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Front page <http://english.pravda.ru/> / Opinion 
<http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/> / Letters 
<http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/> / Viewpoint 
<http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/396/>
America, values, relationships and contradictions
09/22/2004 11:06

Take a friend for example, we see this friend cheating other people, 
doing things that just are not right. This friend is quick to lie, and 
when confronted, their story always changes. They react in hostile terms 
to any criticism or suggestions that you might have. They are also very 
quick to tell us they are our friend and they would never be deceptive 
with us, which is deceptive.

Or the professional liar - they say one thing and do another. They 
compound a lie with more lies. When they are confronted, they tell even 
more lies. They also want you to believe that they always tell us the 
truth and they would never to anything to hurt us, which is a lie.

How do we handle these situations? We start putting distance between 
them and us. Suddenly we are too busy to make plans with them, etc. We 
might let the relationship die a slow death. Or we could confront the 
person straight on and tell them of our growing self displeasure over 
compromised values, and the relationship is terminated.

We must live according to our values and principles - we owe that to 
ourselves.

What do we do if the arrogant, unashamed, crass culprit is our own 
country? What to do when you see your country cheat its own people, 
flagrantly dishonest in its dealings with other countries and people, 
and makes half hearted attempts to cover the festering corrupted soul 
within?

What to do when your country wrongfully attaches your name as one of the 
legions who endorse these bewildering and repulsive actions? Do you face 
the gut wrenching wraith of a combative and consuming entity, called 
America, which now labels you as an enemy if you disagree with it? Do 
you sit in silence and say nothing?

Do you wrongfully believe that your voice or your vote is your way of 
being heard? Not with standing you've been lied to and lied to.

My vote in this election will not matter, no matter who I vote for, be 
it Kerry, Nader or Bush. I already know my vote has already been tallied 
on the side of Bush without my consent. All of Ohio's votes have been 
promised to Bush and that can't be done without illegal actions on the 
part of the election committee in that state or gracious thanks from the 
promisee. There is nothing I can do about that either. Why should I 
waste my time if the person, I would not vote for, is already decidedly 
reelected and November is nothing more than a false face facade?

Another instance - 89% of America who responded to polls said: "Keep 
assault weapons off the streets and keep the ban". Did our voice matter? 
I can't even get Senator Norm Coleman to answer 5 simple questions about 
the matter. Obviously the greater majority of America and me have 
absolutely no say in what happens anymore. Not even in our own lives.

What then does the world make of all of this? Simple answer to a complex 
question - the world sees an aggressive, belligerent nation dedicated to 
war, the art of war, and the weapons of war. Be it military or private 
citizen - it must be a public prostrate before Mars, the god of war.

They see an election so fraught with compromise, double dealings and 
graft. A man who will stoop to even lower levels to insure that he, will 
be, "the man who is king of the world".

The world sees a country that is so tainted that the current 
administration has done every thing possible to create a false call to 
conduct a protracted war of expansionism - and all of the reasons are 
falsehoods. When the world spoke and said "No War", this country flipped 
them the finger and started filling the body bags while self- 
righteously demanding the world stand down because we are going in.

The world sees a country demand that the world abides by the UN and the 
Geneva Convention, while we so arrogantly deify both. We sit in the 
hallowed halls demanding country after country be handed over to us, to 
be laid low, much as Isaac/Ishmael was laid on the altar of sacrifice. 
At least God took a moment to save Isaac, or Ishmael, depending on your 
persuasion.

The world sees a Secretary of State who calls the White House troika 
"F**** Crazies", mean while sits in the UN with teeth and talons bared, 
and with a clenched white knuckled fist, all but says: "We will bury you".

The world sees a country led by a man who has been convicted of war 
crimes, steam rolling America over the dead and the living in self 
edification on what he believes he hears, echoing in the clogged gears, 
locked in the windmills of his mind, from God.

The world sees a nuclear nation that will tolerate no middle ground, or 
compromise, with the larger community of man. To mold a world in its 
image with all of its faults and to be like God from our own 
self-deluded, bloated, and false face perspective. To take paradise and 
put up a parking lot is our overtly apparent goal.

The world sees a country led by a man who demands his own youth to do, 
to do what he himself used stealth, manipulation, and corruption to 
slither around and avoid.

