My Fellow Americans: We Are Fools
by Margot Kidder, via Information Clearinghouse
There is something I am going to try and explain here after watching the Democratic National Convention this evening that will invite the scorn of many of my friends. But the words are gagging my throat and my stomach is twisted and sick and I have to vomit this out. The anti-Americanism in me is about to explode and land god knows where as my rage is well beyond reason. And I, by heritage, half American in a way that makes me “more” American than almost anyone else in this country except for the true Americans, the American Indians, am in utter denial tonight that I am, as you are, American as well.
I am half Canadian, I was brought up there, with very different values than you Americans hold, and tonight — after the endless spit ups and boasts and rants about the greatness of American militarism, and praise for American military strength, and boasts about wiping out ISIS, and America being the strongest country on earth, and an utterly inane story from a woman whose son died in Obama’s war, about how she got to cry in gratitude on Obama’s shoulder — tonight I feel deeply Canadian. Every subtle lesson I was ever subliminally given about the bullies across the border and their rudeness and their lack of education and their self-given right to bomb whoever they wanted in the world for no reason other than that they wanted something the people in the other country had, and their greed, came oozing to the surface of my psyche.
I just got back from a rather fierce walk beside the Yellowstone River here in Montana, trying to let the mountains in the distance reconnect me to some place of goodness in my soul, but I couldn’t find it. The scenery was as exquisite as ever, but it just couldn’t touch the rage in my heart. The visions of all the dead children in Syria that Hillary Clinton helped to kill; the children bombed to bits in Afghanistan and Pakistan from Obama’s drones, the grisly chaos of of Libya, the utter wasteland of Iraq, the death and destruction everywhere caused by American military intervention. The Ukraine, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, you name it — your country has bombed it or destroyed its civilian life in some basic way.
When I heard all the Americans cheering for the military and the pronouncements of might coming from the speakers in the Wells Fargo Centre, I loathed you. I loathed every single one of you. I knew in my gut that what I was taught as a child was true, which is that YOU are the enemy. YOU are the country to be feared. YOU are the country to be disgusted by. YOU are ignorant. And your greed and self-satisfaction and unearned pride knows no bounds.
I am not an American tonight. I reject my Puritan ancestors who landed in this country in 1648. I reject the words I voiced at my citizenship ceremony. I reject every moment of thrilling discovery I ever had in this country.
You people have no idea what it is like for people from other countries to hear you boast and cheer for your guns and your bombs and your soldiers and your murderous military leaders and your war criminals and your murdering and conscienceless Commander in Chief. All those soaring words are received by the rest of us, by us non-Americans, by all the cells in our body, as absolutely repugnant and obscene.
And there you all are tonight, glued to your TVs and your computers, your hearts swelled with pride because you belong to the strongest country on Earth, cheering on your Murderer President. Ignorant of the entire world’s repulsion. You kill and you kill and you kill, and still you remain proud.
We are fools.
Margot Kidder is an actress and activist in Montana.
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Refreshing to hear someone speaking the plain truth from their own heart and mind, without the aid of public relations operatives. The $64,000 question: “how did honorable, simple-truth speaking people like Margot Kidder become so rare?” She is a great example for others to emulate, especially in these strange days, for sure.
Excellent, courageous statements by Margot Kidder and great responses in the rest of the posts. But how do we make this headlines, FRONT AND CENTRE, for average voting American in the next 3 months?!
That process requires disengaging them from The Matrix that is their world.
Within three months.
It takes three months minimum in many cases just to establish who is capable of withstanding the process of being unplugged.
Sometimes we must take a tough look at resource allocation.
I hate to sound cold, but it is 11:59:59
Ah – so you are the one who is serving out toxic food, pharma-sickness to the ‘useless eaters’.
It is so easy to use terms like ‘them’ and ‘we’ – without realizing who is using your mind!
While of course you are free to choose to see lovelessly, (and thereby lose sight of your freedom to choose), I invite that what is often called the ‘matrix’ here is a belief-experience of being UN-plugged from our being and sucking on a fake version.
The fear of being un-plugged from a state of disconnect (that operates a mask of apparent connection over a war-mind) is at root a fear of love – or true connection, balance and alignment.
