August 8, 2006
by Jason Miller

Of Moral Regression, Heartland Extremism, and Solidarity against the Wicked Witch

Forget the exploits of John Brown and Carrie Nation. Their violent efforts for virtuous causes are but distant memories in the Land of Oz. Here in contemporary Kansas, many socially conservative uber-patriots fastidiously and "peacefully" adhere to an American sociopolitical system which is becoming increasingly hostile to science, peace, human rights, the environment, and minorities. Yes, the "American Way" has become rife with many of the truly vulgar and destructive aspects of humanity.

Since 1998, pro-Evolutionary forces have been grappling with anti-Evolutionary forces for control of the Kansas State School Board. In the recent election, power changed hands for the fourth time in eight years as Darwinists reclaimed a 6-4 advantage on the board. It is virtually a foregone conclusion that the board will again re-write the science standards to restore Evolution to its proper stature. Thankfully, reason will again prevail in science classes from Overland Park to Dodge City.

Those of us who believe in the validity of scientific inquiry, draw a distinction between faith and science, and recognize the dangers of state-validated religion are celebrating the progress manifested in the election results.

Yet as I pondered the situation more deeply, I realized that Evolution represents but a minor skirmish in a much broader conflict. And at the same time, reflecting on the notions of evolution and change conjured thoughts of how, in many ways, the United States has followed a plummeting moral trajectory as it has evolved over the years.

While it is reassuring to know that our Kansas public school children will learn one of the most widely held and accepted theories in the biological sciences (and at least for now, their spiritual education will be left to their parents and clergy), there are much larger stakes to consider. Stepping back and examining human existence from a global perspective reveals countless disturbing images of unmitigated suffering thrust upon a majority of the Earth's inhabitants.

Ohio, Georgia, and Pennsylvania are still struggling to inject religion into their science classes under the clever guise of the "theory" of Intelligent Design. Recent legislative initiatives, amendments to state constitutions, and actions by a variety of activist groups (like the Minutemen) clearly demonstrate that many of the Western European immigrants to Turtle Island still suffer the spiritual diseases of homophobia, xenophobia, hubris, and racism.

Preying upon these spiritual maladies, the opportunists in DC and on Wall Street (who reside at the peak of the capitalist pyramid) blitz us with propaganda readily disseminated by their partners in the corporate media to fuel "culture wars". Like a blacksmith with bellows, they super heat raw emotion to a white hot state that leaves human reason in cinders.

As we wage slaves run the rat race, fighting over the scraps so "charitably" tossed our way in America's "ownership society", we claw each others' eyes out over issues like Evolution, homosexual rights, and abortion, enabling those leading our depraved social and political institutions to plunder the world's wealth with little or no constraint. Aside from the numerous seductive distractions they provide through television and consumerism, what better way to manipulate the masses than by perpetually thrusting contentious issues into their faces that splinter them into warring factions?

Remember December? When Iraqi and American body bags were filling up faster than Santa's elves could pack his sacks of toys? And Christians in the United States were beside themselves because some stores weren't saying "Merry Christmas" to customers? It boggles the mind!

It is widely known that the Bush Regime has heavily courted radical Christian elements in the United States to garner much of its political support. Ostensibly bearing the cross of the Christian God who blesses only America, George Bush is on a sacred mission to fulfill Manifest Destiny around the globe.

With the backing of Diebold, Katherine Harris, the Supreme Court, and a heavily mobilized base of extremist Christians who stampeded to the polls to support Bush's eagerness to fulfill their apocryphal prophecies in the Holy Land, elect a degenerate individual many apparently believed was an Evangelical who manifested the virtues of Christ, and to empower a group willing to proclaim that Christianity is the official state religion, George Bush and his cronies blatantly subverted our Constitutional Republic by taking office twice without winning the electoral or the popular vote.

Astoundingly, now that Mephistopheles has revealed his true identity, he and his fellow Neocons, Zionists, Fundamentalist Christian leaders, and plutocrats still garner support from amongst their subjugated masses. Admittedly, he has been on shaky ground lately, but Bush still has enough adherents that he has avoided impeachment and prosecution for his crimes against humanity.

