!" The elites who run your government: "Piss anywhere you want, we’ll clean it up."
So, who’s going to watch the government and make sure they’re doing what we want and acting in our democratic self-best interests? Oh, I know, our elected officials. We’re a representative democracy.
Oh yeah, we’ve got all these knuckleheads we’ve elected to go to Washington and do our bidding. Problem is they’re rich, too. You have to be a millionaire to get elected in most districts in America. So whose interests are they looking out for in Washington? Well, not yours. Their own! And the interests of their rich friends. How do we know this? Because they have lunch (and trips to the Cayman Islands – where they keep their money) with the lobbyists hired by Lockheed and Northrop Grumman and Pfizer. And if they want to get re-elected, they had better take care of those lobbyists and the corporations behind them or they won't get any campaign money.
So, who have we got? We’ve got nobody, that’s who! Unfortunately, a democracy only works if you pull your head out of the sports page and stop looking for pictures of Britney Spears’ bared pussy on the internet. It only works if you research what your government is doing and hold it accountable – the way that Al Qaeda guy is holding you accountable. Do you understand that? The whole world is holding YOU accountable for what YOUR government is doing, and you don't even know what they're doing. They're writing checks, you can't cash. That's what they're doing.
Wait a minute, you’re saying, we’ve got busy lives. We can’t be bothered with keeping after these paper-pushing pinheads in Washington. That’s what we elected people for. And if the news media are in on it, where am I supposed to look?
That’s why I said, “research.” It ain’t gonna be easy. But the alternative is more 9/11’s.
If your wife wrote a check for $10 Billion or ran up $20 Billion worth of charges at the mall, you’d damn well track it down and find out why and make her take it back. Well, that’s what Citibank did. And Lincoln Savings & Loan. And Enron. And now Fannie Mae. And guess what? You are going to pay for it. Yes, you.
You are working for Dick. Dick Cheney and Halliburton and Enron. You are going to have to pay more and more taxes to bail out these failed companies and failed banks and the failed mortgages that they sold you. And you ain’t gonna’ be working a union-backed job at GM anymore at $35/hour; no, you’re going to be working at Starbucks or non-union Wal-Mart making minimum wage with no health plan and paying back 10, 20, 30, 50 BILLION dollars worth of fuck-ups by the rich elites and their corporations.
The CEO of Citibank got fired for losing 20 Billion dollars, of course, but only after he got paid off to the tune of 100 million dollars. Do you think GM is going to pay you 100 million dollars when it closes the SUV plant where you work? Doubtful.
Are we at war? Yes, we are. We, the average schlubs in America, are at war with the ruling elites. Only nobody told us the war had started, and they are kicking our asses all over the place. For how much longer? The war is going on so long its becoming institutionalized. In other words, they’ve changed the laws so much and got the levers of power so in their favor, that even if we did wake up and start fighting back, it will now take years, possibly generations, for us to right the wrongs they’ve committed.
Even if we stopped toppling governments and invading countries in the Middle East tomorrow (unlikely), the damage that has been done will still cause ill-will towards us for another 20 or 30 years. Even if we stopped spending billions on foreign wars today (not gonna’ happen), our great grand-children will still be paying back the debt we’ve incurred to go to war in Iraq. And where did that borrowed money go? Into the pockets of the executives and major shareholders of Northrop, GE, Boeing, Halliburton, Lockheed, Exxon Mobil, etc.
Just like the Marshall Plan to re-build Europe and Japan after World War II. Just like a similar plan to rebuild Vietnam after the Vietnam war. Where do you think that money went? It never left this country. It just shifted pockets.
$8 Billion was approved for rebuilding Vietnam. $2 Billion of it went directly to Chevron. That is a matter of public record. That’s money that left your pocket (actually the government took it out of your paycheck long before it had a chance to get stuck in your pocket) and gave it to some guys living down the street from you to compensate them for their company’s losing money on investments in oil infrastructure in Southeast Asia. They didn't go spend that money in Vietnam, they used it for themselves and their own company. This is what is commonly referred to as “corporate welfare” or “welfare to the rich.”
Yes, your hard-earned money at $10/hour and the hard-earned money of all the other people in your street, town, and city went straight out of your checks and into the pockets of the rich guys living behind the gated communities of mansions down the street from you. Sorry.
