The release last week of an intensively researched report on the Bush administration’s campaign of deception leading up the Iraq War made a good-sized stir in the blogosphere, if not in corporate media circles. Although the study generally refers to the 935 documented de facto lies as “misleading statements” or “false statements,” the subtitle of the report more than hints at its condemnatory nature.

Entitled “The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War,” the report was a collaborative effort by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism. I’ve skimmed through the report on the CPI web site, and I must say that it’s quite impressive in its scope and thoroughness. I encourage everyone to read through the report and its supporting materials. Particularly useful is the 380,000-plus-word online database, which allows us to search through speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, etc. by Bush administration officials, including the Liar in Chief and the Vice Liar in Chief, and the other major players we’re all acquainted (and surely disgusted) with.

The database search tool is quite sophisticated, for example allowing us to search by keywords, the various players in The Lying Game (my own characterization here, not the authors’), various subject areas (including a global “False Statements” category), and custom date ranges. Pretty damn nifty! (I did a search on “uranium + yellowcake + Niger” using the False Statements selector, which was very instructive.)

Nine hundred and thirty five lies sounds like a pretty impressive number—and it is—but consider that the report focuses solely on false statements by George W. Bush, the Vice Liar, and six of the administration’s top officials (National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan), on at least 532 separate occasions, and during the two years following September 11, 2001.

I know that the continual avalanche of lies coming from this White House over the past seven years has certainly had a numbing effect on many citizens. Speaking for myself, when I started this blog I was mad as hell and determined to expose and denounce as many of the lies as possible—until I realized that the task is simply too gargantuan for any regular working person like me (and a few willing assistants) to keep up with. And it never stops! Sometime last year, Bush Fatigue set in, and I had to back away from the torrent of mendacity and take frequent sabbaticals from it all.

So, yes… It’s been a mind-and-spirit-numbing seven years, and if we were able to do a completely exhaustive study of all the lies foisted upon We The People by this criminal administration, and tally them all up, it would surely be an overwhelming total. Clearly, we as a nation have never had to endure such a mountain of dishonesty as we have suffered under the Bush II regime.

At any rate, looking at just this two-year period, and just these eight criminals, and just this one lying campaign (deceiving the nation into an illegal, unjust war for Iraqi Oil and American Empire), how do these players stack up in terms of their lying prowess? Let’s see…

#1, the Champion Liar: George W. Bush: 260 lies or false statements
(We don’t call him the Liar in Chief for nothing!)

#2: Secretary of State Colin Powell: 254 lies or false statements
(He certainly carried the football.)

#3 (tie): Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: 109 lies or false statements

#3 (tie): Press Secretary Ari Fleischer: 109 lies or false statements

#4: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: 85 lies or false statements

#5: National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice: 56 lies or false statements
(C’mon, Condi! You could ’a done better than that!)

#6: Vice President Dick Cheney: 48 lies or false statements
(Guess he was too busy “working in the shadows.”)

#7: Press Secretary Scott McClellan: 14 lies or false statements

Particularly instructive in the report is a chart (below) that documents the escalation of lies as the buildup to the invasion of Iraq mounted, and the tapering off of the lying campaign (they were just busy lying about other things) once the invasion began and following “Mission Accomplished.”

Clearly, this was orchestrated deception, as the data shows, and I think that if we search our own memory banks, we will recall the pattern of escalating mendacity that we observed as little King George’s deadline for invasion approached.

I don’t fault the researchers’ choice of language in using descriptors like “false statements” and “misleading statements” instead of “lies” (the more plain-spoken alternative that we can be freer to use here in the blogosphere). After all, this is a professionally researched academic work, and so it was important to preserve a tone of professionalism, rather than injecting a more opinionated characterization.

However, I found a video on the CPI site which is, I think, very instructive in showing the careful dance that politicians will do, when dancing around questions of truth, “misleading statements,” and outright lies. Here, Bill Buzenberg, Executive Director of the Center for Public Integrity, interviews former Representative Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission, and elicits his reaction to the War Card report. More instructively, the CPI’s Buzenberg has to persistently tease out Hamilton’s opinions regarding the extent and degree of deception and outright lying that took place, and it’s interesting to observe Hamilton’s reactions:

(Direct link to video here)

Yes, it’s a careful dance they do in Washington. Dance around the truth, hem and haw, and “fiddle while Rome burns.” But as far as I’m concerned, and especially when it comes to this administration, a lie by any other name is still a LIE. In the end, it all comes down to motive, and when we consider the motives ($21 trillion in proven Iraqi oil reserves, for one), “orchestrated deception” is an apt description.