There are people in this country who have blinded themselves and refuse 
to see through the transparent veil. They speak in relative words, in so 
many accolades, that this country is the greatest in the world - then 
stutter when asked, in relationship to what. Then like a campaign 
shouting Texas diplomat, they then recite from rote memory, one country 
after another - this is what they have been programmed to say from the 
tender young age of 5. They have all these wonderful little comparisons 
about countries they know nothing of - only what they were told to 
believe. I was 5, many years ago, and I believed everything I was told. 
The study of history has a way of crumbling, and unmasking, long 
standing beliefs.

To those who feel blithely and ignorantly happy in utterly fulfilled 
meanings of their lives on terra firma Americana - I am very happy for 
them. I too would like to be oblivious to reality. I too would like to 
sincerely believe that my vote, my opinion, mattered. I do so want to 
live in the America I was told about when I was 5 - but tearing away the 
carefully sewn velvet covering of the beast has long since broken into 
millions of shards those yesteryears of harmonious idealizations. The 
all American Roy Rogers was nothing more than a fictional television show.

The Americans have this nice saying if you don't love America, then 
leave. To them, I reply: I pay my taxes; I've served this country - 12 
years worth. I have paid my dues and earned my right to live here. I 
don't like what my country is doing. I refuse to listen to the falsetto 
choir of propaganda. Or read the words of increasingly white washed 
versions of history meant to deflect young minds away from what this 
country has really done.

I see so much squandered potential for America to be the country it 
thinks it is. Potential that will never come to be.

I now see drug companies coming under disturbing scrutiny. Kids have 
become suicidal while taking their drugs, some kids who are no longer 
with us - only to find out the drug companies knew this would happen, 
but profitability meant more. I know a kid who was taking this 
medication and he was foul mouthed, hostile, aggressive, and facing some 
not so easy to get rid of assault charges. He has been tried as an adult 
because of his age, and his record will follow him forever. I hope some 
share holder keeps this in mind when they cash their dividend check.

We also downplay and overlook the wonderful things about some Americans. 
The ones who go to other countries, by virtue of Peace Corp style 
groups, and try to make a contribution to those less fortunate. The 
people who rush to volunteer and give help in emergencies, such as in 
the event of floods, here in America. I know because I have worked the 
dikes with hundreds trying to keep the flood waters at bay. The lawyers 
who take pro bono cases because they know the person is innocent. The 
USAF/aux, who freely give of their time, to conduct search and rescue 
missions in some of the most miserable conditions. And of the Coast 
Guard/aux, who patrol the water ways in this country. Ever ready to help 
and assist stranded boaters, and respond to emergencies, often at their 
own peril. We don't hear much about them do we? We are also even less 
willing to give them credit due.

We slash and burn the whistle blowers who stand up and say "This is 
wrong". Karen Silkwood paid the ultimate price for proving that 
something was very, very wrong - missing and unaccounted for weapons 
grade plutonium is nothing to sweep under the carpet and pretend did not 
happen. The young soldier who blew the whistle on the Iraq prisoner 
abuse has to live in protective custody for the remainder of his life 
because of the seething malignant hatred, and direct death threats sent 
to him, and his family, by the hundreds, by Americans who would rather 
kill than see our misdeeds uncovered. And to a lesser known, but equal, 
death threats sent to Americans who are vocally opposed to insanely 
liberalized gun laws that are arming not only our fathers and mothers, 
but school children as well. Death threats sent to Americans, by the 
Americans who honor and revere the names Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.

This is the real America that we parade before a world and this is the 
America we want to have.

We so want to be the Americans of the old western dime store novels too, 
forgetting that those were only novels. We want to all be John Waynes' 
with six shooters hanging from our hips and ready for the next big one. 
We inappropriately think we are tough, brave, and forthright.

You know, we have never once apologized to the black community for the 
'necktie parties' we robbed their youth of, or the Jim Crow Laws, or 
when was the last time we publicly said to Rosa Parks: "Thank you"? I 
guess we can leave brave and forthright out of all of this.

Of all the heroes of the last 50 years, Rosa Parks is one tall figure. 
She stood up for what was right and proper. She stood up for respect. 
She stood up for the alleged American value system that was penned when 
it was written All Men Are Created Equal. But we called her N****er. 
While we so coyly muttered, and attached, the words of Adolph Hitler: 
"sub human".

I don't understand, America, why we tolerate and enable Corporatocracy, 
Crony capitalism, and Kleptocracy. The very forms of government our 
founding fathers did not want us to have. Or maybe I've lost the point 
because our founding fathers also kept slavery as a government 
sanctioned wrong against a people, against human rights, and against 
humanity. Everything that we said we were for, but showed a world what 
we were in reality, which is the dichotomy we slap on the world, at the 
point of a gun barrel, so that the world has to to try and reconcile the 
dreck laced mish mosh of contradictions we blather.

