Atheist Meditations

In an effort to appeal to more readers, to perhaps save just one more soul, I will contain my vulgar tendancies during this latest appeal to the poor American's who choose to ignore the state of their world. Sometimes, I think the poor victims of ignorance need to be shocked into reconsidering how the world 'works.' Other time's I'll try patience and a reasonable approach.

I can blog blue, and I can blog contained. What I can't stand is the childish bloggers who insert *'s over the vowels when ranting about stuff. Like we don't know what word you mean. If you are going to swear, swear. Words have power, but they are not magic.

Anyways, I hope that all of my visiters go and follow the link to 'crooks & liars', that I inserted into the previous post. (Evags, please just squint so that you don't endanger your soul with the poisonious comprehension of vulgar words. Just click on the colored hyperlink.) Sure it could be a fake, but since the Army investigated it, I'd say it might hold more water than a video of crop circle being formed. I can't imagine what it has been like to be an average Iraqi over the last few years.

I consider the neo-conned to be anyone who does not have access to alternative media, and who does not see the problem with that lack of perspective. I read a blog this afternoon where the author was honestly trying to say that Alan Colmes is the last voice of reason in the neurotic Democratic party - valiantly struggling to present a rational face in spite of the fact that he is dwarfed by Sean Hannity's superior intellect.

Ever since the beginning of civilization, a small group has occupied the elite position, dictating the direction of that society, and reaping the lion's share of the wealth and benefit of that position. Medieval Europe had a small aristocracy and a huge peasantry. So did feudal China and Japan. Early America was built by slaves. 'Fathers', sat at the heads of households, managing their lands, families, and resources of slaves. (That's where the term, 'founding fathers' comes from.)

The point here, is that for the most part, inequality is the model for society. The ruling elites used a wide variety of methods to protect their status. In particular: violence, religion, and limits on the education of the masses. Thus a feudal knight had a church that told him the King ruled via God's will, and that any uprising by the peasants was a resistance to God's order and must be put down violently. The culture supported the inequality.

The cracking into the gift of the hydrocarbons, along with the printing press, changed a lot. The industrial revolution required expensive machinery that was too valuable to be exposed to slave labor. A greater level of intellectual capacity was required, and a larger percentage of the population became literate. From this Liberalism was born. The same rights that nobles granted themselves to protect their assests from a King, lower born men began to envy and demand similar rights for themselves.

I'm drifting off point here, perhaps a few neo-conned will have begun to wonder about their simple world view, but I doubt it. Lets skip over the next three hundred years, the founding of America as a Liberal Democracy, and make a hasty segway into the current situation. I figure I only have a few more paragraphs, and any neoconned will have lost interest and scrolled down to the comments to tell me I have small testicles.

Propaganda is an overused word. Overloaded might be a better term. For those of us who have actually bothered to consider that being a good citizen might require one to understand how it works, it is still a very good descriptor for the current media environment. Propaganda does not tell you what to think. Instead, it limits the information that you have access to, controlling the number of selections, so that in the current media world, one is lead to believe that there is a 'conservative' view and a 'liberal' view. Thus, the sly dogs who control the media don't really care which side you choose to believe, cuz neither of them are at all problematic to their continued position in the drivers seat of our economy. Alan Colmes may call himself a liberal, but I call him a candy ass. The point is, true Liberal Thought is almost impossible to find in mainstream media - they don't want you exposed to it, cuz it will lead you to challenge an arrangement that is almost rediculous in the inequality of it. Noam Chomsky is a representaive of real Liberalism, you will never hear him on Public Radio (which is not liberal, it is part of the propaganda machine. It's like the Alan Colmes for the college educated)

So let's focus on the War in Iraq, and apply some of the insight we can take away from understanding the manipulation of media. We are in a war in the middle of the Holy Land with a military that is predominately christian and a Commander in Chief who is obstinately so. This Commander in Chief hired an advertising firm to 'sell' (their word) this war to the American people, and so far the justifications of this War have been rather wishy-washy.

The point is, ask yourself, 'how many images of dead and wounded Iraqi children have I seen?' We know that the Bush Administration is going to great lenghts to make sure you never see a flag draped coffin come off a military plane. Have you ever seen an interview with a Marine who lost almost a quarter of his brain to a roadside bomb? Or how about any camera shots of the almost a thousand bodies a month that show up in Baghdad morgues with their hands tied behind their backs and bullet wounds to the back of the head?

Sure you have seen chanting 'Islamo-fascists' thousands of times, pictures of beheadings and other atrocities more times than you can count. Obviously, the images you are being given by the mainstream press are being selectively managed.

Are you ready to wake up yet? Are you prepared to be a citizen, to be willing to admit that occassionally the most powerful country in the world does not act for the noblest of reasons?

There are other takes on reality, other interpetations of war and injustice than the ten largest media conglomerates on the planet want to spoon feed you. Interact with the bigger world. You can live up to your responsibilities as an American. You can take the time to learn more than what Fox News thinks a fifth grader can understand. You should.