Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Sep 29, 2009 7:58 AM PDT
This essay is dedicated to Norman Vincent Peale, who taught us the power of positive thinking. It and the following several essays were written during the Labor Day holiday. Subsequent essays were written while I was constantly traveling and experiencing a remarkable series of problems with my computers and with access to the internet even when I had access to a functioning computer. I found that even this apparent "bad" luck had the positive effect of forcing me to practice seeing the opportunities inherent even from seeming adversity, such as directing my attention to this book that I had trouble finding time to write. The result was that my faith that there is a way to overcome the obstacles in the road to democracy was increased in so doing.
Many Americans have lost interest in politics because they feel powerless to fight the pernicious changes that they see taking place over the last thirty years and more significantly, the last 10 years. From signing on to GATT, to NAFTA and on to the recent global economic meltdown, events seem to be spinning out of our control. Matthew Taibbi persuasively argued that the worldwide economic crisis was the result of the latest manipulation of the global financial market by Goldman-Sachs, through the deliberate creation of artificial bubbles in what is laughingly referred to as the free market.
In collusion with their friends at the Bundesbank, the Bank of Scotland and other members of a small international cabal of privileged financial institutions, they used the housing bubble that they engineered to reap record profits from taxpayers and investors, while destroying key competitors such as Lehman brothers and using taxpayer money to finance the takeover of smaller institutions that they had deliberately set up to fail by enticing their CEOS with massive short term profits.
In collusion with their friends at the Bundesbank, the Bank of Scotland and other members of a small international cabal of privileged financial institutions, they used the housing bubble that they engineered to reap record profits from taxpayers and investors, while destroying key competitors such as Lehman brothers and using taxpayer money to finance the takeover of smaller institutions that they had deliberately set up to fail by enticing their CEOS with massive short term profits.
What these sociopaths fail to understand is that their propaganda does not fool the well informed among us. They face a gathering storm as we focus the righteous anger of the American people through the power of the alternative media that is being increasingly recognized as the only reliable source of important information. Progressives have learned from the failed leaders of the recently deceased “permanent” Republican majority the techniques of emotional persuasion they used to confuse the people and distract them from the crimes against democracy that were being committed in full view of anyone who knew where to direct their attention.
Pretending to represent conservatives, the counter-Revolutionaries used the corporate media to systematically marginalize and economically starve the free press, while investing massively in the propaganda market from which most Americans were getting their misinformation. From FAUX “News” to the once proud New York Times, the mainstream media had become parrots and stenographers of the White House during the Cheney presidency.
Pretending to represent conservatives, the counter-Revolutionaries used the corporate media to systematically marginalize and economically starve the free press, while investing massively in the propaganda market from which most Americans were getting their misinformation. From FAUX “News” to the once proud New York Times, the mainstream media had become parrots and stenographers of the White House during the Cheney presidency.
Our task as an army of Soldiers For Peace thus consists of focusing our efforts in a strategic way to challenge those who are Hell-bent on inducing mass delusionality in the American mind. This mission is best accomplished by helping Americans to understand that their votes are not meaningless if we do not let fascistic international forces steal them from us. The truth is out there, and statistician-journalist Greg Palast has succinctly laid out for us how the Presidency was stolen in 2000 and 2004. We must have enough faith in the American people to believe that when they are willing to listen, they recognize the truth in what they are told, and that truth explained compellingly is much more powerful than self-serving lies and distortions.
If average American voters can be taught to abandon the artificial Left-Right distinction by which they filters information entering their awareness, they will easily perceive the pattern by focusing beyond the half-truths and outright distortion in the rhetoric of many members of the Senate who have cravenly sold their souls to these corporate interests. Using this money to finance their re-elections through propaganda campaigns in the mass media, key Senators willingly sell out the very Americans on whose votes they depend. Even honest politicians feel trapped in this system because they have quite reasonably in their minds abandoned the notion that “you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
Is it really realistic to hope that we can overcome these odds and take on the counter-Revolutionaries who have long ago re-established the economic aristocracy in America and other ostensibly democratic countries? It is possible if we believe that it is. Change begins when we start with the assumption that we can change the world. Only armed with this belief can we imagine how it may be accomplished. This is the mission for each Soldier For Peace. Search deep within yourself for hope in the belief that we can save the world from self-destruction, then go out and make it happen, by instilling that hope and drive to act that inspires each of us.
In the words of Steve Tyler of Aerosmith:
Every time I look in the mirror…
all these lines on my face getting clearer.
The past is gone.
It went by, like dusk to dawn.
Isn't that the way,
everybody's got their dues in life to pay.
Yeah, I know nobody knows
where it comes and where it goes.
I know it's everybody's sin.
You got to lose to know how to win.
Half my life's
in books' written pages.
Lived and learned from fools and
from sages.
You know it's true…
All the things come back to you...
Sing with me, sing for the year,
sing for the laughter, sing for the tear.
Sing with me, if it's just for today.
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away.
Yeah, sing with me, sing for the year,
sing for the laughter, sing for the tear.
Sing with me, if it's just for today.
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away.
Dream on, dream on, dream on,
dream until your dream comes true.
Dream on, dream on, dream on,
dream until your dream comes through.
Dream on, dream on, dream on,
dream on, dream on, dream on,
dream on, dream on, AHHHHHHH…………
Sing with me, sing for the year,
sing for the laughter, sing for the tear.
Sing with me, if it's just for today,
maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away.
Sing with me, sing for the year,
sing for the laughter, sing for the tear.
Sing with me, if it's just for today,
maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away......
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Rick Staggenborg, MD
Coos Bay, OR
When I first started trying to tell people that it was possible to end war, I was generally looked at as crazy or unrealistic. The truth is, the average American is crazy to keep assuming that war is inevitable, since human survival depends on ending it. How can any parent, son, daughter, sister or brother abandodn hope that we can free successive generations from a legacy of eternal war and slavery?
ReplyDeleteBy imaginaing that permanent world peace is possible, we can begin to imagine how to bring about the Tectonic Shift in our collective consciousness such that war is no longer assumed to be inevitable, but is unthinkable.
Is it the optimist that sees the glass as half full or the pessimist who sees it as half empty the realist? The answer is that the one whose vision becomes a reality is the one who will come to be viewed as a realist. So, are you going to choose to beleive that peace is possible and work for it or are you going to abandon our children to a living Hell on Earth?