Through its denial of civil rights to Gays, opposition to abortion and stem cell research, unwavering support for Israel (and its heinous ethnic cleansing and war crimes), dedication to preserving the dominant role of White America, and creation of a nationalist furor that is beyond being obscene, the Bush Regime has garnered the support of enough Americans to empower them to unleash Hell upon millions of human beings to further the interests of US multinationals, the military industrial complex, Israel, and the rest of its cohorts.

Strauss's disciples learned their art well as they are clearly demonstrating with their virtuoso performance. And Kansas is a microcosm of the stratum of American society that is entranced by the Neocons' euphonious symphony. A symphony they brilliantly composed to drown out the sounds of their abuse of power, exploitation and murder.

As 60 Minutes revealed this week, the Bush administration heavily edits the findings of its own scientists to minimize public awareness of the dangers of phenomena like Climate Change. Employing lawyers to water down admonitions drafted by NASA and EPA scientists, the Bush Regime seriously limits what would be well-founded citizen and Congressional concern about abusive environmental practices by the amoral profit seekers of corporate America.

Capitalizing on their paranoid belief that they are somehow facing persecution by evil secular humanists, the wealthy elites are steering Dominionists and other Christian extremists down a path to the tyranny each group craves. Removing prayer from public schools was not about abolishing Christianity. Eliminating mandatory prayer was to prevent our government from endorsing and potentially mandating a specific religion. State-imposed religion is a powerful element of virtually any despotic regime worth its salt.

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In blaming Hispanic immigrants for "stealing" benefits from tax-supported social programs while providing "nothing" in return; perpetuating Black American poverty, under-education, and crime by isolating many of them in inner-city ghettos or warehousing them in the prison industrial complex; and vilifying Gays for "destroying the moral fabric" of the United States, our de facto oligarchs abuse vulnerable populations already despised by many other Americans and scapegoat them for the ills plaguing our nation. Another block in the foundation of a "successful" fascist state.

[Note: Fascist states are generally characterized by authoritarian rule, extreme nationalism, corporate domination, anti-liberalism, and militarism. Starting to look and sound awfully familiar, eh USA?]

In granting federal money to tax-exempt religious entities for "faith based initiatives" to aid the growing numbers of impoverished in the Twenty First Century Gilded Age, the plutocracy gains the dual advantage of currying the favor of its Fundamentalist Christian base amongst the "commoners" and creating a subterfuge for eliminating "wasteful" federal spending on public social programs to benefit the poor. Many of those resting comfortably atop the financial summit, whose wealth exists thanks to a deeply corrupt system which impoverishes billions of human beings, despise the elements of "liberalism" which serve to limit their boundless greed and visions of unrestrained, Dickensonian Capitalism.

Reducing taxes and privatizing have become the mantras of the Bush Regime's economic policy. At the end of the day, who doesn't want to pay less in taxes and see a reduction in poorly managed government bureaucracies? The problem is that the tax cuts are providing massive benefit to the super-rich (like the Walton and Mars families) while putting very little money back into the pockets of the working class. Meanwhile, military expenditures continue to rise to more insane levels as programs to benefit children, the elderly, the sick, and the impoverished are reduced or slashed rather than redesigned or improved.

What was that definition of fascism again?

Not even public education escapes the rapacious attacks of the ruthless wolves at the top of the food chain. The No Child Left Behind Act furthers their goal of strengthening the Fourth Purpose. John Taylor Gatto defined the Fourth Purpose in an interview about his book, Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling:

Throughout the 19th century, a new Fourth Purpose began to emerge, tested thoroughly in the military state of Prussia in northern Europe. The Fourth Purpose made the point of mass schooling to serve big business and big government by extending childhood, replacing thinking with drill and memorization while fashioning incomplete people unable to protect themselves from exhortation, advertising and other forms of indirect command. In this fashion, poor Prussia with a small population became one of the great powers of the earth. Its new schooling method was imitated far and wide, from Japan to the United States.

Some conjecture that the ultimate goal of social conservatives is to eliminate public education. I disagree. The ruling class realizes what a sacred cow they would be slaughtering. Besides, as Gatto's insight indicates, the most effective way to control human beings is through their psyches. And what better time to capture human minds than when they are young and malleable?

