A Little Help From One’s “Friends”

WikiLeaks has lately provided a whole bunch of folks with a whole lot of information about what most of us don’t want to know. In fact, bringing unwanted public exposure to information illegitimately kept from public view is the primary mission of the self-described “multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public.”

Most unwanted messages are ignored or suppressed. To ensure that some of the more important messages get appropriate public attention, WikiLeaks co-founder, Julian Assange, has cleverly enlisted help from “friends” in the major media.

A little help from corporate media “friends” has certainly brought greater attention to certain unwanted messages, and to the wiki and its co-founder. But greater public scrutiny–as Gary Webb and other disruptive investigative journalists have discovered previously–can present a very real danger to both the message and its bearer. It’s the kind of scrutiny that comes only when the messenger threatens to disrupt the status quo. Whether friend or foe, the intense public scrutiny marshalled to defend the status quo is virtually always abetted by the major media.

Kill The Message

Harold Pinter (10 October 1930 - 24 December 2008), the 2005 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, failed to enlist the major media’s help before delivering his unwanted message. Too ill to travel to the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, Pinter instead delivered his “Nobel Lecture” Art, Truth and Politics, from a London television studio while seated uncomfortably in his hospital wheelchair. Immediately afterward, he returned to his hospital bed.

During his lecture, Pinter took a brief detour from his withering denunciation of United States foreign policy to offer his audience a brief respite in the form of comic relief. The comedic moment–albeit all black–came at the heels of Pinter’s glowering reminder that the “United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads.”

Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

With his next breath Pinter hit the money note, allowing that “thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government’s actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet.” Pinter’s “damning with faint praise” was clear. Had Pinter shown even less mercy, he might have delivered the above line as “dozens, if not hundreds of Americans are, like, totally indignant at their government’s behavior, and are quite close to letting their political representatives know, in no uncertain terms, that they’ve very nearly had it ‘up to here’.”

Upon delivery, Pinter’s lecture was subjected to a nearly total media blackout in the United States. It remained on corporate media’s blacklist until 2 May 2009, when it was first shown publicly in New York. By that time, months had passed since Pinter’s death and years had elapsed since he had actually delivered the speech. Even the British Broadcasting Service refused to air it, although it was shown in the United Kingdom on Channel 4’s More 4 in tandem with the live video simulcast to the Swedish Academy. It’s currently available at Archive.org and elsewhere on the web.

Wish-Kill The Messenger

Last month WikiLeaks released the Afghan War Diary, a trove of thousands of U.S. military internal reports detailing U.S. military operations Afghanistan from January 2004 through December 2009. Taken together, the documents reveal the horrifying ugliness surrounding the U.S. military occupation of that devastated country. They fatally undermine years of Pentagon, White House and corporate media propaganda focused on obscuring the occupation’s catastrophic reality from Americans, and anyone else on the planet foolish enough to drink from the Pentagon’s poisoned punch bowl. Instead of “winning hearts and minds” American predator drones and “special forces” hit squadrons are slaughtering children and ordinary villagers.

The Afghan War Diary came on the heels of Collateral Murder, a disturbing video released by WikiLeaks earlier this year (5 April 2010) capturing the grotesque scene of an air assault by the U.S. military of over a dozen mostly unarmed Iraqis on 12 July 2007. After their initial slaughter, U.S. forces continued their unprovoked attack by opening fire on a critically wounded survivor attempting to crawl to safety, and on a rescue van with two small children inside.

Reactions from the American Public? Make ready the hangin’ nooses? Wheel out the guillotine? Find some brutally effective method to hold this country’s “leadership” accountable for this horrific nightmare? Nope. Instead We The People indulge the Satanic tripe slathered all over us by our “leaders” in corporate media, the Pentagon and in Congress. Here’s a tiny sampling:

WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise. Its…actions are likely a violation of the Espionage Act, and they arguably constitute material support for terrorism. The Web site must be shut down and prevented from releasing more documents – and its leadership brought to justice.
- WikiLeaks must be stopped | Marc A. Thiessen (Former speechwriter for George W. Bush.) | washingtonpost.com | Tuesday, August 3, 2010

The battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and Afghan partners, and may well damage our relationships and reputation in that key part of the world. Intelligence sources and methods, as well as military tactics, techniques and procedures, will become known to our adversaries. This department is conducting a thorough, aggressive investigation to determine how this leak occurred, to identify the person or persons responsible, and to assess the content of the information compromised.
- Defense Secretary Robert Gates

Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is, they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family. Disagree with the war all you want, take issue with the policy, challenge me or our ground commanders on the decisions we make to accomplish the mission we’ve been given, but don’t put those who willingly go into harm’s way even further in harm’s way just to satisfy your need to make a point.
- Admiral Mike Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Where to begin picking apart such mendacious cowardice? The foam-at-the-mouth speechwriter calls WikiLeaks “a criminal enterprise.” Why? Is it because it exposes the real crimes perpetrated by the Pentagon and its wretched quislings in corporate media, Congress and private enterprise? The Defense Secretary wrings his hands over “damage(d) relationships,” “reputation,” “sources and methods,” and “military tactics, techniques and procedures” as if mass murder and uncontrolled mayhem are trifles by comparison. The Admiral frets that exposing the American public to the horrific Pentagon-induced atrocities in faraway lands might have already stained WikiLeaks with the “blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family.” But who exactly ordered young solders into Afghanistan? And why are so many of them already slaughtering entire Afghan families?

Mere language can’t possibly express the contempt these unholy sentiments provoke. Such demonic gibberish, abusively spat onto a populace too distracted to muster a proper goose-step, too apathetic to convincingly bellow a hearty “Sieg Heil,” echoes the sociopathic bureaucratese and vile verbal abuse employed by the Third Reich’s most degenerate henchmen and henchwomen. Instead of demanding investigations into the murder, mayhem and unfathomable corruption the leaked documents expose, the guardians of the New Reich focus their squalid wrath on those who bring such material to public attention. And we, the heavily conditioned public, stare listlessly at our TV screens, blinking vacantly.

Such is the abuse inflicted upon a culture bred on impunity, corruption and cowardice. A culture steeped in war conducted by private-sector mercenaries, “special forces” hit squads, helicopter gunships and robotic predator drones. A culture that condones torture and demands infinite imprisonment for anyone labeled “bad guy.” A culture that tolerates calls for the “execution” of whistle-blowers who expose the depravity fueling illegal wars rather than the perpetrators of such carnage. A soulless, half-life culture feeding on a “vast tapestry of lies.” Ours is a culture in motion: collapse at free-fall speed.

I happened upon Bruce “Shorty” Allen on NW 19th Ave., about half a block from Burnside, while walking up to Stadium Fred Meyer to buy some peanut butter. There’s a machine in their “nutrition” department that lets you grind the roasted peanuts into peanut butter. The self-grind tastes better than anything Skippy ever stuffed into a plastic jar. It was the Eve of Thanksgiving Eve. The days are short this time of year; nightfall came several hours earlier. Shorty sat in the shadows of the poorly lit street, on a knee-high concrete wall that acted as a divider separating the sidewalk from the abrupt drop-off to the car wash parking lot below.

As I approached, Shorty greeted me with “what’s up, old hippie!” then laughed. In my younger years I might have felt slightly offended at someone calling me “hippie.” After all, weren’t hippies those folks who wear hemp clothing and Birkenstock sandals, maintain uninterrupted membership in KBOO Radio’s Jerry Garcia Memorial Collective, dwell on or near SE Belmont, Hawthorne or Lower Division and carefully affix “Keep Portland Passive-Aggressive” stickers to the bumpers of their Subarus or Vanagons without the slightest trace of irony?

But nowadays I no longer automatically cringe at such insults. My lysergic-cannabinol; hardcore punk; grunge media impresario; and “urban professional” days are all long behind me. Sporting an unkempt graying, greasy mop and seedy, grizzled demeanor, I’m sure most folks in my neighborhood assume I’m a bum anyway, if they see me at all. So being mistaken for a “hippie” looks like a step up. On paper, at least. Shorty reached out and we shook hands as he remarked “I always know my own people.”