And Reagan went on TV - where he belonged, and bitched about the “Welfare Mothers” in the ghettos of America that were bleeding America dry. Like I said, research is going to be required. Simply turning on CNN not only won’t help you, but it will throw you so far off the scent you’ll never find your ass with both hands and a flashlight. You’ll have Reagan talking about welfare mothers and W. talking about "Mission Accomplished" from an aircraft carrier in San Diego 6 weeks after invading a defenseless country. You’ll have photo-ops and celebrity diet secrets and the runaway bride and Britney Spears’ panties.
Starting to get the picture?
My cousin He-Dog suggested the idea that he could use cloning to “breed” a super-intelligent super-human that would be able to solve all the world’s problems by virtue of his or her super-intelligence.
My immediate gut reaction to this was to say to him, “Don’t waste your time. We don’t need super-intelligence to figure out how to solve the world’s problems. We all know the answers to the world’s problems. What we need is the will to employ those solutions.”
He-Dog didn’t quite accept my lack of enthusiasm for his plan, but I couldn’t really describe it either. Then I got to thinking about it. I’m sure the lack of a super-genius is not what’s keeping the world on the brink of destruction and a place where people are starving in the streets while others spend millions on living luxury lives. Surely, we know how to end wars – hot and cold wars. We know how to feed and house starving people. Surely, we know how to end suffering, we just don’t want to make the sacrifices to do so.
This is a matter of what, social contract? It’s ludicrous to think Communism is the answer. The idea that the state can be trusted to take in all the country’s wealth and dole out a fair share to all its inhabitants. You’d have to be a child to believe in that. States are run by people, people in power are easily corrupted. As they said about Nixon, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” So that’s no answer. Besides so much of the progress in the world seems to be driven by greedy entrepreneurship, so why destroy that with communism?
So, what about another form of social contract. You know, in most of the world, the citizens of a country realize they all benefit if the more wealthy help to take care of the less wealthy. In Britain, Europe, Canada, health-care and college are provided by the state (by taxes). This, in turn, benefits all members of the society. On the simplest level, if less well-off people are not driven to desperation, then crime drops (crime against all, especially the more well-off). Organized universal health care reduces costs. Restricting run-away corporate profits reduces costs. We’re talking about better lives, longer lives, and fewer wasted dollars. So, we’re talking about social systems of support. Social is an aspect of society. The word has been demonized as part of the “red menace” of socialist communism. Still it works in every industrialized country in the world, but not in the U.S.
So, it’s not a lack of He-Dog’s super-genius that is making the US and the world suffer, it’s the will to implement social support programs and make the world a more equitable, safe place to live. Who’s will? The will of the people, the majority of the population that would benefit from these programs? Well, if I’ve learned one thing in this life it is that people will ALWAYS do what benefits them and eschew that which harms them. That is the one universal truth.
So, does it take a cloned super-genius to figure out what is good for us? Hell no! That’s the last thing I need is some putz, super-genius or not, telling me what is good for me. No, we don't need that. It’s ironic that the idea came from He-Dog since he doesn't listen to anyone telling him what to do. He’s genetically incapable of it in fact. Some cloned super-genius wouldn’t get very far in telling him anything.
No, I don’t need that help. I’m perfectly capable of doing what is in my own best interest. We all are. In fact, we’re genetically predisposed by our successfully handed-down, i.e., naturally selected, DNA to choose what is in our own best interest. It may actually be the only thing we are capable of doing.
So what’s going on here? Do the math:
1. We’re all humans carrying around selected DNA for self-serving choice-making.
2. We live in a Democracy.
Democracy, even representative democracy like we have in the U.S., is defined as:
“government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.”
3. We, therefore, have “supreme power” to be “exercised directly or by [our] elected agents.”
4. Our “democratic” government must reflect our "supreme power" and do exactly what we all collectively want with our self-serving DNA.
Therefore, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = Our self-interests are served.
Right? No, wrong.
Our self interests are not being served.
The self-serving interests of the US public are not being served by the US government. How do we know this? Example, over 65% of the American public, according to polls, were against the invasion of Iraq. Then we invaded Iraq. Are the polls wrong?
Example, over 70% of respondents to polls favored full withdrawal from Iraq in early 2007. We didn’t withdraw. Are the polls wrong?
