Manuel Valenzuela: Grave & Gathering Dangers (III)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

--- Declaration of Independence

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. …But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

--- Declaration of Independence

The first great civil rights battle of the 21st century has begun. Like ghosts of movements past, the ongoing struggle for gay rights is rising from the hallowed ground of justice and equality for all, gaining its freedom ever slowly from the handcuffed grip of fear and ignorance. From San Francisco to New York state, Massachusetts to Oregon and cities in between, the movement towards equalizing gay rights to marry is surging. The Big Mo is swelling upwards as a discriminated class fights backwardness and conservative ideology. Lines are being drawn in the sand, sides are being taken and the evolution of America is about to take its next leap forward. Like all forms of evolution and change, however, the fight will not be easy and it will not be pretty.

The same script is being played as it has been from time immemorial: from Galileo to Darwin, Christ to Martin Luther, slavery to women’s suffrage, black equality and civil rights to today’s gay struggle for the same. The only thing that changes is time and the players. Forces of progress, pragmatism and evolution are once more doing battle with those of ignorance, conservative religion, fantasy and tradition. As my January 28th article American Taliban points out, the energies of progress and evolution always win out over those who would still have us dwelling in caves, with women subservient to men, humankind living in a perpetual state of backwater primitiveness, following six-thousand year old fables and myths as to how to live in a land forgotten and a time long gone. Progress and evolution is life, it is Earth, it is humanity and it is reality.

Those entities who through insecurity and/or ignorance adopt inside them the thought of suppressing evolutionary transformation will do all in their power to squash what they fear, namely change. Those whose interests and powers lie in maintaining the status quo and who cannot fathom a world different than what their small-minded bigotry allows will mobilize their submissive legions and armies, thereby dividing the nation in yet one more fault line cracking under the intense pressure of the politics of division and fear.

Welcome to Election 2004, quite possibly the most historic and ruthless campaign we will ever be witness to, one in which the American people and our beliefs, emotions and views will be used and abused, manipulated and cajoled, exploited and conditioned by the two headed beast in the most fought after election in modern history. Not since the Civil War will we be more divided as a nation. We will become pawns in the war for the White House.

We will purposely be manipulated to self-segregate, becoming separated and divided, split apart by the fault lines of fear. Great tectonic vibrations echoed by Bush will influence many of us to vote against our own best interests as the fear of what we do not know combines with the Rove-fabricated worries of what change will mean to create an earthquake of exploitation using gays and lesbians as bogeymen intent on changing our lives for the worst. This, however, is exactly what the Bush White House wants to achieve in order to distract the American people from the real issues, the real world and the real failure of the Bush administration.

Desperate men in desperate times almost always call forth desperate measures. The administration finds itself reeling from Bush’s ever-growing unpopularity and the enormous rumble being generated by an exponentially-growing number of Americans, encompassing a broad spectrum of diversity, that are united in anger, dislike and disillusionment with the direction Bush has taken this country. Progressives, conservatives and independents alike are realizing the incompetence of the Bush administration and its loyalty not to average citizens but to its corporate masters. This is what Bush and his team fear.

A wave of dissatisfaction is surging, manifested by record numbers of voters showing up in primary polls, in every state and city and from every party affiliation. The Other Superpower is awakening (for more on the Other Superpower please see my February 18th article, The Other Superpower). Millions upon millions of people have as a goal the November defeat of George W. Bush, forever removing from government the pestilence that has smeared America. The stench that has festered for four years over the entirety of the nation is seen by this growing movement as a repulsive and noxious odor that must be purged not only from the US but from the world as well.

The American public has woken up from its long slumber to see through the mirrors of falsity erected by Bush and his cronies that distorted the realities the rest of the world was privy to. Like his past, Bush has been a failure with so many pieces of the United States’ pie. He is the opposite of King Midas, turning gold into that which flies most like to feed on. Only corporations and the rich can safely say with assurance that they are better off now than they were four years ago. The economic “recovery” has benefited only these two groups, while the rest of us suffer unemployment, lack of healthcare, outsourcing of jobs, fears and insecurity, the death and maiming of our loved ones, worsening education, the evisceration of civil liberties and the Bill of Rights and the continued erosion of social programs.

