Thursday, July 26, 2007
Perception Is Reality
All our senses are faulty. Your vision is not "perfect". 20/20 would be considered blind as the proverbial bat by other animals. The same applies to each of our other senses. What we proudly say distinguishes our species from the rest is our brain. This is the same brain that can be afflicted with learning disorders, mental illness, or the Fox News Channel.
The recent story revealing that Iranians are not the great "foreign fighter" problem in Iraq, but it's actually radicals from Saudi Arabia reminds me of this fact. Our administration, enabled by the media, let us forget consciously that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. It was 9/11 (pause) Iraq, and Al Qaeda (shorter pause) Iraq, and so our country went off to a bloody and disasterous war.
70% of us want this war to end, and 70% want universal health coverage. Even with all the spin out there, some problems can only be manipulated for so long. Yet still, nothing is done. Our system has powerful tools in place to prevent what is in the best interest of the majority from being accomplished.
Money of course places a big part in this. Our leaders are bought by those who have money and want to keep it from the rest of us, through higher taxation on obscene profits often generated through government contracts.
If the have nots in this country, the bottom 51% of the population ever decided to unite for their interests, it would be a revolution. It won't happen though. We are divided by race, religion, social issues for a reason. It helps keep us shafted economically.
You can get a person to ignore his streets being left unpaved, his salary being eaten away by inflation if you convince him the gays are going to get married and move next door.
The only way around this impasse (for those of us not in the moneyed elite) is an amnesty. All social issues would not be touched. We only send people to congress for several years under the condition that they make our tax code progressive, protect working class people, get us out of Iraq, and bring us Universal health care coverage.
After these are accomplished we can defend the flag which is being burned at an alarming rate by means of a constitutional amendment.
Just saying.
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