You may be wondering why a video from the Vietnam war era was posted. The answer is simple. At the time, the enemy was Nixon. He was bombing Cambodia, not unlike Bush’s bombing of countries with no credible link to “9-11”. Nixon was waging a smear campaign against his opposition with the “fair game” tenacity of a couch-bouncing Scientologist.
And Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the same two men who would embrace torture, criminality and secrecy as co-horts of the Bush administration, would have the dubious distinction of working as key members of the two most rightfully detested presidents in American history: Richard Nixon and G.W. Bush. The more things change, the more things stay the same. The title of Lennon video is “War is Over” and it was made when Vietnam was still raging. The juxtaposition is Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, also made before the was over, and the latter was a speech wherein he declares an end to a war that is still raging 6 years later.
Because a war on terror is as hopeless as a war on fear, it cannot be won until science gives us the dubious super-ability to fear nothing at all. All of which is to say, Cheney and Rumsfeld are 0 and 2 in terms of victories. They failed in Vietnam and they failed in their cynical war on terror, which was never meant to be won. It was to last indefinitely, until Americans, through fear, gave up all the rights protecting them from naked fascism. To anyone but the most naive, this should be obvious. But then again, there are people whose sole insight on international politics and political intrigues is defined by the fact they watch “24”, the latter show given the documentary reverence of a Ken Burns production.
I watched the John Lennon video and was struck by the unsettling irony. The hope in the eyes of the black children singing literally brought me to tears. These weren’t nostalgic tears, these were the tears of a rage unspoken, a cathartic manifestation of a final and irrevocable conviction that without truth and transparency there is no chance of peaceful revolution in America. So I wept not for myself, but for our country, because if you recall the prescient admonition of President John F. Kennedy: “those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable” then you will realize history always bears this out, and we will be no exception if done for whatever reason, be it political chess moves or a tacit approval of an injustice you once condemned.
But let it be said in my defense I was alone. I didn’t call my friends so they could see the snot run down my nose, nor videotape it to show an audience of millions how patriotic I am. Nobody should give a rats ass how patriotic I am. You should, however, care about what patriotism means to you. You can’t make others more patriotic, but you can make yourself more patriotic.
And all I mean by patriotic is your willingness to personally read, and fully comprehend the constitution, or at least the first ten amendments we know as the Bill of Rights, that you may defend your rights to the best of your abilities. As to the content therein, there will be attempts to mislead you from the left, right and center. Some of that deception will be deliberate, some of it blind zealotry its speakers truly believe.
When your leaders, media , or peers refuse to even read the Constitution, then the duty falls to you. If your pen is mightier than the sword, you are obliged write in its defense. If your oratory can lead people to greatness, lead them to truth.
If you equate violence, fear, hatred and xenophobia with patriotism, you have missed the point completely and have become a tool for any traitors oppressing you.
The point is that without truth and transparency there is no hope for peaceful revolution, because nothing, absolutely nothing can be built on the foundation of mutual distrust; and only violent revolution will emerge. It will create an indefinite absence of liberties in the short-term, and perhaps a permanent one in the long term, all of which could have been easily avoided.
It is true in Iran, it is true here: without truth and transparency there is no chance of peaceful revolution.
A wronged people is not obligated to let an oppressor set the time-table for their redress and transparency. If this be so, there will be no redress. A wronged people is not obligated to apologize for questioning leaders on promises broken, because this falls under the redress of truth. If you cannot keep a promise, don’t make them.
[pullquote]These were the tears of a rage unspoken, a cathartic manifestation of a final and irrevocable conviction that without truth and transparency there is no chance of peaceful revolution in America. So I wept not for myself, but for our country, because if you recall the prescient admonition of President John F. Kennedy: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”[/pullquote]In Iran, the transparency they seek is in regards to whether or not there was electoral fraud.After watching the Lennon video, I wondered where they are now, because they would be President Obama’s age. A part of me wanted to believe that most if not all of them would grown in a new America they could be proud of, one that was a shining beacon of liberty and compassion, of wisdom and leadership.
And I remembered what the very same people who worked with Nixon in that video had given us now now: a legacy of 3rd world torture and militant unilateralism.
Remember New Orleans? When Rumsfeld couldn’t be bothered to send troops to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina? How many more Americans died because of that arrogance?
So I posted the video because war wasn’t over. One was, but the cruelest one, involving the same two men and instigators tutored under Nixon, was now being waged, and continued indefinitely.
That Barack Obama is now president of the United States is proof that at least some hope in the eyes of these children was not in vain. Still, there is the issue of being lukewarm, and why it is a guarantee that you’ll be spat out.