Never Was - Future World

By Judith Moriarty

 

“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”. Orwell

 

 

Daily the ‘news’ blasts out warnings of Armageddon, famine, the slaughter of war and pestilence. Millions march for the right to be indentured slaves to the corporate machine – while a silicon caricature of womanhood – and the parasites who fed off her is the top news.  In Seattle the homeless in TENTS are being threatened with eviction while a billion dollar embassy (numerous bases) is being built in war ravaged Iraq!  Insanity reigns as the clowns with hatchets are intent with their annihilating democracy, to bomb the world to hell and back. Greenspan (awash with money) announces that Americans are paid too much in a race to the bottom in global servitude. He doesn’t mention the CEOs making 400x the salaries of indentured workers.

Indentured humanity – chained to the machine. Global government being enacted through various trade treaties (not read or debated in Congress) with the privatization of the commons and government; is resulting in a race to the bottom in wages with the poor pitted against the poor.

 

Meantime the multitudes engage in the  ‘bread and circus’  routines of gladiator sports events, plastic card shopping (delaying payment to another day): placard marches for peace, the theater of moneyed politics, mega-church services fleecing the flock for heaven’s miracles, Spring Break (including lawmakers!), car chases, run-away brides, black-tie affairs of joviality (politicians – newscasters) in the midst of shredding war, wrestle-mania, horse races, car shows, jogging, health spas, liposuction (easier than dieting), plastic surgery, golf, tennis extravaganzas, ski lodge retreats, fly fishing in Wyoming, hunting in caged preserves, bingo, bowling, lottery ( poor man’s hope for retirement), casino Mecca’s of obscene materialism, video games, river rafting, hiking, rock climbing, concerts, theater shows, cruise trips, hunting for that trophy head, maniacal hockey games,  stamp collecting, auctions, tented wine parties, dog shows (pedigrees only), TV voyeurism, etc. This we are told is what the multitudes in war ravaged, famine ridden, slave labor, drug saturated, dictatorial, polluted (gas – oil – mining – timber) distant lands are “jealous of”. “My country right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying. It is like saying ‘my mother drunk or sober’”. G.K. Chesterson

As the schools, homes, museums, and farms in Iraq are saturated with depleted uranium used in today’s weapons (half life 4.5 billion years), mosques and homes pulverized, Americans were advised to carry on as usual and ‘go shopping’. TV was my teacher far into the night – it taught me to buy everything within sight.

 If it all becomes too much: the bloated, subsidized, pharmaceutical companies promise an escape into oblivion.  For a price we can relive ourselves of the despair, depression, anxiety, or social shyness of the good life (called McFreedom).  Chemical love comes packaged in pill form, warning that a four hour erection needs medical attention. Symptoms of childhood exuberance, inquisitiveness, creativity, discovery; now labeled hyper-active or learning disabled, can be quickly remedied with a variety of psychotropic drugs to assist in conformity and group think. Experts (hirelings kept on staff of the numerous Public Relations firms) on domestic, military, international, and financial affairs; will program us on how we are to think or interpret nagging concerns we might have on war, Wall Street, mass layoffs, outsourcing, immigration, real estate, voting inconsistencies, protests, identity theft (a chip would solve the bother of ID!), free trade, candidates for moneyed office;   and whom we are to distrust – label – and target as terrorists, malcontents, whistle-blowers, rabble rousers, fringe, conspiratorial (it only takes two for any conspiracy), eco-freaks, persons of interest, traitors, and un-American.

 

Relieved of any need to utilize our cognitive or critical thinking skills (most likely dulled from medications) we only need remember the scripted sound bite or mantra of the day. In local affairs the group will be led to form a ‘consensus’ which is merely a preordained decision. Individual opinions or visionary ideas are quickly quelled with the trouble-maker made to look foolish or ignorant and not a ‘team player’.

