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| The Dog Tags |
Yes, denial, most likely the best mechanism we can use to keep our sanity as human beings, but all of us, seemingly united in what can only be called human nature, just hates to be played the fool... and knowing this, that there is a point where some will say “enough is enough,” solace and hope can still give us a worthy standard of purpose...
A playground bully stealing our lunch money as a kid, feels the same as a government stealing your future as an adult, and most have been taught to turn a blind eye. It is justified, we are told, by a fight or flight response that tells us to choose our battles, even as we are swept along by them.
We have learned to turn a blind eye to the strong currents under the surface of our civilization, undermining the very framework of our Republic... Ignorance is bliss, I’ve heard said laughingly, and we are indeed what we think we are as a product of our environment... Sure, it’s easy to say these idioms, and with feeling too, like they are justifications in their own right. Justifications for the blind faith that not only motivates us, but keeps us safe to fight another day. But the day of reckoning does come, as is witnessed all around the world... when people finally have enough.
Sometimes we think we are just too close to this life to see what it’s really all about. We are so busy, so caught up with our tangled lives that we fail to grasp but a portion of the total picture... Memory is fuzzy, history is distorted by bias, and time just presses on... It’s unsettling when a few pieces of the puzzle emerges after the fact, and we can glimpse, even for just a moment, that our reality has been carefully fed to us, orchestrated, manipulated, influenced, and truth withheld from us with the inflection that we are mindless fools...
Does our life still have meaning if our reasoning rational is found to be based on a lie? Should we feel betrayed if our thoughts were discovered to be manipulated? Could we ever truly trust authority again, knowing we have been used without our knowledge? Are we considered just working fools, beasts of burden, where the forces of power strive to control our thoughts, our behaviors, and what we hold sacred as a nation is treated as if it is all a farce?
Is there such a thing as a noble cause? And is there any cause worth dying for?
It is human nature to try and justify the workings of the world, and yes, to manipulate them with our will. We would like to believe that a young man who goes to war these days has a justified reason to do so. He is placing his life in real danger for a real ideal, isn’t he? Shouldn’t he be there because he sees a noble cause? Shouldn't an ideal come first?
And shouldn't it be strong enough to rouse him, by the passion of honesty and truth, without being manipulated by a lie, or forced by a draft? Shouldn’t war, even a cold war, have a true reason, and shouldn't that reason be based on a justifiable accolade? How can we uphold our actions as a nation when we aren’t informed as to why we take action it in the first place? Would we consent to go to war for the profit of an international war machine? I don't think so... and, without a doubt, that is the reason for the lie!
The light of truth, after the fact
Ronald Reagan is said to be one of the 100 most influential people in the 20th century. As he occupied the White House in the mid-1980’s he accentuated two things that I will attempt to explain here. One, as an ultra-conservative, he implemented a free enterprise fiscal policy, including sweeping tax cuts and deregulation of the oil industry, and two, swore to tip the balance of the cold war.
Mr. Reagan succeeded on both counts, but there was a price to pay, and we Americans in the south, unknowingly, paid for it dearly…
Our southern economy did not entirely survive the 1980’s, we had to start mostly from scratch, as seven of our 10 local banks went belly up... I left three companies, from mergers to bankruptcy, and Louisiana and Texas was devastated. I read the paper every day for information and hope, but oil prices continued to plummet, and good hard-working people lost everything in an avalanche of ruined dreams and hopes. No one I knew could tell me why...
I did what I had to do to survive, as so many oil-field workers did: to keep food on the table. Our wives and children helped pull us through, combining salaries to get by. In 1986 it was so bad that I couldn’t even find a house to paint. I left the states to work in a hotel for two years, displacing my family and leaving my friends behind. I couldn’t sell my house in Crowley for 1/5th of what I still owed on it! I had a bumper sticker that read:”Last one out turn out the lights.”
I blamed myself. If I could have been smarter, stronger, or positioned myself better… I thought that the new environmental liberals had fined the oil companies out of existence. I thought it was a normal correction, but I couldn’t figure out for what! I was wrong. I was too close to it to understand, we all were, and information, the truth, wasn’t published.
Here are a couple of points to ponder:
• Congress did away with tax benefits previously given to oil and gas drilling.With no more investment dollars, the oil industry dried up to a burned out shell, and the Soviet Union took it full on the chin. It was a “geopolitical blow” according to the book: Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy that hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union, by Peter Schweizer.
• There were massive and unprecedented tax reforms, by the White House.
• There was an undeniable link between the oil industry, the Saudis, and the eventual collapse of the USSR.
