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I stand before you as an ex-member of the United States Navy serving through Desert Shield/Desert Storm. As a supporter of Occupy, and any other endeavor offering hope, and promise of positive real change for all of us, not just the 1% of us. As a fellow citizen, right now, we are living with a failed government therefore a failing nation. In that, I also stand as a brother in arms against tyranny, the police state, and Congress’ betrayal, in concert with the corporations that robbed us of our once great nation. Ever since military service, I’ve remembered my oath, waiting for the time to act. Like you, I realize there are problems with our country. We have realized this for some time now. Like you, I’ve wondered what I could do to help effect positive change restoring our Republic to its once grand splendor. Like you, I’ve wondered how we get our country back.
The largest problems are simple. Throughout our entire lives, we’ve become conditioned to trust authority and officials, military, and policemen, those holding public offices. The Congress has bullied our school system with constantly de-funding them, lowering the level of education for the masses and therefore raising future generations in ignorance instead of understanding. We’ve had trust beaten into us by a government that is untrustworthy.
Most seem to have no clue of responding to the betrayal of those we’re taught to trust. The cognitive dissonance cripples many, and they never taught us how to confront them when they fail us. Trust lost through blatant action is destroyed and must be re-earned. We must take back power from our elected officials, showing them whom they work for. They have betrayed our trust for too long. For too long, they have NOT served OUR best interests, and we will not give them our trust blindly again.
What’s another problem many of us see? Class warfare and political partisan party propaganda that keeps us divided into small enough numbers fighting one another, preventing any real change from happening. It’s the standard divide and conquer strategy employed by all would be dictatorships. Meanwhile, the fat cats of the status quo instigate the fighting through corporate controlled media and laugh while we continue fighting one another instead of them. When will we as a people, as a society, as a nation, wake up and realize this, and stop the infighting?
Now is not the time for bickering between ourselves. Now is not the time for focusing on our differences. Now IS the time for putting differences aside. Now IS the time for finding our common ground, accepting one another, and working on commonality and a positive change for all. Without such self control, we will never, as a people, as a nation, achieve a large enough collective voice to roar above the cacophony of the wealthy and elite hell bent on the destruction of our way of life. They are driven by greed and their actions have gutted our nation. They are the reason we now struggle for our basic existence. They betrayed us through the poverty they have created, tossing us into another recession destroying the middle class, and in their refusal to bring any perpetrators to justice. The fat cats of the status quo got richer while the rest of America got poorer and struggled even more. While career politicians become millionaires through big money, through lobbyists, the people they supposedly serve have suffered more than ever before in our history.
You say you want change? You say you want a brighter tomorrow? You say you want a better world for our children, and our children’s children? Then I propose we all find ways of accepting one another, leaning on one another, and standing in solidarity with one another to force Congress in creating that better future we all want and need. It is time to take their game away from them, and start playing it by our rules. It is time for us to eliminate class and party warfare through self control and conscious choice. It is time to unite. It is time to take our focused attention off one another, and collectively focus our attention upon the very officials refusing to remember, THEY WORK FOR US, not corporations and big money. This is a turning point in our history. Do we need another 911 to band us together? Is the rape of our constitutional rights and the gutting of our economy not enough reason? What will we choose? Are we together in setting OUR focus on Congress, bankers, and corporations manipulating the status quo? When we return home, let’s all help educate others with what we’ve learned here instead of allowing them the distractions that corporate controlled media use against us.
2 Comments
It’s a good post, James Sanders, and you’re correct that we need to unite against the machine that’s killing us, and destroying our democracy and the Rule of Law.
I’d quibble about all of us being so conditioned to trust authority, especially on these boards, but as you say…you have a much different history than most of us here. But many are sincerely uncomfortable about giving up their long-held beliefs in the socio-economic faux-meritocracy that factory education, and to a large degree, religion taught.
How cool is that Occupy has already changed the conversation about welath mal-distribution and the duopoly that has corruptly held the keys for so long, and is insisting on themes like: fair v. unfair, and horizontal democracy, etc.? Occupy is just resting for the next battles, I think; learning and studying, teaching…more tactical flash actions, that sadly don’t require Occupying the commons for now.
Oh, and by the way, welcome, and I wanted to let you know that the TOS here asks diarists to post a max of two a day. The list of recent diaries is X diaries long, so others get pushed off the list if we have too many on it.
Rec’d.
Just before I read your post, I was thinking back to a time when the “American Dream” was no dream at all. It was an every day reality that the people who were living it, considered it a God given right.
That was a time when those young “occupy” people with degrees would be in some corporate office wearing pressed suits, white shirt, and tie; while healthy individuals who could read and write, worked on high paying union jobs with full health benefits. It was at the time Ronald Reagan gave his famous speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Things have gone downhill every since. Once the 1% destroyed the unions, they were home free.
Maybe we learned not to be divided, maybe we didn’t.