I don’t think (and this could be an erroneous belief on my part) that the majority of Americans often cross international borders other than Canada or Mexico; live in or visit places where there are bullet holes in building walls and shell craters in vacant lots; or have ever seen real people, up close, in line for food and water to survive. This isn’t meant as an excuse for ignorance, but perhaps just an observation that human beings are very, very good at ignoring what isn’t thrust upon them.

Sometimes I have nightmares about trying to raise and protect my four-year-old girl in a war zone or a refugee camp or even a post-apocalyptic scenario. Some of those dreams wake me up sweating or crying; then I go into her room, to watch her sleep in a warm house with a full pantry in a wealthy suburb, and I can breathe again. But all over the world women just like me, except for an accident of birth or circumstance, don’t get to wake up to a different reality.

And some people can’t seem to understand the desperation that feeds terrorism.

I live in a small town in Kansas and our primary impact on the rest of the world is that we make lots of pet food. But by god, we are scared to death of them tarists!

Oh, its so lovely to be home on the range, where the nuts and the right-wing whacks play! Where seldom is heard a truly sane word, and the people love Dickie all day.

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavouring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest—his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellowcitizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not—he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country. Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labours, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal Concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances—what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits. After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters can not penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are
constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

They are called special-interests (the men behind the transparent curtain that create all the news, but whom you never see on MSM newscasts or their repetitions in the echo-chamber) and they have destroyed our government’s ability to do anything rational by putting their interests first and the public good last. They own our so-called representatives and administrators and write the laws and rules which the reps dutifully pass and recite to the public with the thinnest veneer of “good-doing”.

A very small and hardly significant example this week (not to mention the bazillions being transferred to the “too-big-fail” private hands from the public treasury) is that every single body, from the president on down and throughout the media, has referred to the “Christmas bloomer-bomber incident” as an attempt on “Northwest flight ump-ti-ump” when, in fact, Northwest has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Airlines since March, all of its aircraft have been repainted to wear the Delta logo (don’t believe your eyes when they show you a picture of the plane wearing a Delta logo, believe what we are telling you – it was a Northwest flight), all of its bonus-mileage accounts have been converted to Delta-miles some months back, and, this month, the merger is to get final FAA/congressional approval. Now why (in my best conspiratorial tone) would anyone want to associate this colossal cluster-f***-up with Northwest? Could it be (in my best imitation of the Church-lady) that Northwest has almost completely disappeared… and will completely disappear,,, within a matter of weeks and Delta doesn’t want all this dirt on it’s brand name? – even though its deafening PR pitch is that it is now the world’s largest airline (thanks to the mindless deregulation of a privatized natural monopoly) and the only U.S. carrier to service not only Europe, but Africa (Northwest’s contribution to the merger) as well. Repeat after me – Northwest bad, Delta good. I know so because I saw it on TV – between ads for male-enhancement pills and clairvoyants.

Let’s have an American Jihad!

This post was mentioned on Twitter by defconqueso: Fresh from @scholars_rogues: A nation of five-year-olds http://bit.ly/5NeYM0 #p2…

Indeed, some mistakes are more easily avoided if the organ retains flexibility.

But that’s part of the reason i didn’t scimp it. I know the wrath of angered five-year-olds…it’s nothing to to fool around with. One can be handled; it’s when they come at you in packs.

Edit: looks like the scrimp fairy has struck again.

America runs on fear, and the politicians use that fear adeptly.

As a people, we’re scared of our own shadows.