PREFACE

This book is a series of essays laying out the case that there is a way to end war by ending the domination of the American government by corporations through a process of passing a constitutional amendment through Congress and ratifying it by the states.

I argue that it is the international corporations with the money to pay for the obscenely expensive elections of our members of Congress that ultimately create the conditions in which war appears to be inevitable. The goal I have in writing this is to convince others that together we can and must restore democracy to America and bring about the change in the human collective consciousness such that war comes to be seen not as inevitable but as unthinkable.


Stop the Madness: The Diary of a Soldier For Peace in the War to Take Back America is my effort to explain my thoughts on the real meaning of America through a look at critical moments in its history. I offer an explanation of that history through a lens of basic psychological and scientific principles. I then use this to describe how I believe America fell from its position of a leader in the advancement of mankind to a place where it is now the chief threat to human existence. 

Throughout the book I emphasize that this is part of a natural process of maturation of a democratic society that I fully expect to grow up and take responsibility for its behavior toward each other and other nations. One of the goals in writing this book is to  present ideas that may help the process accelerate, before the problems the people of the United States and the world desperately need to address become intractable.

For foreign readers who have not lived through the nightmare that has transformed the United States government from a  maturing democracy into a plutocracy, please be patient when reading the earliest essays.  They focus on day to day US political events when the essays were originally written. It was necessary to start at this point to clarify the process by which I arrived at my the conclusion that democracy in the United States and therefor the world is at imminent risk. This is after all  a diary of sorts. 

To all readers: Even if reading about the details of politics  makes your head spin, please read the somewhat lengthy introduction. I draw in part on my personal experiences to illustrate some of the general points I make in trying to make a coherent summary of the state of American democracy and politics. It is my hope that this summary will be of interest to  every reader and useful as a compass by which to see the direction sometimes seemingly disconnected essays are leading.


This book of essays is deliberately written in a nonlinear style that is intended to provide an overview of the thinking that went into my deciding that it was possible to end war in our lifetime and how we might do it. It includes concepts from a wide variety of disciplines that may be tough going to some readers despite my attempts to explain them as simply as I can.

I have added clarifying comments after the mostly short essays that I hope will help explain the more obscure concepts and how they fit into the larger themes of this book. If anyone who begins to read this has difficulty understanding some parts, I hope that they will keep reading, because the main themes are repeatedly woven throughout the book in different contexts and hyperlinks present more background reading.






After describing Soldiers For Peace International and its origins, the essays begin by arguing that the health care “reform” debate  of 2009 was a cynical bait-and-switch engineered from the beginning to bail out a failing medical insurance industry while preserving the privileged position of the pharmaceutical  and corporate health care industries. 


The dramatically escalating costs of the medical insurance industry's product are threatening the continued viability of this  inefficient and unnecessary system of profiteering from the suffering of others. This obliged these industries to approach the federal government with a request for "reform." What they really had in mind was a demand for tax money to prop up their teetering system for a few more years before it inevitably falls under its own dead weight. The cost in human suffering and economic burden is unconscionable.


I would argue that the apparent opposition of the insurance and other industries of the medical-industrial complex were more directed at deceiving the public and jockeying for control of the process than a failure to see that government subsidies and mandated insurance through private insurers were necessary to keep their ineffective and inefficient non-system of health care delivery intact.  


Most Americans on both sides of the issue seem to have been fooled until they saw the final product. Many still do not recognize it for what it is, focusing on apparent benefits of the plan or details of its many failings without getting the overall picture. I have appended my analyses of the true costs of the Democratic bill and the economic benefits of a single payer, Medicare-for-All system at the end of the book.


After reading the following introduction, the reader will understand my position that either major Party dominating our politics in what has been called the two-Party duopoly would have initiated this debate if called upon to so by the power elite that makes these decisions in our name. Either would have responded to the wealthy medical insurance corporations looking for a government bailout for its industry.  The marketing of the bailout would have looked entirely different in the hands of the Republicans, but the outcome would have been substantially the same.

Social responsibility has not been a concern of corporations since the Supreme Court declared them citizens with Constitutional rights and thus beyond the regulations that prevented them from collectively seizing power over the US government. Now that the coup has been accomplished, the question becomes one of whether it is possible to Take Back America for the People. I argue that we can. I believe that the opposition of nearly 80% of self-described conservatives and liberals means that it is inevitable if we promote all Americans coming together in common cause to end this obvious threat to democracy.

Each essay in this book advances the argument, though it is not always obvious how it does so. It may be therefore better to think of it as a nonlinear approach to solving a problem that linear thinkers regard as unsolvable. 


This book was originally written as I was fleshing out my thoughts on what problems we would have to face to unify Americans behind a single proposition that is the core of what I call The Battle Plan to Take Back America in the book. The specifics  of this plan have changed with events, but the general outline is the same. The plan depends  on  the validity of the idea that we can abolish  the Supreme Court doctrine of corporate personhood and thereby regain control of the US government. Once a representative democracy is restored (some would say created for the first time), we can assure that it places the interests of the People over corporate profit, power and control.

