Lunatics or I’ll See your Conspiracy Theory, and Raise You Mine….

freeacre

Steve Pizzo has a couple of really good posts up on his site, “News for Real” (see the link to his site to the right). He is basically railing against the Republican’s tactic of disruption of the town hall gatherings to give feedback to politicians. The meetings have apparently been turned into screaming right wing goonsquad fests objecting to Pres. Obama’s, or the Democrats’ health care plan. It seems there is a conspiracy. Hatched in the red-hued nests of the hated evil ones – Rep. John Boner, er, Boehner, former Bush speech writers and holy rollers, maybe even Darth Cheney himself – the too stupid to vote in their own self-interest crowd of grey haired, slack-jawed Republicans are outdoing themselves… all in the name of “We the People.”

I told you in a previous post that the WWII generation would be all over this one because it hinted at some fairness in the distribution of health care services instead of just benefiting THEM, didn’t I? So, now it seems that the hysterical oldsters are screaming that Obama is out to kill Old People because the bill supports patients going over a Living Will with their doctors every five years or something. And the corporate insurance lobby is feeding them full of lies.

From Pizzo, “….Kiss your granny and grandpa goodbye if the administration gets it's way with health care reform.

Because, even though America can afford a trillion bucks to fight two wars halfway around the world, we can't afford to keep geezers alive past their sell-by dates. (A date, by the way, which will be determined by groups of heartless, and apparently granny-less, government bureaucrats.)

I know this because I heard it from a GOP member of congress:
On the House floor yesterday, Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL) became the latest conservative to claim reform would kill people. “Last week Democrats released a health care bill which essentially said to America’s seniors: drop dead,” said Waite. Watch it:

For those of you guys out there hoping they are talking about your mother-in-law, sorry. There's not a syllable of truth in the charge. What the GOP has done is to glom onto a single clause in one of the bills that would simply allow Medicare (which largely covers the elderly) to pay for a once-every-five-year consultation with their doctor on end of life care issues, such as a living will and advance medical directives. Both of which anyone with half a brain has -- which might be a clue.

When confronted by this fact, GOP fear-mongers have a comeback:
“Yeah, they'll advise them alright. They'll advise them to die and stop costing their children and society money and bother.”

Oh, brother. God forbid that this country would be forced to extend health care to it’s citizenry like every other developed country in the world. OUR corporations aren’t going to stand for that crap – and their smug, pig-ignorant minions aren’t either. So there!

The problem is that with this kind of senseless “debate,” any opposition to the Healthcare Bill is lumped in with the message of the mindless ones and seen as part of the right wing conspiracy. So, what I consider legitimate objections to the plan, like that it will enrich insurance companies, as yet does not have a single-payer cost reduction element, and doesn’t negotiate cheaper drugs from the pharmaceutical companies, all fall by the wayside and are discounted by the Democratic “progressive” brain trust.

SO, WHOM DOES THIS SERVE? Is this another conspiracy? Hummm…

Pizzo identifies several more fear-mongering theories concocted from the Right – that of the scary terrorists from Gitmo who we should be afraid to put in our domestic prisons, as if these poor souls are (or ever were) a threat to any of us. Oh, then there’s “Satan’s right hand” – the Environmentalists who are trying to convince us of climate change or resource depletion or any other thing that might keep corporations from making a few billion extra bucks. Who cares if your kids are eating jellyfish when they grow up instead of Red Snapper? And, of course, there is always President Obama himself – the “anti-Christ, “ Muslim, non-American (read That Black Guy) who Hates Whites (despite the fact that his beloved mother and grandparents who raised him were white and he is half white). What is this? South Africa? No, it’s the good ol’ white supremist USA rearing its ugly head again.

. . . I sense a disturbance in the Force – yes, it is Carl Rove that I am sensing – the Evil Emperor and Darth Cheney behind all of this. . . .or is it the Bilderbergers or the Illuminati or the Knights Templar, the British Royal Family, or the Nazi Hitler clones? …. Pizzo, you see, is a nice and sensible guy. He doesn’t even believe that 911 was an inside job. He’s probably scoffs at the notion of an engineered Die Off, the FEMA Internment Camps, or the Bird (or is it Swine?) Flu gimmick to reduce the population and further enrich Big Pharma.

