Through the Darkest of Nights: Testament XXVIII

(9:15ish – promoted by RiaD)

Every few days over the next several months I will be posting installments of a novel about life, death, war and politics in America since 9/11.  Through the Darkest of Nights is a story of hope, reflection, determination, and redemption.  It is a testament to the progressive values we all believe in, have always defended, and always will defend no matter how long this darkness lasts.  But most of all, it is a search for identity and meaning in an empty world.

Naked and alone we came into exile.  In her dark womb, we did not know our mother’s face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth. Which of us has known his brother?  Which of us has looked into his father’s heart?  Which of us has not remained prison-pent?  Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?      ~Thomas Wolfe

All installments are available for reading here on Docudharma’s Series page, and also here on Docudharma’s Fiction Page, where refuge from politicians, blogging overload, and one BushCo outrage after another can always be found.

    Shannon’s getting restless.  So am I.

    I’ve come to the Jefferson Memorial many times as the fifth year of this criminal presidency drags on, I’ve needed inspiration and always find it here.  Jefferson took a stand against tyranny and injustice, he showed us how, he told us why, he’s still showing us how, he’s still telling us why.  He knew every generation must take a stand, he knew tyranny and injustice will always have to be confronted if freedom and justice are to survive.  

    Shannon’s been trying to get Rachael’s journals published for months, but no publisher will touch them.  Books like John Dean’s Worse Than Watergate and Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies have made it to publication, Fahrenheit 9/11 was seen by millions of people, but the revelations in them, as disturbing as they are, pale in comparison to what’s in Rachael’s journals.

    Publishers are afraid to publish the bitter truth in its entirety, there’s a point beyond which they will not go, there’s a line they will not cross.  They recoil from shattering the illusion that America is a democracy, they’ll publish authors warning that the shadow of fascism is beginning to darken the highest levels of America’s political, defense, and intelligence establishments, but they won’t publish definitive proof that the beast itself is already here, that it’s been here ever since President Eisenhower saw its approaching shadow and implored Americans to slay the beast before it slays them.

    Americans are living each day in fear, that fear is just beneath the surface, it’s rarely spoken of, but it’s pervasive, it’s far more deeply felt and more insidious than the McCarthy era fear that silenced dissent a half century ago.  Fear is everywhere, it’s a coast to coast mind killer, it will be a nation killer if the courage to overcome it is not summoned.

    I look up at the statue of Thomas Jefferson and wonder how bad it has to get before Americans will say enough. Who will take a stand?  Who will find the courage to stand up and speak out, who will overcome their fear and confront this criminal president?  Who will tell the ugly truth about him and his corporate masters?  Who will condemn them for what they are–fascists with American flag pins on their lapels, fascists in denial of what they are, fascists as demented and dangerous as the psychopaths who unleashed a global war a half century ago.      

    They control the White House, the Supreme Court, and Congress.  They control the Department of Injustice and the FBI, they control the Department of Homeland Security and the CIA.  They have the National Security Agency and its high tech surveillance power in their fascist hands, they have 24/7 control over the corporate media, they have an endless supply of K-Street cash, they have police with itchy taser trigger fingers and Blackwater thugs with licenses to kill.  They have all the political and economic power that deceit, subversion, coercion, blackmail, and war profiteering blood money can buy.

    They’ve locked America’s soldiers into an Oil War Prison in Iraq and have thrown away the key.  Anyone who dares say so is slandered as an appeaser of terrorists, they’re demonized for “not supporting the troops.”   So very few speak out, very few dare tell the awful truth.  No one will say enough, no one will take a stand, no one in Congress, no one in the media, no one in the military, they’re all silent.  

    Moral cowardice, pretense, delusion, and selfishness have spread like a viral infection through the bloodstream of America.  Most Americans decided long ago to quit caring what their government does, to quit caring about the suffering of others, to quit trying to sort out the truth from the lies.  They just look out for Good Old Number One. Nothing else matters enough to pay any attention to, nothing, especially the truth.

   Where is it?  Where can it be heard?  In rare moments when it’s spoken, it can’t be heard above the din of a billion TV’s blaring mindless chatter, it can’t be heard above the noise of distortion and deceit that never stops pulsing across the corporate airwaves of this country.  