The steps involved in solving the problem of war involve coming to a common understanding about our personal responsibility as individuals to each other and society as a whole. I believe that this could lead naturally to a  rational public debate that would result in a more coherent and shared concept of the proper role of government, one that has a proper balance between protecting the rights of individuals and meeting other needs of a society.

I make no apology for the series of assumptions implicit in my arguments. Readers are welcome to disagree with the thoughts I have expressed in each of these essays by posting in the comments section following each essay. I only hope that the reader will be open-minded enough to consider my argument as a whole, because only by having  a dialogue about the central issues that divide citizens of the US  from each other and the rest of the world can we take back control of the American government and establish justice both for ourselves and other nations that its actions affect.

In exploring what is tearing apart the fabric of American society, I attempt to address in the following essays the major issues that perpetuate injustice of all kinds. I argue that just as we are dependent on one another, the solutions to our common problems are dependent on prioritizing and working together to get at the root of the problem, which I regard as corporate personhood. 


We must have a rational dialogue about how to solve the problems  threatening the viability of democracy in America. I argue that these problems  stem from the idea that corporations are people, with the Constitutional right to buy our Senate. The Supreme Court justifies this in the name of exercising "free" speech, which they essentially equate to money. If we can put aside the artificial distinctions which divide us, we  might conclude as a People that the key to restoring democracy to America is the abolition of corporate personhood. 

The most important of the problems caused by the wholesale corruption of government by corporate money are international. Global climate change threatens to produce mass famine, pandemic and the deaths of billions without a coordinated effort to find a way to end war and environmental devastation and to assure that health care is a human right of every citizen of the planet.

We have to look beyond the interests of individual nations  and factions within nations to find a solution that benefits all of us. Because of the universal nature of these issues, I hope that they will be of interest to English-speaking readers around the world, who are encouraged to translate any essays that they find interesting into other languages to distribute as they see fit.

We are all in this world together and our fates interdependent.  I hope that this book will enable the reader to challenge his or her assumptions about the reality of human nature, society and the Universe that we share. If enough of us understand our responsibility to consciously act in full knowledge of the interdependence of all humanity and the natural world, I am convinced that we can yet save ourselves from self-destruction.


The following introduction is my attempt to summarize what I see as the most fundamental problems we must solve to restore democracy in America. It is written in a straightforward style, unlike  many of the essays that follow. 


I hope I have written these essays in an entertaining and emotionally engaging way that will be of interest to most readers.  I have  written them in an allegorical style in an effort to appeal to the widest possible audience. This necessarily means that some concepts will seem trivial to some readers and some may be  difficult to understand to readers new to the issues. I hope that all will find something useful in their own efforts to become part of the change we must create to  save the ourselves from the threats facing human civilization.


The introduction is largely political, in contrast to most of the essays, which are focused on my view of the central problems of individuals, groups and nations that we must consider in building a movement to end war. If the introduction seems pedantic, the casual reader may want to skip it and proceed to the essays at the risk of missing the general scheme of the presentation of  concepts in the book. Reading the introduction may help understanding the book more fully.


  

SOLDIERS FOR PEACE-WHO WE ARE

To answer the question "What is Soldiers For Peace?" you must understand who a Soldier For Peace is. A Soldier For Peace is any one of the millions of people around the world who struggle nonviolently for social justice in their community, nation, and the world at large.

Soldiers For Peace International is an all-volunteer virtual "Army" of a radical new kind. Rather than being an organization, it is a network of individuals working each in their own way to help build a united international front against fascism and war. Most of us have never met each other and the vast majority of Soldiers For Peace have never heard the term we use to describe our network. Nonetheless, it is our collective efforts that give humanity its last hope for peace, freedom and a future for our children worth passing on.

We are anarchical in that we have no command structure. There is no decision making body. There are no orders issued.  Each of us is effectively an “Army of one,” acting individually and as members of organizations to wage a nonviolent "war" against injustice that we believe will lead to the end of war between nations.  No one speaks for all Soldiers For Peace. We follow our consciences and use our own initiative to further our common objectives in the field of battle. What follows is thus not a definition of Soldiers For Peace but my vision of what we can collectively become.

Our goal must be to convince a critical mass of humanity that we can end war. Only if we believe it is possible and absolutely necessary for the survival of human civilization will enough people engage in the work necessary to succeed. War is the ultimate example of injustice. All efforts to fight injustice peacefully further our ultimate goal.

Failure is not an option, because war is the ultimate tool of oppression and leaves no winners in its wake. At a time when war has become an accepted means of expanding and consolidating the power of a small group of international elite with no allegiance to nations or their peoples, none of us will escape the consequences if we fail to act now.

Given that the every decent human wants to see the end of war, the problem is one of overcoming the self-fulfilling  prophecy that war is inevitable. This is a struggle each of us must ultimately wage alone. As founder of Soldiers For Peace International I only ask that you consider whether choosing to accept the idea of war is still necessary is in itself a betrayal of humanity and most especially, the children who will reap what we have sown.




Soldiers For Peace began in the US in 1990 in response to the threat of the first Persian Gulf war, now largely forgotten except by those who fought it and by others who saw it as a great American victory rather than the wholesale slaughter it was. Few Americans realize that after the defeat of the vicious Republican Guard that terrorized  Kuwaiti civilians, the war degenerated into a massacre of mostly Iraqi draftees who had been coerced into serving as cannon fodder in Hussein’s insane dream of restoring Iraqi greatness through another disastrous war.