I think most citizens, if we’re paying attention, can clearly see the naked corruption of this Emperor and his court. And I hope that we are mad as hell, and won’t take it any more!

I’ve recently heard from a few friends who are considering candidates of choice in the primary elections, who seem to be leaning somewhat in the direction of Ron Paul. I have a few thoughts on this man as a candidate for President of the United States.

I do think Ron Paul is fantastic when it comes to defending the Constitution, and pretty good on foreign policy and war, BUT (and this is a big “but”) when it comes to social policy, and policy on regulating and controlling corporations’ vast and dangerous influence, he’s a DISASTER!

I heard an interview with Congressman Paul recently on Air America Radio. On the issue of corporate media concentration and the death of real news in the U.S., he basically said that he doesn’t see any problem—nothing that “the marketplace” can’t sort out. Questioned further about the overwhelming representation of the corporate agenda in corporate media, he said (I’m paraphrasing), “Well, you do have the Internet.”

Oh, brother! As if we should be satisfied with having the average citizen’s concerns and point of view relegated just to the Internet! This completely ignores the fact that the Internet is an active communications medium, and broadcast media are primarily a passive channel… and most Americans have for decades been content to get most of their “news” from broadcast media (primarily TV).

Sure, you could say that people should take a more active role as consumers of news—and they should—but when the hard working wage earner comes home from a hard day in the “salt mines” (whether it’s a blue collar or a white collar job), it’s so much easier to just turn on the TV and collapse into the recliner with a nice cold beer. And because the corporate media news moguls know that they’ve got a more or less captive consumer audience (OK, yes they can switch the channel… but the next channel is just as corporate-brainwash as the previous one, and the next, and the next…) Well, it’s so easy to use that powerful and passive medium as a corporate brainwashing tool, to convince Joe Six Pack to support government policies and politicians that aren’t working in his best interests.

In the same interview, Ron Paul suggested that we should “trust the market” to do what’s right—thus negating the role of government regulation in the public interest, which is to protect the less powerful citizen from the imminently more powerful corporation (which, by the way, has been deceitfully given the rights of “personhood” by U.S. courts). This is a familiar mantra coming from Mr. Paul. SORRY, but I’m not buying this boatload of crap!

“Trust the market,” indeed. What did deregulation of corporate media get us? (Thanks, but no thanks to Bill Clinton for that!) What did lax oversight of the mortgage banking industry get us? What did look-the-other-way, see-no-evil lack of oversight of the Pentagon’s contracting processes get us? (Multi-multi millions and billions of cost over-runs and outright fraud on the American taxpayer, that’s what!!)

Remove environmental controls on polluting industries such as coal fired power plants, and what do we get? Record high, highly toxic levels of mercury in the air and watersheds of middle America—that’s what we got. And now it’s in the breast milk of millions of moms, and in their children.

I’ve never understood this faux-altruistic ideology of Libertarians and Repub-libertarians, the idea that government regulation is the big evil we have to fight, and that if we just leave the poor corporations alone, they will do “the right thing” and we’ll all be living fat and happy in the Land of the Free. Sorry, but I never bought it, and I’m still not buying. Maybe it’s nice to hearken back romantically to the days of yesteryear and the hardworking, industrious American farmer and the American craftsman, who ran their small businesses on an ethical bedrock, on a strong handshake and a direct look in the eye. Nice sentimental stuff, for sure… but it doesn’t apply to today’s corporate monsters!

To be fair to Congressman Paul, he does have a record of opposing government regulation when it becomes intrusive on certain citizens’ rights. Case in point: He opposed and spoke out against a bill that was passed by the Senate Commerce Committee last year aimed at “universal filtering” on the Internet. Good on yer, Mr. Paul, for that one.

But protecting the civil rights of citizens, as opposed to supposed civil “rights” of corporations ain’t the same thing, simply because corporations wield infinitely more clout than just about any citizen. It’s a tempting idea for some, I guess, to try to be egalitarian when it comes to defending rights, but we all know what happens (if we’re paying attention) when big business is given free reign by government.

