A Slightly Different Take

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. Our human rights, and rights as Americans, are inalienable. How to create a basis of peaceful resistance to their loss.

2. They are businessmen. Don't imagine that they are interested in people except as sheep to fleece.

3. The opportunity to redefine human rights and governance may be occuring. Do not allow fear, disaster, and threat to negate this opportunity.



1. Our human rights, and rights as Americans, are inalienable. How to create a basis of peaceful resistance to their loss.

The great founding fathers and incept documents of this country guarantee our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For the first time, an alliance of businessmen and ideators are taking advantage of a lack of checks and balances to a danger from within the government against the people of the country. As it is a slow progression to total dominance, it is protected from violent uprisings until it is firmly in place. People will adapt to 2, 3, 4, or 5 dollar a gallon gasoline and above, as they would have to be willing to risk their property, lifestyles, families, and very lives to do so, and without a distinct, immediate black-and-white threat, will shrug and grumble. The same goes for civil rights. We can live without the right to abortion, and feel really sorry for those who will suffer and for their families, but will not leave the HDTV behind to protest at the lengths required to insure freedom.

How to maintain freedoms that are being eaten? Maintain a positive attitude no matter what. I do not mean denial or delusion, simply recontextualizing the issue. A teacher mentioned that the situation may be critical, but it's not serious. Gather a laugh, and the fearmongers lose ground. As this is an iterative struggle, maintain good feelings, and don't buy into the emotions of Terra Alerts and Bird Flu and the gum disease Gingivitis. Certainly, the problems are real, but if you fall into frothy emotional reaction, you buy into their process. It's just hard to steal from people who are laughing in your face. Fight, and you give them the excuse they want, to release violence, which is all that they understand. Move the fight out of the realms they understand, and you are on the road to self-governance.

If you have a family, spend quality time with them playing games, having fun, talking about what is important to each person, and why, without interrupting, and ask how you can support them in it. The same with friends. Get to know others more deeply, and see yourself in them. Pass out introductions to each house on your block or apartment floor (if you are in an area where you won't be shot for doing so, or especially if this is the case), and get everyone there together for a block party. Exchange phone numbers for security, so if you see a problem, you'll know the name of the neighbor involved and will have less reason to hesitate to get involved. Build community in this way, as it increases friendship and belonging, which conversely decreases isolation and suspicion.

In this day of people using isolation and suspicion and terror to separate people from a feeling of safety and support, you must seek out safety and support as antitoxin. The strength of a group gathering together to face trouble must be sought and built out of whatever is at hand.

Note that some US cities have signed the Kyoto accord in spite of the government's refusal, because it is the right thing to do. This is the path we must take at every level. Know that the government will show increasingly less interest in the safety of its citizens (see slow responses to the Tsunami and especially, Katrina). The antitoxin is to gather together to take care of ourselves and to do what is needed. Disasters bring out the best in people; feed this aspect of humanity at the level of iterative disaster (loss of rights, increase in fear, etc.) by gathering together as possible to face down the problems and to do the right thing. Firefighters and nurses gathered together to combat (and win against) Governor Arnold's plan to privatize all that nice pension money. The entire country understood that they were being sold a line regarding a crisis in social security, and resisted the sales pitch regarding the privatization of all that nice money, for months on end. Bush toured for months on that issue alone, and people resisted until it went away. If enough of us say "no", we win.

This is why they use hotbutton issues to divide us into groups opposing one another. Divide and conquer. If everyone is busy raging about the right for people to mime in public or not, we are incapable of gathering together on the issues that count. "I don't want to stand alongside THAT person, we disagreed on the last issue that is so important to me". They win, especially on all the seeming small issues which creep by without fanfare while everyone is busy arguing about the right to mime or not. I'm being somewhat silly here to remind that these hotbutton issues are truly not a matter of life and death, but are presented as such, to continuously distract from what is important, which is the erosion of freedom while we argue. Laugh off the hotbutton issues, lower their importance, and we are that much more free as a result. (Buying into divide and conquer and fear tactics is a loss of freedom. The political process has been recontextualized into seemingly productive argumentation and fight/flight responses.)

The same goes for any other issue. If the people resist, especially in high spirits, the selfish people will have to use increasingly brazen and obvious strongarm tactics to get what they're after, and that of course will foment further resistance. It would be interesting to see if we could reduce this struggle a good deal towards a black and white perspective, as any group struggles harder and harder to attain the selfish must become more and more obvious, and easy to reject.

Find a way to gather together, to know the strength of citizens' rights, even if it is as simple as saying hello to your neighbors and sharing a six-pack or a pitcher of iced tea, a basketball or chess board. It's our country, and if we're together in this, it will end up remaining our country. A strong knowledge of what we are, and that we deserve the freedoms listed in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence etc., is strength, and what we need to face down thieves. Sounds touchy-feely, but remember: it is our country.




2. They are businessmen. Don't imagine that they are interested in people except as sheep to fleece.

Consider that business at its root exists to maximize profits. This can attract ruthless, non-compassionate people, or worse, selectively breed for them. How cheaply can we bury this toxic waste? Do these girders need to be solid steel? Who cares about the employees, we can sell off the assets of this bankrupt company at a profit (and the employees thought that we were saving the company)...

