With all that is going on around, above and below us, it conjures up visions of evils past and evils current.
What life must have been like when people were subjugated to the diktats of the church in Rome upon fear of being declared heretics, tortured and put to death. Today, millions are still subjugated to the diktats of churches, temples and mosques.
The intrigues of the Borgias and Medicis, limited to their wits and up close murderous encounters with their enemies, were pikers in comparison with the tools the US and the West have at their disposal today. Popes and kings were assassinated, which isn’t much different from today, except it’s more like to be a head of state as kings are in shorter supply and there is suspicion that Pope John Paul I didn’t die a natural death.
Closer to our time are visions of what life must have been like in post-World War I Germany with joblessness, rampant inflation and a people further squeezed by unconscionable reparations, leading to the rise of Hitler and his Nazis. Did ordinary, non-Jewish Germans sense, as some of us do today, what was to come? After all, looking out the window, everything seemed normal: the sun shone, the flowers bloomed, the neighbors still smiled and said good morning. But was there an undercurrent of foreboding in many—in some?
Hitler promised the Germans change and he delivered. Oh, he delivered. He told non-Jewish Germans how great they were—a master race. That made many feel good. He provided jobs—for non-Jewish Germans. He built magnificent edifices to his Third Reich, which he said would last for a thousand years. He told the people the Jews were the source of all their problems. Millions cheered.
He had his scapegoats: the major ones being the Jews, the lesser ones the Roma, homosexuals and dissidents. America has its scapegoats: the blacks and the browns—the former labeled as criminals or potential criminals and the latter as terrorists or potential terrorists, with the exception of Hispanics tossed into the criminal or potential criminal class.
His harangues kept the non-Jewish majority cheering and many of the Jews in disbelief of what he was going to do to them. Sound familiar as ordinary Americans keep saying, “Our government wouldn’t do that to us,” rather than demand the truth about 9/11, despite having their jobs, homes and social safety net taken away from them?
Was there a dawning in Nazi Germany when the trucks rolled up to haul off the Jews, the Roma and the dissidents, and Hitler started his war of aggression? Or were many, if not a majority, of Germans gleefully waving their flags, singing “Deutschland über alles,” joyfully sending their sons off to fight Hitler’s war? Isn’t that what Americans are doing today? Waving their little made-in-China (which most probably haven’t noticed) flags, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing the “Star Spangled Banner” or shouting, “USA! USA! USA!” at every conjured up opportunity?
We have been through many dark periods in the history of the US—from routing the Native Americans to steal their land to slavery and the Communist witch hunts—but this is one of the darkest, if not the darkest. Our freedoms keep vaporizing in order, we are told, to keep us safe. Safe from whom? The truth is the powers that be—the politicians and the corporations and banksters who rule them—want to be kept safe from us, lest we wake up to their machinations.
We are spied upon, scrutinized, subjected to strip-search scanners, groped, put on lists, even arrested for peaceably protesting the loss of our liberties or questioning a law enforcement officer (remember when they were called peace officers?). Yet, they tell us it’s all for our good because the “terrorists” hate us for our freedoms. What freedoms? And if we aren’t with our masters, we are against them and must be hauled off (renditioned, they call it) to some black hole and possibly tortured until we confess our sins.
The propaganda works so well that people send their sons and daughters off to fight wars without end for the benefit of the corporations and banksters. Yet, they and their soldier sons and daughters insist they are fighting for our freedoms by murdering people who never did anything to us and destroying their countries in the process. They, to the tune of the politicians and corporate media, call their sons and daughters “heroes.”
America’s institutions and all who inhabit them are totally corrupt. The corporations and banksters are calling the shots. Our elections are stolen. On one side, we have religious lunatics currying favor with the corporations and banksters in the hope one of them will be chosen supreme leader and get to occupy the White House for four or eight years. On the other side, we have the last cycle’s choice, Barack Obama, who hopes he has fulfilled enough of the corporations’ and banksters’ mandates to live in the White House for four more years.
We don’t know what is real anymore. Were the “color revolutions” real. Is the Arab Spring real? Is the current protest on Wall Street or the Days of Rage real? Or were they and are they all manipulations of the powers that be for the profit of the corporations and banksters? Nothing seems to be what it appears to be.
Meanwhile, the sun comes up and the flowers bloom and everything seems so normal—just the usual grousing and grumbling, but it will be dealt with in short order if it gets too loud. The people sleeping in cars, on the sidewalks, in the parks, under overpasses or in refrigerator boxes, if they are so lucky, are invisible. This is America, dammit—the best, the greatest and richest country on earth—three cheers for American exceptionalism!
Wait! The full extent of the horror is yet to hit. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
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We are living in the Twilight Zone
Posted on September 21, 2011 by Bev Conover
With all that is going on around, above and below us, it conjures up visions of evils past and evils current.