Everyone earning minimum wage in America has to pay for the lates in a long, long line of banking scams - this one the creative mortgage lending scams and the bailout of Fannie Mae. We also had to pay for the Savings & Loan Scandal, Iran-Contra, the 2, count them 2, invasions of Iraq, and the rebuilding of Iraq.
Did Americans vote on this? Did we ask to borrow a trillion dollars from China and other countries so that Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Northrop, and the rest of the big corporations in America could get rich leveling and then rebuilding Iraq. Our children and grandchildren will be paying interest on these massive loans. Does that serve our best interests or does it serve the interests of the top execs and shareholders of those companies and the politicians they pay to elect?
Did we vote to give $80 Billion dollars in aid to the pharmaceutical industry? Well, we did it, and we paid for it. That was the first legislation passed by W. when he first entered office. Is the US Pharma industry in trouble. Are they not already posting billion dollar profits every quarter? Yes, they are, so why do you have to pay them and their executives and their lobbyists $80 Billion?
Why? What's the matter here?
I saw an interview that quoted an Al Qaeda member as saying there were no “innocent victims” in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. “America is a democracy,” he said. “It is a country run by the people.”
He went on to say that Americans had all voted to invade Iraq twice; had all voted to create CIA-backed coups in Iran and Iraq and all over Central and South America to destroy the “democratically” elected governments who didn’t align with what Washington wanted and to replace them with American puppet despots who did our bidding in the region. Of course these despots always ran governments of oppression, which always included serious human-rights violations against their own people. These include Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and Chili’s General Pinochet. Americans had voted for that since America is a democracy and that is what America did; therefore, all American citizens were responsible for the genocide and aggression carried out by their agents - the CIA and these despotic dictators (like Saddam Hussein).
Maybe he's right. The dictionary definition of democracy, again:
“government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.” Our elected agents empower and run the CIA and the CIA-backed dictators. We're free to stop them if we want to according to the definition of democracy, and we spend all our lives bragging about what a great bastion of textbook democracy the US is, so maybe the rest of the world is listening. When we do international terrorism, we're actually boasting that we, as citizens of a democracy, are all responsible for and proud of it. Are we?
So, according to at least one member of Al Qaeda, retaliation on 9/11 was justly directed at the people responsible for the aggressions of the US. Is he right? And if not, why not? Are we not free to stop these acts? Are we?
But, wait a minute. I don’t remember voting to depose the democratically elected moderate government of Iran in 1959 and to install the despotic Shah.
I don’t remember voting to have Reagan take Saddam Hussein and Iraq off the terrorist list in 1982, so that US arms makers like Halliburton and GE could sell weapons and technology to build weapons of mass destruction, and chemical and biological weapons to him, so that he could attack Iran. This was right after our despot in Iran, the Shah got deposed by an uprising of his own citizenry.
The Shah of Iran and his family fled for their lives to the US and, of course, were granted asylum by the country that created them. They ended up living in Miami Beach, where I grew up.
I was sixteen years old when the Shah and his family arrived there after forty years of torturing and brutalizing and murdering his own countrymen and women (like we wanted him to; like Saddam Hussen did with our help). I remember reading about the Shah's 16-year-old son’s privileged life in the Miami Herald.
I don’t remember the details of the article, but I remember the tone – it was a fluff celebrity piece admiring the grand lifestyle of the Shah and his family as they tried to make do with their chauffeured Bentley’s, modest mansions, and private jets – quite a step down from the palaces and luxury in which they were accustomed to living in Tehran, Iran. (Much like Saddam Hussein's palaces in Baghdad.)
The piece in the Herald was written the way they’d write about Paris Hilton or Versace spending a million dollars on a birthday bash – admirable, fawning. I remember my dad admiring the Shah and comparing me, quite cruelly I must admit, to the Shah’s son, who was my same age. I immediately felt inadequate compared to that 16-year-old, who had his own Porsche and played tennis with tennis champion Chris Evert – like why didn’t I do that? That’s how we Americans collectively looked at this brutal dictator and his 40-year despotic reign over oil-rich Iran. He was just another celebrity on Miami Beach.