Bush has sacrificed the present and condemned our future by waging illegal wars for the benefit of the corporate Leviathan whose profiteering, exemplified best by Cheney’s Halliburton and the enormous Military Industrial Complex, has stolen our treasury and our nation blind. However, you can fool some people all the time, but you sure can’t fool all the people all the time. When wallets shrink and frustrations grow, the Other Superpower takes action and a movement arises that sets in motion the eventual eradication of the malignant cancer bleeding the nation to death. This phenomenon is like a train, gaining steam down the slope of change.

Karl “The Great Manipulator” Rove and his infantry of gargoyles are quite aware of this growing trend. They are aware that Bush policies and wars have created more deaths and enemies than jobs, bigger deficits than security, more pollution than healthcare and more corporate/elite wealth than middle class prosperity. Both civil liberties and the environment have been trashed, as has Bush’s character. Rove knows Bush has almost nothing positive to run on, no success stories or credibility.

The Bush war in Iraq has like the winds and sands of Mesopotamia eroded all delusions of honor, integrity and credibility Bush was once able to inculcate into the American consciousness. It has eroded America’s reputation and standing with the brotherhood of nations and has fostered resentment and anger among the spectrum of world citizens. Rove must surely realize that his boss has been a complete and utter failure both to the American people and the world, a grave and gathering danger that threatens both national and global security.

At the same time, ready to exploit the volatile effects of monumental change is an alarmed administration and Republican Party. The desperation of an inept President seeking at all costs to remain in power four more years is becoming more and more apparent with each passing day. The politics of division and fear has reared its ugly and unwelcome head.

With this in mind, the Republican machine that brought us the Iraq debacle with its vast array of propaganda, lies and manipulation is busy igniting the engine that will distract and polarize us once again, pitting us against each other so that in the end we cannibalize ourselves and re-elect Bush to office.

Gays are being scapegoated, becoming 2004’s version of “terrorists,” igniting in millions ignorant fears of a way of life being threatened by people seen as “different” than us. Under the rubric of preserving the sanctity of marriage, the gay drive for equal rights and protections is being exploited as a threat to the historical and normal lives of many entities. The Republican Party, in an attempt to garner maximum votes and support, is preying on the fears of conservative and religious groups, the so-called NASCAR dads and other citizens not open to or familiar with homosexual men and women. It is hoping that these fears metastasize into an outpouring of votes for Bush, who has strapped on beside himself a bully pulpit from where to orate his divisive, bigoted and ignorant diatribe.

Bush, Rove and company know that the massive movement of anger and dissatisfaction gaining momentum against Bush must be countered with a mechanism capable of balancing the huge outpouring of anti-Bush votes in November. For this reason, Bush has initiated the Republican strategy to divide the nation by calling for a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage. He knows that his base, extremely conservative, religious and by consequence ignorant, will come out in droves for the November election if they believe their way of life and conservative beliefs are being threatened.

Thus, gays are the target of political cluster bombs, being used as the wedge to balance the scales in favor of Bush. In Bush’s game of political survival, gays are the road kill that will feed his base. In essence, then, gays are being exploited and the Bush base manipulated to further the Bush/Cheney grip on power. Both groups are being used to further political goals.

At the same time, the Constitutional Amendment idea now festering throughout the US has the desired effect of distracting the Bush base and the ever vital millions of independents away from the atrocious Bush record over the last four years that has only served to worsen their lives. It is a smoking mirror designed to turn voters’ attention away from the decimation of the environment, the appearance of an enormous deficit, the quagmire in Iraq, the disintegration of civil liberties, an economy that to the lower and middle classes remains a recession, the outsourcing of jobs and rising unemployment and the fictitious war on terror that has only served to make more enemies, create more fear and insecurity and devastate the nation’s future through the continued rape and pillage of the treasury by the Bush crony profiteers. Division is distraction, which is why Bush preaches “saving” the sanctity of marriage.

