I’d like to start with a question… Why did America go to war with Iraq?
If your answer is 9.11 ties, you’re wrong. There are no ties to 9.11 and Iraq or Hussein. There are ties to Saudi Arabia but for some reason they were ignored and we’ve still yet to address them from a federal level.
If your answer is WMD, you’re wrong. For the sake of the argument, I’ll concede and say Iraq had WMD. They’ve been found, destroyed, deactivated, moved, etc. by now. If this is why we went there, because of WMD, why are we still there?
Personally, I’m struggling to find an acceptable reason for going to war in Iraq. Not to mention that there probably isn’t one, but we should have known something was up when war wasn’t properly declared. We were too upset about 9.11 to question our Commander in Chief at the time. This is completely understandable. We wanted vengeance for our dead. In retrospect, we can’t say it was right, but it was understandable.
What does this have to do with bread and circuses?
During the 2008 Presidential election, Obama was trumpeting his plans to end the Iraq war. To this day I remain convinced that this is exactly why he won the election. That, and because McCain said he’d stay in Iraq indefinitely. So it is now two years after his campaign and we’ve yet to see any signs of our military leaving Iraq. We’ve had a “declaration” from Obama naming July 2011 as the drawdown date for the Iraq war. But we also have General Petraeus noting that he reserves the right to tell the President it was “too early.” because the drawdown is “conditions based” and evidently there is some sort of benchmark they’re watching.
Well given that nothing has changed from George W Bush to Barrack H Obama over the absolute biggest item from the 2008 Presidential campaigns, surely the voters are upset and the media is reporting on it. Oh silly me, I forgot we’re now back to our apathetic and complacent selves. We’re literally fighting secret wars, permanently harming a new generation of Iraqis, all the while being told that the Iraq war could go on until an unrealized, undeclared goal is met. Oh and remember, the war in Afghanistan is also going well… Given the recent news about Russia supplying Iran’s nuclear program, we’re also hearing the drums of war rumbling as the saber rattling begins.
Ignore all that though. Our media has the “politically active” up in arms about the proposed racists in the conservative group or up in arms about the millions of illegal aliens in the country. More recently, we have the news that a Muslim community center containing a mosque is being built two blocks away from the World Trade Center’s ashes. Some people haven’t learned from the blindness and unquestioning actions our country undertook when going to war in Iraq. Some of us now think it should be illegal for a person to build a community center with a mosque just because their religion is incompatible with the attacks of 9.11 and their vicinity of the World Trade Center. Let me ask you this, do you really want to give the power to the government to allow or disallow a person buying property and building what they want on that property? Do you see any sort of slippery slope here? I digress.
As important as the enforcing of laws and the rights of private property are, we’re missing the point!
This is the modern day circus. In the fall of the Roman Empire, the people were given bread and circuses to distract them from reality. Well guess what folks, this is our circus! The 24 hour news cycle and constant barrage of Internet news and commentary is our circus. We love getting all puffed up and energized and feeling righteous about OUR cause and those in charge of the circus know that. The lines are being drawn between you and the person you have ideological differences with. In the middle of the fuss, while we’re all distracted, trillions of dollars are going from tax payers to corporations. The medical industry, military-industrial complex, the financial industry, they are all laughing their way to the bank.
The quicker you realize the distractions divide you from your fellow citizens, the quicker you can find a common ground in collectively refusing the ruling class to continue it’s fleecing of the people.
Most people, regardless of political philosophy, would agree that constantly taking money from the taxpayer to bailout private companies is bad.
Most people, regardless of political philosophy, would agree that trillion dollar deficits are incredibly detrimental to the country’s future.
Most people, regardless of political philosophy, would agree that the phony paper money system we’ve been tricked into adopting is absolute garbage.
Most people, regardless of political philosophy, would agree that the endless wars, death, and chaos that WE are responsible for needs to come to an end.
Stop with the upholding of the two-party system and the bickering and thinking of your neighbors as philosophical enemies and realize there are very important things that need to be addressed. We all need all the help we can get.