What life must have been like when people were subjugated to the diktats of the church in Rome upon fear of being declared heretics, tortured and put to death. Today, millions are still subjugated to the diktats of churches, temples and mosques.
The intrigues of the Borgias and Medicis, limited to their wits and up close murderous encounters with their enemies, were pikers in comparison with the tools the US and the West have at their disposal today. Popes and kings were assassinated, which isn’t much different from today, except it’s more like to be a head of state as kings are in shorter supply and there is suspicion that Pope John Paul I didn’t die a natural death.
Closer to our time are visions of what life must have been like in post-World War I Germany with joblessness, rampant inflation and a people further squeezed by unconscionable reparations, leading to the rise of Hitler and his Nazis. Did ordinary, non-Jewish Germans sense, as some of us do today, what was to come? After all, looking out the window, everything seemed normal: the sun shone, the flowers bloomed, the neighbors still smiled and said good morning. But was there an undercurrent of foreboding in many—in some?
Hitler promised the Germans change and he delivered. Oh, he delivered. He told non-Jewish Germans how great they were—a master race. That made many feel good. He provided jobs—for non-Jewish Germans. He built magnificent edifices to his Third Reich, which he said would last for a thousand years. He told the people the Jews were the source of all their problems. Millions cheered.
He had his scapegoats: the major ones being the Jews, the lesser ones the Roma, homosexuals and dissidents. America has its scapegoats: the blacks and the browns—the former labeled as criminals or potential criminals and the latter as terrorists or potential terrorists, with the exception of Hispanics tossed into the criminal or potential criminal class.
His harangues kept the non-Jewish majority cheering and many of the Jews in disbelief of what he was going to do to them. Sound familiar as ordinary Americans keep saying, “Our government wouldn’t do that to us,” rather than demand the truth about 9/11, despite having their jobs, homes and social safety net taken away from them?
Was there a dawning in Nazi Germany when the trucks rolled up to haul off the Jews, the Roma and the dissidents, and Hitler started his war of aggression? Or were many, if not a majority, of Germans gleefully waving their flags, singing “Deutschland über alles,” joyfully sending their sons off to fight Hitler’s war? Isn’t that what Americans are doing today? Waving their little made-in-China (which most probably haven’t noticed) flags, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing the “Star Spangled Banner” or shouting, “USA! USA! USA!” at every conjured up opportunity?
We have been through many dark periods in the history of the US—from routing the Native Americans to steal their land to slavery and the Communist witch hunts—but this is one of the darkest, if not the darkest. Our freedoms keep vaporizing in order, we are told, to keep us safe. Safe from whom? The truth is the powers that be—the politicians and the corporations and banksters who rule them—want to be kept safe from us, lest we wake up to their machinations.
We are spied upon, scrutinized, subjected to strip-search scanners, groped, put on lists, even arrested for peaceably protesting the loss of our liberties or questioning a law enforcement officer (remember when they were called peace officers?). Yet, they tell us it’s all for our good because the “terrorists” hate us for our freedoms. What freedoms? And if we aren’t with our masters, we are against them and must be hauled off (renditioned, they call it) to some black hole and possibly tortured until we confess our sins.
The propaganda works so well that people send their sons and daughters off to fight wars without end for the benefit of the corporations and banksters. Yet, they and their soldier sons and daughters insist they are fighting for our freedoms by murdering people who never did anything to us and destroying their countries in the process. They, to the tune of the politicians and corporate media, call their sons and daughters “heroes.”
America’s institutions and all who inhabit them are totally corrupt. The corporations and banksters are calling the shots. Our elections are stolen. On one side, we have religious lunatics currying favor with the corporations and banksters in the hope one of them will be chosen supreme leader and get to occupy the White House for four or eight years. On the other side, we have the last cycle’s choice, Barack Obama, who hopes he has fulfilled enough of the corporations’ and banksters’ mandates to live in the White House for four more years.
We don’t know what is real anymore. Were the “color revolutions” real. Is the Arab Spring real? Is the current protest on Wall Street or the Days of Rage real? Or were they and are they all manipulations of the powers that be for the profit of the corporations and banksters? Nothing seems to be what it appears to be.
Meanwhile, the sun comes up and the flowers bloom and everything seems so normal—just the usual grousing and grumbling, but it will be dealt with in short order if it gets too loud. The people sleeping in cars, on the sidewalks, in the parks, under overpasses or in refrigerator boxes, if they are so lucky, are invisible. This is America, dammit—the best, the greatest and richest country on earth—three cheers for American exceptionalism!
Wait! The full extent of the horror is yet to hit. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
Bev Conover is the editor and publisher of Intrepid Report. Email her at editor@intrepidreport.com.