Artificially induced scarcities cascade from a lack of love or love-worthiness and effectively reinforce a hateful cold and murderous but unfeeling conformity to being ‘tough’. And within the matrix – such is the ‘sacrifice’ of truth and love to an overriding dictate; a loveless god of power – who may stay the hand of destruction to those who deliver their own unto sacrifice… and call it by the names of kindness, love or protection.
We could look at rescouces, but how about in terms of built-in obsolescence, packaging which uses 60% of tree pulp harvested, reviving time-tested rainwater harvesting techniques (both urban and rural), Tessler technology, more light rail/buses and less cars, reallocation of land away from excessive holdings, small and medium renewable energy for rural areas and towns (taking pressure off the national grids–not industrial wind farms or solar farms that destroy areas and are set up to keep the energy companies’ hands in our pockets), community gardens, alternative (not to mention much cheaper) building materials and projects led and even built by communities,…there are so many ways we can provide for the people of this world if we get rid of the hoarding of resources, profiteering, and entitlement to the lion’s share.
If an economist were to set up a capitalist system these days, there would be an upper cap. Otherwise, the system would be unworkable, just like ours is unworkable and has allowed massive hoarding. I like to look at the body of humanity as a human body. If you cut off blood (or the circulation of good/resources) to a limb, you lose it. If you hoard, you are a big clot that will ultimately kill the body you rely on. It is important to keep the circlulation of good going to keep the body of human healthy and alive. If we start cutting bits off, we’ll never be the shining example of what it really means to be human. If we speak brotherhood and sisterhood, we should really think of people as our actual brothers and sisters who share our blood…our human blood.
We have no idea what ways we rely on others, just as nobody knew when the wolf disappeared from Yellowstone in 1970, there would be no new aspen growth. Once re-introduced, the aspen returned. The wolf brought down the elk that were eating all of the aspen shoots, and elk wouldn’t graze where another elk had been killed, so aspen returned. Similarily, we don’t know the intricacies of our human connections, but I know that the greater majority of people love this earth and love the people in their lives, and those people love other people, and those people love other people. In the end, there is a circle of love around the world. We can’t take 40 people maximum in our bunker, because the 40th person will deeply love someone who has been left out…so on and so forth. We’re all in this together.
How can you force information to an unwillingness to listen? You cannot – without invalidating your information by turning it into ammunition and attack – which of course will be defended against and used against you.
But you can be a willingness to listen – and you can speak into such a willingness wherever it may align as a synchronicity of shared purpose.
I watched the Hillary Clinton acceptance speech in full at around 3 a.m. UK time and found it most amusing.
In particular, her Damascene conversion to taxing the rich and Wall Street.
Are these the same people who reportedly paid her US $700,000 per 45 minute after-dinner speech?
Her proposed taxation policies will never happen, of course.
Where else could she go to to get money for her re-election campaign in 2020?
It’s all a good laugh on the US people. Their choice is no choice.
A good laugh which will be paid for in good blood by others elsewhere around the world.
The character of the US government will ever be determined by the character and caliber of those who compose it. The survival of democracy is dependent on successful representative government; and that is conditioned upon the practice of electing to public offices only those individuals who are technically trained, intellectually competent, socially loyal, and morally fit. Only by such provisions can government of the people, by the people, and for the people be preserved.
Human courage is the only defense against Cognitive Dissonance and a dangerous public timidity! Our fear and silence is our consent. Bravo for speaking Truth to power.
“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society”
Very well said Margot Kidder. Someone had to say it. It’s become a very bad joke to hear the American President decrying “Terrorism” around the world when it is in fact the Military Industrial Complex(That President Eisenhower warned the world about in 1960/61)that has been terrorising the world since WWII.
In Korea, Pentagon General Curtis(Bombs away) Le May bragged that the USA had destroyed 90% of the buildings in Korea and killed 20% of the population. Then in Vietnam(and Laos and Cambodia) the US Air Force killed millions of civilians with their Carpet Bombing, Napalm, Helicopter gunships and Agent Orange. No one will ever know the full death count because the victims were blown into to tiny pieces.
