"The Enemy IS Us" until we return to America’s founding principles.
(BEND, Ore.) - Pogo, that paragon of natural common-sense, must have been truly shocked to discover --that first/time !-- that "the enemy is US!"
His striking remark --uttered with deep dismay, natural remorse, and suddenly-desperate self-understanding-- instantly became an historic reflection of the world and its ways, for millions everywhere.
Now it has become a practical guiding measure today for many millions of citizens and for many thousands of others, working intensely in economic, social, cultural --and especially political-- research and development.
That brightly-illuminating insight serves workers and managers in those areas as an "exemplary foundation-rule," piercingly-pointed by the Pogo-character so blithely announcing it.
Why it should be so true --universally-at-work NOW-- remains a mystery to many, still confused by contradiction and conflict.
But continuing catastrophes constantly arriving are forcing the situation to full understandings, perhaps for the first time.
Today, as we contemplate the 75th Anniversary of FDR’s precedent-setting, middle-class/creating New Deal AND the 5th Anniversary of the Iraq “preemptive invasion”, a fair --and objective-- question is surfacing for sure: What if our free, open, unhampered, wealthy, powerful --and presumably potent-- public press had told us ‘the true complete story’, built on fact and record and recent events already known and well-documented as the Bush-II debacle first began?
What we cannot avoid is the compelling and irresistibly damaging comparison: Our contemplation of the New Deal era, widely acclaimed for its creation of our strong middle-America, as against the Reagan/Bush I-and-II cabal created consequences.
Those cabal consequences flow so mercilessly from deregulation, privatization and globalization --key concepts of now-concentrated always negative neo-con political pronouncements, reflecting 19th Century concepts long outmoded in our modern day.
Then, too, there’s that true bugaboo of "supply-side" --so colorfully defined by Bush I, at the time, as voodoo economics, even though he had no way of knowing how precisely perceptive that was then; and how reverse revealing as he later succumbed to become Reagan’s V-P.
There’s a demanding differentiation to be made, too, for the impact of President Bush’s declaration just a day ago, declaring that "normalcy is returning back to Iraq" --even as competing mullah-militias murder one another, and Baghdad’s Green Zone is deluged with rockets instead of rain.
That one is meant to provide possible cover for "the newly-sanitized versions of what history is recording now for future generations to understand" --UNinhibited by fear of retributive humiliation, as is the ostensibly free press.
But if they do learn the truth, they will perhaps thus command much more effective self-protection against intentional misrepresentation of national intelligence.
They may even escape further downright, deeply disturbing flat-lies to market a disastrous, dishonest, demeaning, and desperate dual-war debacle.
Many more millions of Americans have NOW come to understand "just ahead of vote-again/time" - what Pogo’s brief and potent phrase clearly contains, when cogitation-applied sets forth not only its striking symbolism, but the impossible to avoid implications, too.
After Vietnam, as 'a nation perfecting our democracy clearly challenged from within' - as every other democratic governance has always been, and by the same forces-- we had hoped for more-concentrated citizen-cooperation and concern on those problems and issues.
Even then, it was completely clear that we must have continuing broader citizen-participation, achieved at any and every level, by well-informed and deeply-involved citizens, individually and in group; and constantly stronger, more open-democratic progress for all; as surely demanded by our demeaning, demoralizing and desperate misadventure there.
What if we had been forced, early-on, to contemplate, in our daily press-and-broadcast channels, compounded and concentrated proof-beyond challenge that devastatingly similar, intentionally-malign situations were arriving in series-and-sequence?
Would we then have paid attention as those events continued to multiply and proliferate?
The public record was there for our responsible, mature, involved-citizen consideration --ready for full coverage and completely factual reporting, in terms of unavoidable impact on every American life.
Would we then have fallen as woefully-misinformed victims --there is no other honest description possible-- for EIGHT FULL YEARS of what has followed?
In a society served by the essential oversights and sensible sharing of key information --surely simple and realistic to expect, given today’s massive, muscular means of mass communication-- every citizen faced with critical choice COULD and SHOULD have had the basic understandings involved in commonweal-choice on each and every issue --most especially that of greatest impact on ANY society: WAR or PEACE!
Why were we NOT made-AWARE and warned --again and again, in every communications channel-and-format, print-on-paper/side or via the potent 'new technology' broadcast-and Internet-- of what was clearly coming down the pike.
Such timely warning --in those early days when mass marketing and millions, if not billions, of dollars were driving what became a relentless and overwhelming politically-manipulative noise machine-- might well have made the difference in that manipulated decision, saving thousands of American lives and trillions of our treasured tax-monies, too.
Now, finding ourselves torn between two political parties, one offering the spine of a snake when confronted with any considerable confrontation on Democratic principles and politicized consequences.
The other is still so enamored and enormously-invested in 19th Century economic and societal concepts and ironclad, unshakable conclusions that NEITHER offers us any possibility still left for reasonable expectation of a different --and improving-- future.
Pogo’s surprise and dismay COULD not, WOULD not ever, have come about in any such advanced society as we thought we had achieved. We believed ourselves served fundamentally by a free and unhampered array of ostensibly community and commonweal dedicated agencies and channels for essential citizen understandings, in our widely/vaunted free, open and democratic press.
In our own apathy (and deep personal and family involvement's), we had lost sight of the demanding essential for ANY democracy; close, continuing, informed and concentrated citizen participation, reflecting personal responsibilities for OUR OWN NATION.
Canny chief-citizen Ben Franklin, just after the Founders produced our American Constitution --with its world-shaping radical-ideas of "equality, opportunity and justice for all"-- was asked by a widow-lady: "What kind of government have you given us, Mr. Franklin?"
His answer summarizes exactly and precisely where we are now, nearly 250 years later: "A republic, madam --if you can keep it!"
What we ordinary folk overlooked --right along with then-practicing pundits, and prophets in every area of acdemic-specialized study -- and especially the then- leaders of our political parties-- was the massive and malign impacts of simple greed, race-and class ongoing angers and --overwhelming all else-- generalized stupidities, growing from within many complex, always profit-demanding motivations of our capitalist economic system.
We can rejoice that now --far too late to avoid or offset the disastrous economic collapse already clouding our near-future-- the corporate structure itself, on which all-else has been built since World War I, is now finally and irrevocably under probing redesign and redevelopment.
Even the benighted leaders of our business-side are learning the necessities to achieve, once again, the original corporate purpose of an institution chartered and controlled by the state to produce and provide for commonweal and cooperative purposes.
These two confrontational when compared anniversaries provide clear concept-and-content working-proof for the Pogo Principle, now universally recognized as one of those truly unmistakable enduring truths.
For the New Deal: STILL the high-point of full-bore American majority/minority dual development, coupled with demonstrated proof of union membership impact and motivation as working tool-and-shield for the middle class.
For Reagan/Bush I & II --as the mirror-opposite in all possible practical measures-- seen already for what history will confirm as deep, dark, dirty, depreciating, damaging and disgraceful dollar and oil-driven cabal-contortions, for corporate and contiguous sponsors and controllers.
This is now the 21st Century. The times and our tribulations are not the same, albeit striking similarities and situations surely do exist.
We cannot return to the surrounding situations which formed and shaped the New Deal; but we can surely --and indeed NOW, MUST-- return to the basic American principles of democratic governance which guaranteed the success and systematic worldwide, ongoing influence of FDR’s most determined and discerning relationship with "the people".
We can regain "OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people!" once-again --if we have the wit, wisdom and will to do so.
Op Ed: Stupidity, Greed, AngerSalem-News.com