Article: Shining Light into the Abyss

Nothing more clearly delineates the contrast between Bush and Chavez than their divergent social policies. Bush consistently chooses profits over people; Chavez places people above profits. Thus, in my view, George Bush is not worthy to carry Hugo Chavez's shoes.

Socialist Venezuela does not ransack its treasury or human capital on invading and occupying foreign nations in the service of empire. Conversely, plutocratic America sends its youth to serve as canon fodder for empire. Venezuela is not involved in the invasion of sovereign nations in order to pilfer their resources. As a result of a more humane social policy, Venezuela has the financial resources to provide health care to every citizen, and higher education to all who seek it. What does this say about our own national priorities? Whose interest do they serve?

Even the most florid language cannot conceal the obvious contempt the Bush cabal has for the poor, or the world's working class people. All rhetoric aside, their actions, as well as their inactions, speak loud and clear about whose interest they are protecting.

America has a lot to answer for. Despite the willful perversion of language used to conceal unpopular truth, the soul of a nation is revealed not by what it says, but by what it does. We are not the people we purport to be. Our actions, our policies, do not portray a democratic republic concerned with human welfare, the common good. They depict the will of self-interested plutocrats who will gleefully kill every one of us in order to expand their power and increase their personal wealth. They do not care about us. To them, we are expendable servants who exist to do their evil bidding.

Occasionally events occur that reveal transitory glimpses of painful truths that are ordinarily kept hidden from public view, as when lightning strikes in darkness and reveals the contours of a landscape. Hurricane Katrina was such an event. As that powerful storm wrecked havoc upon the Gulf Coast, the world saw with absolute clarity who this government serves. Unvarnished truth of this kind is rarely a pretty sight. Yet we must see it and recognize it for all that it is.

Because we have eyes does not guarantee that we can see the truth that lies before us. Vision requires substantially more than eyes""it requires heart and soul and conscience. Our eyes may be open, yet we do not see or comprehend the travesty that unfolds before us, the hoax that is being perpetrated against us by those in power. Let us open our hearts and our minds and admit the light of truth that much of the world already knows. Let us see, for the first time, perhaps, who we really are. We must then reconcile that vision with our own conscience.

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