If you go to Wikipedia you can see the horrific history of American intervention in so many countries other than the two mentioned.
The American people don’t seem to have much of an idea how bad their government have been behaving, and always ‘rally around the flag’ and flaunt their ‘patriotism’ as they sing the star spangled banner. Quite frankly, it’s all wearing very thin these days. The USA is in big trouble, and the American people don’t even seem to notice.
“I reject the words I voiced at my citizenship ceremony”
Yes. This is the single overriding reason that I refuse to take US citizenship despite the fact that I’ve lived here for 40 years, and my wife and kids are Americans.
Still, when I look back at the UK (with great longing and regret, admittedly) and see a tiny, ugly, mean-spirited US clone-slave, I know I will never return.
“After School Satan” clubs
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any stranger, think again! The Satanic Temple have announced their plans to roll out their “After School Satan” clubs to elementary schools to counter against the Christian “Good News” clubs .
http://kevbakershow.com/wtf-afer-school-satan-clubs-rolling/
I celebrate getting in touch with the feelings of self-disgust and rage that comes perhaps from powerlessness or indeed terror – for such are the fruits of an undercurrent insanity that rises from the deep to break the dream of a power or self-specialness that never was.
I do not want to give suppressed and denied emotion the trigger finger to any harming of myself or others but feel it and use it to generate the desire and receptivity for a true sanity of being – instead of being negatively defined in reaction to the denied and projected or unacceptable self.
It is never truly the people who are culpable so much as the definitions and beliefs we or they are operating out from unknowingly. For everyone seeks their good as they define it in relation to what is happening – even if to choose what seems the lesser evil. And that is my point; the definitions we operate under determine our selective perception and thus the reactions and responses that automatically ensue. That is why ‘controlling the narrative’ is powerful – because it frames reality in ways that block, distort and filter it to ensure outcomes aligning with a pre-set identity.
So without denying the feelings of hatred that arise, I invite a voiding or releasing the corrupted in the renewed or awakened willingness to uncover the true. Because what is out-of-true with us can only generate dissonance and conflict while we try to make it true or fit into its framework.
Recognizing oneself in the ‘negative’ is meeting the extreme need to get rid of it – but if we project it onto hate-objects we merely hide in “self-righteousness”. My invitation to feel – in a safe context as can be found – and in a willingness to be found in or aligned to a deeper Sanity, is that there are core beliefs and self-definitions beneath or within the feelings – ie: beneath rage is hate, and beneath hate is hurt and beneath hurt is a love denied – and all of these layers have ‘story’ of separation trauma that runs undercurrent to our surface world – and is active regardless of being air-brushed ‘out-of-mind’.
Waking up is a Re-Integrative Willingness. But it isn’t the special one or the righteous judge or empowered warrior who awakens to the true movement of their being – it is the Movement Itself – finding a way through you because you are no longer so completely locked into the dynamic of conflict as the means to establish your identity.
If your identity ‘breaks’ then it is not the true of you – and in fact you are free – and needful – to uncover the true of you beyond the dictate of a world gone mad.
Can we fool ourselves? Yes of course – to the degree that we WANT to. Why would we fool ourselves? To evade, escape, overcome or hide from a sense of self that we hate or fear.
Yet I don’t believe our truth is fearful so much as what we have ‘made’ of it. The ‘mind’ is used to self-differentiate in guilt and fear of exposure. But our uniqueness is a signature of our Creator – regardless whether you use such a term for the Source or Cause beneath effects.
I don’t write to persuade or be agreed with – but to offer reflections that may resonate to your own stirring recognitions – and serve your own unfolding discovery in your own terms.
It is not that the true of us is folly – but that we have become entangled and co-fused with fooling ourselves and fooling each other to make it stick – or find reinforcement and validation for such ‘identity’ – which is necessarily struggle for power position and inherently operates as a corrupting influence in the body politic – and co-opts its abilities and technologies to consolidate its victory in death. Because differentiating from Life has its logical conclusion in death – including the living death of a robot-like enslavement to a terror driven system.
