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November
1, 2006
Who Will Stand Up When America Goes Wrong?
The
Spoils of Corruption
By CHARLES SULLIVAN
Like many Americans, since early childhood
I was taught that good always triumphs over evil. But as I grew
older and acquainted myself with the history of my country, my
perspective became less naïve and better informed. My perceptions
of reality were altered forever, and I am forced to live, like
so many of my readers, with the burden of knowledge that often
makes reality painful to bear.
America could have been very
different, but it has become a land of unfathomable corruption.
It is a place where money rules and lords power over everyone
and every process. Corruption has lodged itself in every tissue
and every organ of our societal institutions, and riddled them
with crippling disease. Perhaps more than any organ it has blinded
our ability to see what is before us.
The root of corruption stems
from America's love affair with private wealth and conquest.
We are a culturally shallow and spiritually deprived people who
seem incapable of discerning truth from fairy tales. This may
be a matter of convenience for some and a survival mechanism
to others.
There are three primary cultural
pillars that are the underpinning of our society: government,
media, and religion. It is widely assumed that these institutions
exist to serve the people. Whatever their intent when they were
birthed in the minds and hearts of their creators, these institutions
were subverted and used to subdue and control the masses; to
make them subservient to power. Virtually everything we believe
about America is contradicted by the evidence, but too many of
us are unwilling to come to grips with reality, which thus assures
the continuation of a brutal and tortuous history of murder and
conquest.
In a wonderful essay titled
The Problem is Civil Obedience, historian Howard Zinn wrote,
"I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy,
that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out
of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people
are out of power" Zinn, as usual, sums up the situation
perfectly. But the great majority refuses to see things as they
really are. They prefer fairy tales to truth that is too painful
for them to acknowledge and to bear; and so the charade continues.
Those on the far right of the
political spectrum are fond of saying that America is a Christian
nation, when, in fact, nothing could be farther from the truth.
The framers of the Constitution, especially Thomas Jefferson,
took great pains to keep America from evolving into a Theocracy.
Even so, religion should provide a moral compass that steers
its participants away from corruption and moral morass. Yet with
only a comparatively few exceptions, religion is used against
its followers. It serves wealth and power, and keeps the masses
ignorant, and subservient to the hierarchy of the church, which
is in collusion with the money changers in government.
Organized religion, like the
mainstream media and the government, is controlled by the wealthy
and powerful. It serves the high priests of capitalism and is
little more than an enabler of corruption and conquest. Let us
not forget that Manifest Destiny was driven by a puritanical
zealotry that resulted in the ethnic cleansing of a continent.
The collusion of religion with material wealth lends a false
aura of moral authority to disingenuous and misguided human behaviors
that follow immoral government into war after war. Thus the rich
continue to exploit the working people for the benefit of the
ruling class.
At some point in our history
Jesus of Nazareth was supplanted by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.
The Jesus who despised the wealthy and believed in service to
the poor, who in anger overturned the tables of the money changers,
no longer exists within the American psyche. Unlike Jesus, Robertson
and Falwell believe in accruing wealth to themselves and in assassinating
their enemies. They work hand in hand with the morally bankrupt
leadership that has invaded and occupies 135 of the world's 192
nations. The genuine article has somehow given way to the counterfeit,
and too many of us are unable to tell the difference.
In a purer form organized religion-in
this case Christianity, would be revolutionary and radical; and
it would serve as a bulwark against the accumulation of private
affluence in favor of public service, and a massive redistribution
of wealth and power. It would find itself, like any conscientious
individual, in formal opposition to the conventions of government
and society, rather than an enabler of them. But that clearly
is not the case these days.
The church, like all things
American, more closely resembles a for profit corporation than
a place where human souls are instructed in righteous behavior
and healed.
Similarly, the naïve among
us broadly assume that the mainstream media exists to inform
the people, and thus serves as a countervailing force against
corruption and malfeasance. In truth the corporate media serves
those in power rather than holding them accountable to the people.
While it was not always so, the mainstream media, like organized
religion, is used to program public perceptions-to steer us away
from truth and to perpetuate fairy tales that extol the virtues
of bribery, violence, and greed. It makes useful idiots of those
who cannot think for themselves and persuades them to act like
fools in the eyes of the world.
From the days of Tom Paine
we have regressed to an era in which news anchors are rewarded
for their loyalty to political regimes by being awarded positions
in government. Tom Paine and the spirit of public service have
given way to Tony Snow and Katie Couric, and the creation of
media celebrities. The boundary between government and media,
between church and state and corporate power, no longer exists.
They are all interchangeable parts in a machine that makes a
mockery of social justice and human freedoms.
Gone are the days of radical,
revolutionary religion in America. Gone are the days of Thomas
Jefferson and Samuel Adams, when a just and Democratic Republic
seemed possible. Gone are the days of Tom Paine and the militant
press that challenged corrupt power. The hands of time are no
longer moving forward; we have reversed them. Once again the
dark ages loom large on the horizon before us like an unseen
iceberg in the chill dark of an Atlantic night.
Charles Sullivan is a photographer, free lance writer
and social activist residing in the hinterland of West Virginia.
He welcomes your comments at csullivan@phreego.com.
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