America, values, relationships and contradictions

Take a friend for example, we see this friend cheating other people, doing things that just are not right. This friend is quick to lie, and when confronted, their story always changes. They react in hostile terms to any criticism or suggestions that you might have. They are also very quick to tell us they are our friend and they would never be deceptive with us, which is deceptive.

Or the professional liar – they say one thing and do another. They compound a lie with more lies. When they are confronted, they tell even more lies. They also want you to believe that they always tell us the truth and they would never to anything to hurt us, which is a lie.

How do we handle these situations? We start putting distance between them and us. Suddenly we are too busy to make plans with them, etc. We might let the relationship die a slow death. Or we could confront the person straight on and tell them of our growing self displeasure over compromised values, and the relationship is terminated.

We must live according to our values and principles – we owe that to ourselves.

What do we do if the arrogant, unashamed, crass culprit is our own country? What to do when you see your country cheat its own people, flagrantly dishonest in its dealings with other countries and people, and makes half hearted attempts to cover the festering corrupted soul within?

What to do when your country wrongfully attaches your name as one of the legions who endorse these bewildering and repulsive actions? Do you face the gut wrenching wraith of a combative and consuming entity, called America, which now labels you as an enemy if you disagree with it? Do you sit in silence and say nothing?

Do you wrongfully believe that your voice or your vote is your way of being heard? Not with standing you've been lied to and lied to.

My vote in this election will not matter, no matter who I vote for, be it Kerry, Nader or Bush. I already know my vote has already been tallied on the side of Bush without my consent. All of Ohio's votes have been promised to Bush and that can't be done without illegal actions on the part of the election committee in that state or gracious thanks from the promisee. There is nothing I can do about that either. Why should I waste my time if the person, I would not vote for, is already decidedly reelected and November is nothing more than a false face facade?

Another instance - 89% of America who responded to polls said: “Keep assault weapons off the streets and keep the ban”. Did our voice matter? I can't even get Senator Norm Coleman to answer 5 simple questions about the matter. Obviously the greater majority of America and me have absolutely no say in what happens anymore. Not even in our own lives.

What then does the world make of all of this? Simple answer to a complex question – the world sees an aggressive, belligerent nation dedicated to war, the art of war, and the weapons of war. Be it military or private citizen – it must be a public prostrate before Mars, the god of war.

They see an election so fraught with compromise, double dealings and graft. A man who will stoop to even lower levels to insure that he, will be, “the man who is king of the world”.

The world sees a country that is so tainted that the current administration has done every thing possible to create a false call to conduct a protracted war of expansionism – and all of the reasons are falsehoods. When the world spoke and said “No War”, this country flipped them the finger and started filling the body bags while self- righteously demanding the world stand down because we are going in.

The world sees a country demand that the world abides by the UN and the Geneva Convention, while we so arrogantly deify both. We sit in the hallowed halls demanding country after country be handed over to us, to be laid low, much as Isaac/Ishmael was laid on the altar of sacrifice. At least God took a moment to save Isaac, or Ishmael, depending on your persuasion.

The world sees a Secretary of State who calls the White House troika “F**** Crazies”, mean while sits in the UN with teeth and talons bared, and with a clenched white knuckled fist, all but says: “We will bury you”.

The world sees a country led by a man who has been convicted of war crimes, steam rolling America over the dead and the living in self edification on what he believes he hears, echoing in the clogged gears, locked in the windmills of his mind, from God.

The world sees a nuclear nation that will tolerate no middle ground, or compromise, with the larger community of man. To mold a world in its image with all of its faults and to be like God from our own self-deluded, bloated, and false face perspective. To take paradise and put up a parking lot is our overtly apparent goal.

The world sees a country led by a man who demands his own youth to do, to do what he himself used stealth, manipulation, and corruption to slither around and avoid.

There are people in this country who have blinded themselves and refuse to see through the transparent veil. They speak in relative words, in so many accolades, that this country is the greatest in the world – then stutter when asked, in relationship to what. Then like a campaign shouting Texas diplomat, they then recite from rote memory, one country after another – this is what they have been programmed to say from the tender young age of 5. They have all these wonderful little comparisons about countries they know nothing of – only what they were told to believe. I was 5, many years ago, and I believed everything I was told. The study of history has a way of crumbling, and unmasking, long standing beliefs.

