A cold day in November, 2004. Dasher and I were supposed to be filming an episode of Transcendent Television. But it was dificult to maintain focus. During the filiming of me casting my vote in that year’s presidential elections, I had commented to a camera man, on camera no less, who i thought would win. I casually replied “C’mon man.” “Well what if Bush wins?” he asked me. “It’s not going to happen,” I responded. How could it? I mean, serioulsy. How could it even be close? Didn’t most of the country watch the debates? Certainly that would have been the final nail in the coffin of this dark season of Howdy Doody gone mad, this shameless lame duck masquerading as a president. Reputation and even actions aside, surely the debates showed how close to mentally challenged the man was, how insincere, how incompetent, how utterly incapable; and more than that certainly it was clear from that point on how sold out he was to the higher powers that be — and not those that reside somewhere near the pearly gates through which at some point we all must pass, but the greedy and sinister dark powers that rest right here on planet earth lurking behind corners, barking orders at men like GW as if they were dogs or children. The results of their demands all in the name of money or oil or other natural resources, or simply more corporate power, and sadly many at the expense of much innocent life, more losses of civil rights and liberties, and far less happiness than we are used to in this great great country of ours.
 Surely the debates told the story clearly enough to most american people that Kerry, despite his constant flip-flopping and teetering, would win by a landslide. There was simply no way the people, the people, who are the people? would vote Bush and Cheney back into office again. Perhaps another CEO job for Cheney with some giant insensitive multi-national of avarice. Bush could run another baseball team perhaps or continue his record-setting executions in the great old state of texas for all we cared. We’re Manhattanites. If Texans want to kill each other in record numbers proving once again that the old adage “two wrong don’t make a right” does not apply to the barbarian classes, let them. But for God and Country’s sake get these men out of American government before they destroy every last bit of progress we have made over the last two-hundred years. Â
And so it was thought. So it was hoped. “So what are you going to do if Bush IS re-elected?” the cameraman continued to chide me. I didn’t see it as a possiblity. I had greatly over-estimated the perceptual abilities and the intelligence of my fellow citizens. But i hadn’t a clue. Yet. “I dont know. Probably move to France.” What else could we do? Endure? We had just endured four miserable years. And they were much worse than we ever could have imagined. The Bush Cheney regime had already murdered over three-hundred thousand Iraqi people in cold blood by inititating a fake war on “terror” by attacking an innocent country in broad daylight for all the world to see. I toured the streets of many cities and towns all over the world during those years and was constantly reminded of how truly hated this man was by the people of the world. I was ashamed to be an American when i travelled abroad; not because of anything we did… and surely we have done a lot to be ashamed of over the last five hundred years, but because of what we didn’t do. We allowed a corporate-controlled puppet regime to steal the most sacred office in our government right under our noses and we did nothing about it. Many of the most civilized nations on the earth were more than merely frightened of America now. They were downright disgusted. At its arrogance, its apathy, its insensitivity to the crises it was causing in the middle east; and the potential crises it could cause the rest of the world who lived along its borders.
America that three-hundred million headed monster that looks right into the lens of the world camera and says ‘fuck me, eat me, drink me, buy me’ and without batting an eyelash ends its shallow greedy sexist sales-pitch by saying ‘or I’ll kill you.’ That became the new slogan of the red white and blue. “If you’re not with us then you’re with them.” I believe that was the way GW put it on international television to make it clear that we had all gone truly mad or we’re being held by force against our will, prisoners within the walls of our own once-proud nation. Held captive by a band of renegade theives and killers who looked an awful lot like mainstream middle-american corporate hustlers and used car salesmen. In each and every country that i visited in those four years the first question that i was always asked when i was introduced as an american was inevitably “How do you feel about Bush? How do you deal with Bush being your president? Do a alot of people like him there? How did he become your president?”
What intrigued me the most was how quickly the sentiment changed during those four short years. Travelling abroad as an american once meant being greeted with open arms, with adulation, with envy, with giant smiles and anticipated high fives. Now people in foreign lands seemed to feel sorry for us. We appeared enigmatic to them. Sad, beaten down, defeated, to be pitied. We have an alleged democracy. And yet it was clear to the rest of the civilized world that our democracy had failed us miserably in the stolen election of 2000. “Why didn’t they count all the votes?” people would ask me referring to the cluster-fuck of Florida that sealed our fate. “How can you have a Supervisor of Elections in one of your States who is clearly partisan and who worked as one candidate’s election campaign? Shouldn’t that be illegal? Why did you all allow all those black voters to be denied their right to vote? Shouldn’t you have a revote? We would here,” they would tell me in a cafe or restaurant or bar.
When i hadn’t a reply except to sit there looking dejected and helpless and saddened by our sorry state of electoral affairs they came to quickly realize that we now, American’s of every race color age and religion, are finally experiencing what most of the other great nations of the world have at one point or another in their own countries due to their much longer histories. A totalitarian, nearly facist government thinly disguised as a democratic republic, one without ethics or morals or regard for its people. One without respect for laws, world opinion, human rights, or the seeing eye of the international community. Worse for everyone, one without respect for the truth or concern for human life. Not even the environment got away. So we endured.
