You Get What You Need

by Edgar J. Steele

May 13, 2003

John Adams, (1735-1826), second president of the United States (1797-1801) 
and one of the great figures in American history, on Freedom and Liberty:

          "(A) Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never 
         be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever."  (Letter to Abigail Adams, 1775)  

          "(T)he right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man 
         to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave." (Rights of the Colonists, 1772)

          "(T)he people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right 
         to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their
         protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it." (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

The Rolling Stones on getting results:

        "You can't always get what you want.
        You can't always get what you want.
       And if you try sometime, you find
       You get what you need."
               -- "You Can't Always Get What You Want" (M. Jagger/K. Richards, 1969)

To hear it told by CNN, Fox News or any of the other controlled media outlets, America's recent adventure in Iraq was "a brilliant military campaign," "a bold stroke for liberty" and "crushing terrorism in its lair."  Nobody seems to care whether we got Saddam Hussein any more than whether Osama bin Laden is still alive.  Did we get an Iraqi regime change?  Yes, and the Iraqis say they like it less than life under Saddam.  Did we destroy all those Weapons of Mass Destruction?  Ummmm...despite renewed daily reports of our having stumbled upon them, we actually never found any.

They made us do it, of course.  Victims of their own desperation.  All those awesome Weapons of Mass Destruction.  All that fraternizing with Al Qaeda operatives. All that killing of Iraqi civilians.  After all, it is America that should be killing those civilians, not Saddam.  And, of course, only America can be trusted with Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Just ask our embedded media people.  Or the non-approved media people now embedded in the Iraqi landscape as a result of those weapons.  

This most recent debacle finally has cured me of television news, which increasingly seemed beamed in from another dimension.  And I merely scan the local papers these days, primarily to learn truly useful things, such as when it is legal to burn leaf piles.

It used to be more difficult to know what was going on, because one never knew when America's government, along with its lapdog press, was lying.  Things are much easier since they became pathological and now simply lie about everything.  Indeed, all of American politics, if not society at large, has taken on a similar hue.  Orwell was right.  It was just his timing that was off.

We have perpetual war to "keep the peace."  (Orwell:  "War is Peace")

We yield our civil liberties in the name of domestic security.  (Orwell:  "Freedom is Slavery")

We accuse those who ask questions of being unpatriotic.  (Orwell:  "Ignorance is Strength")

Our Defense Department conducts nonstop war.  (Orwell's "Ministry of Peace" waged war)

All we need do is rename the Justice Department (whose prime stock in trade is injustice for so many Americans) the Ministry of Love.  And, perhaps, the Federal Reserve the Ministry of Plenty.

There's a reason, you know, for this mass redefining of terms.  Orwell said it best:  "(T)he whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought...Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." (George Orwell, "1984," Book 1, Ch 5, 1949)

Said Bush the Second:  "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier...just as long as I'm the dictator."  (George Bush, Washington, DC, Dec 18, 2000, during his first trip to Washington as President-Elect)

And the masses are much easier to manipulate if they are too stupid, or too scared, to disagree or ask questions.  Makes life much easier for the totalitarian in residence.

Unfortunately, there is more.  For example, there is nothing conservative these days about conservatives - now conservatism means favoring bigger government and more control (not less, the classic definition of a conservative).

And there is nothing liberal about liberals any more - who fall over one another to surrender personal freedom (many today do not realize that liberal used to mean favoring personal freedom and liberty).

Racial diversity requires that everyone who is white think the same.

We destroy countries in order to save them.  (Afghanistan)

We kill foreign civilians to liberate them.  (Iraq)

We eliminate our own civil liberties so that our freedom may be enhanced.  (Patriot Act)

We arrest our fellow citizens so that we might feel safe and secure.  (Homeland Security)

It is our Child Protective Services that facilitate wholesale child kidnapping, abuse, rape and murder.

We support and create totalitarianism, then call it democracy.  (Both at home and abroad)

Antisemites, in truth, simply are those hated by jews and thereby demonized with that sobriquet.

There are none so intolerant as those who preach tolerance.

A great many Christians have become singularly unChristian toward those with whom they disagree.

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity...Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."   (George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1945)

It is clear where we are headed:  fascism.  Indeed, we have arrived.  It remains only to silence those few remaining souls here on the internet such as I.  An "internet desperado" is how Israel Shamir described me recently.  Kind of dashing, I think.  Sort of like Zorro.  In real life, of course, Zorro quickly would be captured and hung.  "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." (George Orwell)

Fascism, for those who don't really know, is totalitarianism.  Dictatorship.  Total central control.  Like Communism, but with the pretense of private property (with which one can do only as one is told, whether it be land, cars or children).

Yet, Americans still want freedom and liberty, claiming all the while that is just what we have today.  What Americans are getting is just the opposite.  Based on results, that's what we need, I suppose.

Wants and needs cut both ways.  Based on results, this Administration wants a dictatorship.  What it needs is to be brought up short and punished.  Problem is, we will all suffer its fate, as well, when the world finally gets its act together.

Even so, we must speak out and defy the fascism that the American government has become.  We must disobey, for there is nothing else that we can do.  "Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and rebellion." (Oscar Wilde)

New America.  An idea whose time has come.

Copyright ©2003, Edgar J. Steele

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