To those who feel blithely and ignorantly happy in utterly fulfilled meanings of their lives on terra firma Americana - I am very happy for them. I too would like to be oblivious to reality. I too would like to sincerely believe that my vote, my opinion, mattered. I do so want to live in the America I was told about when I was 5 – but tearing away the carefully sewn velvet covering of the beast has long since broken into millions of shards those yesteryears of harmonious idealizations. The all American Roy Rogers was nothing more than a fictional television show.

The Americans have this nice saying if you don't love America, then leave. To them, I reply: I pay my taxes; I've served this country – 12 years worth. I have paid my dues and earned my right to live here. I don't like what my country is doing. I refuse to listen to the falsetto choir of propaganda. Or read the words of increasingly white washed versions of history meant to deflect young minds away from what this country has really done.

I see so much squandered potential for America to be the country it thinks it is. Potential that will never come to be.

I now see drug companies coming under disturbing scrutiny. Kids have become suicidal while taking their drugs, some kids who are no longer with us – only to find out the drug companies knew this would happen, but profitability meant more. I know a kid who was taking this medication and he was foul mouthed, hostile, aggressive, and facing some not so easy to get rid of assault charges. He has been tried as an adult because of his age, and his record will follow him forever. I hope some share holder keeps this in mind when they cash their dividend check.

We also downplay and overlook the wonderful things about some Americans. The ones who go to other countries, by virtue of Peace Corp style groups, and try to make a contribution to those less fortunate. The people who rush to volunteer and give help in emergencies, such as in the event of floods, here in America. I know because I have worked the dikes with hundreds trying to keep the flood waters at bay. The lawyers who take pro bono cases because they know the person is innocent. The USAF/aux, who freely give of their time, to conduct search and rescue missions in some of the most miserable conditions. And of the Coast Guard/aux, who patrol the water ways in this country. Ever ready to help and assist stranded boaters, and respond to emergencies, often at their own peril. We don't hear much about them do we? We are also even less willing to give them credit due.

We slash and burn the whistle blowers who stand up and say “This is wrong”. Karen Silkwood paid the ultimate price for proving that something was very, very wrong – missing and unaccounted for weapons grade plutonium is nothing to sweep under the carpet and pretend did not happen. The young soldier who blew the whistle on the Iraq prisoner abuse has to live in protective custody for the remainder of his life because of the seething malignant hatred, and direct death threats sent to him, and his family, by the hundreds, by Americans who would rather kill than see our misdeeds uncovered. And to a lesser known, but equal, death threats sent to Americans who are vocally opposed to insanely liberalized gun laws that are arming not only our fathers and mothers, but school children as well. Death threats sent to Americans, by the Americans who honor and revere the names Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.

This is the real America that we parade before a world and this is the America we want to have.

We so want to be the Americans of the old western dime store novels too, forgetting that those were only novels. We want to all be John Waynes' with six shooters hanging from our hips and ready for the next big one. We inappropriately think we are tough, brave, and forthright.

You know, we have never once apologized to the black community for the 'necktie parties' we robbed their youth of, or the Jim Crow Laws, or when was the last time we publicly said to Rosa Parks: “Thank you”? I guess we can leave brave and forthright out of all of this.

Of all the heroes of the last 50 years, Rosa Parks is one tall figure. She stood up for what was right and proper. She stood up for respect. She stood up for the alleged American value system that was penned when it was written All Men Are Created Equal. But we called her N****er. While we so coyly muttered, and attached, the words of Adolph Hitler: “sub human”.

I don't understand, America, why we tolerate and enable Corporatocracy, Crony capitalism, and Kleptocracy. The very forms of government our founding fathers did not want us to have. Or maybe I've lost the point because our founding fathers also kept slavery as a government sanctioned wrong against a people, against human rights, and against humanity. Everything that we said we were for, but showed a world what we were in reality, which is the dichotomy we slap on the world, at the point of a gun barrel, so that the world has to to try and reconcile the dreck laced mish mosh of contradictions we blather.

