Reality Versus Your Comforting Illusions

But it doesn’t stop at what you read, what you do, or what you say. In an Associated Press article posted by Huffingtonpost.com, Lara Jakes Jordan reports that the Justice Dept is considering racial profiling in the name of terror prevention. Jordan reports that, “The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.” The article goes on to state, “Critics say the presumption of innocence is lost in the proposal. The FBI will be allowed to begin investigations simply "by assuming that everyone's a suspect, and then you weed out the innocent," said Caroline Fredrickson of the American Civil Liberties Union”

And in typical Bush regime fashion: saying one thing and doing the opposite, the Jordan article points out, “President Bush also has condemned racial profiling as "wrong in America" and in a December 2001 interview had harsh words for an airline that refused to let one of his Secret Service agents board a commercial flight. The agent was Arab-American. "If he was treated that way because of his ethnicity, that will make me madder than heck," Bush said.” But as the article continues: “Immediately after 9/11, hundreds of Muslims and Arabs were detained, deported and monitored as the government urgently sought information that could prevent another attack. Despite efforts to repair and nurture relationships with those groups, Muslim- and Arab-Americans still complain of being singled out by federal security practices.” The Jordan article ends by asking the obvious question: what about the “white terrorists” like Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh?

Is the Bush regime’s next “logical” step after racial profiling of supposed terrorists to re-create a program right out of America’s own shameful history: the Japanese American internment camps? And how will the Bush regime spin this idea to the American people, by calling these camps “Freedom Facilities”? The Bush regime’s plan for America and the world are much more ominous than just the few examples given here, but these examples alone should, at the very least, leave any thinking person angry and annoyed

Chris Hedges, in summing up his keynote address said, “Hope, St. Augustine wrote, has two beautiful daughters. They are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to see they do not remain the way they are. We stand at the verge of a massive economic dislocation, one forcing millions of families from their homes and into severe financial distress, one that threatens to rend the fabric of our society. We are waging a war that devours lives and capital, and that cannot ultimately be won. We are told we need to give up our rights to be safe, to be protected. In short, we are made afraid. We are told to hand over all that is best about our nation to those like George Bush and Dick Cheney, who seek to destroy our nation. A state of fear only engenders cruelty -- cruelty, fear, insanity, and then paralysis. In the center of Dante's circle, the damned remained motionless. If we do not become angry, if we do not muster within us the courage, indeed the militancy, to challenge those in the Democratic and Republican parties who herd us toward the corporate state, we will have squandered our courage and our integrity when we need it most.”

It’s a sad fact that the vast majority of Americans, by doing nothing to challenge their reality in any significant way, are destined to write the story of their own ruin. They are indeed creating their own reality by virtue of their own inaction, by their refusal to see the darkness and chaos that reigns right outside their little world of comforting illusions.

The time is short and action now is vital. There are many who are waking up to the fact that they, as individuals, have a responsibility to speak out against what is happening, to resist the Bush agenda, to work to discredit the actions of the Bush regime, to lay bare its lies, crimes and offenses, and do this loudly and publicly. It is time to step outside our comfort zones, to take real responsibility for our future beyond voting, beyond polls, beyond commenting online, and beyond just complaining, and work together to heal what has been broken and to create a sustainable livable future for humanity. As it says in “The Call” of World Can’t Wait: This will not be easy.

But what other choice do we have? The days of lives lived in illusion are numbered – at some point soon all our illusions will be shattered by the reality of where we have allowed ourselves to be led if we do not earnestly and wholeheartedly begin the necessary work to re-make society to fit what humanity needs, not what the corrupt and murderous corporations and governments are forcing upon it.

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