“My husband and I’ve thought about this next election. We realized that McCain is more than seventy years old. It’s his last chance. The other candidates are younger and have many years ahead of them. So, we’ve decided to vote for McCain.”Think about it. One of the best reasons to vote for McSame, right?
If this represents the way a large number of Americans reason or just gut check the issues, then the very foundation of our democracy shakes on sandy ground.
A crisp sunny day awakes us with a blue sky here in Southern California. The miracle of humanity begins to scurry; we hop into our cars and go off to work. Busy people, we want to make the money that buys the things that we enjoy with our families. The paycheck routine seldom allows time to contemplate the big picture, or any picture at all, for that matter.
The sunshine drives shards of brightness through the cracks in the curtains and rooftop windows. We awake to the light, but the more we ignore the darkness, the more we allow it to thrive. Soon darkness can take over the sky and the light fades so that we seldom ever awaken, if not in our dreams.
The Matrix
We enter into a fabricated world, a virtual reality, like that depicted in the movie The Matrix. It’s a place we inhabit but our eyes are covered; the brain perceives images and an entire life in a society, a culture, a world, but it’s all merely a video feed plugged into the nerves at the base of our skull. We become so incapable of discerning what is real that we lose all sense of it. Our critical thinking dwindles. We drift into an existence without awareness.
The Secret Service code named Bush’s press secretary, Scott McClellan, as the Matrix, referring to the movie by the same title. McClellan acted as the main video feed into the mainstream news channels, the one who fed the lies at the president’s request. Bush often referred to his ol’ pal Karl Rove as “The Architect,” referring to the character in the Matrix movie as the master mind that created the enchanting delusions which people believed as reality. Karl Rove worded most of the spin that McClellan presented to the media.
Rove, the Architect, and McClellan, the Matrix…they fabricated a whole world around Bush, albeit one of intentional deceit. From Bush all the way through his entire administration, a constant marketing campaign of propaganda fed deception to the public about life and death issues, including health care, war, and the economy. Matrix, Architect…code words. People in organized crime like the Mafia use them to cover illegal activity.
Dispelling the Deception with a Vengeance
Once a fervent spokesman among Bush idolaters, Scott McClellan now peddles his book entitled, “What Happened.” It claims to illuminate how Bush’s public image as beer drinking, ranch hand was mere chimera. By now though, to most of us, it’s redundant to talk how the real Bush lives in his own loser’s bubble.
McClellan’s testimony as an eye witness offers one more of the volumes and volumes of solid evidence in the public courtroom. Will the justice system function as it should? Will its wheels turn and begin impeachment proceedings? The eye witness testimonies of the Bush Administration’s criminal conduct now bust the seams of the bookstores and libraries. Does the US justice system do anything?
Without the light, the colors of flowers would pale and turn their smell sour. The leaves of grass would rot. Without the light of day, truth itself becomes unrecognizable, if not entirely lost.
Can The Working Class Get Tough?
Democracy depends on the working class. We are the majority vote. Like the leaves of grass, we have to keep our feet planted on the ground and respect our common sense, as Thomas Paine once called it. If we fail in the basics of life, we lose our footing, nothing else supports us.
Growing up on a small, remote Oregon farm, my mother could size up a sleazy politician by mere glance. Economics did not allow her to finish high school, yet, she was smart enough to tell you if the town’s Evangelical or Southern Baptist preacher was nothing but a flimflam. Her generation lived by a hard-bitten skepticism that pierced through the darkness of deception and into the light of truth.
What happened? What generation picked up the torch after that generation of America’s working class, the ones who fought in World War II and knew how disastrous war meant for everyone involved?
Was it too much TV for the Baby Boomers? Did the Boomers overdose on the Pollyanna Disney characters? Hopefully, the Bush years have taught the “baby boomers” and the “gen-Xers” about the consequences of political indifference. Too bad we Americans have to always learn by experience and mistakes rather than by reading a history book. The tide has turned, though.
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