Look at the mess our nation is in now. A federal government in bed with giant corporations and multinationals—a veritable orgy of corporate/government incest. Skyrocketing, perilous national debt. Our nation led to war against a nation that posed no threat, with a web of lies as the rationale, and the real agenda (lust for Iraqi oil—$21 trillion in proven reserves!) being the giant elephant in the living room that no one in the corporate media or in government (except a rare few) will dare to speak out about. The Bush administration has gutted federal regulatory power over corporations, and what do we get? Certainly not “the right thing.”

Ron Paul’s defense of the Constitution is admirable and inspiring, and I wish more Senators and Representatives were as passionate. But his laissez faire defense of corporations—and via his anti-regulatory ideology, a further enabling of their poisonous stranglehold on our government—this is inexcusable, for someone who calls himself a patriot.

The United States of America was birthed in opposition to Empire, and now we have become the very same dark force that our forefathers fought against. These corporations and their bedfellows in government need to be reigned in. As I’ve said before, American capitalism is now a runaway train with no brakes. Capitalism, in order to work for everyone in our nation, must have some brakes on it.

It’s time to put the brakes back on this train. I don’t see any indication that Ron Paul is the one who will take the lead in doing so.

peace,

steve

Ron Paul

Whoever decided to call this country, specifically, “The United States of America” was truly prescient. They were on it enough to see the potential for divisiveness in the future (maybe owing to slavery), and put that word “United” right there in our very NAME. Thanks, whoever did that; we probably owe you our lives as a nation, many times over. (The Civil War comes to mind, but I digress…)

On this night, the word “United” stands out in my mind, and my heart, as I listen to a true leader calling upon his countrymen to believe, and to unite. Fighting John Q’s propensity toward apathy, ignorance, skepticism, division and racism, Barack Obama has managed to light a flame of what can only be true patriotism… a lonely candle in the dark at first, maybe, but it’s growing. And there was light, and it was good…

It embarrasses me as a patriot sometimes, the way we allow ourselves to become divided every time the goddamned wind blows. What with as many blowhards as we have pretending to the throne, it’s easy for us all to forget what REAL leaders look like, and it’s way too easy for us to celebrate our differences, instead of the bedrock American values we have in common, like a belief in the Constitutional rights that so much blood was shed for, and a healthy future for our children, and their planet.

We’re all Americans, when you get down to it, and that’s saying quite a lot. That means that I (bleeding heart liberal who’d like to see socialized health care, along with high taxes [gasp] to pay for fluffy things like education, specifically ARTS) would willingly give my life defending the right for an inbred, illiterate hillbilly redneck son-of-a-bitch to attack everything I believe is good in the Constitution. Yeah, being a patriot is a bit of a trick, but do it we must, or we’re not truly Americans. Uniting with my fellow redneck Americans would seem an insurmountable goal, IF I put my views before my patriotic DUTY to understand the Constitution.

That’s a big “IF,” and that’s just the point being made tonight by a true leader: Unity’s not really a tricky thing, when you look at it through open eyes. We’re not all that different, we Americans; our similarities so far outweigh our differences that infighting among people behind the Statue of Liberty is absurd enough to make me question whether or not I’m dreaming. I’ve felt that way since childhood.

I do hereby submit that all Americans believe in freedom. That means, folks, that all Americans believe in defending everything that must be defended in order for freedom to exist. Well, OK, past that point our respective roads fork, of course, and we start bickering about shit like the true definition of the word “freedom,” but these really are minor nuances compared to the first two sentences of this paragraph. I’m just holding a few truths to be self-evident here, folks, like my compatriot Barack Obama.

I, a true liberal, one of those rare ones with teeth, live in one of the most redneck towns (according to statistics) in these United States. Yet I am embraced by this community, and I embrace this community in return. Why? Reasons more powerful than feel-good hug-your-neighbor platitudes; I’m talkin’ physics and math. Basically, like I said last paragraph, our similarities far outweigh our differences. Simple as that.

Check this out: A guy who can think but can’t lift heavy stuff is not as powerful as he could be if he could lift heavy. By the same token, a guy who can’t think but is strong is way more powerful if allied with a guy who can think. Unity. Teamwork. Geez, folks, wolves get this; they’re smart, yeah, but are they smarter than humans?

We The People can do this, I promise you. Dare to believe in unity.

Yeah, we’re all different, but we all have our strengths and weaknesses, abilities and disabilities, just like countries do. People and countries are far more powerful as members of a team (duh). As Americans, our strengths lie in Unity (capitalized), not divisiveness. This goes not only for all of us as a nation, but for all of us as a species.

If you want to see what real leadership looks like, listen to this man speak (without a teleprompter), and ask yourself if you wouldn’t feel good with him leading these UNITED States.