Those of us who responded with alarm in 1990 to yet another war for corporate Empire so soon after Vietnam had already concluded what most people have yet to consider: War is not inevitable, it is always a choice. It is a choice made by people who are unaccountable to We the People and who act through the systematic manipulation of elected government officials and the media. When the war was seemingly over, most of us went back to our day jobs. Only a few sensed that this was a harbinger of worse things to come.

The first Bush went on to punish the Iraqi populace for the sins of their dictator, who he apparently still found to be useful. The corrupt oil-for-food program caused the suffering of millions of poor Iraqis while doing little to curb income to Hussein. He was therefore not only able to continue his lavish spending on himself and his supporters but to conceivably acquire weapons of mass destruction, as claimed by the second Bush administration. This was just the first of many lies offered to justify the second invasion.

Bin Laden and Hussein were in turn useful covers for the role of the corporatocracy's agents within and outside of the US government whose actions and inaction allowed the massacre of 3,000 Americans in a plot that multiple lines of evidence indicated they had been apprised of well in time to have stopped it. Unfortunately, the plot was much too convenient for those who profit from war as a pretext to invade Iraq, as called for in a report by the Project for a New American Century released one year prior to 9/11. Thus, it was allowed to proceed.

The initial conspirator presented to the American people as terrorism personified, accused Saudi mastermind bin Ladin proved useful only until the game plan called for the invasion of Iraq.  Saddam Hussein was then deliberately and cynically substituted as the face of terror. The threat he was said to represent was the only justification given for continuing on the path to a New World Order that promised a false security at the cost of individual freedoms and loss of national sovereignty around the world.
  

Hussein was used as a target toward which to direct the hatred of the American citizenry when it served the government’s purposes after America launched its War of Terror following the 9/11 attacks. US interests having long been assumed by most Americans to be synonymous with corporate interests, too few questioned the push to war by an oilman who was the son of former a CIA director turned President and the grandson of Nazi collaborator Senator Prescott Bush.

The campaign of "Shock and Awe" made for spectacular television, with nighttime shots of smart bombs raining down on Baghdad. The citizens who were thus murdered could not be seen from the vantage point of cameras in the bombers and on the bombs so did not detract from the thrill patriotic Americans felt at this aggressive "defense of freedom." These attacks were often staged for prime time and put CNN front and center of the media cheerleading the Iraq war. 

That President Obama has continued to follow the game plan of PNAC clearly indicates the extent to which the corporatocracy's reach has extended throughout the US government. It seems clear to me that he was warning us when he said repeatedly throughout the 2008 campaign “I can’t be the change, YOU have to be the change that we need.” Regardless of the meaning behind that sound bite, it is up to the people of the United States and the world to respond to that call.

1990 was another time and events proved that Americans were not yet ready to face reality. Without the aid of the internet, Soldiers For Peace never really caught on. After the Persian Gulf War ended the American dream at first slowly and then with precipitous speed transformed into the long national nightmare from which the nation and the western world are just beginning to awaken.

In 2009, the time had come to consider anew whether it was possible to launch a movement based on a simple idea: War is not inevitable. If enough people can be made to recognize that we have the collective power to end it if they understand why failing to do so will spell the end of civilization as we know it, we can together create a tectonic paradigm shift in human consciousness in which war will become unthinkable.

Soldiers for Peace started, as many things do, as just a good idea. What it lacked was the means to build the virtual Army that was needed to wrest control of the US government from corporate rule on behalf of the American people and ultimately, all the Peoples of a world civilization poised on the brink of self-destruction. The internet provided that potential. 

Soldiers For Peace would have remained nothing but a good idea but for the fact that it is an idea whose time has now come. If you understand how the extension of the corporate power over the US government has made critical the state of America and the world and if you have pledged yourself to the nonviolent struggle for the survival of civilization as we understand it, then you already a member of our virtual Army, wherever you are.

We no longer have the luxury of waiting. America and the world stand poised on a precipice, reeling from the disorienting effects of 30 years of misuse of the power of the US government. With the support of citizens around the world, the American people must seize the reins of their own government to keep it from driving all of us relentlessly toward certain destruction through endless war and its effects on the environment, economy and collective psyche of Mankind.

Soldiers For Peace are compassionate realists. We are not “passionate idealists,” because passion blinds reason and idealism does not recognize the limits of reality. Compassion compels us to accept our duty despite the cynic within who tells us that victory is not possible against the power of the psychopaths who are the world’s economic elite. They are at war with us. We have no choice but to resist if we wish our children to live free.

True warriors will understand the importance of the mission know that surrender is not possible in this war. Though the odds against victory may seem insurmountable, every empire has fallen to implacable foes who seized opportunities resulting from the inevitable rotting of all empires.

Our goal is realistic if we realize and can convince enough of our fellow citizens that by acting according to our common ideals, we can demand and secure the right of self-determination of our nations and their peoples. The realist is after all in the end the one whose vision is realized. The cynic will be right only if his view prevails and we fail to try. It is our duty to those who have died in the belief that they were fighting for freedom to assure that the last, best hope for Mankind does not perish from the Earth and with it, our hopes for our children.