He’s no dummy however. He saw right through the complicated Keating Five scandal of the Savings and Loan banks back in the 80’s. Even got nominated for a Pulitzer with the investigative reporting and book he wrote about it.

So, why doesn’t he climb on board the conspiracy train? Are there no conspiracies? Was Kennedy actually killed by a loan gunman? Did those pristine terrorist passports really appear as if by magic at the foot of the Twin Towers?

Let’s define the term. What is a conspiracy? Webster’s Dictionary defines conspire – as to “join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end.”

Well, that doesn’t sound so unusual, now, does it? Hasn’t there been one atrocity after another committed by the landowners and power-mongers against the peasants and indigenous tribes generation after generation throughout history? Weren’t diseased blankets given to the Indians in order to wipe them out? Yes, they were. Weren’t women burned at the stake by the thousands for non-compliance and heresy by the Catholic Church? Yes, they were. Haven’t horrific radioactive and other poisonous medical misadventurers used unsuspecting citizens as guinea pigs? We know they have.

And, wouldn’t all these examples of misdeeds and countless more over time be legitimately called conspiracies? I think so. So why is “conspiracy theorist” used as a pejorative and dismissed in most cases today? I can think of a few reasons:

1) So that we don’t have to look into the matter. It’s a bucket of worms. Too time consuming or embarrassing to deal with.
2) Too dangerous to whomever is looking.
3) Too appalling to those who would discover the truth. We’d rather not know.
4) Too guilt inducing to those who would learn of and live with the knowledge of the atrocities.
5) Too frightening to think that things could be this bad. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch to live with.
6) Impossible to assess with accuracy whether the “conspiracy theory” is true or false.
Or,
7) The scenario itself is delusional, paranoid, or insane. Supported with a lack of verifiable information, it becomes a projection of our own hopes, hatreds, or fears.

The challenge, of course, is to know which it is. Almost impossible these days. That’s probably why Pizzo doesn’t support these ideas. He’s the old-fashioned journalist who likes to verify his facts before he sees them in print.

Now, back to those angry and unruly Republicans and insurance and medical industry shills confronting their elected officials and being so discourteous. I find myself thinking, “Good for them!” I don’t agree with their reasoning on health care at all. But, at least they are expressing their outrage, fear, and distrust of the government.

I wish the citizen Democrats were expressing outrage at the financiers, Blackwater, the banks, Wall St. criminals, FEMA, and the bought-off Congress. If the Democrats would grow a pair, they might be able to find some common ground with their brethren on the Right. We all need to eat, keep a roof over the heads of our families, and we’d like our children to have a chance to be healthy and happy.

With our false choices today of “left” vs. “right,” we may choose the brown collar fascist white supremist goons of the right, or the white collar fascist ruling class overlords running things on the “left”. Either way, the global corporatists, arms dealers, Big Pharma, Agra Business, and international banking cartel wins. This system doesn’t need to be reformed. It needs to be rejected.

If we listened to each other, we might figure out together that secrecy and misinformation from the corporate and government staffs have made us too suspicious and angry and frightened of each other. We might note that our culture and the neighbors in it have been damaged and driven insane because we have been systematically lied to for so long and the truth seems nowhere to be had. That can make one crazy. Sometimes I find myself seeking comfort or answers off world. I look for an alien connection or answers from Spirit or the Earth Herself. Is that crazy? I honestly don’t know.

The antidote to much of this is localizing as much as you can. Get centered in your mind, your home, your town. Grow food. Disconnect from the bullshit artists and propagandists on both sides. Get real. Recognize that grave mistakes have been made, but stop thinking the worst about your fellow man or woman. Be able to confront evil. Be ready to forgive those who sincerely repent. Put together some sort of alternative health plan of your own, like growing herbs or bartering with a naturopath. Make something better happen.

Hopefully to that end, I am including pictures of the celebratory moon/campfire gathering we had last week. We paused to be grateful to the plants in the garden and the flowers and animals at home. I know that some of you joined in as well. It felt really good.

Flowers from the yard


The campfire with neighbor friends

Custard pie with Rhubarb topping

Pasta salad with home grown fennel, basil, beans, peas, onion, garlic and pesto