9/11 Truth Tucson on Democracy Now!

To Young Americans (On The Occasion of Barack Obama's Speech to America's Young People)

To Young Americans (On The Occasion of Barack Obama's Speech to America's Young People)

Enfant Terribles, their bodies built like prison cells
Layer upon layer like termite's nests
Into reasonable, responsible, important,
Big cogs with shiny teeth running like clockwork
Built by the inexhaustible kernel deep inside, now fatally radioactive
Waning; saddled in that monstrous machine.

Standing,
The clanking adult in front of the microphone
Spinning for our own good the invisible safety net
That binds millions in
With millions more autonomous shed cicada skins
Cascading forth from their heads
Falling invisibly from their words
In swarming, spreading hordes
Each trailing a dark thread of
Sickly sweet ethereal silk

Each borne by carrier wave--
Dead shells of iron clad sentiments
Forged in the depths of grandiose self-delusion
By the galvanized clanking black knight
Naturally emulating an unmanifestible truth
That should be intimated to us by real adults.

Scrambling, buzzing through listening ears
They search of any purchase in gray matter
A thrill for self-abuse, an unsinkable Titanic self-identity
A hidden, unwavering, yet popular selfish demand
The spark of wanting to believe in cruel comforting illusions
The belief in a life lived under a mask of fun-loving deception
As the human condition
Any and more, but something firmly rooted
In which to bury their anchored threads
And this done, like stinging bees, they die.

And thus, the threads take hold
Surprisingly, not tenuous so that years later
The threads lie stretched taut across the world
By those years of blind, desperate obedience
For the lost, deafened listeners
Years of material consolation
The years of the pupating cicada.

A form finally rises off the ground
Composed of these stakes and lines;
These people and word-borne silken threads
Taking shape as the cylindrical central nexus
Rises eerily, as if by some malevolent actor
Whose timing seems fitting, obvious
Like the lights dimming before a concert
Popularly unhindered, it slowly turns
As though it were an old record player
Playing a warped recording of a 1920s calliope
In an echo chamber.

So does the ethereal tent rise, turning
Accelerating, thrilling, morbid, groaning under its weight
Its rigidity increasing from centrifugal force
The ancient merry-go-round of war culture
Thriving in the nuclear age
Far from the battlefield, though ever closer
People's lives in the merry-go-round
Fly apart all over the Earth.

With the grace of God will there be
In those days of the wrecked abandoned fair ground
Carnival food wrappers in clouds of dust
The old refrain, resonating in the firmament
With crystal clarity to the lost radioactive people:
You gotta walk that lonesome valley
You gotta walk it by yourself
Nobody else can walk it for you
You gotta walk it by yourself.

Deluge of Diluted Delusion

I like the idea of universal health insurance funded from tax money as elucidated by Ralph Nader. I also like the idea of unilateral, rapid nuclear disarmament as elucidated by Daniel Ellsberg. But when I get emails from big political emailing lists on just these topics, there is something strange about it. I got an email about President Obama's health reform initiative--which includes watered down sort-of-universal health insurance funded by tax money--from David Axlerod. And I got an email about a strategically savvy-worded, glossy Nuclear disarmament petition signed by Zbignew Brzezenski and Philip Zelikow. David Axlerod is a giant media consultant millionaire who was Barack Obama's campaign manager. And Zbignew Brzezneski is a longtime spooky "national security advisor" to Democrat regimes who rallied the fundamentalist jihadists in the 80s and has been playing at international power politics for the last twenty years while Philip Zelikow has failed so completely as to be suspicious as executive director of the 9/11 commission.

Maybe this is a good lesson for the times of Obama, as we all have to learn to cope. Great ideas on national direction, when pulled down from those heroes who have had the courage to act on a national and personal concern based on what they felt was right--like Daniel Ellsberg and Ralph Nader--are eventually transmitted to the wheels of power "as it has developed." However, the wheels of power have developed in a terrible, deceitful and corrupt way. When this happens, the powerful "as it has developed" through their support of these ideas detract from the power and vision of these good ideas because they are dragged down by the anchor of the means they used to establish themselves at the wheel.

There is something that makes me hesitate to sign in support anything that Philip Zelikow has signed in support. I think this is because I wonder how someone tasked with such a monumental and important position ignored the obvious nature of the events of September 11th, 2001--and how subsequently botching the investigation he can now sign on in support of a nuclear disarmament petition. This seems to say: yes, we should disarm our nukes, and no we should not seriously investigate an event that killed three thousand or more Americans and traumatized millions still today. Similarly, I wonder how the campaign manager for President Obama--who brought health industry C.E.Os to meet in his first healthcare initiative's public hearings and stifled any "single payer" consideration for health care reform--can now send me emails urging support for "healthcare reform."