Freedom of thought is the one liberty that cannot be taken away. In freeing our minds from the trap of unquestioned assumptions we free ourselves. In sharing information and mutually supporting ideas for action, we can free each other from the Matrix of lies within which most of humanity is bound. This is how we build a united international front against fascism and war that will assure that our children thrive in a world free from want and war.   

There is a place in our Army for anyone dedicated to the ideal that free Peoples can and should rule themselves. We must learn to think of ourselves first as citizens of the planet, abandoning the idea that we can identify ourselves first as citizens of a nation, members of a political faction, of a religion or any group smaller than humanity itself. Such ultimately artificial distinctions obscure the fact that it is what we share in common that makes us human. At a time when civilization faces the very real prospect of self-destruction, we must fight together for the survival of human civilization.

If you find yourself subject to doubt and cynicism, know that you are not alone but do not submit to these demons. It is often said there are no atheists in foxholes. Desperation is sometimes the only way to inspire faith in the frightened and hopeless. We must find that faith in ourselves that allows us to believe that together, we can accomplish what faith alone cannot. We must pledge our lives and sacred honor to this cause. Together we will advance to victory, leaving no man, woman or child behind.

Soldiers For Peace International was first established by veterans of the US military. However, our intent was never to reject any supporter of our efforts who did not choose to serve in the military. We honor those who have made that choice. All who agree with our mission and understand the importance of working for unity among those striving for peace, freedom and democracy in the world are by definition Soldiers For Peace and are invited to join our  group on Facebook. The more we achieve a common identity, the louder our collective voice will become.

Although military service is not a prerequisite to service in our virtual Army, we remain interested in recruiting within the ranks of current and former active duty service members. Their knowledge, skill sets and contacts within the military community will prove indispensable in the Revolution that is surely coming, whether or not we realize our goal of keeping it nonviolent.

If  you  are  a veteran  or  active  duty  service member in the military of any nation, find out  more about  how you can uniquely contribute to our efforts by emailing me at: staggenborg4senate@hotmail.com.

Rick Staggenborg, MD

Founder, Soldiers For Peace International

Captain, U.S. Army (retired)

Coos Bay, Oregon

 

CHAPTER SEVENTY SEVEN. THE TECTONIC PARADIGM SHIFT

This essay is devoted to the unknown author of the Biblical text found in John 8:32: Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Few truths are as self evident as this. The international elite who are the self-appointed Masters of the Universe and their puppets in the US government are tightening their grip on the people of the United States. They do this to "protect" citizens who appear willing to trade their freedom for the illusion of secruity. Meanwhile, the international coporate terrorists who control the foreign policy of the U.S. expand the dominion of their corporate Empire by preemptive war on defenseless nations, while citizens who consider themselves politically aware waste their efforts arguing about which of the two corporate parties of the Duopoly best represents their interests.

Citizens of the U.S. and other western nations hope to be on the "winning" side in the dawning New World Order whose horrors they do not yet comprehend. These are people who still believe in the concept of nations in a time when international corporations are replacing governments in deciding the fate of the world.  Those individuals who are taking all of us down this path blindly accept the proposition  that life is an eternal competition for survival. They perpetuate this myth to maintain their power by playing on the hopes and fears of gullible citizens who  naively expect the defeat of terror at the price of their own liberty.

The idea that life is inherently a struggle between contending self-interests is a fallacy. The result of  failing to challenge this illusory vision of human nature would be the destruction of human civilization as we know it. Only by working together in the interest of humanity as a whole can we assure that the sins of our fathers will not be visited upon our sons and daughters.

It may seem that things are getting worse at this point in history, but it all depends on your point of view. If we focus on the continuing acts of reckless greed that are threatening the world economy, causing seemingly endless war and creating conditions for mass starvation, pandemic and increasingly frequent and severe environmental catastrophes, it is natural to conclude that human civilization may be already doomed. 

However, if we focus on the many positive signs that people are awakening and remember that our numbers give us the potential strength to resist enslavement in a permanent fascist New World Order, we will see things differently. It is only by going through the pain of the adolescence of humanity that we can learn from the mistakes of generations before us and give up the illusions of childhood. When we do, humanity will finally mature as a society of adults, ready to accept the responsibility of caring for our fragile species and leave a legacy of hope, peace and proseprity for our progeny.

Some compare humanity to a cancer, growing unchecked by natural barriers to growth and threatening to kill the organism from which it arose. However, unlike mindless cells or parasitic organisms, humans have the ability to direct their own evolution. We can choose to act to save our civilization by adapting not physically, but psychologically and spiritually to the threats we have created by our stubborn beliefs in dangerous ideas. We must abandon the belief in the supremacy of individual will over social needs and the idea that life is a zero-sum game in which only the strongest prosper, at the expense of the many. Failure to evolve our consciousness through an act of collective will and effort would be tantamount to mass suicide.

