JIMMY CARTER / AMERICA'S MOST FAMOUS TRUTH TELLER AND MORAL REVOLUTIONIST

2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Former President Jimmy Carter is America's most famous truth teller and moral revolutionist. Carter recently declared that "The U.S has no functioning Democracy" which did not appear in American mainstream press; Carter rightfully defends NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden actions declaring that "the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far" and finally Carter still correctly argues argues that "Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestine land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East." ~ and yet Jimmy Carter continues to be ostracized by the global elite and main stream press who obviously deeply fear his revolutionary moral truths: Allen L Roland

Only the truth is revolutionary and with that in mind, former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter is our most famous living truth teller and moral revolutionist ~ who continues to gnaw at the collective conscience of a spiritually faltering America with his penetrating truths, which are based on universal moral principles of equality, fairness and justice.

Carter's most famous speech is his Crisis of Confidence or Spiritual Malaise speech on July 15. 1979 which was deeply prophetic of future unfolding events which have led us to our present morally deteriorated state ~ see 2 minute video of excerpts ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lHplhMChZQ

Here's excerpts of Carter's exact works on the moral apathy which was already beginning to grip our nation ~ "Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past….But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose…. The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next 5 years will be worse than the past 5 years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world."

Jimmy Carter is a global moral force and trouble shooter for fairness and justice who gives living truth to these words by William James ~ words which also happen to be an inspiration for myself ~ "I am done with great things and big things and great institutions and big successes, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets or like the capillary oozing water, yet which, if you give them time, will bend the hardest monuments of human pride"

Here are some famous Jimmy Carter quotes which give ample evidence of his moral courage;

" War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children."   Jimmy Carter

"America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America."  Jimmy Carter

"Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world."  Jimmy Carter

"I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A. I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts."  Jimmy Carter

So it gives me great comfort to watch Jimmy Carter continue to weave his moral magic throughout the world oblivious to the snickers and silence from the main stream media and global elite ~ but true to his deep sense of moral truth and justice as well as his willingness to deal with controversial issues. A great example is his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, as well as his current defense of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, shared at a closed door meeting of Atlantic Bridge, and reported by the German newspaper Der Spiegel but ignored by America media outlets ~ and only accessed through the alternative press:  

"The English translation of Carter's remarks was published in the online news source Inquisitr.com. No American media outlets reported on the closed meeting and it was not clear where Der Spiegel got its information, Inquisitr noted. But both Inquisitr and Huffington Post, which also carried the story, noted that the quotes were consistent with previous published remarks by the former president.

In June, Huffington Post noted, Carter addressed the Snowden controversy in an interview with CNN after the 29-year-old intelligence analyst had flown from Hong Kong to Moscow in his quest for asylum from the U.S. government that is seeking to prosecute him for espionage and theft of government property. "He's obviously violated the laws of America, for which he's responsible," Carter said at that time, "but I think the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far." The Georgia Democrat also said nations that were offering asylum to Snowden were acting within their rights. "I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial," Carter said. See Article ~ http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/16043-jimmy-carter-defends-snowden-says-u-s-has-no-functioning-democracy

How refreshing it is to experience a modern day American president, or in this case former president, who is actually walking his talk.

"I'll never tell a lie. I'll never make a misleading statement. I'll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I'll never avoid a controversial issue."
Jimmy Carter

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/jimmy-carter-americas-most-famous-truth.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and transformational counselor Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations (allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

The Ultimate Commencement Address

THE ULTIMATE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS













Paul Hawken at University of Portland / 2009

On May 3rd, 2009 Paul Hawken delivered the ultimate and timeless commencement address in that he stressed the true values of human behavior ~ Truth, Beauty, Justice, Faith and Love and then wrapped them all in the last great humanitarian value of Service: Allen L Roland

I have always felt that the last two steps of ego death are celebration and then service. But celebration and service from a place of truth, beauty, justice, faith and love.

Paul Hawken stressed these same values in his historic commencement address at the University of Portland in May, 2009.
" You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it "

Paul Hawken is a longtime friend of CharityFocus, renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, founder of Wiser Earth and author of many books -- most recently Blessed Unrest.

This is the commencement address that every graduate in the United States , if not the world, should read and absorb for it rings of truth and authenticity. It calls us to the great humanitarian values of human behavior ~ Truth, Beauty, Justice, Love and Faith and wraps them all in the last value, Service.

