I’ve long wondered how it is that the vast bulk of the population stays complacent to the egregious violations of freedom and liberty we observe the government taking from us, on a regular basis, without asking. The complacent acceptance and/or approval by most of IRS violations, Benghazi and the NSA/Snowden surveillance debacle, coming all at once, finally turned the light bulb on in my head. The reaction spectacle to the lock-down and house-to-house searches, after the Boston bombings generated a bizarre and hideous screaming approval on the streets, confirmed it.
It explains why the caged bird really sings. It sings not for the reasons we’re taught to believe. It’s largely the same reason that Communism, Fascism and Socialism killed 100 million while Democracy only killed a few million in comparison: Make the cage just comfortable enough and the bird forgets it’s indeed caged.
Totalitarians must kill tens of millions to succeed in their warped and despotic dreams. Democratic Authoritarian Tyrants kill fewer of their populations because so many more people accept their condition in seemingly benign control environments. The Amerikan Progressive and NeoConservative authoritarians learnt the lessons of the 20th century. So began the implementation of more benign methods. However, a truly free person realizes the end goal is the same.
For those so out of touch they fail to realize deaths attributable to Democracies; stop and think for a few minutes about the 19th-21th centuries. The Indian Wars, “Banana Republics,” and Iraq as a small sampling. The British, European and American “democracies” have killed quite a number along the way while resisting giving up their empires, maintaining economic and monetary dominance and assuring the flow of oil. The record is replete with examples.
Or maybe, through insuring the Communists, Socialists and Fascists stay in their immediate sphere of influence and don’t stray too far into Progressive territory, among other reasons. We also don’t like to count those numbers who died in our wars of opportunity (and lots of imperial skirmishes), for oil, cash, and political influence and control beyond our borders because they were supposedly done “for the right reasons.”
Maya Angelou, in her famous poem “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,” drew an allusion of a bird trapped, trussed and tied in a cage that still sang for freedom. While it is a popular analogy, it is not an accurate depiction of the real state of freedom and liberty in America. A trussed-up bird never sings; it shrieks for release. No, the caged bird sings in America because it finds the cage comfortable enough to exist in and the natural desire to sing masks its actual condition of entrapment.
When Americans sing the false praises of their condition they do so in a gilded cage, comfortably submitting to being trapped, in a bondage of their own making. They do not sing for freedom, they sing that their bondage is comfortable enough to tolerate, while the government further restricts their movement by clipping off a couple more feathers often enough.
A ruthless and implacable government, that refuses to be resisted, has grown to previously unimaginable proportion. More Americans are now aware, through the disclosures of Edward Snowden and a few others, that their government has collected and archived who they call, when and for how long, their emails and web-browsing history. The phone and internet systems allow the geographic position to be readily obtained in real time. They now know that 4.5+ million, clerks, bureaucrats, technicians, politicians, agents and contractors keep secrets on them and from them. There is a massive-beyond-imagination secret government and controlled-corporatist infrastructure operating all around us. We don’t know who will be seeing those records or when. We don’t know at what point a computer algorithm will initiate a complete disruption of our lives. We don’t and won’t know what we don’t know about how others direct our lives, foreign policy, justice, medical care and personal finances.
We are now aware that the IRS not only has our financial records but will soon have our medical records. Those records will be shared with 7 other government agencies, including Health and Human Services, the Peace Corps, Department of Homeland Security, Social Security and Department of Defense. No citizen will have the power to consent to sharing those records and to who has access to see them. We will be powerless to stop inadvertent disclosure or the input of false and inaccurate information. Ever try to fix an error on your credit report? This will be 10 times worse. Ever thought about what a nightmare it would be if that hated brother-in-law had access to your bank account and credit cards? How about a low-level government clerk on a bad hangover on a Monday morning? Big Brother will have it all, right at their fingertips.
Yet Americans keep singing the praises of their once great country while remaining caged in a familial, political, economic and philosophical space that is steadily shrinking. They stand en masse and recite the Pledge of Allegiance and sing the National Anthem at rallies and sporting events, believing they’re free. They do so because the cage is cleaned and lined with fresh newspaper regularly and their food and water replenished (think welfare, transfer payments, subsidies, loans and tax deductions) keeping up the comfortable illusion. They believe that daily TV propaganda, mindless sitcoms and reality shows, weekend sports and beer are freedom. Americans have become so desperate to believe the illusion of freedom that they’ve become willing participants in a massive Stockholm Syndrome construct.
We are truly in the grip of madness. The vast bulk of the population has now reached the point that they will accept any indignity, welcome any deprivation, accommodate any restriction, in order to maintain their own illusion of freedom. Meanwhile, the 21st century Authoritarians and petty tyrants march straight ahead toward absolute control. The giant Tower of Babel (actually babble) that is the media and press are covering for a vast propaganda machine, posing as a Left-Right ideological contest, who are actually playing on the same team.
Thomas Drake, former Technical Director of Software Systems at the NSA and another whistleblower on the failed billion-dollar TRAILBLAZER collection and analysis system, put it succinctly when he said, “Since the [US] government unchained itself from the constitution after 9/11, it has been eating our democracy alive from the inside out.”
The Progressive/NeoCon Authoritarian manipulators may kill fewer people outright along the way than the overt totalitarians, but they are every bit as evil. They are the death of the Constitutional Republic and the American people are letting them kill it, all the while watching like it’s some kind of traffic accident in which they don’t want to get involved.