Reality Versus Your Comforting Illusions

By Cheryl Abraham

Some people say that you create your
own reality. I don’t know if that’s completely true – I didn’t
create the sun but its existence is an important part of my reality. 
Because if  the sun didn’t rise, for whatever reason, I’m sure
it would have a remarkable effect on my reality. In fact I believe that
life on earth might be at an end should such a thing occur. If the sun
refused to shine would I merely turn on the lights and ignore the darkness?
Would I just brighten my own little world and ignore the chaos outside?
Would I choose to not see what’s right before my eyes and continue
on as if the end of everything was not occurring? Doing so would become
an exercise in futility as reality would eventually come crashing in
on my little artificially lit world.

But that’s what the vast majority of
Americans are doing right now: keeping their little worlds artificially
lit in the hope that soon or someday things will get better, as if the
possibility of re-making our reality against the tremendous odds we
all find ourselves enmeshed in is that simple. Though the sun refusing
to rise would surely mean the imminent destruction of all life on the
planet and something humans could do nothing to prevent, the reality
that we face now for the future of the planet, while probably less dire
than this sun-less scenario, is one that we all can choose to have a
hand in shaping and creating.

Some Americans are hoping that electing
Obama and more democrats in the House and Senate will bring hope for
the future. Some Americans want McCain to win thinking that we need
four more years of the Bush agenda to keep America safe and strong.
Some don’t bother at all with politics or doing anything, either out
of ignorance or out of apathy or out of a sense of complete powerlessness
and/or hopelessness. Regardless of which definition defines the actions
of an individual American nowadays the truth is that an adherence to
any of these points of view will only exacerbate the problems facing
the U.S. and the world and in reality is a personal exercise in futility.

Unfortunately, the issues that America
faces, and indeed the rest of the world, are issues that will
and are affecting each and every one of us, no matter how we
shelter ourselves from them, whether  by hoping and believing in
the promises of a candidate or by ignoring the reality of these issues
altogether and focusing solely on our own lives.

These issues continue to grow daily and
are unprecedented in their potential for enormous negative consequences
for the entire planet.  Chris Hedges spoke about the reality we
face in a keynote address to Furman University, entitled, “America’s Democratic Collapse“. Hedges said, “… We are fed lie after
lie to mask the destruction the corporate state has wrought in our lives.
The consumer price index, for example, used by the government to measure
inflation, has become meaningless. “”

When you add in all the lies used to
justify the actions of the Bush agenda – the surge is working, Iran
needs to be bombed, torture saves American lives, and on and on in a
continual effort to make you think that crap smells like roses 
– it is incredible that Americans have not risen off their couches in
the millions to stand up to the machinations of the Bush regime and
instead continue to do nothing in the stink of the Bush reality which
reeks right before their very noses.

Lets put things in a more personal perspective
for the average American, like you and me for instance – while we hear
that the economy is doing okay and that there is no recession yet, the
truth is in our own pocketbooks – how much are we paying for our essential
needs now as compared to one year ago and is this a temporary situation
that will improve itself soon? Maybe you personally are not adversely
affected by the enormous and swift rise in the cost of living – at
least not yet, but hundreds of thousands of our neighbors are being
adversely affected right now, today, not to mention the food shortages
taking place in other parts of the world with no end in sight. How long
will it be until this reality affects every single American in some
way?

Not only is there a concerted effort
to put the truth of economic conditions in an artificially positive
light, there is the unprecedented secrecy that follows every move the
Bush regime makes. They don’t want you to know what you already don’t
know.

The ACLU in a “Statement for the Record to
the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee
on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties” states, “Over the years we have seen the state
secrets privilege mutate from a common-law evidentiary rule that permits
the government “to block discovery in a lawsuit of any information
that, if disclosed, would adversely affect national security,”[1] into
an alternative form of immunity that is increasingly being used to shield
the government and its agents from accountability for systemic violations
of the Constitution. Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration
has fundamentally altered the manner in which the state secrets privilege
is used, to the detriment of the rights of private litigants harmed
by egregious government misconduct, and at the sacrifice of the American
people’s trust and confidence in our judicial system.”

The ACLU statement goes on to give instance
after instance of the unchecked abuse of executive power through the
Bush regime version of the state secrets privilege: torture, extraordinary
rendition, warrant-less wiretapping and surveillance, the remarkable
story of the silencing of whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds, and more. In its conclusion the ACLU statement
says, “In each of these instances, the government has sought dismissal
at the pleading stage, and the privilege as asserted by the government
and as construed by the courts has often permitted dismissal of these
suits on the basis of a government affidavit alone – “. these qualitative
and quantitative shifts in the government’s use – and the courts”
acceptance – of the state secrets privilege warrant legislative action
to correct this imbalance of power and rein in unconstitutional executive
practices that are injurious to the health of a democratic society.”

What does this have to do with the average
American, and how does this affect you? Ask yourself, does any of this
sound like the actions of a government that gives a damn about you or
the rest of the world?

Another issue that directly affects every
American right now is wiretapping. In a Metro Daily West article, Mark Klein and Babak Pasdar write, “To this
day, the American people do not know the full extent of the telecom
actions in warrantless wiretapping, and if amnesty passes, we may never
know. Allowing this administration and these corporations to get away
with this illegal and unconstitutional behavior sets the worst type
of precedent for future American generations.” Allow that information
to seep into your American brain for a bit, then read about the startling
revelations of a Truthout.org article by Bruce Finley entitled, “Terror Watch Uses Local Eyes;
181 Trained in Colorado.
The article points to the fact that, ” Hundreds of police, firefighters,
paramedics and even utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched
as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado and a handful
of other states to hunt for “suspicious activity” – and are
reporting their findings into secret government databases.”