    A few brave souls organize protests and speak out, but Americans have been psychologically conditioned to believe that public protests are self-indulgent and unpatriotic, that they are useless, that they are embarrassing spectacles no self-respecting citizen would take part in.  Americans who know better, who understand what patriotism is, who organize and participate in protests are portrayed as wild-eyed radicals by the corporate media.

    Too many Americans believe that portrayal and never question it.  Millions of others see protesters as people who think they’re smarter than everyone else, and react with anger and hostility.  Government abuses of power that compel patriotic Americans to protest don’t offend them, the protesters offend them.  It makes no sense, but not much in America makes sense anymore.

    Too many Americans believe whatever the government tells them to believe, they see what they’re told to see, they hear what they’re told to hear, they say what they’re told to say.  Young Americans join the military and fight whoever they’re told to fight, while their families back home buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have.  They want it.  So they buy it.  With plastic.   Consumption is the only comfort they can find, so they consume and consume and keep consuming until they’re dead and consume a six-foot-deep hole in the ground.

    Until that final day of consumption, handled by a funeral home for the bargain price of only $10,000, they’re just cogs in the machine, existing in their consumer homes on their consumer streets in their consumer towns, sitting in their consumer clothes on their consumer couches, watching everyone on their consumer TV’s consume, watching them consume in ads, consume in sitcoms, consume in soap operas, watching them consume, consume, consume on every program on every channel.  As it has been, as it is now, as it ever shall be unless a tidal wave of debt sweeps this nation away and the world says good riddance to America and its mindless materialism.  

    I got on the Metro and took the Yellow Line to Huntington Station in Alexandria, disgusted with this country and damn near everyone in it.  For generations, tens of millions of Americans have gone to work each day, they’ve gone to work for ten years, for twenty years, for thirty, forty years or more, telling themselves every day that working their dead end job had some meaning.  But deep down, deep down inside, they knew they had no life, they knew they were just existing, with no hope of better days ahead.  

    But admitting that is too painful, so they seek escape in delusion and pretense. They need delusion and pretense to get through each day, like a junkie needs a fix.  They’ve become addicted to unreality, addicted to pretense, addicted to delusion. The government and the corporate media feed that addiction, and keep feeding it, and keep feeding it, with a never ending supply of narcotic spin, narcotic photo ops, narcotic neocon crack for the addicts. They get their fix every day, they smoke that crack with O’Reilly and Limbaugh, they smoke it with Hannity and Hume, they smoke it with the Crack House Press Corps, they smoke it with Bush and Cheney, the drug lords of unreality.

    Shannon and I feel alone, we are alone, in a nation of 300 million people, only a handful of Americans are publicly protesting.  We participate in the protests here in D.C., but only a few hundred people show up, sometimes a few thousand.  Those protests are ignored, except by the police.

   When I got home I was still restless, I can’t take much more of this, someone has to do something.  I heard the radio playing in our bedroom, walked down the hall, and stood in the doorway, too agitated to sit down.  “When is someone going to take a stand, Shannon?  A real stand?   When is someone going to confront George W. Bush? When is someone going to call him out and get in his face?”  

    “Jericho . . .”

    “Enough is enough.  Someone’s got to do something.  Something the media can’t ignore, something dramatic.”

    “Jericho . . .”

    “Something no one’s ever thought of before, something no one’s ever done before, something that’ll grab this country’s attention.  Someone’s got to do that.”

    “Someone is, Jericho.”

    “I’m about ready to . . .”  I finally noticed the suitcases on the bed, Shannon was packing.  “What’s going on . . . why are you packing?  Are we going somewhere?”

    “We are, as soon as we can book a flight.”

    “To where?”

    “To Texas.  A woman from California has gone to Bush’s ranch, Jericho, she’s demanding to see him, she says she’s not going to leave until he tells her why her son was killed in Iraq.”  There was fire in Shannon’s eyes.  “She’s going to take a stand, for her son, for all our soldiers, for all of us.  Her name is Cindy Sheehan, she’s had enough, she’s going to take a stand, and we’re going to take a stand with her.”