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This should make certain narrow-minded leaders very happy. If we don’t know where we are, we can’t much assess where we are going. And that is exactly where the empowered elite want their soldiers to be.
Eleven percent cannot find the United States on a map. Twenty nine percent cannot locate the Pacific fucking Ocean! This is beyond xenophobia, which at least requires a cognizance of something else on the planet (gasp! perhaps they are not even aware they are on a planet…). This is Dick Cheney’s fighting Uruk-Hai, a mindless fighting force which their masters can simply point and shoot. Right now, the target is Iraq. But such a versatile weapon—bereft of moral misgivings—can be re-targeted with little or no coaxing upon the so-called enemy within, dissenting Americans who object to the exsanguination of American freedoms and who hold antique notions about liberty and justice.
Swallow your coffee hard, and turn the page. Forget about my irritable, paranoid ranting. But if we continue to tolerate the progress of tyranny in the most powerful nation of the free world, our subtle indifference will have epochal reverberations. If you don’t care about the future—or if you just plain don’t care—then never mind. And if you are a cynic like me, then just sit back and watch the amazing demise of the most magnificent experiment in human freedom history has known. But if you care—and this is a significant distinction—if you care, then you have to do something, even if the cause is hopeless. Compassion does not spring from a promise of reward; indeed it blossoms best in the flickering light of hope beseiged. If you care…