Ignorance, Heart of an American Nightmare

It is difficult, at times, to keep my spiritual head above the water. The water being the flood of distressing, disturbing, and just plain horrible news regarding what is being done in the world.

I do not get my news or at least not most of my news input from 'mainstream' corporate controlled media. When you compare the news of the world as presented by the big US media, to the information disseminated in the rest of the world and even from homegrown independent media, you are immediately struck by the paucity of details in US generated stories.

The majority of Americans are plugged into the corporate media in a very big way. Night and day the TV and radio blast right wing pundits and talk show deans, preachers and good old boy local radio personalities with their God Bless America patriotic 'contests' and White House approved questions in interviews with local vets, usually officers, praising the president and his holy crusade.

They wake up with it, drive to work with it, sit with it at night and go to sleep with it..

The result of the perpetual media wash Americans live in, is that Americans have a particular and peculiar world view that separates them from the rest of the world, from the rest of humanity. Of those Americans who are aware of this peculiar mental schism
many support it, as a good thing. God is on our side and the rest of the world is wrong.

In my checkered past I have worked with a few people that can be safely described as clinically paranoiac. I have listened to many hours of why "everybody is crazy, wrong, and blind, except me."

The "God is on our side and the rest of the world is wrong" view, is not a rational or healthy world view. It never is.

But, I think the majority of Americans with that peculiar and well insulated view, do not realize that the rest of the world knows things that they have not been allowed to see.
I think the sleep walkers have no idea how much and exactly what kind of evil is being done in their names.

If they did, they may be too lazy, greedy, and self serving to give a shit but, as it is, they will never have the chance to know.

For a democracy to function as a democracy, it first requires an informed and involved citizenry.

Informed, no longer describes the American populace. Ignorance is the lack of information. That lack, that ignorance, has become a hallmark of Americans, in the eyes of the world. A world that knows a lot of things Americans just plain don't know.

Many Americans may not deserve the view the world has of them but if they don't start showing some real resistence, they are going to be stuck with it, whether they arguably deserve it or not. In the face of the massive aggression the government is guilty of, passive disagreement just doesn't cut it.