Transforming human consciousness may seem grandiose but it is not. Every major shift in human civilization started with an idea. If an idea has the power to capture the imagination of the multitudes and change how they interact with one another and with the natural world, change is inevitable. Those who argue that the dangerous beliefs that threaten our collective survival are "human nature" are mistaken. If there is one thing that can be said about human nature it is that it can be expressed in as many different ways as there are humans. The many men and women who have already realized the key to saving human civilization is to live up to the ideal of "liberty and justice for all" proves that the capacity to do so lies within each of us.

The very evolutionary pressures caused by human-caused global climate change have the potential to drive the shift in human consciousness that can save us. The threat of imminent demise may be what saves us. If we respond quickly enough, untold millions will die but human civilization may survive, chastened and changed for the better by its near-death experience.

Only when we are forced to challenge our most deeply held misconceptions will we succeed. The change has begun. It is almost imperceptible, as any exponential change is at first. However, it is a characteristic of exponential growth that at some point the rate of change grows so rapidly that transformation seems to have come from nowhere, like an algal bloom on a pond that appeared clear the day before.

With the power of the internet, our ability to communicate is amplified manyfold. People across the world struggling to find a way to change the course of human destiny can talk to each other directly. Through such personal interactions we can teach each other to reject the notion that conflict is inevitable. We can build a united international front against fascism and war at the grassroots level.

When a critical mass of people come to understand that our interdependence dictates that what is best for each of us is what is best for all of us, we will witness a tectonic paradigm shift in human consciousness. When we put aside the self-imposed distinctions that keep us from recognizing our common identity, consensus reality will change. Only then will democracy be truly possible. 

The most important lies that we tell ourselves are those that conceal the evil acts of leaders in government. Acceptance of atrocities as natural by the people in the nations whose governments commit them makes them complicit in these crimes against humanity. We can and must change the paradigm of consensus reality that accepts enslavement of people in weaker nations by powerful governments run in the interests of international corporations. The change begins when the individual accepts the interdependence of each of us with each other and the planet itself, but it can only become an exponential process if each of us dedicates ourself to awakening those around us to this reality.

Having come to understand that the survival of human civilization itself is in danger, each of us who have awakened must translate our understanding into political action, however we believe our efforts are best spent. Americans can begin to accept their responsibility to future generations by demanding a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the constitutional violations by the Cheney regime that have sown the seeds of fascism in the United States. These have laid the ground for wars of choice to maintain the powerful oil interests that put them in office, wars that continue under the Obama administration.

As of this writing, it remains to be seen whether President Obama intends to address global climate change that is threatening human civilization or whether he intends to offer any resistance to those who would subjugate the world through fear and threat of perpetual war. In seeking to move forward without looking at how we got to where we find ourselves, he is continuing down a path of self-destruction.

In the process of creating democracy in America so that it might flourish in the world, Americans must demand transparency and accountability for the crimes of those in the U.S. government and the shadow government who create conditions to justify wars of choice. This will entail declassifying documents hidden from public view under the Orwellian logic of “state security.” The leaders who have treasonously betrayed us and used war to further the interests of international corporations and those who benefit from these crimes against humanity must face our collective judgment. 

The list of these crimes includes the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the murder of democratic leaders throughout the world and the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and occupations designed to make the chosen among the US aristocracy the rulers of a slave planet. War is the ultimate betrayal of humanity. That it persists in a world where there is only one superpower makes a mockery of the claim that the U.S. is a democracy. In a democracy, a free People who know the truth about what the government is doing in their name would not permit it to prey upon the rest of the world to benefit those who pay to put elected officials in power.

The true enemies of freedom are those stateless actors of the corporatocracy who direct the U.S. government and military to achieve their plans of world domination. The vast majority of elected officials in the U.S. are guilty of giving material aid to these international corporate terrorists and are thus guilty of treason. The idea of concluding an investigation with prosecutions is thus a fantasy. No serious investigation will ever take place if those in power had to face the same consequences as those they deem enemies of the state. The appropriate way to have accountability is with a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In the end, we must punish only those who refuse to cooperate with or who lie to the Commission, or there will never be an end to recriminations. Peace and freedom on Earth depend on facing the truth about what we have allowed our government to do in our name, then forgiving all but the criminals most responsible, while never forgetting their crimes. After all, any American who has not devoted themselves to ending the crime of war and its attendant evils shares some measure of blame. Only by forgiveness can we hope to move on to a future where all participate in the salvation of an otherwise doomed planet. Vengeance will only breed the pursuit of more vengeance by the vanquished.

Let's end the Uncivil War that has raged in the US for decades and establish true representative democracy. Only then will we have the moral authority that will enable us to spread freedom, justice and peace throughout the world by our own example where we have failed to do so at the barrel of a gun. We must have some sympathy for the devil within all of us and find a way to forgive those who are have acted out of shortsighted, narrowly defined self-interest. We have all at times let selfish considerations into our hearts and allowed them to guide our actions. When we free ourselves from the this self-imposed enslavement of our minds, we will free ourselves from a desire for revenge that would only breed resistance to our efforts to create a world where our children can live free of fear of want and oppression.

In the immortal words of John Lennon:






When I find myself in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom.
Let it be, let it be.

And in my hour of darkness
she is standing right in front of me,
speaking words of wisdom.
Let it be, let it be.


Whisper words of wisdom,
let it be, let it be.