I, for one, do hereby dare to believe: This guy could sketch a Gettysburg Address on a train, on a napkin. This is what real leadership looks like. Listen to this man speak:

>> View video on MSNBC.com (Opens in separate window.)

“You, Mr. Bush, are a bald-faced liar.”

There’s not much to add here to Keith Olbermann’s devastating indictment of the Liar in Chief, for his brazen lies about Iran’s supposed “nucular” weapons development program. This is not just a righteous diatribe. He lays out the timeline and the chain of evidence quite clearly, which shows that George W. Bush has been consciously, deceitfully and yes, treasonously attempting to fear-monger the American people in order to build yet another bogus case for war.

Day by day, week by week, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny the naked dishonesty and treachery of this emperor. Time to impeach!

peace,

Steve

I ran across this very interesting interview with John Perkins, the author of the New York Times Best Seller, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, on mediachannel.org. This book has been on my “To Read” list for some time now; I’ve got a lot of books on that list (so little time to read complete books these days), and so it was great to find this interview with Mr. Perkins—and a pretty lengthy interview it is.

In his book, John Perkins details how he served at the behest of U.S. and multinational corporations, and for the United States government (he asserts that he was screened by the National Security Agency for his job as a chief economist at the consulting firm Chas. T. Main). His primary mission, he says, was to entrap Third World nations in massive foreign debt (loaned by the World Bank, IMF and other major players in international banking), and the concomitant procurement of lucrative contracts by U.S. and multinational corporations. These poor nations were targeted, he says, strictly because they possessed resources (such as petroleum) that these corporations could exploit in return for the banking cabal’s servicing (or sometimes “forgiving”) of that crippling debt.

Perkins also outlines how the U.S. government, in concert with these banks and corporations, has been building the world’s first truly global empire, with the chief armament of its imperialist aggression being not military means (although they certainly play a role), but rather global economic warfare on a scale never before seen (but certainly contemplated and planned for decades by the currently ruling elites).

Now I know that some people will be put off by or even sneer openly at the fact that this interview was done by Al Jazeera, the Middle East media network that has been the favored propagandistic whipping boy for the Bush administration and its henchmen and acolytes. But as any serious journalist should be able to tell you, Al Jazeera has a reputation for doing a lot of serious in-depth reporting, both in the Middle East and globally. (They now have a bureau in the U.S., which produced this interview.) Certainly, they report many stories that the U.S. government would much rather not see the light of day, and which the openly compliant (and dare I say lazy) U.S. corporate media won’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

And so it’s left to Al Jazeera to feature an extensive televised interview with an author and former insider who lays bare the de facto program of global empire for the “New American Century,” to which the U.S. government and its partners in domestic and international corporatocracy (promoted as “globalization” by its NeoCon architects and propagandists, such as Tom Friedman, Paul Wolfowitz, et al.) are now so rabidly dedicated.

Those apologists and “Empire Deniers” will, of course, continue to publicly deny the obvious. They will carefully deny and obfuscate, and pontificate about “dee-MOCK-racy!” and “FREE-dom!” (“Freedom to do exactly what, and for whom?,” one might ask) while appearing before the corporate media machine, in their “on the record” moments. Occasionally, however, in an unguarded moment their unbridled enthusiasm for the mission will get the best of them. Sometimes, the truth will leak out just a bit (like that little bit of “seepage” that sometimes happens when you’re exercising hard).

“Oops… stained my shorts.”

To wit: As reported in the New York Times on October 17, 2004, Ron Susskind interviewed a senior White House aide and the following issued forth:

“… The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’“

Many will have already read this New York Times story, but I think it serves to illustrate the true agenda of our current ruling elite. It’s all about Empire now. The mission for the new century (and beyond, I would suppose) is global empire for the United States of America, and for its actual rulers—not “We The People,” but rather “We The Corporations.” This, my dear citizens, is our New Reality, as defined by our “leaders.”

So I fervently hope that those of you who are still sitting on the fence—maybe not yet convinced of the totality of the corruption and debasement of what was once the republic of the United States of America—will wake up and smell the stench that’s coming from the halls of power in Washington, D.C., and from corporate boardrooms across the land and around the world, and from the mouthpieces of the corporate media machine.

So much faux impassioned talk about “democracy” and “freedom,” and so much treachery in the shadows. So much flag waving, and so much demagoguery. So much “patriotism,” and so much blood spilled for Middle Eastern oil.