The gay marriage issue plays to people’s emotions and psychology, to their hereditary and environmental conditioning. People instinctively fear what they do not know or understand. It is an evolutionary defense mechanism that for millennia furthered survival of the self. When fears are confronted by understanding, contact and education, however, humans grow comfortable with what they once feared. Since most people who fear homosexuals have never spoken to or associated with them, a natural fear emerges given the stereotypes and ignorant prevarications espoused by society, group leaders and relationships. Bush is banking on this psychological barrier to exploit those who fear out of ignorance.

When the President of the United States builds up the “threat to the fabric of civilization” and to “the institution of marriage” the debate on gay equal rights and protections is transformed into an inquisition of a maligned class. For POTUS to blatantly impose his and his core constituency’s moral and religious undertones and beliefs onto the rest of the nation is a grave offense unbecoming of the highest office in the land.

This in itself is an impeachable offense. It is a high crime against the nation for a sitting President to openly discriminate and seek to constitutionally create a class of second class citizens. It is to mix church and state, to speak for higher deities and idols created at a time when to fear the sun and the moon was ordinary and to believe in the divinity of kings and high priests absolute. We now live in the 21st century, not 4000 B.C. Human civilization has progressed beyond the primitiveness of our ancestors and the detrimental beliefs of different times with different needs.

To preach discrimination and bigotry from the Oval Office is to meddle in roads never before crossed. It is to contradict and defy the same Constitution you swore to uphold. It is to allow the citizens you swore to protect to follow in your ignorant steps, granting them moral authority to segregate a discriminated class and treat them unequally under the law. An entire group of people, numbering in the tens of millions, is being made inferior thanks to Bush’s cynical manipulation of his base and the exploitation of a scapegoat class. For the first time, the Constitution is being used to discriminate, rather than to alleviate.

The same man trumpeting his calling as a “uniter” and not a “divider” is baiting and switching the American people once more, uniting nothing but negative energy and dividing an entire nation apart. The same man espousing Jesus as his favorite philosopher cares nothing for loving his neighbor and doing onto others as he would have others do onto him. This self-proclaimed born again Christian appears not to know anything of his religion or his god, never practicing Jesus’ principles of love, peace and nonviolence. Instead, he wages hate, war, death, destruction and violence on the same lands Jesus called home and onto the same peoples that are ethnically related to him.

A proud compassionate conservative has mutated into the realm of warmonger, bigot, ignorant repressor of rights, war criminal, fearmonger, discriminator of millions, oppressor of an entire class and subjugator to people exercising the same freedoms and liberties he so passionately wants to bring the entire world.

Meet George W. Bush, President of the United States, hypocrite extraordinaire, politician by birth, miscreant in blood and self-serving liar in spirit. Meet a grave and gathering danger, a threat to national and global security.

In the end, the rhetoric concerning a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage is nothing more than a ploy that Bush knows will never pass Congressional muster, state legislature approval and Supreme Court scrutiny. The fray over gay marriage is a political tool to use his base as voting puppets to further his own career and to expand his and his party’s power. It is a trap most of his core followers will inevitably fall into, voting against their interests and condemning themselves to four more years of corporate exploitation at the hands of Bush, the elite and the Leviathan.

Fear of gays and their right to marry will in four years time morph into fear of another scapegoat group chosen by the Republicans, and the vicious circle will continue to unfold as primitive emotion is manipulated to empower another group of sharks entering Washington. When people become sheeple, those in power win.

The attempt to introduce discrimination and bigotry into the Constitution represents a grave and gathering danger to us all. If the drive to amend the most sacred document in America succeeds, who or what group will be next? What other group will be made second-class citizens, seen as unequal in rights and protections? How far will the evisceration of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights go in furthering the interests of the elite minority? What other forms of discrimination await us?