When the broken hearted people
living in the world agree,
there will be an answer,
let it be, let it be.

And when the night is cloudy,
there is still a light that shines on me.
Shine on till tomorrow,
Let it be, let it be.


I wake up to the sound of music,
Mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom,
Let it be, let it be.


Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.




Rick Staggenborg, MD

Roseburg, Oregon

CHAPTER EIGHTY SEVEN. A CIRCLE HAS NO LEFT OR RIGHT

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on May 22, 2010 8:19 AM PDT

This chapter is devoted to Harry Stack Sullivan, the brilliant developer of many of the techniques of interpersonal psychotherapy. The most important thing that I learned from him was that we are all more alike than otherwise.

Interpersonal therapy is a tool I use daily in psychotherapy. My job as a therapist and a physician is to help my patients realize which of their symptoms are treatable without drugs, which might be better borne without the benefits or harm of medicine and what the safest and most effective treatments are when medication is wanted or cannot be avoided if the symptoms are to be adequately addressed.

I cannot help a patient without engaging in a genuine conversation in which he or she lets down the guard that many of us carry around all or most of the time. When I am doing psychotherapy I am engaged in an intensely personal conversation that begins the first time we meet and that deepens over the course of the therapeutic relationship.

Establishing trust in such a relationship means allowing the person who is asking for help to know who I am as a person. My job is helping people deal with some of life’s most soul-shaking experiences. I help them to make wrenching decisions, to live with the consequences of things they cannot control and with decisions whose consequences control their lives. In the process of learning how to help others, I come to understand and change myself for the better as well.

I have learned to understand how men and women do terrible things and how their victims bear the selfish, cruel and destructive actions of others. What is more important, I have learned how to maintain my empathy for the victims of this mindless cruelty without losing myself in anger at the perpetrator. As a member of Soldiers For Peace International, I know that I have a mission that transcends anger and desire for revenge. I know from my work as a therapist that anger will only interfere with the mission of SFPI to end war.


I am determined to not let the suffering of victims of social injustice  to be in vain. To the extent that I am able, I will further the cause of establishing unchallenged democracy in America through my work to abolish corporate personhood. This is the only way to cure the insane society in which increasing numbers of citizens see themselves as separated from the rest, who they consider responsible for their misery. 

The cure for the depression, anxiety and anger of the average American is to Take Back America through a Constitutional amendment that would abolish corporate personhood and restore the power of government to the People. I cannot see another way to achieve this in the foreseeable future unless someone introduces an amendment on the floor of Congress that would abolish it. 

We must encourage candidates has the to have the courage and integrity to challenge sitting members of Congress to choose between corporations and the People. If even one candidate or sitting member of Congress is elected and follows through on the campaign promise to introduce such an amendment, we can use support for it as a litmus test of loyalty to the People in every subsequent election. This person can and must arise when the People speak with one voice and declare their willingness to stand behind such candidates. 

There is a way to end the partisan paralysis caused by the leaders of both major acting in the interest of the corporations over Americans citizens. We must learn to cast aside the self-imposed distinctions of left and right, party affiliations and religious fundamentalism  that translates into support for authoritarian "solutions" to problems affecting all of us. The corporatocracy is able to impose the  will of  the economic aristocracy because it promotes the divisions among the People of the United States in order to serve the interests of a minority over the both the individual citizen and the nation as a whole.

The only way to convince voters to take a chance on a candidate not chosen by the Puppetmasters of Congress is for those of us seeking fundamental change to win the support of both those who consider themselves Conservatives and those who proudly label themselves Liberals. The abolition of corporate personhood is the issue where the Left and Right will come round full circle. It is the issue that will remind us that we are all Americans and citizens of the world.

Americans  have a duty to remember the sacrifice of those who have died to preserve the Union and those who felt that they were defending their homeland from a foreign invader during the first American Civil War. In that time, Americans were torn between fighting for a slavery-based society or to remain a weakened but partially unified nation. We are in a similar time now, with each American deciding for him- or herself whether we were meant to be one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all or whether we are to submit to becoming slaves of corporate masters.Thus, we have come full circle from the time of the Founders, who risked and often gave their lives to fight the fascists of their day and establish the hope for democracy in America and the world.

I believe we are one nation under God, though I would defend the right of another to deny it. Whether for love of God, Man, family or self we must come to understand as Harry Stack Sullivan did that our commonalities are much more important than our differences. We should treasure those differences that give life its complex and delicious flavor to those who care to embrace it in all its joy and pain. We must not let our differences divide us.

This is how we End the Civil War and Finish the Revolution. If we dare to talk to each other in a spirit of understanding and respect, we will find that we have left the American Revolution incomplete. Too many of us fell asleep in history class but it is never too late to learn from the mistakes and successes of the past. Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. 

Those who do not remember the instructive lessons of the past will be unable to re-establish democracy in a nation where the citizens of this once-great democratic Republic have allowed fascistic corporate control of government to take root and grow nearly out of control. Once rooted, the growth of fascism threatens to choke the life out of  the tree of Liberty.