But good news and better times were on the horizon. Kerry was certainly still a “company man.” Sold out long ago. But the fact that he was both a war hero and then a war protestor spoke volumes about his character. Could you ask for a better man as president of such a rich and powerful nation? Probably not. At least not then. And we didn’t have time to do so. We needed to get him in regardless of his shaky stand on many of the issues. In time, his character had already proven, he would settle into the issues and make the right decisions. Once all the campaign consultants and yes men and pollsters cashed their checks and fled for the hills, he would start setting things right again. If anything he would make a damn good bandage on the open wound that America had turned into till we found a good surgeon.
Or so we thought. But something insideous transpired that fateful evening. The guerilla regime that had overtaken the white house had run a nasty campaign of childish pranks, hate-filled and jingoistic, sexist, arrogant, deceptive, and most of all ignorant. These thugs were white bread. All the calories without any taste or nutritive value. Instead of showing respect and honor to the man who should be king and then debating him intelligently about the issues, as any real president would do, GW and his frightfully senseless cabal of liars and theives mercilously attacked the quiet contemplative war hero and congressman called Kerry. They chose not to speak of issues, but only of fear and terror.
They used what in philsophy, logic, and debate is known as fallacies of consequence — appealing to false consequences of fear rather than proving any particular point. If their campaign were a doctoral thesis they would have received an F. In a debate they would have been booed by the audience and docked a point and warned not to make the same mistake again. But they did it over and over and over again. To the point where the only issue seemed to be terror. How much terror can we as american people inflict on the world around us so as not to have the same done to us. Let us kill for you so we will not be killed. We will terrorize every country who gets in our way in the name of fighting terror. We cannot tell you who the enemy is, but we will kill every last standing man woman or child until we are sure that they are dead and we are safe. Let us rape this land before our enemies do it first. Fuck the envirmonent, we need the money. Fuck healthcare. If you aren’t wealthy enough to afford it, you’re better off dead. Education? Who needs it? Look at us! We barely speak english and we’re ruling the most poweful nation in the world.
With the flesh and guts of recent victims dangling from their jaws and fresh blood smeared across their smarmy dogged faces they appeared on countless news programs spitting out lies so obvious and blatant that many news shows would ask them to thier faces why they kept lying and then run short segments highlighting them repeating the same words of deceit over and over again to show them how many times they lied: “we beleive Iraq is harboring weapons of mass destruction and terrorists and if we don’t continue our crusade to conquer that land and its people we will be unsafe here in america.” Cheney would stare coldly back into the eyes of the journalists interviewing him and report that he never said anything about Iraq harboring weapons of mass destruction. And then the journalist would replay five to ten different scenes where on different episodes he said just that. As if to say, ’Sir you are the vice president of the united states and therefore out of respect for this office i will not aruge with you about this but rather i will let you argue with yourself. The people have clearly seen that you either have no respect for the truth, or you are simply ignorant of the concept itself. But either way you are a liar and worse yet you are using these lies to kill innocent people in our name.
On and on it went. And by election day 2004 the good kind working people of this great land who huddle in the safe center portion of its belly were so confused that many did indeed cast a vote for the warpig butchers and henchmen of the giant corporate monoliths whose intention it was to eat these same poor people’s children for breakfast or maybe just keep sending them off to fight their battles for them in some foreign country undeserving of yet another attack by the wicked american imperialists. Frightened or just confused? In the end who knows.  But it happened. And america went from pitiable to pitiful to despicable in the eyes of the world community.      Â
So instead of working that day following the election Dasher and I sat in the park. We were speechless. Shocked beyond words. A freind stopped by who was doing a piece about how New Yorkers were responding to the news for a local paper. We spent an hour or so together in mourning. Our camraderie in that moment founded upon a rather sorrowful state of affairs. Less than a year later my friends and I would hear news that one of our own from the high school days had been killed in action in Iraq. He told his family and friends that he volunteered for the marines after the US government announced that there was a clear connection between Iraq and the attacks on 9/11. Even though we tried to explain to him that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11 he didn’t believe us because he had seen them say it on TV countless times. He felt it was the least he could do. His mother spoke at the funeral and said that the best way for us to “support the troops was to get them the hell out of there because they have no business being there in the first place.” It was the first time I heard applause at a funeral.
Day six. A quickie. Several of our team members fell ill over the last 36 hours. I too had a brief bout with the old ‘rumble in the jungle’ yesterday morning as previously reported; not sure if it was the unbearable heat, the grueling work, the lack of sleep, or something I ate or drank. Same goes for the other troops who went down over the last two days. You just can never be sure. But we’re back on the work site and we’ve finally hit that flow-space that most work trips find eventually within themselves. It can take anywhere between two days to five if its going to happen, and when it does you can really see and feel it. It’s palpable. One minute you are on a team of twenty-something unique individuals of all different ages, races, backgrounds, and social circles, who may or may not know each other, each with their own work habits, ideas and beliefs; each with their own opinions, fears, hopes, and aspirations – God knows all trying their best to get along and get the job done, but still separated by that invisible line that exists between each of one of us and “the other.” On almost every work or peace or mission or activist trip I’ve ever been on I have noticed that at some point the group as a whole will reach a new place in consciousness where the individuals unify, become one unit and work as a whole that almost always is greater than the sum of its parts in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and productivity. Not sure when the exact moment in time that occurred for us on this trip, but it has. We spoke about it today after we got back to the hotel in our group meeting. We hit that stride where everyone is now working together in harmony and it feels great. Heat, illness, and back-breaking work aside, several commented that the work site has now turned into “a happy place.” Read More »
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