Not in my backyard!

What is reason compared to the warm, fuzzy glow of slogans and easy answers peddled by false prophets? What is reason compared to the thrill of my new SUV? The unmatched comfort and performance of my 6500 lb vehicle on the long drive to work, the richness of my leather seats and the gas mileage be damned…after all, I deserve it. I work hard, don’t I? There’s no law against trying to make more money goshdarnit, I’m not stealing it, am I? I owe it to myself and my family to buy a bigger car, a bigger house and who cares about the debt? That’s what credit is for…as long as I make the payments, who cares? It is my right as an American.

What is reason compared to the semi-solid rumble of officious pride when I hear our valiant troops have just won another glorious victory? Hey, I know it happened! I saw it on CNN, it has to be true! The talking heads on my 58-inch plasma flat screen television told me!

What is reason compared to the power of lies? How can we fight against the depth of lies now up to our necks, and still rising? Who wants to hear that we’ve poisoned the world beyond repair, and that we are drastically shortening our stay on this planet? That even as our oil reserves get lower, our cars gobble up more gasoline! Or that even as the scraps of ozone layer sizzle away, we churn out more poison than ever before…corroding the tattered edges of the enormous holes like an old rusty fender disintegrating into dust. That the more powerful we get, and the more “enemies of freedom” we crush beneath our boot, the more the rest of the world hates us…a black, fervent hate that will someday, probably sooner than later, be sated. Who cares, right? Let ‘em come, we’ll kick their asses…don’t mess with the US! These colors don’t run! We’ll parrot out anything our leaders tell us to! But not in my backyard! What is reason against the god-given right to slaughter people we don’t like, and steal the spoils for ourselves.

Who cares about a gap between rich and poor reminiscent of Victorian England. Who cares that most Americans…in the Land of the Free, work harder for less money, while interest rates soar and the housing market starts its inevitable decline? In the land of the free, where your internet habits, library records, telephone conversations and credit scores are the property of the Government, to do with as they please, sell to whom they favor, with no recourse to the law. Their decisions made in an opaque environment of mutual benefit between the corporations and the political structure that enables them. The more we fight for “freedom”, a fight song sung to us in honeyed words and chest-beating sloganeering, the more carte blanche the Government gives itself to follow it’s own agenda of private enrichment for the few and the erosion of civil rights for everyone else. ‘We are at war!’ they tell us, ‘War takes sacrifice!’, or “Freedom isn’t Free!”, sweetly sung by men and women who have never seen the horrors of combat, who dodged any kind of dangerous service by way of their enormous privilege and power, and whose sons and daughters are not dying abroad in some god-forsaken desert or bleak mountain pass, cut down in their foolish youth by homemade bombs and bullets. These “above-it-all” figureheads seek hundreds of billions of dollars to fund such acts (terrorism to stop terrorism, for instance), but they lose nothing, not loved ones or a drop of their enormous fortunes…in fact their accounts and investments grow by grotesque amounts…while the rest of us shoulder the tax burden (at an alarming increasing rate, due to tax cuts that favor the super-rich coinciding with government spending spiraling into unforeseen stratum), and worse: A family member arrives home in a pine box, a cheap funeral is arranged with a framed picture of the President to smile at you from your wall, signed with a rubber stamp: the man who sacrificed your child for nothing but his own gain, and that of his inner circle and society…but you are not permitted to know why your son really died. Or why that nice young woman down the street who signed up last year, convinced by diabolically effective propaganda that she would be fighting the good fight, currently sleeping beneath a piece of granite at the cemetery…what did she die for? Freedom?

Freedom? Is that the best you can do, Mr. President? Can you not even be bothered to take the time to construct a more plausible lie to cozen the bereaved in their hour of need?

What is reason against such evil? What is reason against cable TV, shopping malls, climate control passenger seats, shiny new credit cards with low-low rates, drive-through double-whoppers…better patio furniture sold to you by helpful salespeople…timeshares by the vanishing Everglades…Playstations and cell phones with cameras and internet access, clam chowder in handy disposable microwaveable bowls, floor cleaners that can simply be thrown away after just one use (instead of the hardship of rinsing them for eight seconds), CDs and DVDs…IRAs and 401-Ks…mega grocery stores and prescription medications for everything from gout to degenerative tissue disorder to a hangnail…glass cleaner that won’t leave streaks…invisible fences for our dogs…automatic garage door openers and leaf blowers…gas-powered hedge trimmers and easy-stow fitness machines…cappuccinos and lattes…PDAs, ESPN and Movies On Demand…Disposable personal items that “fit your lifestyle”…herpes medication and automatic sprinkler systems…ribbed condoms and concrete sealant…cheese slices individually double-wrapped for your safety and singing Santa Claus figurines…five different flavors of Coke and seven hundred colorful choices of deodorant to choose from in the fluorescent-bathed aisles of Wal-Mart, coming soon to a unwilling community near you!

What is reason? Does it even exist any longer? Reason cannot find a home among such force-fed plenty, and such triumphant, unabashed duplicity. Someone with wisdom once pointed out that Reason and Ignorance cannot co-exist, and the truth of those words is being proven on the world stage as these words are being written. Ignorance, in all its colorful forms, has gained sway over the American people. Before you growl in righteous indignation, reader, remember that ignorance is not the same as stupidity: Intelligent people can be ignorant. Ignorance for some is indeed a choice, sadly, but for most it is simply a state of being misinformed by sources we are taught to trust. Many of us are ignorant and have no idea: we believe we are informed.

What we are ignorant of is that we are being lied to.