America is now being judged by her deeds, for its words are no longer 
trusted in the world.

Yes, we do hand out billions of dollars - to countries that want no part 
of us. We are trying to buy friends. We have never looked into where the 
money went to after we so freely gave. Where did Saddam get the money 
for all those palaces? The mujahadeen, who took untold amounts from us, 
are now our enemies, killing our soldiers with the weapons they bought 
with the gift certificates we lavished on them. We will never recapture 
the millions we slipped to Marcos so he could better his people's world, 
the money was well spent on his creature comforts while he was president 
for life. And on and on and on.

Hand outs are great if you have the money to do it, which is something 
we don't have. We dole out and a world sees our own poverty, homeless 
people, our graft and letter of marque style profiteering at the expense 
of our own citizens, our own sons and daughters, and our elderly.

In the spirit of a generous America, we trash American workers and ship 
their jobs overseas. One famous tennis shoe company has hired workers 
off shore to make their tennis shoes. We pay them pennies for a 40 hour 
work week, and the glue they are using is causing widespread and an 
aggressive form of lung cancer. With a price tag of well over $100.00 
per pair back here in the states, I can't afford to buy them.

We have tax havens, we have tax shelters, and we hand out so much money, 
we can't even afford to hire additional Internal Revenue Service people 
to help stop the growing tax cheating which is now up to 311 billion 
dollars per year.

The tax cut I, and millions of Americans, was promised is never going to 
happen because we are not in the upper 1% of this country - so where is 
the offset tax burden going to fall?

Yes, we do want to stop human rights violations in the world, but our 
efforts, unfortunately, start at our borders working outwards with 
hissing, belecos bravado. With all the bumblings of a aimlessly 
backwards Dudley Doright, we are very pleased with lashing out the stern 
admonishments: "Do as I say, not as I do for if you do as I do, this 
means war". All the while we tell our lessor Christmas revelers, those 
whose only protection from the elements is a cardboard box in some 
alley, to stay out of sight least they expurgate the festive season for 
the rest of us.

Yes, we are very big at giving to other countries. When it comes to a 
charity here at home, the first thing we demand is a receipt for twice 
the value of what we gave so we can take it off our income taxes.

We are very big on telling countries how to beef up their educational 
systems. In fact, we almost demand it. What education would be complete 
without studying the English language so that they can understand what 
we demand of them? But we dumb down our own high schools to below 6th 
grade level, cut school funding because the money is not there, and when 
in doubt, close a few schools. Teacher salaries are not a big priority 
either. And we are completely for the enforcement of student privacy, 
which worked quite well at Columbine High School because there were no 
metal detectors installed.

America has given from her heart to countries less fortunate - such as 
the poisonous and tainted baby formula - the ultimate in after the fact 
birth control, and genetically altered grain that our own FDA refuses to 
allow on US markets.

America was built on small free enterprise and we want to share that 
success with every one we can. A good start up business is computer 
recycling - no wonder some of the nastiest chemical compounds, found 
only in computers, are showing up in Chinese ground water. We've send 
them loads and load of computers for recycling which are piling up along 
the banks of their rivers.

Permit me to do some side by side comparisons. Germany, through cleverly 
crafted vote counting, elected Adolph Hitler. America through the same 
means has elected, and reelected, George Bush. Germany enacted the 
Nuremburg Laws to keep "unter mesch" under control. The US had enacted 
Jim Crow laws to keep "them" under control. Hitler used 'enemies of the 
Reich to sway, control, and influence the population. America uses 
'threat of terrorists' to sway, control, and influence the population. 
German citizens loudly proclaimed Germany was the greatest country in 
the world. Americans loudly proclaim America is the greatest country in 
the world. Hitler was quick to lash out at his critics. America has 
publicly shredded its critics. Hitler openly defied the League of 
Nations. American has openly defied the UN. Germany painted a picture of 
countries proud to be annexed into Germany. America goes into countries 
and paints a picture of liberty loving people proud of their alliance 
with the US. Hitler enacted laws that subverted civil rights. Bush 
enacted the Anti-Terror act and the Patriot act (the former reads almost 
word for word in context as Hitler's).

It might be better, before we want to jump up and shout trying to 
convince everyone how great we are - we should first ask, in 
relationship to what.

*Michael Berglin*



Pravda.Ru <http://english.pravda.ru/>


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