Sunday, December 05, 2004

America’s Collective Loss of Memory and Mushrooms

Published in the Douglas County Sentinel November 2nd 2004.

Apparently, there is a far greater nemesis lurking in American than the threat of Alzheimer’s or other physiological disorders affecting our memories. As a nation, we are told that memory loss and memory dysfunction are attributable to aging, disease and other physiological disorders, but I think it is much worse than that. I think the reality of our condition lies more in the cultivation of mushrooms.

America was viciously and murderously attacked on September 11th 2001. Yet many Americans seem to have forgotten that. President Bush set a course and policy to hunt down and destroy those responsible, but to listen to many Americans you would think that he is the enemy. A war against terror has become a war for oil. A war to thwart and prevent further terrorism on our shores is represented as a war for financial enrichment and global conquest. We are told that 200 billion has been wasted and that 1100 American lives have been thrown away pursuing a wrong war in the wrong place. We have been told that the evidence clearly demonstrating the ties to terrorism to an evil and murderous dictator are in reality blurred and inconsequential. We are told that the embellished record of a candidate whose combat experience totaling four months is a more valid and substantial qualifier than a president whose war record stretches back three years. We are told that our president has lied, yet we are told to ignore the repeated lies of a candidate whose career and history of lies dates back thirty five years.

We are told to believe the ever changing and constantly manipulated reality of John Kerry is the true reality, yet no one seems to remember the lives lost in New York or Washington or Pennsylvania that September day three years ago, or sees the ever present danger of the threat that looms in America’s future. More importantly, no one seems to remember who was responsible for those acts and who was attacked. They either don’t remember or they don’t understand that we were the victims, and that we were the ones attacked. Some how, we have become the assailants and the president’s actions are portrayed as acts of aggression rather than defense and John Kerry is the savior to be embraced.

How can this be? How can this have occurred? The answer is not complex. Memory is based upon information and experience. If we don’t experience something personally, we must necessarily rely on the experiences of others to form our understanding and memory of events. The keeper of our collective memory of shared experience as a nation has traditionally been the media. Those that dared to seek the truth and braved the dangers to acquire the truth for the benefit of all. Sadly, that highest of goals has been circumvented and hijacked for the purpose of political advantage and surreptitious manipulation of public opinion.

As we approach next Tuesday’s election, each and every American should be considering the issues and the facts surrounding the presidential election and who will be best to lead our nation during this dark time of threat to America. Americans need to push aside the spin, and the manipulation and the forced perceptions being pandered by those whose motivations are based more in ratings and Emmy’s and Golden Globes and Pulitzer’s than truth and the common good of our country.

America needs a leader. A man that will stand by his convictions, a man that has a history of keeping his word and navigating the gales of dissention and the seas of purposeful deceptions. We need a president that not only tells the truth, but is willing to make hard decisions and then stand by those decisions in the face of organized efforts purposely assembled to assail and challenge his will and resolve. We need a president that will look coldly into the eye of murder and terror and not flinch and never blink. A man that will never barter the safety of America on the alter of international perception and approval.

America’s memory has been purposely manipulated and obscured by those that seek to realize egalitarian global plurality as their own personal reality at the expense of America’s safety and sovereignty.

Someone once said, “I feel like a mushroom, because I am kept in the dark and fed manure all the time.” The keepers of the mushrooms in America are those that control and editorially manage mainstream media. The major networks and the major newspapers are the ones responsible for keeping Americans in the dark and feeding them a steady diet of manure wrapped reality. As Americans it is our responsibility to let our voices be heard. Next Tuesday that collective voice should be a unified shout. Not only as a referendum on the man who will be our president, but also as a referendum on media in America and their collective attempt to weaken our nation. As Americans we each need to go the polls and vote. We need to let the liberal elitist in main stream media hear the voices of those other than the spoon fed mushrooms. © trickworm 2004

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