A Great Reawakening and the Breaking of Fear's Sway

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A Great Reawakening and the Breaking of Fear's Sway

By Joel E. Bousley

November 13, 2005


For the past five years we have been partial witness to a presidency that seems to overflow with incompetence and imperial hubris. This is an administration that has profited greatly from the tragedy that befell our nation on September 11, 2001. This is an administration that has gone so far as to retaliate against those who oppose its agenda. This is an administration that has attempted to do away with domestic policies that are largely valued and successful. This is an administration that has misled this country into an elective war of aggression that has cost the loss of life, limb, and sometimes mind, of over 13,000 U.S. service people and tens of thousands of Iraqis. We have been partial witnesses because we were lulled into a comatose state through the application of fear. Our American values of freedom to include speech, religion, dissenting opinion, and open discussion have been trampled.

Through it all the American people have stared forward seemingly unaware of our surroundings. It is as if the tragedy of 9/11 was a blow to the head that incapacitated the national consciousness and left us prostrate. Over four years ago the American people entered into a comatose state and have only shown occasional signs of life. Having regressed into this infantile state, the national treasury has been looted and a war of historical aggression started. A vacant stare has come to dominate a visage that was once alert and progressive. Occasionally there have been brief periods of consciousness, but these are be quickly countered by an application of Thorazine inspired fear.

The American people have been rendered complacent as various administration officials - to include the president - have warned of an ever impending terrorist attack. They have shored up fear by conjuring images of the proverbial boogiemen that haunted our childhood nightmares. Through a color coded system they have kept the people complacent and quiet. However, the administration has not acted without aid from outside forces.

Elements of the Republican Party have played a major role in the scheme to supplant our national discourse and sabotage our long and deeply held values. The Neo-Conservative and far right elements have played the largest part in keeping the populace complacent. The national treasury has been handed out in no-bid contracts and a war of preemption, as the Republican Party seems to have forgotten what it means to be fiscally conservative. The Republican Party seems to have abandoned the concept of small government in favor of a bellicose bureaucratic structure that puts even the most flagrant liberal to shame. The Republican Party is largely to blame because it controls both houses of congress and has done little, if anything at all, to check the excesses of the Bush administration.

In all fairness, the Democrats have also done little to stop the administration because they have failed as an opposition party. The Democratic Party has allowed itself to be rendered impotent by not presenting a unified front to the populace. Polls indicate that this is one of the major problems that Democrats must strive to overcome. However, a large part of their seeming incompetence is excusable when one considers that the idea of a "liberal media" is nothing more than a myth shoved forcefully into the national mindset. This myth has little rational merit or truth. Nonetheless, only recently have Democrats begun to fulfill their role as an opposition party under the leadership of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. Last week Senator Reid called for a closed session of Congress to discuss the mishandling of intelligence in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Senator Majority Leader, Bill Frist, said he had been "slapped in the face," and tried to write off Senator Reid's actions as a political stunt. However, a public opinion poll revealed that the majority of Americans felt it was not a political stunt and had merit.

In these Orwellian times, the national discourse has also been sullied by a massive failure on the part of the fourth estate as newspeak has become "all the rage." The mainstream media has played a key role in ensuring that the Neo-Conservative doublespeak reaches the masses. George Orwell would be aghast to hear that one of the rationalizations for the war in Iraq is the continued peace. He would be further aghast to hear the doublespeak notion that "we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Surely he would see the irony in George W. Bush having proclaimed that America should not be in the business of "nation building" in the run-up to his securing the presidency in 2000. The mainstream media has become the doctors that administer the spin that has kept the American people comatose for the last five years.

The Thorazine has been supplied, if not administered, by a mainstream media that is simply complacent at best or criminally complacent at worst. The so-called mainstream media has provided a forum for trumpeting the administration's messages and allowing Neo-Conservatives and members of the extreme Right Wing to dominate national discourse. Those who have expressed opinions that run contrary to the administration's message have been worse than ostracized. They have been vilified and slandered in the echo chamber that has come to represent the fourth estate. The Bush administration and its allies have not been completely successful in their attempts to squash those who disagree with its policies.

Former talk show host, Phil Donahue, was fired from his show "Donahue" in February 2003 on the MSNBC cable news network. He was fired because his show was viewed as too liberal and offered too many dissenting opinions in the run-up to the War in Iraq. Dissent is frowned upon and punishable in an America that has been drugged. Dissent simply cannot be tolerated in such an America, and this is clearly evidenced in Phil Donahue's case. In a recent appearance with Amy Goodman on "Democracy for America," Mr. Donahue revealed that he was fired because the executives feared his show was becoming a platform for those expressing opposition to the war.

The people have been kept in the dark by having their patriotism questioned should they deviate from the accepted national mantra. Phil Donahue's case is only one example, of many, of the dangers faced by people who have braved opposing the policies of the Bush White House and its allies. A national mantra emerged to define what is patriotic - one must support the troops (to include chicken-hawk leaders), offer no dissent and toe the party line, and have an unhealthy preoccupation with wedge issues like abortion, guns, and gay rights. The people have been rendered impotent through being badgered with constant applications of fear tempered with outright lies represented in daily threat levels coordinated with a nonsensical color coded system.