Death – in the sense I use it here – is the refusal of the transformative and evolutionary expansion of Life. It may feel like a death to be broken in your ‘self-reality’ construct, but if you abide in willingness for Life – it will move you to recognition because it IS your will – your long denied will. The acceptance and embodiment of your true feeling being.
The communication of a deeper nature does not address your problems – but if you let it in as the feelings rise to acceptance and release, then it restores a fresh and living perspective from which to take a step in good heart… in a connected sense of worth. This willingness has to replace the sleepwalking template that is imprinted as our habitual ‘mindset’ and emotional conditioning. There is no rush to attend to the moment at hand – and no delay either. Your presence is invited to participate in the Embrace of Life on Earth… as you are freely willing to accept and align in.
What a great post about an ugly Show! In deed it was digusting, Hubris unchained!
See also my articles on the USA: https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/list-of-my-articles-on-the-usa/
Andreas Schlüter
Sociologist
Berlin, Germany
Margot Kidder nails it for me too, and I’m a Brit, though with lovely US friends and relatives who are also deeply alarmed at the corporate greed (with all its world polluting, toxic fall out) and bellicose machinations of their nation.
Well said. As an American living abroad for many years, I am ashamed of the reputation we have across the world. I am also mystified by the wide-eyed shock and self-pitying idea of unjustified victimisation expressed by some Americans when they discover this to be the case. In the information age, it amazes me that so many people prefer to accept any kind of dross dished up to them and won’t take the time to research the facts.
However, it is worth keeping in mind that these conventions are populated with people who are the most heavily drugged by media hype. You can see it in their glassy eyes. I know there are many Americans who live in America who are not on that wavelength. Let’s just hope that common sense among the population will prevail at some point.
Can these jokers at the top really think they can spill out the same old sludge time after time, decade after decade, and that nobody will notice? Still, they continue using the same tactics to sway the masses, but personally, I think a lot of people have had enough of the lies, enough of the dodging and double-dealing, enough of the intolerance, enough of the theft, enough of the slurring of character when anyone objects, enough of continual warring, enough of seeing little children across the world injured, dead, frightened of salvos of bombs, and living in demolished cities. I think many people have hung their heads when they see a little muslim girl holding her doll close to her chest while her mother tries to get her to safety, or another who is crying as soldiers hold semi-automatics on her family, or another who is unable to smile.
How many people watch 4th of July fireworks and think about the terror those same sounds and sights raise in little children across the world and feel ashamed. who think about how the children must cower, who think about the 17 year old girl in Iraq (with the poster of David Beckham on her wall) who had dirty bandages dried onto her burnt face after the first American attack in 2001, who think that one injured or dead child is one too many and are appalled at the hundreds of thousands who have been maimed and killed by the good guys of the world. I’m sure it is more than the governing forces are comfortable with.
We are all aware that the billions of American dollars spent on wars could have uplifted the poor of the world and solved numerous environmental problems. We would have had allies galore. We would have be loved. Even now, those billions could create a sharing of resources for the common people where everyone across the world benefits, not just the few who want it all for themselves and for their dynasties. It is because of these people who control governments and buy policy that there is no talk of peace unless it is the peace found at the end of a gun–peace by control, not by kindness (while making land grabs and resource grabs in the background.) Oh dear, I’ve used the words peace and kindness and hinted at compassion. I will probably be accused of being fluffy, dillusional or an ageing hippie that wears tutus to rallies. It doesn’t matter who I am or what I do–which FYI, I don’t wear tutus or go to rallies. That is a distraction from the starting point which is: the misdeeds and manipulations of the governing forces.
We either want peaceful hearts or we want to go on fault-finding missions to pick fights. By the way, why is the subject of peace, world peace (and not the globalist solution that claims to be peace, that will beat everybody down until they haven’t got the heart, mind or will to be anything but dominated) never mentioned any more? Do you remember that concept? That possibility? That feeling that all could be well with the world? That was once a starting point, too.
I think that many people, from America and across the wider world, have had enough of busting their backs to support someone else’s idea of what life on our collective earth should be. I think many are getting sick of busting their backs to cough up funds for Christ knows what–funds that could be put toward creating homes and communities for their families, providing healthy food for their families’ good health, offering more-than-average educations for their children, and having more time to live their lives rather than aim for the best position to catch the gravy drips off the 1%’s table.
