Of Prophets and Loss
By Richard Girard
Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction.
Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.
--Proverbs 31:8-9, KJV
There are days that I feel a great kinship to the prophets of the Old Testament. The whole "The voice of Him That cries in the wilderness..." idea resonates within me, because I feel like I am shouting at a human world that has decided to destroy itself regardless of the warnings it receives from a variety of sources, and the chances which it is given to correct its ways.
Our world--and I use this in the sense of the world that humanity shares with one another--has become a world where it is only important that the needs of the individual be served, or the small group which exists solely to serve and advance the needs of a small group of individuals, and never those of humanity as a whole. Even government, whose very reason for being in the United States of America is to serve and protect the people of the nation as a whole, has been co-opted by the giant corporations to serve them and their needs, ahead of the needs of the American people as a whole. This has led to the near destruction of the American middle-class and the devastation of our industrial power and infrastructure-- physical, economic, and social--required to maintain that middle-class.
Eleven years ago, I wrote an article for OnLineJournal.com titled "Madness," in which I laid out what I believed was one of the most important underlying causes of our problems. Five years later, I republished this article in OpEdNews, when it disappeared from the archives of OnLineJournal. The first paragraph states the following:
"I have come to an inescapable conclusion: the United States of America has gone around the bend. Not take a Valium agitated, or take a Prozac depressed, but load the syringe with Thorazine, call the attendants, and get the strait-jacket insane. Some of this insanity can be laid at the feet of dogmatic, fundamentalist Christians, but they are not solely responsible for our nation's descent into madness, and we collectively bear at least an equivalent degree of blame."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
