We have time, don’t we? While we watch the world as we’ve known it slowly fade off, with the country shedding jobs at nearly 700,000 a month, some of you must have some time on your hands. If not now, perhaps eventually. Good a time as any to check the contents of your souls while answering these questions:
1. Did you approve of the Iraq war when it started, even knowing, as everyone knew, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?
2. Did you simply swallow, unquestioningly, the official list of events as they happened that day, despite myriad holes that did not and could never add up, like where was Norad and why did they not follow stated protocols – amongst many other problematic issues?
3. Did you pay attention to the fact George W. Bush had the worst job creation record, officially, since Herbert Hoover, as of 2004, and what that would mean for our economy?
4. Did it cross your mind that huge deficits were unsustainable over any length of time, let alone nearly a decade? And that never, in the history of America, were taxes lowered at the same time one war was underway – let alone two?
5. Did you buy one of those cheesy metallic ribbons for our troops, but fail to bat an eye as these young adults were returned to combat duty, over and over, some without much leave time at all? Did you know that allegedly more troops commit suicide right now than are killed in combat?
6. Did you look at all the pictures of Abu Ghraib? The really horrid, awful torture pictures made available on the Internet and elsewhere?
7. If so, did you say anything about them? Do anything? Feel much remorse and sorrow for what our country was becoming and how your own actions or inactions helped along the spread of evil?
7.5. Did you speak out, protest, write any letters to your Senators, Congressmen, State Reps, Governors….anyone….over any of these matters?
8. When new shopping centers started popping up everywhere, and there was a new Chipotle, Wal-Mart, another ubiquitous Olive Garden or Lowe’s, did you stop to think how these stores would be sustained with so much overlap? And why we were destroying the land to build new plazas when old shopping plazas had plenty of empty rental units?
9. Do you still think people who don’t have jobs right now just don’t want to work, or do you realize how bleak things really are? During the Depression, it was still a widely accepted myth that people were just “lazy” and unwilling to do the work that was available. I hear it, still, around here.
10. If you answered yes to more than two of the above, how you doing with that whole looking in the mirror and sleeping at night jazz?
We really do reap what we sow in this world, and it appears the US has a bumper crop coming in. No matter on what side you fell…you will share in the harvest. But it’s always nice, while there’s some breathing time, to ascertain what kind of evil comes about when otherwise good men and women do nothing to stop it.