“Pay no attention to those men behind the curtain. Support the troops! Complete the mission! Buy a Hummer! See Paris Hilton!” Bread and circuses for the masses, while what’s left of our democracy burns to the ground.

Wonder not, my dear citizens, why so much of the world has lost respect for the United States of America. We were birthed as a nation opposed to empire, and now we have become what we once fought against. Now, we have become what our forefathers spilled their blood in overthrowing.

Wonder instead what our founders would think, if they were to see what we have become.

Relevant quotes:

“If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“I see in the future a great crisis approaching, which causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow. The money-power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all the wealth is aggregated into the hands of a few and the republic is destroyed.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776

“A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gate is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.”
- Cicero, 45 BC

“For years the freedom of our people were really never in doubt.”
– George W. Bush

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
– Edward R. Murrow

References:

Ron Susskind, “Without a Doubt,” New York Times, 10-17-2004

Don’t tell the thought police, but I wonder sometimes what the world might look like had Beethoven and Stravinsky simply been piano players and not composers. If Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. hadn’t had the gift of writing… hell, what if Tom Jefferson had had his heart, ideas and ideals, but was illiterate? Where would we be?

For that matter, where are we? How many Jeffersons and Kings are among us now, the very answer to our woes in their breasts, unable to present themselves to the world in any more articulate way than rap, graffiti or rage, their rubber unable to meet the road because we’ve sold out their educations?

I’ll go one step further and admit to a treasonous level of scrutiny: I openly wonder how many of us credit-card-carrying, consumer-culture lemmings still possess the capacity to truly reason as patriots should, and to doubt the honor of any government that would willingly bankrupt the very educational system of its own citizens.

As Americans, it is our duty to hold the tough questions up to the light, to answer them and to create a better world. As Americans, we should all hold ourselves to the highest level of realism where governing is concerned, and not only vote realistically, but not hesitate to draft some laws, and/or abolish some.

As Americans, we must always hold a few truths to be self-evident; draft legislation (and/or riot) when we feel our patriotic voice is not heard. And as Americans in the modern world, we must always determine what is really true. Yet we, and our fellow voters, allow ourselves to get corralled into the dumbest, most obvious Hollywood-driven drivel of reasoning on such a regular basis that I call voting day “Tuesday bargains.” The selling out of America, you see… ”Tuesday Bargains” …never mind.

In the musical world, as in all other cross-sections of humanity, there are followers and there are leaders. In music, leaders are called “Composers,” “Arrangers” or “Musical Directors.” Occasionally, a “Producer” qualifies as a leader in the eyes of musicians, but never “Agents” or “Managers” or “Publishers.” These usually fall under the heading of “Opportunists” (and I’m being kind)… but I digress. This log entry regards human composing, be it the Ninth Symphony or the American Bill of Rights, and I hereby put forth this tenet: Writing is writing, creating is creating, whether it’s music, a government or the future of your child or of our world. Not only is it all the same process; it’s all intertwined. Ideas grow from ideas, good and bad.

Long ago, one of our ancestors had had enough of living in the trees just to avoid danger, and dropped to the ground to try their luck. The rubber met the road. Creating lays the groundwork for the next generation of potentials, the way the hand moves a steering wheel, manipulating destiny where possibility meets time. Any strong, needed idea that gets realized, implemented and survives is amplified in its power as the foundation for the next generation of ideas, developing that theme… it’s all a whirling, dancing mobile of likelihood and potentiality, swinging from the ceiling of our collective psyche like the stars we will never reach, try though we must.

Thwarted by bad ideas and boosted by good, we lurch forward through our millisecond here on earth, on our species’ pilgrimage toward the next big thing, all the while developing our theme, collectively and as individuals, either according to intent or despite it. Good and bad, dark and light, ignorance and awareness… they’re all tools of the cosmic rules of thematic development, and these forces are as helpless as you or I against the almighty sky. The sky, by the way, is also helpless; it’s just bigger.

What portentous words, those: thematic development. Dit-dit-dit-daa, indeed. The track of reasoning that Beethoven rode into history while discovering and developing the Fifth Symphony was the same real estate trod by Jefferson, Einstein and Gandhi. It was (and is still, for any who care to stick their necks out) one man’s tenacity to keep chasing an idea, like a ferret diving down a rabbit hole, developing and applying that idea to the point that the ripples sent out change the whole collective body of human reasoning.

