Wake Up? Nah

Now that I finally am done with Reed College, I turn back to writing blogs that no one reads.

I feel it would be prudent to state my current political status here. I did not vote in the last local election, mainly because I was out of town and did not bring the ballot with me. Also, it was not the foremost thing on my mind.

Recently I have been told about a number of supposed proofs that the buildings that collapsed on 9/11 were imploded by explosives that the government or the owners of the buildings had placed there in order to prevent those buildings from toppling sideways and causing more catastrophic damage. The question remains as to whether these explosives were set off on purpose or accidentally in the main buildings. It seems to me that the planes could have triggered a chain reaction of those charges going off. Of course, allowing the terrorists to attack us seems like it would have been enough to justify a war, without imploding the buildings.

I'm just now at the beginning of considering all this, and frankly, I just don't see how it really matters. Especially this semester after studying the rise of the Roman Empire, specifically the emperor Augustus, I just don't see how what is going on today with America is really that different. We have a leader who has tons of secret meetings with a core group of his staff, and they basically decide what they want to do, and then use misinformation that they give to Congress to cause them to vote for war powers etc.

Congress essentially made Bush an emperor with a term limit. In all the press conferences I've watched, Bush appears to have the attitude that he can do whatever he wants because hey -- he's president. I do think that he is careful to always leave some stones unturned, some issues left unpressed -- such as Qwest -- so that he appears not to be a total Nazi. Also, thankfully, the US is not nearly as dominant a world power as Rome was in its day; there are lots of things to keep us in check.

Yet I return to the point: America is like the new Rome in many ways. Sure, we lack outright slavery, and things are really good economically and socially for many people. This is why there is no revolution at the moment. All of the people you hear calling Bush a war criminal and saying that we need to pull out of Iraq -- what do they do? They go to work, pay their taxes, and occasionally protest.

However there is not any kind of organized resistance within America to the US government. Surely if there had been a Fallujah-type incident (or incidents, as it were) here at home, perpetrated by the US govt., then we would probably have a coup on our hands. Yet if our government does this type of attrocity to human beings in another country, to a city in another land, then we don't hear about it, we don't think about it, we do nothing about it.

Further, if there was to be any type of real attempt to overthrow the Bush administration, we all know what would happen. Those involved would be called "terrorists," which would then justify their being "disappeared" or otherwise dealt with in an injust way. You see, the Patriot Act essentially is the best type of defense a government could possibly have against a revolution. With such powers, a corrupt government could rise to power and then have the legal means to defend its perch upon the White House. That place is damn near a fortress at this point.

On the development of the White House as a fortress, and the relationship between that and the plane that took off on 9/11/1994 and attempted to crash into the White House:
http://prop1.org/clues/

On the 9/11/2001 building demolitions and other information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories#7_World_Trade_Center

They call all of these "conspiracy theories." However, I do not think that is what they need to be called. Rather, it is all attempts to explain things that led to the stupidest war in history. Things that were led to justify the election and war powers of the stupidest president in history. George W. Bush is the man who benefited most from 9/11, of anyone. Why? I don't see the need for a conspiracy theory.

Still, does it really matter? Is it any surprise that the world's "only superpower" should do whatever it feels like? Is it any surprise that there is a military-industrial complex and that we would invade an oil-rich country and give billions in oil-field equipment contracts to our own companies, rebuilding them before even fixing the water or electricity in Baghdad? Read some Roman history and it won't be much of a surprise to find that the way the Romans dealt with their colonies and provinces is not dissimilar to the way in which the USA deals with Iraq and other nations.

It's all so sickening it has, I feel, forced me and many people who actually *cared* at one point into a sort of coma, a malaise. After the electronic voting machines put Bush back in power (www.blackboxvoting.org), it was as if all our votes didn't even count. Yet did the people of Ohio up? Did the people of Florida rise up after the 2000 election? No, because we all know there is NOTHING WE CAN FUCKING DO ABOUT IT. What are you going to do about it? Hahaha.

Sigh.