Dr Paul Brandwein, the renowned educator, wrote of this same need for individual courage and moral values. For years, he sought to put " the soul " back into the educational system by a return to the basic values of human behavior ~
" It is a child's ultimate values of truth, beauty, justice, love and faith, which, when fully developed in his understanding, make him not only a citizen, but civilized and human. To the extent man believes in truth, beauty, justice, love and faith ~ to this extent, do we say he is truly man."
( The Permanent Agenda Of Man / Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich / New York 1971 )

Hawken touches on these same themes in his memorable must read commencement address on May 3rd, 2009 ~ and to me, it was the ultimate and timeless commencement address . Here it is in its entirety.

University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009

" When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation ~ but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but all that is changing.There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to de code it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.
The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection.

Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true.

Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown – Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood – and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it.

We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe – exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a 20 deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it."

In other words, Hawken is saying that we cannot escape our destiny and it is divine. It is written within us ~ but it depends on each of us listening and responding to this deep inner humanitarian calling and then fulfilling our part in a loving plan ~ but always in sync with our ultimate teacher ~ Nature.

Allen L Roland
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/ultimate-commencement-address.html

This weblog is sustained through donations from people like yourself. Please send check or Money Order to Allen L. Roland, PO Box 1221, Sonoma,CA 95476 Also accept Visa, MasterCard and Discover .

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

ONLY THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY

Stop The Zionist Pirates Of Israel

STOP THE ZIONIST PIRATES OF ISRAEL

[ Click on picture to enlarge ]

Flying their skull and crossbones the Zionist pirates of Israel attacked the Freedom Flotilla and turned this humanitarian effort into a killing field ~ thus reinforcing world wide condemnation and the demand for justice for continued crimes against humanity: Allen L Roland


Rachel Corrie ship Intercepted, boarded, equipment jammed, and ship taken to Israeli port, Ashdod. Yes, these are the same Zionist pirates who attacked the humanitarian aid Freedom Flotilla in the international waters over 90 miles out of their territorial waters, five days ago. The boats carried no arms; the participants strictly adhered to Ghandian mode by asking the Greek and Cyprus authorities to search the boats to avoid later claims that they were armed. It did not help them ~ the Zionist pirates boarded the boats in the high seas, and they turned the boats into killing fields.
"They attacked us as we boarded their vessel, and we killed them in self-defence", claimed the murderers afterwards, and thousands of willing accessories to the murder repeated this nonsense. An intruder can't claim self - defense for the Peace activists were entitled to defend themselves against the unlawful attack.


The Guardian newspaper editorial correctly stated: "the responsibility for the bloodshed was entirely Israel's. The Israeli navy said they were forced to open fire to avoid being lynched. What did the commandos expect pro-Palestinian activists to do once they boarded the ships ­ invite them aboard for a cup of tea with the captain on the bridge?"

( Latest News ) 4 Freedom flotilla passengers transferred to Ankara hospital too injured to go directly home were interviewed yesterday from their hospital beds. The video is very powerful and confirms Israeli atrocities. Also autopsies on bodies of activists killed in Israel's attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla five days ago indicates that the victims were shot multiple times at close range . Click on video
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/20106535425983666.html


Watch an ominous brief video of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan proclaiming to Israel Zionists: "This operation, which is completely against international law, is an act of inhuman state terror .. Don't think that we'll sit by in silence after such events ... We are sick of your lies "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iJ_J_ozVYM

Legally, the Zionist pirates of Israel do not have a leg to stand on ~ as compiled by Lynda Brayer - a human rights lawyer who specializes in the laws of war and international law iand who lives in Haifa ~ which puts the lie to any such Israeli claims.

Salient points :

" The standard for judging the Israeli acts is objective and not subjective. It is irrelevant what Israeli ministers, generals, admirals, or soldiers thought or intended. The test is in what they did.

What they did was engage in acts of war using weapons of war in international waters against vessels that are protected not only in peacetime but also in times of war.

Israel has therefore committed both crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity.
These are crimes that have international jurisdiction. Israeli political and military personnel can be named in trials held in any and all countries of the world. If the Israelis do not attend the trials, they can be tried in abstentia, and those decisions in which the Israelis are found guilty can be executed anywhere in the world.

Because unarmed civilians were murdered by a preplanned military attack, capital crimes have been committed. While it would appear that the international community no longer finds capital punishment civilized, the punishments for these capital crimes can be multiple life sentences.

Conclusion:

It follows, therefore, that Israel was first of all not allowed to attack these vessels militarily, and then not to board these vessels by force, capture these vessels, attack the passengers, imprison them on the vessels, forcibly remove them from the vessels, and steal their private property in the form of cameras, computers, clothes, etc.

