THE SILENT MAJORITY IS INVISIBLE TOO

I seem to have become somewhat of a referral service when I find viewpoints aligned with my own about the responsibilities laid at each of our feet for our contribution to the multi headed hydra of environmental imbalance, population explosion, criminal corporatization of elite world government, energy crisis, herding of the sheeple, you name it. This post has been generated by a certain passage out of a great post over at Driftglass about the untypical, invisible majority so totally disregarded by representation of any elected servant.

“…because we have always believed, down deep, that there were certain things -- certain categories of things -- we could rely on. That certain things would persist, and therefore didn’t require our anxious attention.”

Christians and atheists alike believed in our exceptionally righteous place as the forefront of the future of the world ever since the US rescued Europe from a fascist foe our monied elite secretly funded. Behind every exploitation into foreign affairs since assuming the reign at the reins of global destiny it’s been raining terror. The obligatory use of our war machine to authorize the opening of the public trough to the already overfed military-industrial complex has overridden our will to diplomacy and statesmanship. The belligerent pride of the super patriot great-grand-son of a W.W.II vet is perked up for chances to exercise his right to silence anyone who says his country is not free. With the latest level of domestic surveillance paranoia encouraged by the White House anyone may excuse intrusion on the lives of others as a patriotic duty to report strangeness. This is the glue that seven years of panic government expects to bond the fracture of 911? More like a corral where the fence is fear. Or a brain-spinal cord amputation. We have never been able to trust the government to represent the will of the people, they are the last profession to be trusted.

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My thirty some odd visits to my childhood home over the forty years spanning my leaving it at 17 and Dad’s death at the age of 82 gave me something like time lapse photography’s ability to enhance perception of change in processes too slow for the civilized mind’s expedience oriented perceptions to suspect much less bother to notice. I watched my dad morph from vital breadwinner and loving husband to retired widower, daily golfer and wooer of country club widows to sailor extraordinaire, cabinet maker deluxe, to emphysemic housebound TV news addict given to political tirades and rants foreshadowing my own radicalization since 2000. Observing these stages so clearly in our fond friendship around the table in his den, lining up a putt on the third green or beneath the boom in the middle of the gulf over the years has led me to wonder whether such political orientation is an inevitable stage of a maturing human or whether my radicalization is a result of past seven years stolen by the present misadministration. Other factors in the quandary are his 24 year earlier sample of political influence than mine, the very real possibility that the powers that be beneath the electoral icing on the top secret ingredients of the American vanilla layer cake are conducting a long running experiment on how fast the heat can be turned up on the frog before he notices the intent to boil him, and the mixed blessing of dad’s not witnessing Dribblya’s debauchery.

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The last time this happened
Dad was my age
To hear him tell it
He had a voice for his rage
The people got big
And loud
And mad
And one
And right enough
To fill Dick with dread
Of the fear he had bred
Trials were held
Questions asked
Exposed his sweaty lies,
Behind scowling bushy brows
And bookie bearded face
Naked imperialism's hairy ass.

He left minions to steer,
While the main puppeteer,
Learned to use a dash more smarm
Down home, harmless, goofy
Opie country charm
To hide fascist plutocracy
Behind wartime democracy.

These same older, wiser sages
Chose a puppet from our stages
Ready-made, lily-white, nice guy
From our TVs and that movie
But his act wore quite thin
When their ambition to win
Showed through his puny fabric of groovy

It took seven sorry, sinful years
Of elephants sitting on asses faces
Putting secret microphones in private places
To catch Willie get aide shifting gears
Evoking bible thumping outrage
Setting up that born-again stage
For a country yokel so stupid
Alfred E. Neuman looks lucid
While the asses blew hot wind
From the party that had sinned
Dumbo snuck away with the prize

The stumbling bumpkin we’ve now got
Fills our lives with constitutional rot
Chasing fall guys for his own crime
Offering scapegoats just to buy time
Calling things things they are not

Will there be a ground swell?
Always too early to tell