Aim for your own peaceful heart and don’t lose your starting points, With luck (and perhaps a bit of divine intervention) the rest might follow.
Great words and writing.
Thanks Jim. Every now and again, I let loose. :)) I like the comments on this page, but I’m not signed up to click the button. Thanks to all for your insights and information.
You are quite welcome.
Be well and safe, and be prepared for change over the next few years, as it is coming. And it is needed.
I hear that! The same to you and yours.
I can relate.
I am an American citizen who moved to Canada shortly after 911, not because of 911 but due to marriage to a Canadian woman.
I began to realize something was fundamentally broken and wrong with The United States Federal Government several years later, and have been immersed in a challenging period of even further enlightenment just as you have described. I have been in this heightened state for about five years now, and it is refreshing but painful to realize how destructive, pathological, and criminal the United States Federal Government is. I recently read an article that lists and details all of the medical experiments that have been done to The American People for decades without their knowledge such as the Tuskegee Experiment etc. It is disgusting. Yet the people continue to support and participate in this system even though they know something is wrong, and all of the corruption is right there online for all to see. I guess they call this cognitive dissonance.
You are not alone in your disgust, but know that there are still many good people in America.
It is hard not set aside the anger, especially as we try to awaken those that continue to slumber in The Matrix no matter how hard we kick them to wake up. We have to choose our battles wisely, spend our time and energy efficiently, and still see the good that exists out there despite the obvious sickness and evil.
“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Take Care,
Jim
Unfortunately Canada is rapidly following in the American footsteps, having been under the destructive neoliberal guidance of Harper, being followed up by Harper Light. I live in South America and used to be quite proud to be able to say, “No, I’m not a gringo, I’m Canadian”. Now I just keep quiet.
You are absolutely right.
I believe that once whatever happens in America happens and the dust clears they will begin to ratchet things up further with all of the Marxist garbage here in Canada and then attempt the North American Union a few years later.
I find that Canadians are not as paralysed by Normalcy Bias and Tolerance and Apathy as our southern neighbour and don’t take as much garbage from the government.
But I definitely see a similar pattern with all of the obsessions with the LGBT stuff ( a non-issue IMO whipped into an issue by Justine T.) and the hollowing out of the armed forces, etc.
Good post Margot.
Read this post on Friday over at counterpunch. I was surprised that “lois lane” was so visceral in her condemnation – until I realised she’s Canadian. Speaks to my feelings very well though. For all the naysaying and “lesser evilers”, there is no disputing the unnecessary belligerence and scheming malevolence issuing from the US, not just at present, but for decades. In fact the recent 30 years have only touched a part of the wrong that the exceptional empire has been responsible for in their history. It seems that the pursuit of empire and economic hegemony was built in right from independence.
Sure, there have been good things too, but only in the pursuit of profit, never philanthropy.
No doubt Kidder will be denounced as a commie Holywood type by those in power. No change there then.
Margot Kidder nails the topic perfectly.
Our ‘dear’ American colleagues will be limbering up to give us their usual boilerplate bilge cut/paste replies:
1) “It’s not us!! It’s the government!” Oh yeah, Elmer Fudd?? Then why do the aircraft and drones that rain death down upon innocent people have “United States Of America” painted on the side???
2) “We gave you all that stuff!! Computers, and Nike shoes, and… “ None of which is manufactured in the USA.
3) “We saved your effin’ asses in WW2!” No, it was the Red Army who saved our effin’ asses. Do please show us the photos of Patton and his men driving into Berlin and arresting Hitler?
4) “We’re not all like that! There are 1-2 of us who mean you no harm!” Yet even if this were true, the 98% who do mean harm to the rest of the world are happy to sit back and watch the bomber squadrons set off. There are exceptions of course – Chelsea Manning. And look what happened there. And what have those others done to help her?
5) “But we’ve given you stuff like Toby Keith banjo songs!” . Sadly, this is actually true. I guess we’ll just have to manage with the Bolshoi Ballet until ol’ Toby gets around to touring again.