sunrise...sunset

There was a question posed on a blog i was reading yesterday that stuck with me.
The question was why are so many Americans passive while millions lose their homes, their jobs, their families, their hopes for justice and the American Dream?

Why aren't we like the Europeans who congregate en mass on the streets and demand answers and change? Where did our fighting spirit go the article asked?

The causes for this passivity were five fold, a crisis of ethics and a lack of concern for our fellow citizens, the dying of the economic dream, economic desperation and the erosion of families, isolation from each other, and the drugging of America.

The drugging of America had an immediate impact on my mind as i thought about how our nation is drugged.  Are we asleep at the wheel, working too hard, taking too many anti-depressants that numb the fact that our media has been complicit in the "dumbing down" of America? 

Are anti-depressants the SOMA pills of our world, leaving those drugged little time to use their critical thinking skills.  Could it be that is why so many were deluded into thinking Iraq was a threat to our National Security.

But are we really passive, are we really drugged as badly as those in "A Brave New World?"  i think not.

Voters in Oregon shook the bars of their cages and did fight back recently, they refused to raise money by cutting teachers, firefighters, homeless shelters, etc. Instead, they decided to tax incomes over $250,000 a year and add an even higher tax on incomes over $500,000 a year. They also raised a tax on corporations, all things unheard of in the past twenty years.

The unconquered take risks all the time.  They do battle with those trying to subdue them, they use various tactics and voting is a powerful one.

The unconquered are everywhere, all over the world.  They fight quietly and loudly for reform.  They fight for everyone, for change happens incrementally. 

One overlooked aspect the unconquered use is forgiveness, it is a human condition that the perpetrators of violence and other injustices have no weapon against.

"There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible." Howard Zinn

Using military might, death squads, prisons and other forms of violence and propaganda to subdue people usually fails in the end.  Yes, there are massive die offs, but the "conquerors" eventually lose power and the unconquered regain their prominence. 

Today we are still waging war all over the world.  The "war on terror" and the "war on drugs" means we have a hand in almost every country that exists on our planet.  And yet, there are those of us that believe there is a different way to battle these fires.  That the struggle for justice must include the invocation of peaceful methods.

Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech in 1910 at the Sorbonne which included this passage.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Those who have appeared in that arena in recent memory include Aung San Suu Kyi,  
Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King.  They never gave up their fight even with the threat of overwhelming power.  They pushed on, they convinced others to join them, and they created that incremental change.
 

i don't think Americans have become passive.  There are too many unconquered out there that have found new methods and ways to communicate ideas that are beneficial to large numbers of inhabitants of this planet.

For me personally, i want to know who we are fighting a war with in Afghanistan? Why are we spending billions on a band of a few thousand cave-dwelling extremists with no air force, no navy, no missiles, no helicopters, no tanks and no heavy artillery.   And why are we still in Iraq?   

i haven't given up believing we should be out of both of those countries, i haven't been made passive and neither should you.