That’s how we looked at Saddam Hussein back in 1982, as well, when Donald Rumsfeld, special middle-east envoy to Reagan’s state department, personally flew to Baghdad to seal the deal to sell arms and biological weapons to Hussein. The same weapons we trained his army and aided his army in deploying with our helicopters against the Kurds and against Iran. I was too young to vote then, but I don’t remember anybody voting for that. Did you?
Those very same actions, supported and aided by Rumsfeld in 1982, and condemned by Rumsfeld in 2002, were what we tried and hanged Saddam Hussein for in 2006. Hussein is estimated to have killed about a few hundred Iraqi Kurds with our US-provided biological weapons back in 1982 (right after we took him off the terrorist list and armed him with those weapons and loaned him the helicopters to use them).
We’ve killed an estimated 1 million Iraqis in our efforts to bring Hussein to justice at the hangman’s noose. Even in junior high school, my math skills would have made that sound like a ridiculous proposition, not to mention the three thousand US and allied soldiers killed to depose Hussein and punish him for those few hundred Kurds - not that the lives of the Kurds aren't valuable, they are, but 1 million lives for a few hundred. Of course, those Kurdish lives were not valuable to our democratic government, so by the definition of democracy, we killed them.
Of course, Hussein, with US backing, also killed an estimated 100,000 Iranians. We helped him do that, too. Did any American vote in favor of any of these activities? How about the Reagan-era Iran-Contra deal where the CIA was selling arms to Iran to finance Contra rebels in Central America – rebels that overthrew, yes, you guessed it, democratically-elected governments in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.
I can remember my dad laughing about these issues. It was pure arrogance. We’re America. We don’t like governments, democratically-elected or otherwise, that don’t do what we want in our backyard; therefore, we have the power and the right to do what we will with them. Forget the rule of law - forget the U.N. and the Geneva Conventions, we're going back to pre-Magna Carta dark ages - might makes right. The powerful do what they want. Well, 9/11 is when we got paid back. I don't like getting paid back like that.
Well, if that’s the attitude of most Americans - that we do whatever we want because we're powerful, then that Al Qaeda guy was right about 9/11, i.e., there are no innocent Americans. We all deserve whatever retaliation is visited upon us. Is that so?
The U.N. condemned W's invasion of Iraq. The US vetoed the UN Security Council and announced, "We don't come to the UN because we have to, we come because we want to." In other words, forget the rule of international law, forget the precedents set by almost a hundred years of history of the UN established by Bush's predecessors in the White House. Forget all of it. Maybe the Al Qaeda guy was right. Of course the US justified its invasion of Iraq partly with the fact that Iraq had not heeded the UN's ruling to prove it had no WMD's, but then the US did not heed the UN's banning of the invasion. Convenient, isn't it?
I don’t think most Americans would vote in favor of all these illegal international war crimes and atrocities carried about by the CIA if we knew about them. We may choose to watch The Simpsons and the Super Bowl and discuss Janet Jackson's bare tit for weeks on end, and we may follow the latest gossip about Paris Hilton or Britney Spears panty-less crotch and hair-less skull instead of following what our government is doing, but if we had to actually vote, would we vote for these things?
When our own National Security Advisories warn that invading Iraq will lead, not to a decrease in terrorism, but to an INCREASE in terrorism against the US, would we vote for invasion anyway – without proof of 9/11 linkage, without proof of WMD’s? I don’t think so. Would we vote for continued economic sanctions and boycott of Cuba? I don’t think so. Would we now vote to invade Iran? I don’t think so. But the Washington propaganda machine will make us think Iran is the next country to threaten our very existence, and then maybe we would.
So, why do these things keep happening? Are the polls wrong? Do we live in a democracy? If third-world, poor countries like Guatemala can have a democratically elected government, why can’t we? We ‘re the richest country in the world with a million times the natural resources of most countries, so why is our economy in trouble? Why is the dollar dropping like a stone? Are we broke, or something?
Why? Are we poor? Do we not have a vast agricultural export business stretching thousands of miles from Sacramento to Maine? Why are our banks failing and our mortgages and jobs leaving us? Why?
Are the actions we are taking in our own best interests? Are we so stupid that we need He-Dog’s cloned super-genius to smack us around and make us do something in our own best interest, like brushing our teeth? Are we not capable of wiping our own assholes? None of this makes sense. If we live in a democracy.
