This blog entry is in response to a letter written by Mark Wright posted as a comment to my last blog story "Injustice still reigns supreme in Georgia". I started writing a response and realized it deserved more than just a simple note so here I am.
First of all, I want to thank Mark for taking the time to write such a great letter. Thanks Mark. For those of you who haven't read his letter, it has been reproduced herein at the bottom of this text for your convenience. I welcome comments from readers on both this subject and on the subject of Ed Kramer's seven years under house arrest without trial or conviction.
Mark's letter was on the subject of outrage and the fact that it doesn't seem to exist in American any longer. Nor, he claims, does democracy. I agree with much of what Mark says. His letter is very well expressed.
There are many elements at play here. Often I hear the words, 'Yeah, it upsets me but what can I do? I am only one person. I can't fight city hall." And, so it goes with most of us. A rationalization? Yes, and no. People really do think they have no power to effect change. But, they are also desensitized by the barrage of a million ideas and images coming at them fast and furiously. It is bewildering and enough to shut anyone down to the possibility of taking action.
Humm . . . seems we all need to reevaluate what's really important from all of it.
What helped me most in sorting all this out? Well, many years back, in graduate school I took a course in propaganda. I'd recommend a similar course to anyone who truly wants to understand what's really going on in the world and how the 'government' system really works.
I was amazed how candidly the prof spoke of what he called 'dark secrets' as if it were common knowledge. Well, actually . . . it all was. Most of everything discussed or videos shown were taken from information that was all a matter of public records. Yes, it was all quite amazing . . . and all stuff sitting right underneath our noses.
I think it was the prof's very first 'dark secret' in which he said this country has never been a democracy. In fact, he continued, great effort has and will continue to be expended keeping democracy out of other countries as well. Duh. A lot in the class were shocked. I was not.
I can not tell you exactly why I wasn't shocked but a forthcoming book of mine does a pretty good job of trying to answer that question. This particular writing project is a book about certain aspects of the 'system' . . . and murder for the sake of democracy etc, etc. . . .of course, much of what I have to say comes from insights that were seeded while still a student. Although it has a substantial element of truth, for many reasons, I have chosen to put it in the form of fiction. The reader will have to decide for themselves and make their own choices about what they want to believe.
It has always amazed me how people, even those who were my classmates then, can consider our state of government in this country a democracy. Some people even get into a fist fight to defend this fantasy. My youngest son, a military officer, declines participation in discussing the matter. I guess I can't blame my son there. How can one fight in a war one does not believe in? You can't. Soldiers are trained or 'desensitized' to see the opposing forces as the enemy rather than as the father with five children he is or a young man, still technically a teenager who is someone's child. A soldier can kill an enemy but not those seen as a human with lives much like our own.
In a similar manner, how could Americans continue to sit idly by if they weren't constantly being brainwashed into believing that they as individuals are helpless to change anything.
BUT, think again. You can make a different! You just need to rediscover your outrage! Yes, I did say outrage!
Noam Chomsky, an author whose books were basic reading materials in my course, has been writing about the biases in the media for years. Although, because he writes on an academic level, few mainstream people pay much attention. Still, it is not the likes of Noam Chomsky that can influence or change the greater masses of people. Real change only comes from real people talking to real people. It is the neighbor speaking to a neighbor, friend speaking to a friend, and activists speaking before peers at a rally. We are also subconsciously influenced by images on a screen. Thus, the power of media.
Humm . . . Humanitarian filmmakers where are you?
Yes, outrage in the USA appears gone but I do not believe it is dead. IF we can unite people in a common cause, especially via the media, then there IS a chance that both freedom and justice can return.
They say that mass media is at fault . . . horrible images from war bombings and natural disasters are flashed daily in front of our faces. We have become desensitized. No one can take that on a daily basis without short-circuiting in some way. But that is the way it is. So, the problem is how exactly can people then be incited to do something about all this injustice that surrounds and drowns us all? How is that done? Can it be done? One must wonder. I wonder.
Hollywood has glorified war and images on a screen seem to most just that . . . images on a screen that are not in the viewer's life . . . these are all things that are remote, things one can imagine but can not relate to, But, the people dying, starving and living in inhuman conditions are REAL people . . . they are not just images on a screen.
Call me an optimist but I do believe that anything is possible. If people could just see beyond the smoke screen . . . the images that mesmerize and desensitize . . . if only . . .
Yes, images on the screen . . . powerful and deadly at the same time. It all depends on the message being conveyed.
Take Ed for example. One day, he was a writer, editor and founder of a world renown SciFi Convention, DragonCon. The next day, he's accused and scorned based on the flimsy evidence of heresay and the words of youth who, I believe , later retracted their statements. The mass only hear the words 'he did it' irregardless of any evidence to the contrary. The mob mentality rules. Even if later freed, some will always see that person or persons as guilty . .. because that's what the first story said and that remains most in memory.