We need to understand that our forefathers fought the Revolution only after the patriots in Boston decided that the forced import of British tea subsidized by the government was too much to bear. They knew that the King and leaders of the House of Lords profited from this cozy arrangement. In the meanwhile, the British government was casually destroying the burgeoning cottage tea industry and hurting the American shipping industry on which it depended. This was a government in which they were not represented and had little influence.

For three decades, too many Americans have dreamed our lives away. They have been enjoying the fruits of a false economy and have left us, themselves and all of our children to suffer the hangover from their drunken spree with our money. We began to wake up when we found out that we had to cover the bets that they bankers had made with our hard-earned money they expected to multiply by their imaginary winnings. 

The largest economy in the world has been and remains under the control of war-profiteering bankers with no loyalty to the United States, its citizens or the citizens of other nations who are dying for democracy. In its failure to prevent the rise of unchecked corporate power in the United States, its citizens have been complicit in the murder of millions of innocents throughout the world who are the victims of a war-based economy. 

When the middle class and the poor were treated with the respect and compassion that is the hallmark of America since its founding until 30 years ago, the economy thrived. The average American was and remains willfully ignorant of the fact that their standard of living depended on the suffering of others on distant shores. Now that the consequences of unbridled selfishness are devastating the American economy, those who cheered the myth of American exceptionalism must acknowledge the essential interdependence of all who depend on the fair distribution of the Earth's resources and the wealth that is generated only by the sweat of the worker.

The anger of the dying middle class is palpable and survivalists await a showdown at Armageddon. Fingers are being pointed everywhere by the perpetrators and the mobs of the unemployed and retired follow them in their blind anger. 

Survivalists don’t know when or where to shoot but are gripping their guns ever more tightly as they await the advent of the imaginary socialist government that they believe is coming to take them away. Fascists masquerading as conservatives have again spun myths that raises alarm bells in our reptilian brains. 

The hurt and angry average American must be shown that the consequence of valuing individual rights over collective responsibility is economic subjugation of all Americans. The result is the stripping of  the thin veneer of civilization from American society and rendering angry mobs resistant to reason. Only by talking to each other without fear of anger can Americans come together as one to Take Back America for the People.

Those who have not been following events and reading between the lines are easily swayed by corporate propaganda into believing that those of us preparing to Take Back America are naive dreamers, unrealistic and not to be listened to. 

These politicians and the partisan followers of both major and minor parties do not seem to realize that the power of a people united has been proven by the events of 1775. Fortunately, there are untold millions of us who do understand that we can and must Take Back America for the people.  They must understand that no political faction in the United States can do this alone.

The ranks of the Libertarians are swollen with angry and frightened citizens who believe they must protect their property and that of their friends and family at all costs. Those of us who know better must help them understand that it is this selfishness and tribal mentality that is at the root of our recent surrender of democracy.  To assure the individual Liberty that their leaders place over social responsibility, they must understand that in a Revolution, we all hang together or surely we will all hang separately. We can and must make common cause in restoring democracy to the United States.

It is easy to forget the responsibility of citizens of the United States to safeguard democracy through civic engagement that recognizes the inherent dignity of each of us and honors it with civil political  discourse. The Revolutionary period was one in which colonized  people took to the streets and taverns and debated amongst themselves whether they could and should take control of their own collective destiny. In the end, Common Sense prevailed and the revolutionaries seized the day and their own collective destiny.

The question of whether democracy was possible hinged on whether men and women are basically good or whether they are incapable of overlooking narrowly defined self-interest and working together for the common welfare. The majority came to believe that the better angels of our nature are stronger than the selfish part of our nature. Had the majority concluded as does the majority today that Man is inherently evil and war inevitable, the American experiment in democracy would never have been conducted. If we abandon the very belief that makes democracy possible, we abandon democracy itself. We must not fail to find and act on our common interest in this, its darkest day.

The essential assumption of the American experiment in democracy is that if men and women are inherently good, they can rand by right should rule themselves. Americans have for too long abdicated that responsibility to leaders more interested in wealth and power than in serving the interests of ordinary Americans. They must now understand that the wealthy as a class always puts its own interests over the masses because they are raised to see life as a game of Monopoly.

Once colonials made the momentous decision to forget their differences and to work to ensure that they and their children would be free, they launched a Revolution that has not yet been concluded. They fought a King and the corporatocracy of their day. at the risk not only of failure but their very lives. We must do no less than finish the battle to strip the power of the international corporate terrorists of today if we are to honor their sacrifices and those of the men and women after them who died defending our hard-won freedoms.

The first European Americans and the African Americans risked their lives, their property and their sacred honor to challenge the greatest military power of their day. Having been invaded and dominated by the mercenaries of the corporate Puppetmasters of the Eighteenth Century, they fought back with the conviction that God was on their side in the struggle to give birth to the uniquely American experience of democracy. 

If the United States is to become  the beacon of hope to the world that our Founders intended, then we must clean our own House and Senate to ensure that the last, best hope of Mankind does not perish from the Earth.

During the advent of the American Revolution, patriots  depended on support from the rich European nations who were alarmed at the rise of England that was threatening world domination. The French came to our aid thanks to the brilliant work of Thomas Jefferson, who wooed the French court while rooting for the demise of the French aristocracy. Benjamin Franklin also played an important role, playing the American rustic for the amusement of the sophisticates of the French court. Meanwhile, John Adams was judged too dour and quarrelsome to succeed at winning French support, though he was able to help the Dutch government to understand the benefits of standing with us against their rival.