Suspicious activity? Secret government
databases? These “TLO” officers have the authority to interpret
YOUR activities and decide if they are “suspicious”. What are some
of these activities that might seem suspicious? Finley’s article goes
on to explain, ” “Suspicious activity” is broadly defined
in TLO training as behavior that could lead to terrorism: taking photos
of no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements or notes, espousing
extremist beliefs or conversing in code, according to a draft Department
of Justice/Major Cities Chiefs Association document.” “Taking photos
of no apparent aesthetic value”? “Making measurements or notes”?
Hmm, I’m pretty sure that anyone who might have been watching me has
seen or heard me doing some of these things, what about you? In fact
this article that you are reading right now, in some people’s opinion,
is extreme, and you, the reader, in the action of reading it makes you
extreme too. In a few short paragraphs of free thought and opinion we
have both become “extremists” at least in the head of some Bush
regime trained circus monkey parading around in an official title. But
wait, it gets worse”

Is there a record of you clicking on
this link and the length of your stay at this link? Is that too paranoid
of a thought for you? Is it tinfoil hat time? But think seriously about
this: is it just possible that there now exists a record of YOU reading
THIS article? And if so, why, and how does that record make YOU or me
safer from terrorism?

The fact is that it doesn’t make us
safer at all, what it does is it puts both of us in danger: in danger
of being considered an enemy combatant by our own government, a government
that has legalized and codified torture as an interrogation method.
Do we really want our public and our intimate actions judged and recorded
by the criteria that the horrendously corrupt and murderous Bush regime would like to measure
us by? Unfortunately the truth is that it is already happening, and
the vast majority of Americans continue to do nothing as the Bush regime’s
agenda expands and solidifies itself in an ever-widening worldwide grip
that strangles civil and human rights.

But it doesn’t stop at what you read,
what you do, or what you say. In an Associated Press article posted
by Huffingtonpost.com, Lara Jakes Jordan reports that the Justice Dept is considering racial
profiling in the name of terror prevention. Jordan reports that, “The
Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans
without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile
that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.”
The article goes on to state, “Critics say the presumption of innocence
is lost in the proposal. The FBI will be allowed to begin investigations
simply “by assuming that everyone’s a suspect, and then you weed
out the innocent,” said Caroline Fredrickson of the American Civil
Liberties Union”

And in typical Bush regime fashion: saying
one thing and doing the opposite, the Jordan article points out, “President
Bush also has condemned racial profiling as “wrong in America”
and in a December 2001 interview had harsh words for an airline that
refused to let one of his Secret Service agents board a commercial flight.
The agent was Arab-American. “If he was treated that way because
of his ethnicity, that will make me madder than heck,” Bush said.”
But as the article continues: “Immediately after 9/11, hundreds of
Muslims and Arabs were detained, deported and monitored as the government
urgently sought information that could prevent another attack. Despite
efforts to repair and nurture relationships with those groups, Muslim-
and Arab-Americans still complain of being singled out by federal security
practices.” The Jordan article ends by asking the obvious question:
what about the “white terrorists” like Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski
and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh?

Is the Bush regime’s next “logical”
step after racial profiling of supposed terrorists to re-create a program
right out of America’s own shameful history: the Japanese American
internment camps? And how will the Bush regime spin this idea to the
American people, by calling these camps “Freedom Facilities”? The
Bush regime’s plan for America and the world are much more ominous
than just the few examples given here, but these examples alone should,
at the very least, leave any thinking person angry and annoyed

Chris Hedges, in summing up his keynote
address said, “Hope, St. Augustine wrote, has two beautiful daughters.
They are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage
to see they do not remain the way they are. We stand at the verge of
a massive economic dislocation, one forcing millions of families from
their homes and into severe financial distress, one that threatens to
rend the fabric of our society. We are waging a war that devours lives
and capital, and that cannot ultimately be won. We are told we need
to give up our rights to be safe, to be protected. In short, we are
made afraid. We are told to hand over all that is best about our nation
to those like George Bush and Dick Cheney, who seek to destroy our nation.
A state of fear only engenders cruelty — cruelty, fear, insanity, and
then paralysis. In the center of Dante’s circle, the damned remained
motionless. If we do not become angry, if we do not muster within us
the courage, indeed the militancy, to challenge those in the Democratic
and Republican parties who herd us toward the corporate state, we will
have squandered our courage and our integrity when we need it most.”

It’s a sad fact that the vast majority
of Americans, by doing nothing to challenge their reality in any significant
way, are destined to write the story of their own ruin. They are indeed
creating their own reality by virtue of their own inaction, by their
refusal to see the darkness and chaos that reigns right outside their
little world of comforting illusions.

The time is short and action now is vital.
There are many who are waking up to the fact that they, as individuals,
have a responsibility to speak out against what is happening, to resist
the Bush agenda, to work to discredit the actions of the Bush regime,
to lay bare its lies, crimes and offenses, and do this loudly and publicly.
It is time to step outside our comfort zones, to take real responsibility
for our future beyond voting, beyond polls, beyond commenting online,
and beyond just complaining, and work together to heal what has been
broken and to create a sustainable livable future for humanity. As it
says in “The Call” of World Can’t Wait: This will not be
easy.

But what other choice do we have? The
days of lives lived in illusion are numbered – at some point soon
all our illusions will be shattered by the reality of where we have
allowed ourselves to be led if we do not earnestly and wholeheartedly
begin the necessary work to re-make society to fit what humanity needs,
not what the corrupt and murderous corporations and governments are
forcing upon it.

What kind of future are you working to
create?  

Cheryl Abraham is a member of World
Can’t Wait from the Seattle area and a regular writer for the World
Can’t Wait web site.