Because History is Already Repeating Itself
History, like any teacher, has to repeat itself, over and over again. Some learn, but most don't. Reason being that most have never looked at the mechanics of history and HOW things went wrong or why. Schools don't teach us how to learn, they teach us WHAT to learn. The fine art of regurgitation has created in us, a nation of confused, apathetic, fearful reactionary types that are too often, easily misled by inflammatory rhetoric.
As key as education is in the survival of any species, so is controlling the thought processes of the masses by dumbing them down, key to controlling the masses. The US is now one of the least educated countries in the world.
Worse, the processes of learning are not only ignored, but systematically snuffed out by the very system that is supposed to be there to teach us how to save ourselves. Curiosity is discouraged. Thinking outside the box or pondering deeper into a subject is discouraged by teachers who are ground out by the same mill that creates textbooks rife with factual errors and missing component information, from Math to History and Economics is not taught in most schools now.
The Arts: Music, Dancing, Painting, Writing, Drama wherein the mind finds constructive outlets for expression and inspiration, are being dropped as 'wasteful'.
Ideas are not discussed, they are ridiculed. Debate is not engaged, it is discouraged in lieu of recitation of accepted patterns of thinking. History is boring. Economics, dry. Communications all about spin, where I understand, there are bright futures and big bucks waiting for the adept.
The very best teachers, the creative, the passionate, the inspiring, have been systematically weeded out to make it more conformist on the front lines, less 'educational'.
We have become a nation more uneducated and helpless than at any other time in our history. We substitute rage for constructive action, and get nowhere. We are easier to control and to mislead because we don't know how to think for ourselves or see what is really being said and done to us. We become 'dependent' on our elected officials, who in turn, can easily betray us.
Radical, wingnut extremists can recruit the fearful and the uneducated and use them for their own amusement, profit and political agenda. Perpetuating the cycle of futility, rage and mistrust.
Getting Lost for Lack of a Moral Compass
Now, we are literally, as a nation, wandering lost int he deserts of the Middle East. We have learned nothing of what the underlying mechanics of war are, and thus are surprised when we find ourselves again, spilling blood and treasure in lands where we don't even speak the language.
We were led there by those who exploited the ignorant fears in enough of the population, that those who had keener vision were shouted down and trampled over, as the nation listened to lies and thought they were the truth.
We feel our 'trust' was betrayed. I have a real problem with that. If more people had learned how to learn, they never would have allowed a fraudulent election to render a dunce whose only goal was to demolish the Constitution, raid the oil fields of Iraq. We would have, more of us, seen through the rhetoric and the lies and laughed him and his band of mutant trolls out of town.
We could have stopped it. There were opportunities, not lost, but sacrificed on the altar of politics, putting us all at risk. Petitions by Members of the House of Representatives to overthrow the bad Florida Count and force a recount were brought before Congress more than 10 times by more than 10 Representatives.
All they needed was ONE signature from ONE SENATOR in order to be enforced. Representative after representative pleaded before the house. Each one was slammed down by the gavel when the leader asked if they had obtained the ONE necessary signature. Each had asked all 100 Senators and not one had signed it. Not one.
In that "Not One" unanimity, Sens. Kerry and Edwards. Ostensibly, they promoted themselves as the guardians of our Democracy, upright and 'not politically' driven. (Oxymorons, anyone?). They knew that this procedural hearing would get little if any press.
Indeed, it received none. Why, if they were A: Democrats, and B: So concerned for our nation, would they allow what they knew and often said, was a fraudulent election to stand?
I think they wanted Gore to fail so that they could run in 4 years, instead of 8. Politics above Country. The Dems, just as guilty as the frothing-at-the mouth GOP with their wingnut fringe leading the fray.
Moral Compasses neatly tucked away. No need to see what danger lie ahead, just bide your time and wait your turn. The monster they let feed on the fears of our nation, later overtook their campaigns with smears, lies and underhanded tricks.
Their egos suffered massive defeats, and our nation was flung into the abyss by the childish antics of a drunken, ignorant, spoiled brat from a wealthy, powerful family.