Once victory was secured at Yorktown with the help of the French navy and the Marquis de Lafayette, the new nation turned inward. The Founding fathers counseled the avoidance of foreign entanglements while the new nation shored up its defenses. Jefferson was still in Paris when the French people took matters into their own hands in the bloody Revolution there. He unwisely opined that “The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots from time to time.”In this day, the only way to finish the Revolution is to abandon violence as a means to our end.

We are today living with the consequences of the widely held belief that democracy can somehow be established with violence. The foreign entanglements that are bankrupting the United States have been widely acknowledged, but the full costs to Americans and victims of war in other nations has yet to be appreciated by the masses of average Americans. 

The American Revolution will not be complete until the people of the United States abandon this belief and work to secure liberty from the corporatocracy through the democratic process and not through the threat of violence, which is the ultimate tool of the international corporate fascists that have seized control of our government. The Crisis is international and as at the beginning of the American Revolution, so is the solution.

It did not take long for leaders of the Federalist Party to look for conquest in the North through the acquisition of Canada through force. While the goal was to end British domination, the effect was to betray the French, whose compatriots supported us during the early stages of our own Revolution at a heavy cost to the French crown and the aristocracy of France.

Adams to his credit opposed this war of conquest and all Imperialist wars. Though he had already begun the counter-Revolution through the Alien and Sedition Act, the arch-conservative Adams had sided with his rival Jefferson and bravely taken on the leaders of his own Party in resisting an even more foolish war against the French in the early days of the American Republic. Neither was a perfect man, but both believed in their vision for America and it did not include Imperialist expansion, though the doctrine of Manifest Destiny proved them wrong.

With this history, it is remarkable that the American people have split under similar lines as those drawn in the early days of the Republic, when the issues are even more clearly apparent. today. We must remember that when government operates it must do so with the just consent of the governed. Stolen elections have undermined the legitimacy of the US government. It is the right and our duty of Americans to alter it, not foolishly abolish it. 

To study our history carefully we must not accept the Bolshevised version that the corporate media would have us accept. We must reject the self-serving myths that promote the interests of the wealthy and powerful among the hard-working citizens who truly believe that  their hard work will automatically bring the economic rewards the myths of their Masters have injected into their collective unconsciousness. 

Together we must reject the revised version now being considered by the Texas Textbook Commission, whose aim is to help us to forget the ideals upon which the United States was truly founded. In recalling our recent history, we may remember that we came together once to fight worldwide fascism and won.

Today’s world is more complex than at the time of the Founding, making it easier to deceive those who do not recognize the interconnectedness of and mutual respect for each other that is the essential assumption of democracy. 

Battle lines are being drawn between self-described liberals and conservatives to fight a new Civil War rather than finishing the Revolution. We cannot afford to fight each other. There is no place for the loser to go now that we span the continent and threaten to impose totalitarian control over the world, in league with soulless international corporatists who respect no national boundaries and care nothing for the peoples of these nations.

In war, there are no winners. We must end this most Uncivil War and finish the Revolution. In the name of all that is Holy I will not cease to fight for a future for our children and grandchildren. that is worthy of being our legacy to them. We are closer to victory than most appreciates precisely because the corporatocracy seems to be so close to the total economic enslavement of the citizens of this planet by the imposition of a fascist New World Order. The human race is waking up to its impending reckoning.

It is up to us now individually and collectively to choose what future the world will take. We can choose endless war and Hell on Earth, or choose to recognize that our mutual survival as a human civilization depends on recognizing our interdependence and acting together to eliminate the threat at its source.

Freedom will begin in America on the day that a Constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood is introduced on the floor of the Senate. Only then will the Puppets sitting in the Roman Senate realized that Americans swayed by the lies of the corporate media and these self-serving politicians have awoken will they realize the fate that awaits Kings and Queens when the abuse of their subjects becomes intolerable. Only then will these corrupt politicians understand that Rome is burning around them. while they were fiddling to the tune of their corporate Puppetmasters. They will then have the choice of putting out the fire by putting the  interests of the People before that of corporations. Should they fail to understand the power of a People united they themselves will be consumed by the fires of the Hell they have created.

In the immortal words of Neil Young:

Won't need no shadow man

runnin' the government.

Won't need no stinkin' WAR.

Won't need no haircut,

won't need no shoe shine

after the garden is gone.

After the garden is gone.

After the garden is gone.

What will people do

after the garden is gone?

What will people say

after the garden?

Won't need no strong man

walkin' through the night

to live a weak man's day.

Won't need no sunshine,

won't need no purple haze

after the garden is gone.

After the garden is gone.

After the garden is gone.

Where will people go

after the garden is gone?

What will people know

after the garden?

After the garden is gone.

After the garden is gone.

We live in the garden of Eden, yeah.

Don't know why we wanna tear the whole thing to the ground.

We live in the garden of Eden, yeah.

Don't know why we wanna tear the whole thing down.

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden.

Rick Staggenborg, MD

Portland, Oregon