The pivotal fulcrums of human development, historically, have had as their accompanying engines imagination, audacity, pragmatism… and resolve. First the wheel must be invented; then it must meet the road. Hopefully, if the idea is good, this occurs before assassination, and if the idea is bad, assassination occurs first. A cursory glance at human history unfortunately confirms that this has not always been the case.

You see, what we’re all riding on here, ALL of us, and ALL of this—this big bus of humanity, this cosmic book of cause and effect under which we all pretend to the throne—all of our accomplishments, good and bad, and the systems springing from them, good and bad, and our art, good and bad, which so vividly captures our culture, love, war, grace, our ugliness and our beauty, and throws it all against the sky like a thunderhead blazing in a sunset for all to see, past, present and future… that, and the hopes we have for our futures, especially of our children, and the framework of our collective human constitution… all of this, this US, this WHOLE ENCHILADA… it all springs from IDEAS.

Human existence owes its survival to the human inception of creativity, perhaps beginning with the IDEA of leaving the trees and walking upright. To whoever first did that, it probably just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Time, of course, grew to history, and the inevitable layers of logistical portent grew upon that decision, like so many generations of legacy, and amplified that event to such significance that we, viewing it all from today, cannot imagine things to have ever been otherwise. But ‘t ain’t so. We just lost track of how lucky we truly are. Lucky and bad-ass.

Some of those ideas, seen from the perspective of modern ineptitude, were giant. Indeed, we live in a world where one doesn’t expect to even hear in the news (corporate or otherwise) of a human capable of really, REALLY leading. To wit: Drafting a Bill of Rights, a Gettysburg Address (hastily sketched on a train), a Ninth Symphony, or an “I Have a Dream Today” speech (head wound be damned).

Imagine if the western leaders in charge today had the moxie displayed by Churchill, Roosevelt or Truman (Stalin omitted). Iraq would be three easy pieces: Sunni, Shiite and Kurd. Bring the kids back in time for lunch. Of course, no true leader would have gotten us into Iraq in the first place, any more than any truly patriotic body of voters would ever have elected such a goon (in fact we didn’t)—but I digress.

When a culture loses its ability to put forth ideas and hook the rubber up to the road, game’s over. Cultures are like animals; in that way at least, mankind has not strayed from nature. Compare a city on the surface of our planet to a virus or bacteria in a Petri dish, and the word “culture” takes on new meaning. Ideas grow, and our civilization with them. And where an animal or a species grows weak, the balance tips and another animal or species pounces on the opportunity with what can only be called “all due ferocity and joy,” to quote Steinbeck. This is as it should be, of course. This may be a difficult thought to wrap your acceptance around, but it’s true: If we’re not the fittest, we don’t deserve survival.

America first carved out a niche based on the notion of holding a few truths to be self-evident, and then grew to be the exemplar for modern governments worldwide. How did we get to where we are now? I respectfully suggest that a government for the people, by the people REQUIRES the people, with their attention span intact—not X-boxers and other tumors of consumerism.

Looking back at the last forty years—a time during which American education was strangled, hopefully not for good—I remember it as being like watching an hour hand moving, or a boa constrictor slowly choking its victim; slow enough for John Q. not to notice or raise the alarm, only the rag-tag fringe cognoscenti.

Fast forward to the result, and now all of a sudden, We The People, the world’s great shining light, have the dawning realization and horror: We The People are no longer at the top of the food chain. Animals are crouching in the night, and we can’t spell “sullewshun.”

Personally, I love America, I would gladly die defending the Constitution (as long as killing elected officials is not required—as much as I’d love to, that’s not the American way), and I think we owe it to the world to get this fucking show back on the road, and in good form. Them animals crouching in them bushes don’t like human rights, and the world needs us.

So, what’s the “sullewshun?” Obviously, we need to locate and maybe reinvent our toolbox. Making funding for education not only a constitutional right, but a constitutionally required percentage of the budget would be a good start. ARTS in education should be a goddamned mandate, with copious spending. I am a musician, and have seen music do miraculous things in environments where nothing else could have possibly saved things, so I’m admittedly and duly biased. It is true, though, that musical study results in higher academic achievement. I don’t know why that’s so, but it’s an undisputed fact.

By the same token, it’s evidently the case that being raised in a Texas oil cartel family with back-door access to the CIA and then thieving into the White House results in global instability. It seems, to this writer at least, that the more sensible road is the musical one.