They could have stood up. They could have pulled the E-Brake. But they decided to let the train wreck, thinking it would make easier, their stepping into the shoes of the Presidency on down the road. Just point to the smoldering pile of national chaos, and smile paternally, and the prize would be theirs.
We all paid the price. But have we learned anything? Or do we only know how to get mad?
The Ends of War
I can tell you how the war will end. I have been to the past and the future is running down that very same track, so I am pretty sure it will end exactly as I tell you. First, let me qualify the statement of any war 'ending'. Once started, no war ever ends. There are only quiet interludes between the bombings. We call those, the 'ends' of war, but the cycle is not broken and nothing is ever won.
Wandering Lost In The Deserts
The war will end with all the oil companies and other multi-national mega corporations taking over all the resources in that area. They will engage their own security. In this case, it will probably be Blackwater, which has changed its name to "XE".
We will pull out most of our troops and engage our Diplomatic Corp in keeping whatever puppet government that install, viable. We will not allow anyone to take the Presidency of that nation that would not look favorably upon the US. We have overthrown democratic regimes in the past, not because they were a threat to us, but because they wanted to keep their resources for their country and were not friendly to allowing major corporations to come in, create poverty by taking the resource rich lands for themselves, and then exploit that poverty in the following ways:
- Keeping the population too broken and scattered to unite against the raiding of resources and unable to hold elections to throw out the corrupt.
- To keep the overall impression of that region as scattered, unstable and in need of 'guidance'.
- To make it easier to bribe or coerce any elected official into allowing the resources to be drawn out without concern for the people, the land or the future. A corrupt government is easy to deal with. An Honest one more troublesome.
Little risk of our Nation, being raised on instant gratification and distractions, mired in our own grinding economic woes, even rising to question what goes on in a nation we know nothing about, and whose language and culture we do not understand. It will remain a place where they don't look like us. That underlying racist inclination will allow not allow us to view them as anything other than "other".
The people in that broken country will, from time to time, attempt to rise up and retake the levers and the wheel of their own destiny, their own nation. Those will be shot down by the security forces of the conglomerates: XE or roses by any other name.
It will, if it even pings the radar in the West, be portrayed as "uprisings by renegades" and we might catch our breath for a moment. Then we will hear that it was all 'put down' and we can feel safe again.
The people will eventually sense futility in doing things democratically. They will tire of being treated like trash in their own country. They will become more and more angry at the accumulation of wealth by those in power, corrupt puppets who are supported by the Multi-Nationals.
They will become easy converts to the more violent, more radical forms of zealots. They will believe what they are told on religious and ethnic topics because they were raised in poverty, treated like trash and lack the education it would take to know that they are being misled and misused.
Violence will break out. Our country will then feel called upon to use the might of our military to put down the uprising. Bombings, assassinations, and our CIA covert, Black Ops will deploy to 'restore order'.
People in the region will shake their fists at us. Our leaders will make a sad face, declare that we were not appreciated. Our Nation will think of them as ingrates.
We will be ripe, once again, for attacks. If we have a president that ignores the warnings, he or she can then use them as a battle cry to once again wage war. We will be told that despite all that we have done for those people, they hate us because of our freedoms.
We, lacking the ability to learn, remember, or to think through how stupid that sounds, will again send our men and women, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers into a foreign land to spill their blood and the blood of innocents, at a cost to both nations, that is breaking the heart of God.
The cycle is already beginning, even as this war is supposed to be winding down. It has worked in every nation, including our own.
If we were to have learned anything by the scandal at the Department of the Interior, it is this one thing: Our nation is run for the sake of Resource Extraction by Mega Corporations who take from us, that which belongs to us, and then sells it back to us at exorbitant prices.
Those who live with the injustices of puppet governments, Federally supported intimidation and bullying, and who are thought of as 'ungrateful' and 'other' are right here, in our own backyards. Just look at Indian Country and you will see how this cycle of Nation Taking has worked for over 400 years.
Now, look at the Middle East. Look closer. Tell me what you see.
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