America is now being judged by her deeds, for its words are no longer trusted in the world.

Yes, we do hand out billions of dollars – to countries that want no part of us. We are trying to buy friends. We have never looked into where the money went to after we so freely gave. Where did Saddam get the money for all those palaces? The mujahadeen, who took untold amounts from us, are now our enemies, killing our soldiers with the weapons they bought with the gift certificates we lavished on them. We will never recapture the millions we slipped to Marcos so he could better his people's world, the money was well spent on his creature comforts while he was president for life. And on and on and on.

Hand outs are great if you have the money to do it, which is something we don't have. We dole out and a world sees our own poverty, homeless people, our graft and letter of marque style profiteering at the expense of our own citizens, our own sons and daughters, and our elderly.

In the spirit of a generous America, we trash American workers and ship their jobs overseas. One famous tennis shoe company has hired workers off shore to make their tennis shoes. We pay them pennies for a 40 hour work week, and the glue they are using is causing widespread and an aggressive form of lung cancer. With a price tag of well over $100.00 per pair back here in the states, I can't afford to buy them.

We have tax havens, we have tax shelters, and we hand out so much money, we can't even afford to hire additional Internal Revenue Service people to help stop the growing tax cheating which is now up to 311 billion dollars per year.

The tax cut I, and millions of Americans, was promised is never going to happen because we are not in the upper 1% of this country – so where is the offset tax burden going to fall?

Yes, we do want to stop human rights violations in the world, but our efforts, unfortunately, start at our borders working outwards with hissing, belecos bravado. With all the bumblings of a aimlessly backwards Dudley Doright, we are very pleased with lashing out the stern admonishments: “Do as I say, not as I do for if you do as I do, this means war”. All the while we tell our lessor Christmas revelers, those whose only protection from the elements is a cardboard box in some alley, to stay out of sight least they expurgate the festive season for the rest of us.
 
Yes, we are very big at giving to other countries. When it comes to a charity here at home, the first thing we demand is a receipt for twice the value of what we gave so we can take it off our income taxes.

We are very big on telling countries how to beef up their educational systems. In fact, we almost demand it. What education would be complete without studying the English language so that they can understand what we demand of them? But we dumb down our own high schools to below 6th grade level, cut school funding because the money is not there, and when in doubt, close a few schools. Teacher salaries are not a big priority either. And we are completely for the enforcement of student privacy, which worked quite well at Columbine High School because there were no metal detectors installed.

America has given from her heart to countries less fortunate – such as the poisonous and tainted baby formula – the ultimate in after the fact birth control, and genetically altered grain that our own FDA refuses to allow on US markets.

America was built on small free enterprise and we want to share that success with every one we can. A good start up business is computer recycling – no wonder some of the nastiest chemical compounds, found only in computers, are showing up in Chinese ground water. We've send them loads and load of computers for recycling which are piling up along the banks of their rivers.

Permit me to do some side by side comparisons. Germany, through cleverly crafted vote counting, elected Adolph Hitler. America through the same means has elected, and reelected, George Bush. Germany enacted the Nuremburg Laws to keep “unter mesch” under control. The US had enacted Jim Crow laws to keep "them" under control. Hitler used 'enemies of the Reich to sway, control, and influence the population. America uses 'threat of terrorists' to sway, control, and influence the population. German citizens loudly proclaimed Germany was the greatest country in the world. Americans loudly proclaim America is the greatest country in the world. Hitler was quick to lash out at his critics. America has publicly shredded its critics. Hitler openly defied the League of Nations. American has openly defied the UN. Germany painted a picture of countries proud to be annexed into Germany. America goes into countries and paints a picture of liberty loving people proud of their alliance with the US. Hitler enacted laws that subverted civil rights. Bush enacted the Anti-Terror act and the Patriot act (the former reads almost word for word in context as Hitler's).

It might be better, before we want to jump up and shout trying to convince everyone how great we are – we should first ask, in relationship to what.

Michael Berglin