By the time Mr. Reagan was reelected in 1984, his secret economic strategies were taking its toll against Russia. Credit from the west was gone, and export licenses for technology were denied. Both liquid currency and traded Western technology slowed to a trickle. The Siberian pipeline, expected to bring in hard currency for Russia, was years behind schedule. The Reagan administration frustrated efforts further by a concerted technical disinformation program against them.
These catalysts were in place. “We wanted lower international oil prices largely for the benefit of the American economy.” Said White House counsel Edwin Meese. “The fact that it meant trouble for Moscow was icing on the cake.” To pull this off, they solicited the support of the world’s largest producer of oil, Saudi Arabia... and as we poured over the paper for any sign of reason and hope, nothing of this was mentioned... I may have believed Mr. Meese's words having a morning cup of coffee with other unemployed Mud Men... but not now. His words were lies.
It was easy for the Saudis to do. It only cost about $1.50 back then to produce a barrel of oil, and they could still maintain a healthy profit at a lower market price. Intelligence has found since then, according to Mr. Schweizer, that the USSR had an annual loss of $13 billion from this oil price drop.
The end came when the Soviets tried to borrow more from the west. With lack of funds, projects died. Disinformation made it weak, furthered by the devaluation of the dollar …but it was oil prices that finally shut the doors.
The country collapsed in 1991... as they were fighting their Vietnam in Afghanistan, and as our CIA operative Osama ben Laden harassed Russian boys with US made weapons, trying to protect their National pipe line, our Military Industrial Complex made billions selling arms. It wasn't mentioned in our National Newspapers that we wanted control of the poppy fields that supply Europe with high grade opium for distribution around the world... And our solders are there guarding those crop even today...It was opium that killed two of my shipmates in the Hong Kong Hilton hotel in 1970, the only men to die in that specific.
West Pacific Vietnam experience on the USS Kitty Hawk... another profitable venture for the arms trade... and what was it for? Democracy? We actually lost the war? But not everyone lost, though over 80 thousand came back in body bags, about the number of people, for a perspective, now living in Lafayette... the international arms industry profited very well, and new tax structures took industry from our shores to theirs... Korea, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, China...
What National Security?
So what are the almighty powers of our monstrous centralized government doing with our lives now? Can we figure out the strategy they seem to set for reasons known only to them? Insider trading is lucrative, but unless you have a crystal ball everything you do is based on a speculation... Do you think the international banks and the Federal Reserve makes decisions based on speculation? Oh, did I say that? That would mean they have a common interest, and it is taboo to use the word conspiracy.
Is the lack of information considered a lie? Are we talking about national security here, or is it purely about big bucks, or possibly just the power to control the masses? Of course, we must realize too, that a certain amount of secrecy is necessary for security reasons.
So trust is an issue also. We have to trust that the people in power in America have our Liberty and welfare as the primary goal, and not a selfishly motivated concern, like a black bottom line for their friends.... It is so easy to do when you are totally exhausted working overtime to pay the interest on your credit cards... Fifty percent of us are either too tied up to pay attention, or too tired to care, and that is a speculative guess too....
Mr. Reagan, bless his heart, knew these answers well, because he and his government created the questions... and they are lost now to a man who sat and dreamed by his sunny window with Alzheimer disease... for years before his death. What was lost to him, to all of us, is beyond measure.
It seems that what we are is what we are told to be, and by that process our freedom to rationally choose is taken away, and our American Dreams will remain just that... Sure, our founders told us that we the people must pull the reigns of our government, but looking at the world, and our influence on it, that could not be further from the truth... and that, I am sorry to say, is the real truth of our reality.
I'll end this with a couple of questions: “Do you think the USSR, that morphed into the Soviet Union, doesn't remember those times? Do you think the KGB no longer exists? Do you think that forgiveness is in their heart, as they now consider themselves an Orthodox Christian nation?
“The humblest citizen of all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of Error.”-William Jennings Bryan in a speech at National Democratic Convention (1896).
“Public office is a public trust.”-William C. Hudson, a newspaper man, produced this slogan from various speeches of Grover Cleveland during his first campaign for Presidency (1884).
“Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”-Abraham Lincoln
“The answer to this dilemma of unconstitutional government and runaway spending is simple: restore a burning conviction in the hearts and minds of people that freedom works and government largesse is a fraud. When the people once again regain their confidence in the benefits of Liberty- and demand it from their elected leaders- Congress will act appropriately. - Part of Congressman Dr. Ron Paul's introduction in his United States Constitution handout, 2004.
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Author's note: I read the life of Ron Paul in a little essay by Mrs. Ron Paul called The American Dream. His life is an open book. It is no wonder he was so hated by those who had to seal Obama's life's work from view... from school transcripts to police records, by a court order. I have to take pause... I have to ponder on the quality of the American mind... with a lobotomy of truth.
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