I heard somebody say just the other day that all they ever seemed to hear in the news anymore was one conspiracy theory after another and he wondered "why they always sounded so thin?"
I told him that "not everything he heard was a conspiracy theory and just because it sounded thin didn't make it false." You see, sometimes the truth is stranger than conspiracy.
"All this stuff in the news lately about Rumsfeld, Bush, Chaney, torture, the wars, the CIA lying, the Speaker of the House lying and on and on and on. . . that is how the country really works," I explained. "This is the our real American government. And don’t think that the current administration is any different than any other that came before it. President Obama has already started hushing things up and extending policies that Bush, Clinton and other presidents have put in to place. Ask yourself what has President Obama really changed?"
He had no answer.
Yes, he directed military leaders to end war in Iraq (but the troops are still coming and going). Yes, he ordered two additional military brigades to Afghanistan. Yes, he released some of G.W. Bush’s presidential records. Yes, he supported high-speed rail. Yes, he extended unemployment insurance benefits and temporarily suspended taxes on those benefits. Yes, he reversed restrictions on stem cell research. And yes, he ordered that Guantanamo Bay Detainee Center be closed (but wait, maybe not if you listen to the rest of Washington, DC. Congress isn’t going to pay without a plan and he doesn’t have one, oops.) A lot of set up, but, what is being accomplished to change Bush policies? Actually not much. Each and every one of those things can be changed or stopped in an instant depending on the direction of the political winds. Hey, Nixon promised to end Vietnam he took 48 months and an additional 15,183 battle deaths to end that war, how long will President Obama keep us fighting when nobody really knows where all the enemies are? It's like the Cold War with a Commie hiding under every bed. However,is the President right to keep us engaged? Ahhh
The Government tells lies, it’s what they do, because as Jack Nicholson would say, ‘American’s can’t handle the truth.’
People are getting just a taste of the truth right now and they can’t handle it. Why do you think President Obama put the brakes on the release of torture pictures and criminal charges? Your smart, you know the answer.
What have we done as a country that “we the people” know about? Well, we infested the indigenous people of this continent with small pox and herded them like cattle to reservations (a euphemism for reeducation camp); we legally held other human beings black, white and yellow in slavery (some called it indentured servitude); we locked up Japanese-Americans because people who looked like them attacked us; we destroyed the lives of innocent people and even executed a few during the Cold War (McCarthyism was king and Ronald Reagan was their shining star); we infected black soldiers with syphilis and I myself was part of the attack and take over of Panama in 1989, (why was that done again?) We didn’t know at the time and I never have learned anything to my satisfaction. Oh, and we invaded the wrong country to stop our terrorist enemies. And they are our enemies. They chose to make us theirs when we turned our backs on them after the Soviet’s left their country a smoking husk.
Now ask yourself, If we know we did those terrible things, what have we done as a country that “we the people” don’t know about?
But that is what America has always been. However, that same America allows people like Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken to have talk shows and me to write editorial columns that criticize them, it allows your children to attend school where you want them to go public-private-home whatever and become anything they want, it provides welfare and Medicare for those who cannot or will not work and bails out major corporations who are in danger of failing (corporate welfare) so that more people don’t wind up on. . . welfare.
America has a split personality. We want all the freedoms the Constitution outlines, but we don’t want or like the methods that protect them.
Maybe someday we will get smart enough to stop the cycle, but I don’t think it will come in my lifetime. In fact, I think it will get much, much worse before it gets better.
Now that’s how you set up a conspiracy theory.
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