04.11.08
This has been on my radar for a while, and I reread an annotation of it tonight in the Economist. I had to bring it to your attention. It’s tantamount to what has ruffled me for years and years now. Yes I read the Economist. I don’t just read about design. I try to stay on top of where spaceship Earth is traveling, and lately our trajectory has seemed to be on a direct collision course pitting us against our own survival.
The event I want to call to your attention happened a millennium ago (in web time) on March 19th. It deserves a certain amount of attention though, especially from young people. It highlights, in an off-the-cuff candid way the mindset of our highest elected officials. If you have a pulse and you care about where this country is headed and just how far it has veered off course, it should make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. For too long now, with their integrity laid on the slab like a helpless sacrificial lamb, I have been watching people refuse to speak out about the fascist political climate in the U.S. because they are afraid of risking their job security. It’s a sad state of affairs, and it is exactly what people like Thomas Jefferson warned us about.
So without further ado, a little less than a month ago Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on ABC news. When told that seven out of ten Americans think that the war in Iraq is not worth fighting, he responded with a smug smile, “So?” You can see it preserved forever digitally, which is what now accounts for celluloid, above.
It really took my breath away when I saw it. I felt like it was one of those moments of honesty that the camera was able to capture, albeit momentarily, until he was able to again compose himself and do his best to pretend to be a politician and not the worst embodiment of a cut-throat soulless American Capitalist. It was just shameless and unabashadly nefarious on all fronts. How long have we slept to allow such a disconnect from the outer appendages connected to the body politic? Our politicians should represent the soul of our nation and Cheney is black to the core. There is no heart there, he is a machine born to plunder and make money. It is a mirror that we need to gaze into and take a long hard look. It’s embarrassing and quite frankly, I believe we are better than this. I know we are. I still have faith in America, especially in the public. I am not alone either, it is still a candle held by disenfranchised people the world around. That candle is what inspired people to cram themselves onto rickety ships and push their way past the foreboding halls of Ellis Island for many years.
If anything good can come out of this dark time in our history when our Vice President can, in a single simple one-syllable word, completely disregard the public who elected him, it is that we reopen our lines of communication. It is time to engage. If you want to be relevant, then start thinking and start caring. We are overdue. We have a chance here to right some very wrong wrongs. There is still hope and we cannot give in to this era. We must not let it define us. We are better than this. I honestly care about this country and I especially care about the generations younger than me who will one day have to take the reigns of what could then be a stallion too wild to tame. Let’s get this behind us as soon as we can and start diplomatically working towards a better world once again. Then we can be the country that the world has prayed we would one day become. It’s not about money, it’s about human life, progress and the future of our planet. It isn’t an individual endeavor, it’s collective. At one point in time, there was a lot of people out there hoping we would be the country that would pave the way towards a global society. We can be that country again. We just need to ask for a second chance, apologize and bring the people who have perpetrated crimes at the highest levels of our government to justice. Nothing in our lifetime, in terms of politics, will prove more important.
I say to you Mr. Cheney, ‘so’ long and good riddance. I hope you have amassed enough blood money to buy a spaceship and build a home on Mars. You don’t breath air, have a heart, or need other human beings anyway. We can live without you. It’s time we move on and start working towards the progress of the human race again and stop making a bunch of arrogant old white men rich.
“So” Mr. Cheney, thanks but no thanks, you had your chance, now get the hell out. You will not be missed. I promise you that.