Profits, property, and power trump humanity in the sociopathic value systems of the vicious malefactors at the helm of the United States. Witness the willful neglect leading to the tragic death and diaspora of tens of thousands of Black Americans in New Orleans. Consider the slaughter of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, the liberal distribution of depleted uranium throughout Iraq's countryside, the wanton destruction of much of Iraqi infrastructure, the death of over 2600 American military personnel in Iraq, the sacrifice of almost 3,000 American civilians in the Neocon's Pearl Harbor on 9/11, the torture of human beings, and the suspension of basic justice for those suspected of "terrorism".

Their willful refusal to employ the power the United States clearly has to enforce an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon provides yet another overt example of Neocon moral bankruptcy. The United States has deliberately stymied UN intervention efforts to give Israel time to finish destroying Lebanon with funding and equipment we furnished. Israel has displaced a million people, killed over 600 innocent civilians, and destroyed over $2 billion worth of infrastructure through its invasion of a sovereign nation. This in retaliation for the capture of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah, a powerful group of militants over which Lebanon has virtually no control. In contrast, Israel has suffered the loss of 26 of its civilians. While tragic, these losses pale in comparison to the devastating horror the Israeli war machine has inflicted upon Lebanon

A sane government concerned with human welfare and justice would have put a stop to these blatant crimes against humanity long before the situation escalated to this point. But the Bush Regime has justified and encouraged the Israeli atrocities. They obfuscate well, but it does not take much critical thinking to see the true agenda of our malevolent leaders.

Virtually all citizens of the United States have been deceived by their government to some extent. While I remain a tenacious dissident against many of the United States' political and social institutions because of my passion for social justice and human rights, my choice to manifest my dissent through writing and publishing burdens me with a degree of complicity in the schemes of the Bush Regime. As I research, analyze, write, and publish, I serve humanity as writers have throughout history. I educate, inspire both support and opposition, amuse, comfort, provoke thought, agitate, anger, and in some cases, win hearts and minds. Yet at the same time, by asserting intellectual arguments which are mostly opposed to the American Empire because of my personal beliefs, I participate in the intellectual civil war the ruling elites love to perpetuate to keep those of us in the "lower classes" from achieving solidarity against them.

Contrary to our patriotic programming, dissidents in the United States are not free to exercise their First Amendment rights because millions of poor wretches fought and died in wars of imperial conquest under the pretext of "protecting" or "spreading freedom." For now, our leaders allow domestic dissent because they want to keep their populace at odds with one another, they know that their strangle-hold on the psyches of many of their citizens is virtually unbreakable (if people start to see through the Reagans and Bushes, the ruling elite come up with a "liberal" Democrat like Bill Clinton to pacify the "Soccer Moms" yet still maintain the status quo of de facto plutocratic rule), and they are not ready to shed the thinning veneer that they govern according to the Constitution.

Yet despite my unintended contribution to the intellectual wars our overlords use to distract us, if I stop writing and publishing, I will surrender a significant means to contribute to the struggle for social justice and human rights and to counter the lies of the corporate media, government propagandists and history revisionists.

The answer is not to stop thinking, debating, or writing. Regardless of how we contribute to the struggle or how much we differ in opinion, we of the poor and working classes need to "agree to disagree" and unite against those who prey upon us.

230 years ago, the United States was founded by valiant rebels who shattered the manacles of colonialism. Sadly, the nation they predicated on Constitutional limitations of government power with significant emphases on the rights of individual humans (admittedly marred by the denial of rights to Blacks, women, and Native Americans), has evolved into one of the most violent, narcissistic, and oppressive empires in the history of humanity.

Sorry Dorothy, but the Wicked Witch of the West is alive and well. But don't despair. Human beings possess an uncanny ability to Evolve, especially for the better.

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Jason Miller [send him email] is a 39 year old sociopolitical essayist with a degree in liberal arts and an extensive self-education (derived from an insatiable appetite for reading). He is a member of Amnesty International and an avid supporter of Oxfam International and Human Rights Watch.  He welcomes responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com or comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.