Legacy of Greed and Arrogance

9/11 has left us with a curious and terrifying legacy; asshats, motherf***ers, and bullsh***ers as far as the eye can see, bad things happening to good people, bad people getting all the dough and all the power, and good people watching their homes burn or washed away in a flood and people in Africa starving while a bunch of pin-headed, self-righteous redneck, evangelical elitists and greedy power-mongers glad-hand, campaign and make back-room deals.

These influence brokers used the fear generated by the cowardly attacks of 9/11, ten years ago, to erode our freedoms and break the back of our government. Bin Laden got what he wanted.

Racist bullies, liars and hypocrites sit in their snug little ivory towers and rain down hate rhetoric. Inane/insane pundits burst our eardrums with their messages of hate....This goes beyond party and philosophy and into the heart of the human race where it is festering and about to blow. They wanted to use fear to control the populace. Well, good job, Sh**eaters! I am definitely afraid. But controlled? Not yet.

I fear a return to the dark ages, an elite class that celebrates the ignorance and fear of the masses while they control access to everything that makes life better...education, creativity, art, music, freedom. I fear a time when the public becomes nothing more than voiceless drones. I fear a bloody rebellion, a destruction of something so precious, lost because it was taken for granted.

I see the seething anger and/or the exhausted resignation of the millions who just want to work for a living. I see a wife entering a church to ask for food. I see a man gathering scrap metal so that he can sell it to buy gas to look for work. I see elderly people wondering if they will die in poverty.

And I see a large dark cloud harboring a hideous, tentacled, Lovecraftian monster with many faces; Koch, Murdoch, Bush, Perry, Beck, Coulter, Rove, Cheney, Palin, Bachmann, Robertson, Cain, Paul, Devos, Exxon Mobile and tar sand blasters, pipeline runners and mountain cappers...not enough room to list all of the dastards.

I see book-burning, church-run "education" and emotions, especially love in any form, outlawed and punishable by law. Orwell just had the year wrong. Atwood is a visionary as well. History and literature have warned us but we haven't heeded the warnings and are beginning to pay the price. "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."

Ten years ago, we saw the results of hate and religious fanaticism. It cost the lives of thousands of innocent people and left a scar on the face of our nation. I find it absolutely flabbergasting that the parallels are not recognized in the antics of Robertson, the Tea Party and praying candidates who fall to their knees while their states burn. Fascism isn't socialism, People!! It's intolerance and fear and iron control and fanaticism and it isn't just Islam that has a claim to those attributes. It is here in the fundamentalist, evangelical, end-of-timers Christian Dominionists and we should fear them just as much as the Arab piloting an airliner. There is an ACTIVE campaign to replace Democracy with control through fear, and to replace the Constitution with the bible. And YES, that would be a bad thing!!!

My time is coming soon, when I won't have to worry about it. I am in my "golden years" (*snort) and the worse will probably come after I am dead and gone. But I have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and a legacy of ignorance, fear and poverty is not what I would want for them.

For every time I didn't speak up, for the times when I was younger when I was too self-involved and reacted rather than researched, for all the votes I didn't cast because I was too "busy," I am so sorry, my Dear Ones. As long as I still have breath in me, I will protest and write letters and keep the DC switchboards buzzing. I will support that which speaks to the rights of all and fight that which gives the best to a few.

I just hope we aren't too few, too late.