Even if Ed, or anyone in his position, were guilty, it does not matter. NO ONE deserves the treatment that this one man has received. The day they put a label of accusation on Ed was the day, he was tried and conviction by the public. Guilt or innocence does not matter in the eyes of the masses. It is the system that is in the wrong. Seven years have been stolen from Ed Kramer . . . seven years that can never be replaced. How many more years must this one man give of his life before someone in the political hierarchy finally screams ENOUGH? Indeed, how can such injustice continue in America?
One voice alone can not do it, but one voice added to another and another and another and another become five. Soon those five voices can touch a hundred others, and then those hundred touch a hundred thousand. A voice chain can reach millions before long. The 100th monkey . . . do you remember that? A scientific fact. When a habit reached the 100th monkey, it became a trait of the whole species. The same with our voice. One voice CAN make a different.
It's called changing the world one voice at a time. Ah-ha, we're just demonstrated the power and curse of the media. A million people all receiving the same news story at the same time. Each internalizes that story differently but ALL see it. If those stories can be molded to elicit certain directed 'public opinion' response, imagine the power such a message can have. Think about it.
Also, think about this . . . every day for seven years, an innocence man is denied the basic freedoms we take for granted. He is treated as a criminal yet no jury or court has done anything to attest to his guilt or innocence. Imagine how you would feel if you were in his place. Feel the frustration of being innocence and unable to plead your case. Feel the pain of living in isolation. Feel the outrage rise within you. Then do something . . . start a petition, write letters, start groups and pray for all Americans . . . I say ALL Americans because if such injustice is allowed to continue, what has happened to one, can happen to just about anyone. Yeah, think about it. The next victim of injustice could be your loved one. It could even be you.
~ Shirl A. Steward
Comment By Mark Wright
(Submitted: 06/24/2007 11:48 am)
Ed. There is no outrage in the USA anymore.
As long as the wolf of inequality and unfairness is at the neighbor's door, the sheep watching tend to think if they're lucky, the same wolf will not come to their door.
We tend to elect leaders who as part of the flock follow the system, Not individualism and ideas. Interestingly those elected tend to appoint judicials with the same systematics.
Thus over time, We have become a people that is subjugated to our legal and govt system.
Granted that is not the way the founding fathers intended things to turn out (originally the govt and legal systems here were designed to serve the people).
Following is a simple analyisis of the trend, excerted from of Gerry Spence's books. "From Freedom to Slavery, the Rebirth of Tyranny in America".
"First they came for the facists.......
In this country we embrace the myth that we are still a democracy when we know that we are not a democracy, that we are not free, that the government does not serve us but subjugates us.
Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last has become the people's master.
We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed, first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf.
We did not care about the weak or about the strays. They were not part of the flock. We did not care about those on the outer edges. They had chosen to be there. But as the wolf worked it's way towards the center of the flock we discovered that we are now on the outer edges. we must look the wolf squarely in the eye. That we did not do so when the first of us was ripped and torn and eaten was the first wrong. It was our wrong.
That none of us felt responsible for having lost our freedom has been a part of an insidious progression. In the beginning the attention of the flock was directed not to the maurauding wolff but to our own devient members within the flock. We rejoiced as the wolf destroyed them for they were our enemies. We were told that the weak lay under the rocks while we faced the blizzards to rustle our food, we did not care when the wolf took them. We argued that they deserved it. When one of our flock faced the wolf alone it was always eaten. Each of us was afraid of the wolf, but as a flock were not afarid. Indeed the wolf cleansed the herd by destroying the weak and dismembering the aderant element within. As time went by, strangely, the herd felt more secure under the rule of the wolf. It believed that by belonging to this wolf it would remain safe from all other wolves. But we were eaten just the same.
No one knows better than the children of the Holocaust how the lessons of history must never be forgotten. Yet Americans, whose battle cry was once "Give me liberty of give me death", have sat placidly by as a new king was crowned. In America a new king was crowned by a shrug of our shoulders when our neighbors were wrongfully siezed. A new king was crowned when we capitulated to a regime that is no longer sensitive to the people, but to non people--to corporations, to money to power. The new king was crowned when we turned our heads, as the new king was crowned as we turned our heads as the poor and the forgotten and the damed were rendered mute and defenseless, not because they were evil, but because, in the scheme of our lives they seemed unimportant, not because they were essentially dangerous but because they were essentially powerless.
The new king was crowned when we cheered the governement on as it prosecuted the prodegy of our ghettos and filled our prisons with black men whose first crime is that they were born in the ghettos. We cheered the king on because we were told that our sacred rights were but "loopholes" but which our enemies: the murders and rapists and thieves and drug dealers, escaped. We were told that those who fought for our rights, the lawyers, were worse than the thieves who stole from us in the night, that our juries were irresponsible and ignorant and ought not to be trusted. We watched with barely more than a mumble as the legal system that once protected us became populated with judges who were appointed by the new king.
At last the new king was crowned when we forgot the lessons of history, that:. when the rights of our enemies have been wrested from them, we have lost our own rights as well, for the same rights serve both citizen and criminal.