Freedom now means “those not with us are against us”. Those not for war are unpatriotic, un-American, evil, and unredeemable sinners!  “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.” Edward R. Murrow

President George W Bush shakes hands with army SFC Thomas Douglas of Fayetteville, N.C., after presenting him with a purple Heart at Walter Read Army Medical Center in Washington , D.C. Friday April 11 2003. Also pictured is Mr Douglas's wide Donna Douglas.

 

Even now we can see famine, pestilence, war, and death riding to and fro over the earth. Bucolic towns, retirement villages, Mardi Gras decadence, and towers of mighty steel all gone in a moment’s time – leaving remnants of people’s lives strewn about, pulverized to ashen dust, or buried in the muck and mire of Muddy Waters. War in the name of ‘liberation’ has shredded multitudes with innocuous bombs called Daisy Cutters (so as not to offend?) War in the name of our nation’s finest, youth of promise, youth of untold gifts; return in flag draped coffins in the dead of night (so as not to offend?) Those surviving bear the mental scars of man’s inhumanity to man (for rich’s men’s objectives) or are irreparably brain damaged, blinded, or limbless – maneuvering through a bureaucratic nightmare (to prove degree of disablement)  developed and approved by those who so gallantly sent them off! Bits of cheap medals and ribbons are awarded for a future of suffering and broken dreams. One can’t pay the electric, fuel, or food bills with purple hearts. Better yet, would be life long exemptions from property taxes, a handicapped assessable home, or free utilities for those totally disabled? Something tangible! How about a world without war and only armies of Peacemakers? Generations of war has only resulted in man using his genius and talents to construct ever more annihilating weaponry and the earth saturated with the blood of the innocents.

 

Should we not give those who’ve served in the halls of Congress comparable rewards if it’s deemed they were about the people’s business? Why should they feign ignorance for the thousands returned from war;  in not having the best of care or adequate compensation? They are fully informed on their own perks, voting themselves yearly raises, and obscene pensions (with yearly cost of living increases)The end of one’s world can vaporize in a moment’s time – it doesn’t need to wait for the final battle! The end comes for many, after the parades and photo ops, seeing yellow ribbons rotted in neighborhood parks. Our befuddled, self-serving legislators, have been less than honest with the people (and those serving).  Why have they not informed the public (instead of playing games) that privatization has taken place in many parts of the military (including Walter Reed) which has created a bureaucratic nightmare of impossible barriers with staff cut to the bare minimum! This is not the military of Korea or WWII. Contract workers, (hired mercenaries) over a hundred thousand of them, according to Congress, are being paid anywhere from $1200.00-$1500.00 per day – wonder what this does for morale? “You go with the Army you have” (Donald Rumsfeld). Small consolation this is, what with BILLIONS spent, and multitudes dead and permanently injured. But then, Rumsfeld couldn’t protect the Defense Department on 911!

Corporations (in all schemes of privatization – public private partnerships) exist to make money for their investors, and in so doing, they can’t seem to get enough sucking up all the wealth out of the hands of the citizens, so that they end up owning all the wealth. While the soldier, risking all, is paid a pittance: the robber barons of banking, oil, gas, no-bid contracts, and the mammoth military industrial complex; are bankrupting the country in their all consuming greed, and final objective of controlling the oil fields in the mid-east. Anyone who thinks this is about purple fingered democracy is not the sharpest tool in the shed. War has always been about conquest and profit.

 

We don’t spend our tax dollars on building reliable levees, schools, highways, or housing or modernizing steel mills, or auto plants (all shipped overseas).  Instead we build 15 -20,000 pound bombs called ‘Daisy Cutters’ that explode above a town – village etc; rupturing organs and eyeballs. Its earth shattering noise can be heard for 15 miles and is reported to be a ‘great’ psychological weapon. The more deadly weapons there are, the more our fears turn us numb.  Depleted uranium used in today’s weapons (“because it cuts through metal like butter”) is poisoning the people – soldiers – land and waters with its radiation (half life of 4.6 billion years).  In the name of ‘liberation’ we are creating a wasteland.

