is just as important for nations and societies to uncover its repressed truth, in order to heal, as it is for the Individual.
And just as on the individual level, if our nation — specifically right now our government — continues to deny,
refuses to let our truth rise up to heal us, or simply, as Obama may end up doing, look the other way on the grounds that there are more important things to deal with, well then as a nation — just as individuals, we are driven to continually re-enact our biggest mistakes over and over despite our best efforts not to — so also on the level of the nation or society, we will fix a problem only to see it rise up again during the next election cycle. In fact, it is exactly that lack of facing the truth that Reagonomics not only almost quadrupled the national debt during the 12 years of Reagan and Bush, Sr., not only did it severely unbalance the budget, but it caused a recession so important that it led to Clinton winning the Presidency on the slogan "It’s the economy, stupid!" Despite the fact the Clinton reversed that downswing dramatically by REVERSING Reaganomics; and despite the fact that his policies helped create one of the most prosperous decades in recent history, even leaving a surplus for the next administration. But our country was not about to call Reagan wrong at that time; too many idiots felt that somehow we had to treat him like a nice Grandad and not say anything unseemly, regardless of how the rest of the country will fare. And it was just that lack of truth-telling of the obvious, so as not to smear Reagan, though his economics was a horrible failure and it had been proven to be so, that allowed Bush to come in and go about doing Reagan’s mistake, only doing it several powers greater and doing it sooner. Bush came in and gave the budget surplus to the wealthy, without a peep from any in the media or any outrage on the part of Americans, most of whom had suffered through the recession only a decade earlier. But the average American would not know economics like the experts, the media, and the government. So it was tragic to refuse to point out that Bush’s ideas had already been tried by Reagan and his father with horrible consequences. Everyone kept quiet and suppressed the knowledge of their own experience. What happened? We "were doomed to repeat it," only karma seemed to have a part because we are not just repeating it. We are being punished severely with one of the worst economic downturns in America’s history; and it seems to me we deserve it because obviously the lesser medicine did not teach Americans and their media and leaders a damn thing; but with this one; oh, well, NOW, we are hearing that trickle-down Reaganomics started it all. So if we are too stupid to learn from a mistake, that mistake will come back bigger and bigger until we wake up and realize that the path we are on is not working.
Now this is very important, why?
Because scholars have determined that in studying the actions of Bush-Cheney, America, for the first time in its history, went into a dictatorship, meaning that their policies, which involved tossing out the Constitution, and pillar-by-pillar removing the foundations of our rights, our freedoms, and our democracy, including even the right to have a vote that will be counted, or more specifically, will be counted in favor of the person you voted for, not counted toward the opponent. Consider that the ones with expertise in poring over all the documents and data have determined that we had a smokescreen of democracy and freedom talk, but that actually we were living in a dictatorship.
Now, if that is something that we do not face, or we turn our heads from; well we didn’t have the concentration camps, but not all dictatorships do. But just as when we didn’t learn our economics when we had received a good spanking in the early 90s for giving money to people who didn’t need it – and wasted it – while people who needed money were getting budget cutbacks, and the standard of living and the average pay in America was going down for the first time. After you look at what happened under Bush, and there are scholars galore putting out books delineating the ways in which our Executive Branch acted as literal traitors, and worse, to America, and list the grounds upon which Bush and Cheney would be tried for murder, for starters, if they were anyone else in America. And it is too painful for me to even read what they did, though I do read it, and just let the crying come. But you’re going to have to do that for yourself, because it would be even more painful to delineate it again. Others are doing that job. I will have to pass; but I will make my point based on the work they’ve done.
And my point is this: If these truths are not faced by our country, God help us. For just as voodoo economics returned, with results many, many times worse than the first time; well, what can we imagine would happen if we don’t face the truth about the dictatorship of George W. Bush, the loss of rights and freedom and honest elections? For one thing, consider how easily this dictator rose to power. Our supposed democracy didn’t stop him, like it is assumed democracy will. If we don’t take in that lesson, not only are we doomed to repeat these horrible eight years, but we are leaving a door wide open for the next one; and if you think you have to have concentration camps in order to see dictatorship, well, gee, just guess what you are going to get under the next American dictator.
For as long as we refuse to notice that being an American doesn’t any more (and I think once it did) give you any advantage over other people in the world, and we continue our complacency in the face of our problems, and we continue to think that we can look away from unpleasant truth and just "put it behind us" then just as Hitler wasn’t the last dictator, wasn’t the last individual to be able to enslave a nation; then also Bush won’t be the first and only dictator America will see; and sure as hell the next one will be worse, perhaps far worse; and then the next one, if we still don’t face the truths of what is possible in this country and discover what happened to make it now possible when once it wasn’t; then I shudder to think what monster will be in our country’s future.
Towards reversing that and hoping to raise some consciousness about the truth of our recent history, I am offering the accompanying video. I hope all Americans and our representatives will resist the tendency to run away from the unpleasant past and instead find ways, and there are plenty of easy ways, to turn and face the darkness behind us, so that we will not be forced to walk through an even blacker and more horrible darkness before us.
HTML clipboard"8 Years" is an artistic rendition of feelings swirling around myself and my fellow
Americans, living for eight long years under what a number of scholars
have officially determined was — as meeting all the criteria necessary to
categorize and as characterized by all the elements by which one defines
it — the "dictatorship" of so-called President George W. Bush,
from the years 2001 through 2009.
Apocalypse - NO! 