The greatness of the Constitution is that it was created not to protect the fear inducing majority from a bogeyman minority but to protect a subjugated minority from the powerful grip of the majority. The Founders were aware of power gone astray, of the lynching capacity of the masses and of the need to protect those minorities whose opinions, lives and beliefs differed from those of the rest.

The Constitution is a living and breathing creation, designed to evolve along with us and progress with the passage of time. The Founders were visionaries, exemplary leaders espousing their belief in the future of America, not its past. They wanted us to look forwards, not backwards; to become the guiding beacon for the world to follow, not the lighted candle slowly glimmering away in the dungeons of regression.

Human civilization is synonymous with progress and evolution. Today, more than ever, we seek human rights and dignity for all. The Other Superpower is growing to the realization that we are all in the same boat together, that we are all the same. We are seekers of happiness and of a life worth living; exploitation and dehumanization are condemned. A new understanding of and respect for human life continues to grow.

Our nation is becoming the world. People of all shades, shapes and colors, beliefs, religions and goals now make America home. We are not the United States of twenty years ago anymore, much less 200 years ago. We are multicultural, yet homogenous. We are the next step in human civilization, the first nation to comprise an amalgam of all the people and ethnicities of the planet. Our fear of each other is giving way to understanding and acceptance. Our children are growing up together, learning about each other and thriving in worlds only they belong in. This is not our grandparent’s country anymore; a land of white-snowed landscapes and homogenously Puritan dogma has given way to one of rainbows, sunset horizons, diversity and a plethora of ideas and beliefs.

Bush is right in one respect. The institute of Marriage is in peril, but not because of homosexuals wanting what rightfully should be granted them. Half of marriages today end in divorce. Ending marriage is but mere paperwork, an easy escape for those who want to move on. The effects of divorce on children can be psychologically devastating, in many cases affecting their own relationships as adults. The capitalistic exploitation of men and women in this materialistic, individualistic and superficial society that conditions us to produce and consume is making love disappear and marriages dissolve. Yet Bush wants to deny two people in love from sharing their life together, just like the rest of us? He wants to deny equal rights and protections based on sexual preference? When science is telling us that preference is not a choice but rather an ingrained reality?

Perhaps Bush would be better served in defending the sanctity of marriage by declaring war on the corporate Leviathan that is milking us all to death, working and stressing us out of our energy and time. Perhaps he can declare war on a society that values money, greed and materialism. Marriage’s real threat lies in a society, desired by the Leviathan, that rewards slave work and consumerism over love and commitment. Defenders of the institute of marriage should stop scapegoating that which they fear most and instead turn to pragmatic symptoms of a larger problem.

To allow gay marriage is to make stronger the institute of marriage. To deny love is to implode it. Where is the threat of gay marriage? What damage is being done? Who is being hurt or killed? The only damage that will result from Bush’s divisive politics is the polarization of a nation and the unequal treatment not just of gays but of their children and families as well. Bush has already set us back many years, let’s not let him do more damage by undoing the progress of decades and centuries past that came with the shedding of blood, sweat and tears of those who came before us and at the horrible price of repression, discrimination, suffering and death.

Cynically manipulating a divisive issue to embolden a faltering re-election campaign, Bush is using us all for his own political aspirations. In the end, he will forget about those who voted for him, just as he has done in his first term. He is but a politician, the worst of humanity. Let us unite in body and spirit, not divide in ideology and belief. Let us realize that a desperate cabal of spineless vermin sees themselves threatened by growing anti-Bush animosity and that they will utilize anything at their disposal to try and retain power. Their desperation is apparent in their cowardly attempt to create division, distraction and fear among the American people by their anti-gay invective.

Let us evolve towards enlightenment and progress past our animalistic and primitive selves. Let us push this world forward, forever denouncing bigotry and hatred based on fear. Let us unite to extinguish the Bush fire that has already burned so much of what we cherish and that threatens to obliterate the majestic forest of vibrant life called America.

Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, activist, writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel to be published in Spring of 2004. His articles appear weekly on axisoflogic.com where he is also contributing editor. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net. Read More articles by Manuel Valenzuela.

© Scoop Media