musings on extremists, karma, and the dogmas it runs over.

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In the march to total domination of any culture, fascists and extremists have always- ALWAYS- fallen back on the 'us and them' mentality that justifies their hatefulness and extremism. After all, if they serve the Great Righteous One, and there is someone out there who is their Great Opponent, whatever means are necessary to protect themselves are reasonable. So Jews and philosophers, infidel Christians and astronomers, Native Americans and women who refuse to cover their heads are expendable collateral damage in the push for whatever triumph of domination the group of the moment is after, because the greater Unknown Enemy must be defeated and the Great Righteous One must triumph.

Well, two nights ago Michelle Bachman, the Republican Minnesotan of extreme evangelical bent, used the words that Sarah Palin, the Republican Alaskan who has been declared 'annointed' to head the country by a Kenyan witch-hunter preacher, hadn't yet dared to utter. She said that people in this country who thought differently than she does about the world are 'anti-American'.

And synopsized the entire struggle we are up against in a nutshell.

On one side of this struggle are the 'deciders', the people who have an immovable vision of how their world should be, the people whose world has no room for change, growth, different opinions, or actual freedom because it is the world of Rules. Their world is ordained by their authority figures, be they evangelical preachers, heads of parties, oil company executives, or The Bible [as they have it], and any variance from their interpretation of that rulebook is of course against it- and therefore 'anti'. This is their approach to 'safety'- since the world is ordained and ruled and controlled by their Big Boss [of course it's the Almighty God, who could argue with Him?], they are covered. And since they are arrogant enough to assume that only their vision is from the Divine, and only their approach to the world is of importance, they appropriate the moniker 'American' [all that's good and holy about it] for themselves and add the gloss of patriotism to the wrappings on their tiny little mental box. And it is therefore only logical that those who oppose their packaged view are 'anti' 'American'.

On the other side of the struggle are people who have spent some time trying to explode their own boxes, or at least cut windows into them, have spent time learning to see through the eyes of others, have learned the difference between their own opinions and What Is. Truth is a very large very difficult subject, and it would be presumptuous in the extreme to try to define it, but I do know what it is not- it is not limited by the wishes of humans, it is not something any one person has the rights to, and it becomes a monster whenever it is distorted and manipulated by will or by willful illusion in order to serve the mere whim of mortals. The Truth will set you free- not tie you to dogma.

Those of us who are 'anti' the packaged version of Reality which has brought us two endless wars, a destroyed economy, a potentially destroyed nation, a schism between reason and faith, unworkable dogmas in active policy, and a population so ill-educated that they do not even know what facts are- let alone the Truth- those of us who are 'anti' The Big Illusion would do very well to start poking the people who are asleep or hypnotized in an effort to get them up and moving out of this burning theater now. 

The clarity of intent behind Bachman's moronic, age-old assertion- that she is an 'us', and everybody who disagrees with her is a 'them'- that intent has been seen over and over again throughout history, and whenever it surfaces, it is the lead-in to other much more horrifying events, because it is the alarm bell that the hubris of the dogmatists has hit critical mass.

As if the total suppression of human rights and liberties by truthless [never mind Godless] manipulators for the purposes of their own megalomaniacal advancement weren't horrifying enough in the abstract and scattered praxis where we've seen it, now they seek to put in harness the zombie drones they've created with their endless misinformation, and use them against those of us who think outside their box.

The 'deciders' have come out of the closet, which means that they think they're powerful enough to act.  I really don't want them to. Do you?

Authors Bio:
Mother of two adult children, freelance artist with fine works in private collections in 20 US states, 7 European countries, Africa, China, and Japan, concerned citizen of the US.

Overreaching corporate controls of food, housing, clothing, medicine, transportation, information, and education have been a serious concern of mine for decades. Consequently I've spent a great deal of time studying and practicing self-sufficiency/ removal from "the grid".

I no longer have credit cards, I raise my own vegetables and chickens, am an herbalist, a reiki master, a shiatsu practitioner who's worked with people with serious illnesses for more than a decade, as well as an ordained minister [I call myself a shamanist because it's the closest description of what I do, not because I'm from Tibet].

I've worked in construction for many years, and I've spent some time beating dead horses on the subject of independance from corporate control and learning to live a life of value as opposed to one of dehumanization.

My message to surburbanites: rototill your front lawn, grow vegetables, put up solar panels, stay home more often, make things for yourself, and cut up your credit cards.

Live your life as if truth, honor, and love were the most important things.

The corporate culture would have us believe that we owe someone rent for the privilege of being on the planet, that some pigs are more equal than others, that it's important to be royalty- as opposed to noble- and that happiness is available for purchase.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out the truth of things.