Katrina brought home to everyone the knowledge that this Bush cares as little for the citizens as his father did. These people are busy with their base, as Bush2 calls it, "the haves and the have mores." If you imagine that you register to them as anything other than financial opportunity, think again. In fact, considering Katrina and the torture going on in secret and public "terror" prisons, I question whether there is some actual enjoyment of this human suffering. Pure conjecture on my part, but if you loathe suffering and torture, you'd act swiftly and decisively to stamp it out, and I just don't see that happening. Certainly there are levels of emotional deprivation which allow for only negative fulfillment due to the loss of any hope of positive reinforcement. You will have to conclude for yourself if this describes anyone currently in office. Bush managed to put many to death as governor of Texas, for example, so measure his compassion and valuation of human life, and his belief in the teachings of the church he attends, in perspective. Know that George Bush has a history of failed businesses, from which he has profited. He appears to have an ability to make money by destroying things. Look at Neil Bush and the Silverado debacle. Taxpayers had to bail it out. See? Little old ladies lose their life savings, AND have to pay taxes to bail out the people who robbed them. Neat, huh? Peoples' lives were ruined, THEY have to pay extra to fix it, and a Bush walks free. I'm sure that they would never repeat such a scam.

Now check out the $400 billion or so that has been moved from the US treasury (taxpayer dollars) into the pockets of the military industrial complex, and also to the pockets of business relations close to those in office (Cheney and Halliburton, Bush family/Bin Laden family and Kellog, Brown, and Root, Bechtel, etc.) These people personally make money from war. Why not have a never-ending war at the taxpayer's expense? Police say follow the motive, and that can be love or money, etc. I say follow the money when it comes to BushCo. It looks to me that Bush1, Herbert Walker Bush, was once head of the CIA, and the CIA armed Saddam and Iran at the same time, Iraq overtly, Iran covertly. Who wins? Whoever wants to be able to march into these oil-rich territories once they're unstable, and "need" US military bases to insure "democracy".

Didn't they say that Iraqi oil would pay for the invasion? With a fox-in-the-henhouse grin? I've heard that they've sold US debt to China, a lot of it. Business seeks to open new markets. Look at the explosion of cell phones etc. in India and China, and the number of persons in these countries (optimizing for those with the money to actually be part of an expanding marketplace). The US begins looking like a cheap labor camp in comparison, if things keep going the way of privatization, outsourcing, downsizing, etc. See if they push for "guest labor" laws regarding illegal aliens and undocumented residents. This could give business owners a reason to further lower wages and benefits, through competition in the labor force and a need to maximize profits.


3. The opportunity to redefine human rights and governance may be occuring. Do not allow fear, disaster, and threat to negate this opportunity.

Or to cause you to lose your skepticism as you act to fulfill your needs.

And be aware of those who offer to champion the redefining. Charisma and likability do not mean that someone is actually trustworthy, especially in a time of crisis. Crisis being the best time for opportunists to plant seeds and restructure the garden to harvest their benefit. The best salemen I know can convince you to buy something that is less than you need, because you end up liking them so much, and feel so warm and fuzzy... This is the opposite of fear tacticts in sales and marketing, which is all that BushCo know. ("Oh no, Iraq!" "Oh no, Social Security!" "Oh no, Iran!".)

I tend to watch people on TV with the volume turned off, to get a better idea of what they are, not what they are selling. This is especially funny with the hair rock bands of the 1980s. Try it with politicians and televangelists. You may need popcorn and a drink; enjoy!

We live in a fear-based society. Read your Alice Miller regarding the charateristics of dictators and know that we're on the way to reducing abuses of power, through reducing abuses of people. A teacher said that we are at the end of the "do what we say or else" mode of learning. This woud mean that we have the opportunity to establish a mode of living based upon individual needs, support, reinforcement, self-expression, and greater understanding of self and others, which increases compassion and reduces the need to abuse ourselves and each other. Overt bullies attack what they're afraid of. They've been abused, and feel less than, out of control, powerless. To feel momentarily better (illusion), they abuse those less powerful. If you hit them back, they might go away (or return with a gang). Covert bullies manipulate, and use weakness in others as opportunity to cause harm, for the same reasons as the overt bully. Same pain, different tactic, typically being merely an advertisement, a scrolling marquee of how they themselves were abused, a literal cry for understanding and help. I see the selfishness and conniving of BushCo as a strong representative of fear-based behaviour, one we probably have to observe in all its glamour, in order to entirely lose any interest in it happening to us again. This "feeling less than/needing to feel more than" ego nonsense needs to end.

We're born with needs to be fulfilled, of being recognized for who we are, accepted, supported, reinforced, and of expressing ourselves, and being able to do all of this for others in turn. A person who is struggling or weak is an opportunity to be of service, to them, and thus to yourself. Imagine a society, or a world, where having a need or a weakness doesn't immediately make you a target, and in response to abuse, yet another abuser.

If you look into the 12-step programs, you will see people of many disparate beliefs working together in spite of difference in order to survive a fatal illness. This is a general model of what the world could be like. People can overcome ideology, preference, belief, and even religion in order to survive. Again, having to work together brings out the best in people. It is an act of spirituality. Action is different than belief (grin).

-May the grace of God and all of God's avatars be with you, whatever you believe or prefer. It has changed my life at the root level, and for the better (and I've needed it, and will always need it, and will always be thankful as I am able to remain mindful of the gifts I have been given and those who have given them. Being in need, and being answered, is a great teacher in itself, praise to those who serve.). And no, that's just me, you don't have to seek God to work together with others for a better future. This is what has worked for me; keep on doing what works for you, and share it if it can benefit others, as they wish to hear it. And no, I don't believe that I'm better than anyone else from having had to turn to God; on the contrary, my weaknesses make me require help to survive, and this in itself is a continuously humbling lesson to one who spent much time overcompensating loudly for said weaknesses. Experience is the great teacher.

Sorry for the weepy stuff, but if the trends currently in place continue, the strength of unity at the grassroots level will become imperative. And a great direction.