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LETTERS / Very Few People Really Search for Knowledge

Dear Editor,

Very few people really search for knowledge about this world. They twist what they have already shaped in their mind into an image without which they can’t go on. This is the foundation of success for “mainstream news/opinions”. Truly questioning opens the door to the whirlwind where the answer may obliterate your preferred world view. Brain dead ideology beats intelligent compromise in America.

 We “elect” politicians and then imagine that somehow the world will improve in conformity with their promises. To trust politicians is dangerous.

 Rape has been explained by Todd Aiken, a Republican Congressman from Missouri and women everywhere rejoice to learn that they need not fear pregnancy if they suffer legitimate rape. He told us that female reproductive organs can distinguish between legitimate rapes and, ah, counterfeit rape saying that the only rape that can end in pregnancy is an illegitimate or what you might call “phony” rape. Women who don’t realize this distinction are thought to be members of NARAL-Pro Choice, a radical group of loopy career women and terrorists. Congressman Aiken ran in this year’s election for the Senate, where he hoped his ideas would get women back into the kitchen and the nursery where they belong. This theme has been echoed by several other “republican candidates” with variations.

 How do my neighbors believe “our government” has any right to concern itself with abortion yet fail to extend their “Christian pro-life” sentiments to children in countries on the receiving end of American cluster bombs, bullets and corporate rape? Perhaps there are “legitimate” murders, as in rape.

 Citizens choose what version of reality they prefer finding “evidence” to support those views. The result is a country/world that is in a downward spiral resulting from delusion. The curious thing is they don’t make any space for opposing ideas demanding others live with the ones they choose as “true” or “acceptable”.

 We have a winner take all political system that gives fifty plus one the right to insist we all live in the “winners” world. The system isn’t broken so much as rigged. Corporations are legally considered people with all of the rights and none of the responsibilities. None of this is in any way decent but the loudest of our moral arbiters demand obedience to their narrow view of morality, forgetting their religious ideological details in their rush to demand, we be them. It’s the Talibanization of America using methods “our patriots” scream loudly about when they imagine they’re the subjects of such. Compromise is the only solution to avoid violent collapse. They forget; do unto others as you would have done unto you.

 “Our government” is a gang with a flag. It’s a criminal group more formidable and successful than any ‘private’ Mafia. H. L. Mencken said; “every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under”. Mark Twain said about voting that “if voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it”. Charles Bukowski said that “the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting”. Once you’ve become convinced that you’re living in a free country, then all the characteristics of that society are believed to be free, and any questioning is considered to be questioning freedom or even hating America.

 Republicans lie to themselves when speaking of limited government; they mean that they want a government limited to one controlled by Republicans. From the decider’s tax cuts to the Medicare drug plan and several wars they started, they have paid for none of it. Now they expect the average person to foot the bill and leave their rich patrons untouched. They’re the party of war, torture, empire, militarism and corporate welfare. The democrats follow those policies, to lesser degrees, like loyal dogs.

 Thomas Jefferson said that the best foreign policy is “peace, commerce, honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none”.  American foreign policy is corrupt, reckless, belligerent, and meddling, and has been for several hundred years. Our military shouldn’t be fighting wars of choice. American soldiers shouldn’t be stationed anywhere but here at home. All 1,000 foreign bases should be closed, and the American military should be brought home.

 They produced bogus threats from Islamic fundamentalism to start wars, saying that the problem isn’t America’s giant war machine or Israeli aggression but angry Middle Easterners who want to take over the world. This type of talk is delusional. Islamic fundamentalism has been exaggerated by “our national security state” to justify USrael’s aggression against Muslim countries. We have a long history of such propaganda and aggression.

 Speaking at a press conference Obama called for an end to the firing of missiles into Israel by militants inside Gaza, saying “there is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” Evidently he forgot Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, and Gaza?

 “Our government” doesn’t bother with a likely story anymore to convince “consumers” that “our war machine” is a force for good. They just say; “We’re good, they’re bad” and you must believe it.  

Craig Dudley