The other day I heard some brilliant riffs on the news by the LA-based Frangela sitting in for Stephanie Miller and I laughed until my side felt like splitting in sync with their spot on takes on race, sex, rings of prostitution and propaganda in high places. Thanks Stephanie and Frances Callier and Angela V. Shelton. I need light relief.

Regressive Quartet

Because five years on I am deeply concerned about the widening pattern of U.S. aggression in Eastern Mediterranean States together with the Bush administration’s insane push to deploy missiles in Central Europe aimed East toward Russia and China and further threatening and destabilizing Central and Southwest Asia. This worrying march of regression, this backwardness in international relations (and with it neglect of domestic affairs) originates, in relatively recent times, with a callous quartet:

Ronald Reagan (1981-89) in Iran and Central America;

George H.W. Bush (1989-93) in the Persian Gulf (Iraq, Iran, Kuwait);

William Jefferson Blythe/Clinton (1993-2001) against Iraq, Belgrade and Rwanda;

George W. Bush (2001-) in direct and proxied arming, invading, threatening, occupying and destabilizing the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia), South/Central Asia (Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India), South/Central America (Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela), Central Europe (Poland, Czech Republic, Serbia/Kosovo), and in global renditions/torture in violation of international law.

As America distracts itself with 24-hour easy sex/race news, an increasingly militarized foreign policy comes to Main Street. The other day in Britain people were being asked whether they agreed or disagreed with allowing soldiers routinely to wear their military uniforms on the streets. The discussion centered on individual rights and personal patriotism: do soldiers have the “right” and should we as “patriots” encourage them to wear their uniforms, for example, to the supermarket? The discussion was off the point; it should have centered on the nature of civil society and the inherent threat posed by uniformed soldiers to civilian society—especially in an era of “war on terror” paranoia. Among the panelists was the mayor of London who should have known not to fall into the trap of having to defend his patriotism.

For the past seven years Americans too have allowed themselves to be forced into a corner having to “defend their patriotism”—a patriotism defined by war mongers, profiteers, religious zealots and militarists. The danger in succumbing to a seemingly minor attempt at mind control is that progressively the tactic renders people unmindful of erosion that is taking place in civil society at the hands of increasingly incompetent governance. Abandoning constitutionally guaranteed rights, systems, institutions, checks and balances leaves civil society prey to military coup d’état a la Pakistan, Myanmar, Cuba, China, Nigeria, Sudan.

Domestic March of Regression

Unfortunately Yale, Harvard and Stanford have given the world graduates in international lawlessness and domestic decline. Fives years’ U. S. invasion and occupation in Iraq raises serious domestic concerns.

1. Schools are huge armed camps warehousing and releasing hundreds of marginally literate people revolving in and out of hostile environments—where dissent is discouraged, independent thought is thrashed, and education is anything but education.

2. School curricula are based in somebody’s bigotry.

3. Communities are places where helicopters hover overhead, questioners and protesters (students and environmentalists) are threatened, labeled “terrorists,” tasered, and imprisoned—or gunned down on the spot.

4. Law is whatever the man commanding the armies, controlling communications systems or holding the gun says it is. Abduction, torture or domestic spying becomes legal or illegal at whim.

5. Democracy is oligarchy—“a form of government in which the ruling power belongs to a few”: examples include centralized control of mass media (print, broadcast, publishing, telecommunication) and weapons of mass destruction; corporate selection, ownership and control of contenders for public office; government abolition of citizenry’s ownership of public airwaves and violations of their constitutional guarantees of free speech, free press, assembly, right to vote (to choose from a variety of candidates, to have the vote cast counted).

In the major city near where I live the mayor is a veteran law enforcement officer who touts his religion, appears in radio adverts for the Salvation Army, deploys religious street monitors, and sends SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams into neighborhoods. Instead of helping people build community and reach and resolve underlying problems, he contrives community with street cleaning days all the while encouraging an “informer” (snitcher) culture and imposing lockdowns. The previous mayor failed schools and communities and did nothing to establish cross-county light rail to bring employment and workers, commerce and culture in and out of the city. He sunk millions of debt into a defective boat and boating scheme that on its face was irrelevant to the city’s needs and completely lacking in common sense.

When oligarchy—power in a few— funds incompetence people and democracy lose. The Democratic Party in the county where I live failed to field an opposition candidate and refused to support independent candidacy for county executive, thereby handing the election to a party whose character and issues are supposed to be different from those of the Democratic Party. During this year’s Primary campaign the Democratic Party listed in the Yellow Pages allowed the use of its offices to one candidate and denied all other Democratic candidates, thereby restricting the competitiveness of and voter access to the candidate pool and attempting to influence the outcome of the Primary election. “There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations,” Madison said. This is the work of oligarchy—one of the ways in which small groups manipulate election results a la South Africa or Russia, or choose any regressive regime you like. In America, at every level, a few hold the power and deny choice to the electorate; if allowed to get away with it, a few rig systems so voters cannot exercise options. These are some of my worries on the domestic front as Washington persists in waging war.

Five Years On

The United States of America is five years into a brutal war against the people of Iraq, most cruelly against women and children of Iraq. And by all reliable accounts what the U.S. government has done to Iraq far exceeds the terror perpetrated by the head of state murdered by the administration—a death shamelessly celebrated by corporate media and Exxon-Mobil, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse, General Electric.

Five years into this madness in foreign policy an American reciting a talking point, uninformed by the life of Lincoln, opined on a domestic question unchecked by the NPR moderator. The United States of America, the man said, is founded on “States Rights.” This ignorance or propaganda-based schooling furthers America’s march of regression. In 1848 the man credited with laying the foundation for universal, non-sectarian public education, Member of the U.S. Congress Horace Mann, wrote that beyond all other devices of human origin “Education…is the great equalizer of men [and women]—the balance of the social machinery.”America neglects the education of its people.

Inscribed above the entrance to the Madison Building of the Library of Congress are US. President James Madison’s cautionary words: “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

Five years in Iraq, seven in Afghanistan; sixty years of undeclared wars and an unconscionable wrong in Palestine awaiting human correction; twenty-seven years of fear and lies, a foreign policy of violence and a domestic policy of despair and disrepair—this coming Wednesday March 19 Peace marchers meet at the headwaters of America’s long march of regression.

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March 16, 2008 By Carolyn Bennett Http://journals.aol.com/cwriter85/todaysmissingnews/ Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett, Writer, Independent journalist, Educator. Author of Women's Work and Words Altering World Order published 2008 by iUniverse. Hardback ISBN 978-0-595-70449-1; paperback ISBN 978-0-595-46712-9 .. (http://www.iuniverse.com]