 

I believe our country has been left in a very vulnerable position. Katrina and the devastation of the Gulf coast (still a shambles) should have been a wake up call for Americans; asking themselves just how well is our country prepared for an even greater emergency? The duty of our government is first and foremost to defend the citizens. With our military (National Guard – Reservists) in Iraq/Afghanistan and scattered all over the globe in hundreds of bases (while ours are being closed down) I have to wonder who’s running the store? It obviously isn’t the Foggy Bottom folks (on BREAK again – working only 3 days a week) or those out on the campaign trail 19 months before the next election! We all witnessed how miserably the billions in tax dollars we’ve paid for DEFENSE these past decades failed on 911- with planes allowed to meander all over the country (check the timeline) causing massive death and destruction. If, as we’ve been told, 19 hijackers (not from Iraq though 42% of unread Americans still believe this) with $1.98 box cutters; having trained on crop dusters,  to maneuver computerized jet aircraft, could invade us so easily we’ve got a real problem. I haven’t heard this discussed between the hourly updates on the state of Anna Nicole’s corpse! I’ve not heard in-depth discussions take place on the incompetence of American (not Homeland) Security with its budget of billions – letting multitudes of people (mostly seniors, the chronically ill) die over a five day period (seemingly unable to reach them!). Instead the media blamed the victims – not the Army Corps of Engineers who didn’t follow a mandate issued in 1965 and adjusted in 1979 to a Category 4 hurricane.

 

The folks in New Orleans survived the hurricane – safe in the Superdome. They didn’t survive the levees giving way hours later which drowned the multitudes. They didn’t survive the 100+ degree heat (seniors, chronically ill, babies) for five days while ‘Homeland’ Security sent ice trucks everywhere but to New Orleans!

 

This levee resembles a wall one would build around their local Little League park – not to withstand a category 4-5 hurricane! Better to blame the victims: so that the incompetence, corruption, greed, and indifference on all levels of government; local – state- and federal will not be revealed as being criminally negligent in protecting the citizens.

 Once upon a time it was bragged that ‘even God couldn’t sink the Titanic’. “Pride comes before a fall”. Proverb   The collapse of Rome, even though it was predicted by some, shocked the world. Jerome, in his cave at Bethlehem, wept on receiving the news of the fall of Rome, and in his commentary on Ezekiel, which he was writing when he heard the news said, “Who could have believed that Rome, founded on triumphs over the world, could fall to ruin; and that she, the mother of nations, should also be their grave? The world is rushing to ruin. The glorious city, the capital of the Roman Empire, has been swallowed up in one conflagration.”

 

‘Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair!’ Ozymandias -  Percy Shelley

“The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up these last steps to the mountain pass, and beyond there is a different country. I AM BECOME DEATH - THE DEATH OF WORLDS.” Oppenheimer

 

 

The sky blacked out and his hands were slipping as he reached up to nothing there. Sad, dusty, windows displays of broken mannequins stared unblinking at the inferno of light. Empty streets at twilight – children’s laughter napalmed. A dry stale breeze blowing yellow scraps of newspapers, headlined: “WASN’T THERE NEVER WAS”

 

Spectral red warning lights flash ‘malfunction’, and there’s no one there to fix the machines; to replace the worn out parts, to oil the gears, to replace the cables. A posted sign announces, “Out of Order – Forever”. Missing children play in vacant lots laughing and screaming from somewhere far away.

And there was light. I could see that I was blind - that my vision had been burned out in the super nova flash. My flesh fell away; mountains wore down, generations passed, and the mills dissolved into rusted earth. The sky burned up and the moon fell into the sea. Jesus wept.

 

No-one was there. A shadow figure slips away out of the corner of my eye. There’s the whisper of dry gray October leaves down dusty city streets where the houses remain unoccupied and all the games remain un-played. Never was – nobody lives here – no exit, closed permanently. And there was light – and I could see that I was blind.

 

“Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule”. Nietzsche

 

“Madness is badness of spirit, when one seeks profit from all sources.” Aristotle

 

www.rense.com/Datapages/judithm.htm      

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