However, it seems that the people have developed a tolerance for the drug that has been forced upon them these past five years. The last few months have been privy to unrest across the amber waves of grain. The tragedies of Katrina and Rita have been the most recent examples, and have been highlighted by those who are both poor and/or black who have appeared on the news. They also seem to have been the most effective in rousing the nation from its comatose state. The shock of what happened in New Orleans and the government's slow response to the tragedy caused many Americans to wake from their comas. Suddenly the masses that had been seduced into slumber more than four years ago began to emerge from the drug induced haze of fear. They were confronted with the ugly realities of just what has happened in America during their long slumber, and poll after poll has indicated that the American people do not like what they see.

Of course, the quagmire that is the War in Iraq continues with ever increasing violence. Two weeks ago a macabre marker was reached with the two-thousandth death in a war that is now condemned by the majority of Americans. At this writing, there have been exactly 2,055 U.S. military deaths in Iraq. This ever increasing figure is a daily grim reminder of the lack of planning and forethought on the part of the Bush White House. With no clear plan for success, the Bush administration has turned some of its staunchest allies away, as casualties mount with no end in sight.

President Bush has failed in his most ambitious domestic agenda as well. The American people have thoroughly rejected his plan to overhaul the Social Security program started under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Despite a cross-country campaign to convince the American people of the "merits" of his proposals, the American people are united their opposition to any "overhaul" of the Social Security system. When the Bush administration and its cronies in Congress and the mainstream media attempted to smear the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), a nonpartisan organization, they made a serious error, and only managed to unite more people against Bush's plans for the Social Security program. George W. Bush failed miserably in his most ambitious domestic agenda.

Our national debt is spiralling out of control. This administration has borrowed more from foreign governments than all of the previous forty-two administrations combined! This has created an America that is dependent upon foreign nations. At the close fiscal year 2004, our federal budget deficit was a record $413 billion. As of this writing, our national debt stands at $8, 035,505,876. Yes, you read it correctly - over $8 trillion dollars in national debt to largely foreign debtors. America is heavily in debt to such nations as China, Germany, and Japan.

On March 5, 2005, the Congressional Budget Office released its estimates for the cost of President Bush's 2006 fiscal year budget. As a result of President Bush's budget for FY2006, the deficit will increase at $1.6 trillion over a ten year period. The Bush administration continues to loot the national treasury through dubious domestic policy and a war that has no end in sight. Bush and congressional Republicans seem to have lost all memory of what it means to be fiscally conservative and responsible.

This administration has also attempted to rob America of its values by sending young men and women to an elective war of aggression; it has attempted to also steal its spirit of hope and willingness to challenge its fears. The Bush administration has used the drug of fear for so long that it is reeling as the Thorazine seems to be having less of an effect lately. The majority of Americans have steadfastly resisted the drug that has so bound them mentally these past five years. Old stalwarts of this system of fear are now rendered ineffective as well. The color coded terror alert system of the Department of Homeland Security, as silly as it is, seems to have little, if any, effect in changing public perception. It seems that the days of quiet slumber are finally at an end.

As the American people are beginning to see the Bush administration and the Neo-Conservatives for what they really are, Bush's job approval numbers have sunk as low as 35% in a poll from November 2, 2005 conducted by CBS news. The mismanagement of the Katrina and Rita disasters in parallel with the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has crippled the Bush administration. Public opinion has turned against the administration as recent polls indicate that the majority of Americans believe that the country was misled into the war in Iraq. It seems that President Bush was somewhat correct when he said, "Freedom is on the march." Indeed it is - freedom of speech represented by a growing opposition to the foreign and domestic policies of this administration.

In a truly free society dissent is encouraged. While it is not rewarded, it is most definitely not frowned upon. For five years the majority of Americans have sat comatose when dissenters were ostracized, while those who dissented were punished, but that appears to be rapidly changing. In a recent Pew research poll, 79% of those surveyed said that they consider the outing of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife to be important to the country. The American people are rising to defend the right to dissent as being inseparable from the values that have defined our country for over two hundred years. A point must be made that this is about more than freedom and the associated right to dissent; this is about Americans coming together to solve the dilemmas that stand before us. This is about coming together to fix a system of government that has been broken.

As a nation, we must unite - Democrat, Republican, and Independent - to reinitiate our grand public discourse. Now, more than ever, dissention should be encouraged but tempered to be moderate so that we can truly unite as a people. Party affiliation, past grievances and slights, or who was right and who was wrong should play no part in this conversation. The noble discourse defined by the founding fathers and mothers must continue because America has lost its way these past five years. We are not the America that we can and should be. This is no time for labels or grudges. This is the time to unite and confront historical challenges ranging from vastly irresponsible fiscal policy to a war that is unjust and elective.

It is a defining trait of our country that America has always been able to come together and find workable and reasonable solutions to the challenges we face. Another defining trait is our ability to, not only confront, but overcome the fears that we face as a nation. America stands at a great crossroads and must make a clear choice as to whether we are to be a truly free society that challenges our fears or whether we will continue to be a society ruled by our fears. We must throw off the shackles of repressive thought, and don the garb of progressive thought that has so defined what it means to be American.


EDIT TO ADD LINK: http://americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=3685

Please clarify. Thanks.

I posted the direct link to the article at the end of my post.