Obama to Americans: "Take the Blue Pill"

He finally said it--given the choice between the red pill and the blue pill Obama said in his health care reform press conference:
"If there's a blue pill and a red pill and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that's going to make you well?"

And don't go thinking that his point was about medication or health plan costs, we heard it loud and clear!

The Joke's On Us

Since Nancy Pelosi's comments about health care reform that "In our caucus, over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it's not going to be a single payer" one should wonder how it is that a popular option for a national health care system was simply eliminated by people elected supposedly to serve the populace.





But, consider Joe Biden's comments last year that "There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, 'Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don't know about that decision'," Biden continued. "Because if you think the decision is sound when they're made, which I believe you will when they're made, they're not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they're popular, they're probably not sound."





Consider also Barack Obama's laughter at the notion that bailing out the auto makers with public money is enormously unpopular--18% approve according to Steve Croft, who conducted the interview. These three most powerful of Democrats in Washington each indicate their contempt for even consideration and inclusion of the will of the public into policy, so who are they representing?

So help US God...

Do you feel it too? The inaugural hope and excitement that is just too sugary, too numbing and vague? It has a tinge of menace to it. Why are we so happy about this? Are we actually turning the page? Are we fixing our mistakes? Are we satisfied that this election was truly honorable and on-topic? Are we satisfied with mild reforms? Are we really self confident in our national direction? Are we all satisfied that we understand 9/11? Are we voting against war, voting for the starvation diet of the military, voting for an end to maniacal global violence in our name? Are we nonplussed about much of Bush's war continuing? Are we safe voting for the lesser of two evils? Are we paying attention? Are we behind expanding a war in the middle east? Are we being listened to? Are we ready for long overdue national soul searching?

My Plan for Change

I posted this to the Obama transition team that was looking for people's visions for America. Surprisingly, I have yet to get a call from Mr. Obama about my ideas. Maybe after getting my post on his blackberry in the middle of the night and reading it several times shouting "Eureka!" at the end, he is too busy implementing it as we speak!

For too long the USA has been threatening and carrying out violence on the world through economic policies, military policies, and lifestyle choices that treat the world as a giant marketplace and seek to dominate the globe for supposed noble reasons of democracy, prosperity, and opportunity. It is time for this to stop. The United States should close its 700+ military bases worldwide, unilaterally disarm its nuclear weapons, radically cut defense spending, stop being the number one worldwide provider of arms to the world, stop the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, voluntarily clean up depleted uranium, pay, forgive, or renegotiate war reparations to Vietnam and other countries with an acknowledgement of aspects of our nation's misguided, oppressive and violent legacy. Then, ensure that no government money goes to covert war making through CIA or other programs. Our new national defense will be non-violent.

In this vein, international trade deals like NAFTA and corporate agreements with US companies must come under radical review in light of a new initiative that the US must launch with the UN, WTO and World Bank--to remake the crashing global economy into one that works for local areas so that the web of international goods shipment contributing to global warming and social unrest can be shut down. This would include land reform, farming initiatives, and ensuring local food and basic commodities. The aim is to disentangle the United States from the heights of the global economy as we see it today, with a responsibility to the rest of the world to coordinate this initiative with them for the planet's benefit. Decentralized energy like photovoltaics and wind power must be emphasized in this effort. The message is: we can no longer live on this planet like America has encouraged for the past 60 years, and must work together to change this urgently. Once again, we must face and acknowledge the aspects of the US's recent history that have encouraged this terrible and self-destructive economic behavior.

The average American must be a part of this project--no longer can we have unlimited cheap gasoline and cheap consumer goods. The new local economics will be a hard adjustment for some, but with luck, the social fabric that has torn over the past decades under our current decadence and hubris will on the whole provide people with quieter, slower, more humble, and far more satisfying lives. Making this a national priority would help those struggling with these issues feel part of something bigger and allow the propagation of wonderful alternative energy techniques and local businesses and would also allow a new entrepreneurship based on these global priorities to flourish.

This shift would bring us closer to Thomas Jefferson's ideal of America than we ever have been--a nation of fiercely independent farmers and small businessmen. We have no more time to lose, we must reverse the trajectory we have been on up to this point. I think that there will be significant resistance to this from the entrenched powerful. But, I believe that the American people would love to take part in such a daring and honest national direction. With good leadership, people would, I think, recognize the neccessity of these changes and would find meaning in the attempt, even if it should fail. These are not radical changes, though they may seem so to some. They are simply a long overdue maturing of the United States from the misspent and violent adolescence into a necessary recession, an exile based on self reflection and a spiritual reform from sins of the past.