It’s easy for John Q. to look back wistfully on the time when Americans were considered to be educated by world standards, and would know what to do, and care enough to do it. And John Q. would rightly say, “I wish we were still like that.” It’s also easy for one to say, “There truly were giants in THOSE days” and, “It’s a shame that solution could never happen now.”

What we forget, and all too soon in our consumer-culture brainwashing, is that we have the same blood as our ancestors. The thematic development of time may have changed our level of ignorance, but not our blood. In the past, that blood has changed not only our world, but thematic development itself, as the most fundamental aspect of any human development is sheer goddamned will—but again, I digress.

“Where are the giants now?” you may ask. The answer is in your hands. They are us, or more succinctly, they are our ACTIONS. And bear in mind: Inaction is an action. Leave your video games, young ones. Leave your corporate news, shoot your televisions, leave your consumerism and pursue the ACTUAL truth. We can do this. To quote greatness: “If not now, then when, and if not me, then whom?”

You know, I gotta say, everyone knew this would happen; it wasn’t a question of “if.” We as humans have this amazing ability to ignore instinct, and not learn from the past.

I lived in that part of the world for 23 years, and every fall these horrible, wind-driven fires would take out a few neighborhoods. One night just a few years ago, sustained 80-mile an hour winds knocked a power line down on the roof of the house upwind of the one-acre horse property I lived in, by the base of the foothills in Sylmar. The only reason my guitars, masters, gear and who knows what else wasn’t wiped out was that my roommate was unable to sleep, and went outside on a perimeter patrol.

The fire-heroes were amazing in their response time and in how effectively they shut that fire down; the neighbor’s whole house was involved, and the embers were blowing horizontally for over a hundred feet onto our property (a horse ranch with lots of open ground, but also lots dry shrubs and trees). That the whole neighborhood didn’t go is still a source of amazement to me, and I’ll never forget the surrealism of having to assure myself that I wasn’t panicking (or dreaming) during a hurried evac at 4:00 a.m.

This year was no different, except that there were so many fronts simultaneously, we had no defense. What a freaking nightmare. I haven’t been able to think clearly for a week, for stressing about my friends. I’m still waiting to hear from three people about how their homes fared; everyone else I know (or could think of) in the ravaged areas made it through OK (notwithstanding Tracy and Dave waiting so long before leaving their house in Bouquet Canyon that the flames burst out the back window of their SUV, and the three kids were in the back covered with clothes as they drove right through the flames for their very god-damned lives).

I like to think that we’ll learn. But we won’t. That people will know better than to build a city below water level, or in Tornado Alley, or along the coast, or to enact fire/brush management policies that result in things like this. But we won’t.

American Indians were never this stupid. Hate to say, “I told you so,” but I’ve never really been able to buy into this whole “western civilization” doctrine, and its attendant philosophy of domination over Nature. We either achieve balance, or we get bitch-slapped by Queen Nature, as should be the case.

If there is a silver lining here, it will be in our gaining humility as a people, and respecting The Queen, and learning that if we don’t let routine fires cleanse the land periodically, bad things happen.

(Thanks, moveon.org)

Over-saturation. Awash and armpit-deep in the slag that runs downstream from American consumer culture like toxins from a copper mine, floating on the surreal slime of propaganda that drools from the corporate news every day, I find solace in headphones. Listening to the simple American truth and substance of Aaron Copland, I quell the dizziness.

CNN is selling the DUI trial of some hotel heiress as more important than what concerns the land and its people, the same day that Glenn Beck (CNN doesn’t define his show as ‘editorial’ on the promo) goes on the air defending political conservatism—and Mormonism. God bless America, indeed.

In the same news cycle, the chimp-in-chief is threatening to veto a measure that would include woman abuse and gay-bashing as hate-crimes, but that story’s buried, and just try, America, to unravel the web between Tony Snow, Fox, CNN and the White House. I’ve taken it this far: Fox has presented the Nat’l Inquirer as an affiliate; Tony Snow comes from Fox. Now, maybe it’s just me, but I would expect that in an office previously occupied by Nobel peace-prize laureates and nominees, the thought of the National Inquirer having a connection of any kind would foster disbelief.

Evidently, where televangelist Pat Robertson’s disciples rule, reality is… well, different. What with the unification of church and state, truth has to be hunted from downwind by sleuths in cammo, or it’ll bolt. This is NOT the America our Forefathers founded, and this is NOT the truth in news they would say we should have. Copland sounds more pensive than usual in “Appalachian Spring.” Strange; it’s the same recording I’ve played a hundred times.