But what if we don’t live in a democracy? Does it all makes sense then? Yes, it does.
What if we just think we live in a democracy, when in fact an elite portion of our society, say, less than 5 %, actually creates laws and international policy to benefit just themselves? What if they’ve gotten the power and kept it and they use that power to separate themselves from us, to create an ever-wider divide between them and us – between the haves and have-nots? What if they’ve re-rigged all the rules and tax laws so that their corporations can get their hands on all our tax money and use it to make their owners richer and richer?
Is there any evidence of this happening?
Well, yes, there is. For the last 25 years the public record will show cut after cut to tax rates for the wealthiest sectors of our society - people making over $200,000/year. Is that you? It ain't me.
Cut after cut for taxes on corporate profits, cut after cut on estate taxes. None of these celebrated "tax cuts" benefit the 95% of Americans leading average lives, but they have serious benefits to the rich elite who run the country. What would you do if you ran the country? Would you protect your own interests, the interests of your family and friends? Would you use your power to make sure your family was set for the next few generations? Would you? I would.
Or would you take a $1 salary the way JFK and RFK did? They said they were already wealthy and were there to serve the people. There is some evidence that that is true. They did do a lot for the civil rights movements and welfare programs for the underprivileged, but JFK was also responsible for CIA illegal terrorist attacks in Cuba (like Al Qaeda did at the WTC) and for invading Vietnam in 1962. So maybe he wasn’t as altruistic as his $1 salary would indicate.
What would you do? Would you set up your family, your friends, your corporation to stay wealthy after you left office? Would you try to keep the power in the hands of your allies, your friends, your sons? What would you do? Remember, power corrupts. Would you be able to maintain an even head when you could easily wield that power to get what you wanted even if it was possibly to the detriment of other countries and other Americans? Could you?
If power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, who can we count on? Can we even trust ourselves with that power?
Wait, you say, didn’t Jefferson and the other founders create checks and balances in the government so that it wouldn’t be corrupt? Yes, they did, but do you think it’s foolproof? Some people wearing seatbelts die in car accidents; even when the car has airbags. That’s life. No system is foolproof. Systems need constant monitoring. How good are you at policing yourself? I’m not good at it. I speed every time I drive a car.
So, who should police the government? The government? Doubtful.
The New York Times? Laughable. The media is part of the elite 5%. The newspaper owners are going to do what makes them money. Going along with the powerful people in Washington and their pet corporations makes them money. They’re not going to help you. You’re a nobody, remember?
Who then? Big corporations? You mean like Halliburton, GE, Boeing, and Lockheed? Yeah, they’re going to help you keep an eye on the government and make sure the government is acting in your interest. No, they’re keeping an eye on the government all right, in fact they pay lobbyists millions of dollars to keep an eye on the government and to make sure the government is doing the right thing and selling arms all over the world and creating wars and “police actions” all over the world so that their shareholders can get rich. They’re not going to help you.
When was the last time you bought something from Lockheed? Do you think there’s a Lockheed store at your local mall where you can go in an buy a 60 Million dollar attack jet armed with all the latest satellite/laser guided missile systems. Maybe you and your drinking buddies can pool your poker money together and buy a $7000 toilet seat that was reportedly made for the US Air Force. Doubtful.
Who’s going to do it? You ever see that sign in a restaurant – bathroom is for customers only. Try taking a piss at the Lockheed store. "You ain’t a customer, get out!" The elites who run your government: "Piss anywhere you want, we’ll clean it up."
So, who’s going to watch the government and make sure they’re doing what we want and acting in our democratic self-best interests? Oh, I know, our elected officials. We’re a representative democracy.
Oh yeah, we’ve got all these knuckleheads we’ve elected to go to Washington and do our bidding. Problem is they’re rich, too. You have to be a millionaire to get elected in most districts in America. So whose interests are they looking out for in Washington? Well, not yours. Their own! And the interests of their rich friends. How do we know this? Because they have lunch (and trips to the Cayman Islands – where they keep their money) with the lobbyists hired by Lockheed and Northrop Grumman and Pfizer. And if they want to get re-elected, they had better take care of those lobbyists and the corporations behind them or they won't get any campaign money.
