I Am a Dissident
By Timothy V. Gatto
I am a dissident. This term allows my government to ignore
my opinions and also enables the rest of America to discount any or all of my
opinions. I am also a "conspiracy theorist", because I believe that more than
one person in my government are colluding together in order to dupe the
American people to believe things that are not true. Therefore, I am of no
consequence. Anything I say can be attributed to the "lunatic fringe". I have
been framed, that is, I have been relegated to the sidelines of any debate of
consequence. I have been neatly packaged and categorized so that my opinions
have no relevance.
I should be outraged, but the truth is such, that I consider my labeling to be a badge of honor. To be considered otherwise would brand me as a participant in what I consider to be the ultimate betrayal of everything good that this nation has ever stood for.
Let me be frank. I'm not saying for a moment that America
was ever a "shining light of democracy" or a nation that was totally pure in
deed and actions. Still, at one time, it was the world's best chance since
ancient Athens to create something noble. This nation was once an experiment to
build a nation that was "of the people, and for the people".
Sure, there were those that never subscribed to that quaint notion. In fact, many of the people entrusted to continue this experiment in representative government were in fact, some of the most duplicitous individuals in our nation's history, but it never seemed to matter because eventually, the nation would right itself and follow the path laid out for us by those that initiated this great experiment. Just as in all of mankind's many endeavors, nothing about this nation has ever been perfect because perfection doesn't exist, but still, it was a valiant effort.
Everything in the physical world has a beginning and an end. The more we cherish something, the longer we try to hold on to it. When we lose something we hold especially dear, it is generally recognized that we go through different stages of grief. Probably the most well-known of these might be from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' book, "On Death and Dying." In it, she identified five stages that a dying patient experiences when informed of their terminal prognosis.
The stages Kubler-Ross identified are:
* Denial (this isn't happening to me!)
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