More importantly, in the same news cycle and also hidden from viewers, a bill has won its way to the floor of Congress which if passed will BAN paperless electronic voting machines. Golly… that sounds important. No mention on CNN of course. I found out through MoveOn.org, which is in part responsible for the bringing of this measure to the floor. In my mind at least, this measure is more important than any other. More important than the “decision” to go into Iraq; more important even than Supreme Court nominees. For the first time since 2000, there is hope that America will be back in control of America. In the headphones, the opening of “Fanfare For the Common Man” explodes its magnificent truth: a lone trumpet blazes down through the clouds over the land like shafts of sunlight breaking a storm, heralding Nature’s own glory.

MoveOn… I cannot possibly lavish enough praise for an organization so effective, so well-conceived, and whose missions are so commonly so well-executed on street level (that means in the offices of gummit, folks). Armchair patriots can sit at their computers, and actually participate in government in whatever small way. Folks with more availability are welcome and encouraged to lend a hand, of course.

For my part, I crave nothing more than to make it real and go face-to-face with legislators, doing my best to have the effect of a lightning bolt when I smell the bleeding of America… but I’m paying my daughter’s way through college with no college fund. Patriot or no, decisions affecting my time and money are mandated by that criterion.

For knuckleheads like me, who care about the Constitution but can’t afford the time (and there are a lot of us these days), Moveon.org is a god-send. The compass and sextant that was the voice of American people, upholding and defending the Constitution against foes foreign or domestic, is NOT dead. Let’s back them, and not lose our way. To the folks at MoveOn, I’d like to say thanks, whoever you are. You rock. Voices without action are just howling at the moon.

Many people are skeptical (or derisive, or indifferent) about the possibility of producing vehicles that are exponentially more fuel efficient than the petroleum-gulping status quo that we have now. Some think that efficient vehicles must by default be underpowered, under-performing and unexciting to drive. Environmentalists’ dreams to the contrary are pipe dreams, they say. Silly.

Well, the naysayers have now been proven wrong. Witness the arrival of the Tesla Roadster (it actually debuted last July), an all-electric powered car with a top speed of 135 mph, performance clocking in at 0 - 60 mph in about four seconds (almost as quick as a Lamborghini Murcielago), a driving range averaging 250 miles—and all this performance for only about one cent per mile.

Contrast that with a gasoline powered car. Let’s say you get an average of 30 miles per gallon. At around $2.60 per gallon (sometimes more), your fuel cost per mile is 8.6 cents per mile (sometimes more). So the Tesla Roadster is more than eight times as efficient—more than eight times less expensive to drive. And for those of us who are not solely motivated by self interest, there’s another great bonus: this car produces one-tenth the pollution of those gasoline powered sports cars, when you factor in the environmental burden of producing the electricity.

The naysayers will point to the $100,000 price tag of the Tesla and say, “Yeah, right. Yet another example of how you can’t produce a super-efficient car for an affordable price.” But consider this: The Tesla Roadster had an initial production run of only 100 cars. Now what if we were to give this vehicle a production run of 100,000 cars? Or maybe one million cars? Do you suppose that a car like this could be produced at an affordable price, as compared with a gasoline powered car? I think the answer is pretty obvious.

So let the Sean Hannitys, the Rush Limbaughs, the Ann Coulters and the rest of the assorted right wing pundits and camp followers snicker and make snide remarks about “those crazy, wacko environmentalists” who are supposedly living in a fantasy world. Let them proudly boast of their God-given “right” to drive 12 or 8 mile per gallon dinosaurs, belching out tons of destructive carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons. Let them have their bloody, heartless oil war. (Okay, let’s not let them have it.) I think I know who the crazy wackos are.

Check out the Tesla Roadster here. I think I want one!

I stumbled across this new track by Randy Newman on iTunes, and I think it’s a perfect followup to the previous (much more serious and ominous) article by Chalmers Johnson, now that we’re on the subject of Empire. (See below.)

Randy Newman has always had a real knack for taking a serious subject and injecting it with the most clever, ironic wit. If I was to believe in reincarnation (a prospect about which I’m still somewhat divided), I could swear that I hear the voice of Mark Twain echoing in the background.

Hmmm… I wonder what Twain would have to say about our current sorry state of affairs?

Listen closely, enjoy and…

peace,

steve

“Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time, and your government only when it deserves it.”

– Mark Twain