So, who have we got? We’ve got nobody, that’s who! Unfortunately, a democracy only works if you pull your head out of the sports page and stop looking for pictures of Britney Spears’ bared pussy on the internet. It only works if you research what your government is doing and hold it accountable – the way that Al Qaeda guy is holding you accountable. Do you understand that? The whole world is holding YOU accountable for what YOUR government is doing, and you don't even know what they're doing. They're writing checks, you can't cash. That's what they're doing.
Wait a minute, you’re saying, we’ve got busy lives. We can’t be bothered with keeping after these paper-pushing pinheads in Washington. That’s what we elected people for. And if the news media are in on it, where am I supposed to look?
That’s why I said, “research.” It ain’t gonna be easy. But the alternative is more 9/11’s.
If your wife wrote a check for $10 Billion or ran up $20 Billion worth of charges at the mall, you’d damn well track it down and find out why and make her take it back. Well, that’s what Citibank did. And Lincoln Savings & Loan. And Enron. And now Fannie Mae. And guess what? You are going to pay for it. Yes, you.
You are working for Dick. Dick Cheney and Halliburton and Enron. You are going to have to pay more and more taxes to bail out these failed companies and failed banks and the failed mortgages that they sold you. And you ain’t gonna’ be working a union-backed job at GM anymore at $35/hour; no, you’re going to be working at Starbucks or non-union Wal-Mart making minimum wage with no health plan and paying back 10, 20, 30, 50 BILLION dollars worth of fuck-ups by the rich elites and their corporations.
The CEO of Citibank got fired for losing 20 Billion dollars, of course, but only after he got paid off to the tune of 100 million dollars. Do you think GM is going to pay you 100 million dollars when it closes the SUV plant where you work? Doubtful.
Are we at war? Yes, we are. We, the average schlubs in America, are at war with the ruling elites. Only nobody told us the war had started, and they are kicking our asses all over the place. For how much longer? The war is going on so long its becoming institutionalized. In other words, they’ve changed the laws so much and got the levers of power so in their favor, that even if we did wake up and start fighting back, it will now take years, possibly generations, for us to right the wrongs they’ve committed.
Even if we stopped toppling governments and invading countries in the Middle East tomorrow (unlikely), the damage that has been done will still cause ill-will towards us for another 20 or 30 years. Even if we stopped spending billions on foreign wars today (not gonna’ happen), our great grand-children will still be paying back the debt we’ve incurred to go to war in Iraq. And where did that borrowed money go? Into the pockets of the executives and major shareholders of Northrop, GE, Boeing, Halliburton, Lockheed, Exxon Mobil, etc.
Just like the Marshall Plan to re-build Europe and Japan after World War II. Just like a similar plan to rebuild Vietnam after the Vietnam war. Where do you think that money went? It never left this country. It just shifted pockets.
$8 Billion was approved for rebuilding Vietnam. $2 Billion of it went directly to Chevron. That is a matter of public record. That’s money that left your pocket (actually the government took it out of your paycheck long before it had a chance to get stuck in your pocket) and gave it to some guys living down the street from you to compensate them for their company’s losing money on investments in oil infrastructure in Southeast Asia. They didn't go spend that money in Vietnam, they used it for themselves and their own company. This is what is commonly referred to as “corporate welfare” or “welfare to the rich.”
Yes, your hard-earned money at $10/hour and the hard-earned money of all the other people in your street, town, and city went straight out of your checks and into the pockets of the rich guys living behind the gated communities of mansions down the street from you. Sorry.
And Reagan went on TV - where he belonged, and bitched about the “Welfare Mothers” in the ghettos of America that were bleeding America dry. Like I said, research is going to be required. Simply turning on CNN not only won’t help you, but it will throw you so far off the scent you’ll never find your ass with both hands and a flashlight. You’ll have Reagan talking about welfare mothers and W. talking about "Mission Accomplished" from an aircraft carrier in San Diego 6 weeks after invading a defenseless country. You’ll have photo-ops and celebrity diet secrets and the runaway bride and Britney Spears’ panties.
Starting to get the picture?
Sorry, He-Dog, you also have to consider some uber-intelligent cloned super-genius would just be owned by Northrop and GE and turned into either a weapon or a super-weapon creator. Look what resulted from Einstein's genius - Hiroshima. No thanks.
Maybe Dick's the super-genius. We're all working for him anyway.
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