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"...Here comes your 19th nervous breakdown." - The Rolling Stones
THE CACCIOPOLI BUNKER (coup2k.com) Thursday, March 29, 2001 -- OK, I have to face the facts and admit that Coup2K has permanently altered my mental balance. The sunny, tentative optimism of last Sunday is history - I'm back on the roller coaster, alternating between despair, fear, depression, and gut wrenching anger. It's the days after the Theft all over again, minus the confusion - unlike then, I now know where it's all coming from, but simply knowing is not enough to keep me on even keel. I still believe that the tide will turn in 2002, and that America will throw off this illegitimate regime in 2004, I just wonder what will be left of this country after 2 years of daily assaults, let alone 4.
I think that the breaking point for me was the juxtaposition of the world's angry reaction to the abandonment of the Kyoto Agreement (particularly the poignant pleas of some people on islands that are already suffering devastation from the rising ocean levels caused by global warming) and the callous, inhuman attitude of Timothy McVie towards the death of so many children in the Oklahoma City bombing as simply "collateral damage"! (The photo of the rescuer cradling the lifeless form of an innocent infant in his arms, is permanently etched in my mind.) I saw this, not as two isolated events, but as part of a continuum, an indifference to the suffering caused by pursuing one's own selfish and evil ends, and so my spirit's downward plunge began - hope spiraling down the toilet!
It didn't help that I had recently read this line from Joe Conason & Gene Lyons's book, "The Hunting of the President" - yes, I finally got around to reading it - "Around this time (late summer 1991), Clinton received a phone call from a Bush aide he had encountered occasionally at national conferences on education. The presidential assistant's unsolicited advice had nothing to do with charter schools or teacher training. He urged Clinton not to run for president in 1992, not to try to deprive George Bush of a second term. "We think that you're the only one who can beat him. And if you run this time, you will never be able to run for anything again..." (Imagine that, as if he had a "divine" right to rule!)
It also didn't help that The Washington Post reported that British researchers had determined with almost certainty (96.3%) that a second gunman fired at JFK from the grassy knoll that day on November 22nd. (I've never believed the "magic bullet" theory put forth
by The Warren Commission, but then again, most people don't.) And it
certainly didn't help that I followed a paranoid (or maybe not so) "thread" that reminded me that the CIA had an asset on the ground that day in Dallas, a one George Herbert Walker Bush, which by accident or design, puts him near or at the center of every anti-democratic incident (illegal, treasonous, and criminal) in our country's recent history.
The fact that we are now even more firmly under the thumb of what is perhaps the largest criminal conspiracy in our country's history is more than enough to stomp out any fledgling thoughts of hope that I may have. Even as this lawless regime seems to be imploding, the nagging fear is back. (The fear that maybe might does sometimes make right, the fear that justice is not always done, the fear that sometimes the good guys don't win...) The great edifice of "checks and balances" that the founders of this country wisely put in place has collapsed, there are no checks and there is no balance, and a free and independent press committed to exposing official wrong doing is mostly a thing of the past. (Still, I'm hopeful...)
So what stands against this defacto dictatorship? Four brave Supreme Court justices, the Black Congressional Caucus, a few courageous men and women in the Senate and Congress, a handful of journalists, and us, the majority of people in this country! We are in the midst of an epic battle for the soul of our country, and the survival of our democracy as we knew it, with implications for the rest of the world and the future of our planet. I firmly believe that we can turn this thing around, but it will take a concerted effort from all of us who feel passionate about it.
This is not a time for relaxing, this is not a time for thinking that someone else will take on this struggle, for if enough of us act that way, then truly there will be no struggle! This struggle will disrupt our lives, it will change our habits, it will drain our resources, it strain our relationships with family and friends - it will not be comfortable (as many of us have already discovered), and it will not be easy. But we can (we must) win this! And just think, afterwards we can return to the hopeful, less stressful lives that we once had. (But if we lose, especially for lack of trying, what will our lives be like then?)
Me, I'd like to get back to tending my garden, playing the guitar, exploring the mysteries of Mediterranean cooking, and watching my children grow up. And that's the big one for me, my children, their future, and the future of this planet, they are worth disrupting my life for. (And I need to get in balance again, I need to get off this roller coaster, I need to avoid my "119th nervous breakdown"..."Here it comes, here it comes...")
Reporting from my own private BBBR bunker,
Robert C.
NEXT: THE DIVA: MIA, AWOL, OR A DESERTER?
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