Every single act carried out by the Israeli military forces in international waters on May 31, 2010, are unqualifiedly and absolutely violations of international law ." http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com/2010/06/lynda-brayer-legal-framework-of.html

Sixty-four-year-old Paul Larudee, an American citizen and longtime pro-Palestinian activist, was on board one of the ships carrying humanitarian relief to Gaza that was raided by the Israeli navy on Monday. After being tasered twice and beaten, he dove into the Mediterranean Sea, only to be captured and held in an Israeli prison for two days. Read his harrowing account on Salon and then Jerry Mazza's appropriate poem for a country that refuses to take accountability for its illegal actions and continues to counter these claims as being Anti-Semitic. Salon link ~ http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/06/03/paul_larudee_flotilla_account/index.html?source=newsletter

Mazza poem

HEIL, ISRAEL !

" Stiffen your back and click your heels
and thrust your right hand to the Fuhrer
morphing into Netanyahu
and the Nazi crowds of Judah,
becoming their own murderers,
replacing their lost with living Gazans,
Palestine no longer theirs,
an open prison and sore surpassing
the ghettos of Warsaw, Lodz and Krakow,
Jewish sections now Arab quarters
rolling towards a final solution
like the tanks and bulldozers flattening
what life stands that slings a stone back
like David to Goliath, blinding his wrath,
children of another god
in name only, the creation
sentencing the killers to sterility
by depleted uranium
packed in the shower of bombs they dropped
whose radioactive response was blind,
attacking the organs of life on the wind,
leaving the future a two-state graveyard,
burying the Fourth Reich with its victims,
death by a remorseless reversal of history,
a universal amnesia as the
edifices crumble like Berlin
into a thousand years of dust. "

Israel has obviously become a pirate state operating under its own rules and illegal agenda, just like those established in the Caribbean in 16th century or one that flourished on the Barbary Coast as late as the 19th century.

Let's make the world's outcry too loud to ignore. Join the petition for an international investigation into the raid, accountability for those responsible, and an immediate end to the blockade in Gaza ~ click to sign the petition, and then forward this message to everyone on your mailing list. http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_flotilla_8/?vl

Moshe Dayan, Israel’s most celebrated general, famously outlined the strategy he believed would keep Israel’s enemies at bay "Israel must be a like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother " but this mad dog is rabid and must be delt with immediately ~ even at the laughable risk of being called Anti-Semitic.

Allen L Roland
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/stop-zionist-pirates-of-israel.html

This weblog is sustained through donations from people like yourself. Please send check or Money Order to Allen L. Roland, PO Box 1221, Sonoma,CA 95476 Also accept Visa, MasterCard and Discover .

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on http://www.conscioustalk.net/

Cartoon courtesy of Pat Oliphant / Washington Post

ONLY THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY

Our Tax Dollars At Work / Killing Machines

OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK / KILLING MACHINES

Plane: Boeing Apache attack Helicopter.
Engine: Powered by two General Electric T700 turboshaft engines
Target Acquisition / Designation system: Lockheed Martin
Mission: Destruction of high-value targets ( not civilians )
Armament: Hellfire missile and 30MM chain gun (1200 rounds) and Hydra lethal rockets for wide variety of targets.
Cost: $12 million off the shelf / $ 15 million fully armed.

53 cents of every dollar we pay in income taxes goes to military spending and the Military Industrial Complex such as Boeing ~ which gets 51% of its total revenue from military contracts for killing machines: Allen L Roland

The irrepressible Mark Morford, SFGate.com, precisely sums up my feelings about our out-of-control Military Industrial Complex and rabid War Machine ~ " We have the largest, most bloated war machine in the world. We sell more guns, tanks, jets and warheads to more dictators, regimes and drug cartels than anyone on the planet. Are your local schools crumbling? Public hospitals failing? Entire state dumber than Glenn Beck's fact checker? Blame the military, at least in part, for sucking down about $1.6 trillion every year."

Jason Ditz writes on April 14th on antiwar.com ~ " From Dow Chemical’s manufacture of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War to the Cyclone Power Technologies man-eating battle droids of today, military contractors have inevitably faced questions about the ethical use of their products in decidedly unethical conflicts. Thanks to last week’s Wikileaks video release, it is now Boeing’s turn under the microscope."

