Wake Up!

By: Charles Sullivan

We are living in unprecedented dangerous times. Unless we act forcefully, death will once more rain down from the skies of Iraq, likely resulting in the death of tens thousands of innocent people - many of them children.

The court appointed Bush regime is literally getting away with murder. Military spending usurps more than half of every American tax dollar. Important social programs at home and abroad have been suspended for lack of funds. A lunatic right-wing Attorney General has shredded the Constitution and suspended our hard won civil rights. We are living under the constant threat of endless war.

Corporate money continues subverting democracy - thus effectively marginalizing the will of the people in order to serve the rich. The government is involved in toppling democratically elected leaders in foreign lands around the globe.

A faceless sniper was recently randomly shooting people in the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia. Our schools are in serious disrepair. We have no national health care program. We have the highest level of alcoholism and incarceration of any nation on earth. Our streets are lined with the homeless. The military is exposing its own people to radioactive munitions in the form of depleted uranium. U.S tax dollars are supporting the Israeli ethnic cleansing and murder of Palestinians. Gun-toting nuts are killing hundreds of people daily on our streets.

Big business and their ilk in government are continuing their campaign of union busting. Millions of hard working Americans cannot earn a living wage and are forced to work multiple jobs to the detriment of family life. The pharmaceutical industry has more lobbyists in Washington than there are members of Congress. Congress recently gave the unelected President a blank check to wage war against any nation on earth he chooses, and for as long as he wants.

America is the leading contributor to the green house gases that cause global warming and its resultant climate change. Industrial waste continues to poison the water we drink, and the air we breathe. Genetically engineered food is altering the food chain in unknowable ways. Carcinogenic chemicals: insecticides and herbicides pervade our food supply and the soil.

The corporate media continues to purvey the propaganda of government and industry to the listless multitudes.

Our tax dollars are used to rape and pillage our National Forests in order to provide corporate welfare to wealthy multinational timber companies.

...the list of outrageous misdeeds goes on and on.

What is the response of the average American to these insane crimes against earth and humanity?

The shopping malls are full of monotonous consumers. Gas guzzling Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV's) are the best selling vehicles in America. Our email boxes are overflowing with jokes and amusing stories. Millions of us are too busy playing video games to notice world events. Family members don't want to hear any un-American talk. Our vehicles and homesteads are decorated in American flags. National fervor is at a feverish pitch. Bigotry flourishes in every dark corner of the American psyche. The drums of war are beating out a droning death tome. The thirst for more innocent blood continues to grow like a malignant tumor in minds gone mad. Gun sales are skyrocketing. The corporate stranglehold on mainstream politics tightens its death grip on democracy. Citizen apathy is epidemic. Americans tune in to more sitcoms on television. Soda pop bands flourish.

Most of us read no more than one book a year. Most have lost the capacity to ask relevant questions and to think critically. Ignorance of our national history is at an all time high.

But we are having fun. The big party continues. We hide our heads in the sands of distraction so that we don't have to deal with the whole sordid mess we have allowed to spawn. We pretend that all is well; that we are a pure and good, innocent, peace loving people. We are too busy to pay attention to the horrors we are causing through our failure to act against them.

So it was until the morning of September 11^th, 2001. That is the day when our inattention - our hubris, our adolescent self absorption - came home to roost. So it is now; and so it will remain until it comes home to roost again - as it surely will, until we wake up and accept responsibility, and act for global justice.

We are one, great biological community. What befalls any part of the community affects the whole. All things are connected. Wake up and take part in this great dance of life. Take to the streets. Write something subversive. Speak your heart. Act your conscience. Participation is far more empowering than being a spectator and doing what you are told.