Djelloul Marbrook

In the 19th Century we had a destiny, to clear and hold everything we could by any stretch call the US of A. There were beneficiaries and casualties. But what is our destiny now? The care and feeding of fat cats?

If we’re going to have a respectable destiny we need a fearsome dedication to the truth, no matter how ugly it is. We need to stop cottoning to seductive lies. It’s all very well to blame the liars for invading Iraq, but we know we smelled their lies.

It’s up to us, but the obstacles are formidable:

—a Fourth Estate disguising its greed by entertaining us to death instead of informing us to thrive;
—a culture obsessed with winning, races, ratings, polls, sales, it doesn’t matter as long as there’s a winner;
—transference of our respect for ourselves and each other to worship of feckless celebrity;
—simpleminded fundamentalism that reduces civil discourse to fiercely held stupidities;
—the absurdity that we can have a just and compassionate society without equitable and progressive taxation;
—the subversion of the republic by corporate imperialists willing to sacrifice our sons and daughters for profits but unwilling to pay their fair share of taxes;
—an election system that discourages our best people from seeking office and confuses fund-raising with competence and integrity;
—the smarmy argument, promoted by the Clintons and Bushes, among others, that what’s good for our mega-corporations is good for the nation; and, last but not least,
—refusal to see that Israel’s safety may well depend on our impaired ability to distinguish our national interests from Israel’s.

Truth oftens hurts like hell, but we have never been a cowardly people. Our bitterest enemies would concede that. We have to dump politicians and poobahs who tell us what we want to hear. We have to register the impulses of our shit detectors. We have to live with what we know and not dope ourselves with lies.

(Note: Ordinarily I would offer all sorts of web links to enhance such a complex subject, but when you search the web for these issues you are swamped by ideological distortions, and so I have chosen to let my bare thoughts stand alone).