One of Boeing's products, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, was front and center in the Wikileaks video, as the helicopters mowed down some 12 civilians, two of them reporters for Reuters.
Boeing's arrogant advertisements of their killing machines have deservedly left them open to parody and here's a great one. Click on ~ 2 minute video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1M7xpRV5cc&feature=player_embedded

Stop funding these illegal occupations and the parasitic Military Industrial complex which profits from them.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/

This weblog is sustained through donations from people like yourself. Please send check or Money Order to Allen L. Roland, PO Box 1221, Sonoma,CA 95476 Also accept Visa, MasterCard and Discover ~ call (707) 935-1908.

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is also available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com )

ONLY THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY

Slow Creep Of Moral Apathy In America

SLOW CREEP OF MORAL APATHY IN AMERICA

Little by little America's freedoms are being marginalized and our moral apathy is much like Germany between 1938 to 1945 ~ when the people thought they were free but, in reality, hate and fear had left them morally apathetic and impotent: Allen L Roland

While President Obama and the Democrats keep bailing out the Banks, Health Insurance Industry, Nuclear Industry and now Oil Industry ( renewed Offshore drilling ) and Main Street staggers along with close to 20% real unemployment during this severe economic crisis ~ it becomes obvious that there is now only one party, through the magic of Clinton's and now Obama's triangulation, and it serves only the Corpocracy (or financial elite) and always at the expense of the American taxpayer.

Chris Hedges mirrors my thoughts when he wrote ~ " All traditional standards and beliefs are shattered in a severe economic crisis. The moral order is turned upside down. The honest and industrious are wiped out while the gangsters, profiteers and speculators walk away with millions. The elite will retreat, as Naomi Klein has written in The Shock Doctrine, into gated communities where they will have access to services, food, amenities and security denied to the rest of us. We will begin a period in human history when there will be only masters and serfs. The corporate forces, which will seek to make an alliance with the radical Christian right and other extremists, will use fear, chaos, the rage at the ruling elites and the specter of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian controls to ruthlessly extinguish opposition movements. And while they do it, they will be waving the American flag, chanting patriotic slogans, promising law and order and clutching the Christian cross."
http://www.alternet.org/story/146005/we_stand_on_the_cusp_of_one_of_humanity%27s_most_dangerous_moments?page=entire

Most of Obama's pre-election progressive promises have been broken ~ much like Hitler's were in 1938 after he had gained power during a severe economic crisis. Here's the current list ~ Keeping the Guantánamo torture camp open, Continuing the war against Iraq, Renewing the USA Patriot Act, Continuing "military commission" kangaroo trials, Reserving the right to torture, and Continuing the NSA's "domestic surveillance" program of spying on innocent Americans' emails and phone calls. Note the slow marginalizing of our freedoms against a backdrop of public moral indifference. The dead canary in the mineshaft of public apathy is the growing suicide rate of both active and returning veterans.

In addition, the Obama administration has defended and justified in court almost every moral atrocity that the Bush / Cheney administration perpetrated on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Milton Meyer wrote of this same creep of moral apathy in his classic They Thought They Were Free, The Germans 1938 -1945 ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955 )

Excerpt: " What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider.....the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think....for people who did not want to think anyway gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about.....and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated..... by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us..... "Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'.....must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.....Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.
"You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone.....you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.
"That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed ~ "You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father.....could never have imagined."

We Americans are already seemingly in denial of the well over 1.3 million Iraqis who have been killed and displaced in our illegal war and occupation of Iraq which is now being replicated in Afghanistan ~ an occupation which benefits only the coffers of the Military / Industrial complex while economically starving Main Street .

Think of what could have happened if the German people in 1938 refused to be controlled by fear and instead ~ made a moral stand for social justice and altruism versus funding their Military / Industrial Machine's global designs of Empire building ~ while millions of innocent people died. Sound familiar ?

But let me point out that this indifference to the suffering of others is precisely what ultimately made fascism and the Holocaust possible ~ "The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people." Philosopher Theodor Adorno

As Hedges correctly points out ~ " Our mediocre and bankrupt elite is desperately trying to save a system that cannot be saved " because, I would add, the same debt bubble that blew up in 2008 cannot be re-inflated ~ particularly when Main Street is bankrupt and jobless with no manufacturing base while Wall Street remains unregulated, unchecked and unsupervised.

So what's the answer ? Stop our morally out of control Military / Industrial Complex in its tracks by defunding our two illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and electing politicians who are committed to that promise in November, 2010.

It may be too late ~ but anything less will be morally suicidal for our staggering Republic.

Allen L Roland
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/slow-creep-of-moral-apathy-in-america.html

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Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

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