Shorty said he’d come down here to Portland from Seattle, where FEMA had relocated him after the flood. He told me he’d lost fourteen family members in the Katrina cataclysm. Shorty broke into tears as he described how he tried, and failed, to save the lives of a drowning baby and her mother. Just talking about that experience seemed to transport him back to the moment. Back into the murky, filthy, moccasin-infested floodwaters, trying–and failing–to pull those particular doomed victims to safety.

Shorty asked me if I’d buy him a burger, but quickly corrected himself, requesting “Chinese rice” instead. The Panda Express restaurant sat just on the other side of the car wash. Unsure if he wanted me to actually go into the restaurant and buy him his meal, or just fork over a few bucks, I decided to give him the ten dollar bill I found nestled next to two singles in the little change pouch I found tucked in my front-left pocket.

Shorty had suffered much in his forty-two years on this planet. His many hardships left visible marks on his face, in his eyes, and on his beaten down body. One of the side effects of having gone through so much trauma is the inevitable alienation trauma leaves in its wake. Your story, your experiences set you apart from others around you. It imposes an insurmountable barrier between you and the reigning social “norm.” Your story makes others uncomfortable. They don’t want to hear it, or may doubt or dismiss the story you tell.

It was important to Shorty that I understood he was not bullshitting me or telling me lies. His experiences, his traumas, were real. They really happened to him. As if to prove to me that he actually existed, Shorty pulled out his I.D. card to “show” me he was for real. Shorty wasn’t the first person I’ve encountered who did this. Even so, it astonished me each time I witnessed it. It was a gesture that never failed to usher in an awkward and deeply poignant moment in which words failed. How do folks get so thoroughly beaten down that they feel compelled to justify their existence to a stranger?

In better times, Shorty had traveled extensively. He worked for Unocal on oil rigs off the Gulf Coast and around the world: Russia, Venezuela, Brazil, Trinidad and other faraway lands. His seventeen year-old daughter lives with her mother in Rio de Janeiro and his twenty-one year-old son is enrolled at Texas A&M University.

But on this particular evening Shorty found himself, on the cusp of Thanksgiving day, sitting alone on a concrete curb, nursing a tall can of malt liquor discretely tucked into an inside pocket of his overcoat. No place in Portland to call home, Shorty lived on the street. He was too scared to return to his former home in New Orleans, which likely no longer existed anyway.

His experiences had clearly traumatized him; during our conversation he repeatedly emphasized that he had a lot of “gratitude.” His survival mantra. For as bad as he has it, he knows that there’s someone else, somewhere, who has it worse. And then he would weep. He desperately clung to the belief that his “God” watched over him. I gathered that his repeated use of the phrase “my God” was meant to distinguish his God from whatever “god” the Republican member of Congress referred to when he quipped “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” I asked Shorty if he might consider writing down his story. I appreciated his sharing it with me, and pointed out that his story is important. Others should hear it.

I didn’t make it to Fred Meyer that night, but–after walking Shorty to the door of the Panda Express restaurant–I slowly and dejectedly walked back to my tiny studio apartment. For many of us, even those of us spared the horror that Shorty and so many New Orleans citizens went through, Katrina and her aftermath signaled a turning point. It unmasked the mythical and fraudulent “American Way Of Life.” The “non-negotiable” delusion our society has tortured and murdered so many to protect and uphold. Katrina guaranteed the death and damnation of this rancid “Way Of Life,” which now rots in a hell of its own design.

Oh yeah, uh, happy shopping!

Whitey On The Moon, V.2 (Redux)

Whitey bombs the moon.

Source: NASA’s mission to bomb the Moon

Tea Baggers At Play

12. SilverFox | 09.14.09
I’m just drove back from the 9-12 march & I’m saying that this is now a Movement!! It’s We the People……not you the government!! Keep going EnterStageRight. com & booksbyoliver. com — The Revolution is Coming!!

13. Voyo Milenic | 09.14.09
Yes foam at the mouth and keep up the fanatical propagandist inversion fear mongering. You people on the far right are so out of touch you actually believe you’re lies to power program are going to be successful! There are far more common sense, rational, honest, REAL AMERICANS just lying in wait right now. Every stupid little action like that pathetic sham of a march on Washington keeps adding steam to the big push-back coming! Now bring on the snide petty immature remarks and throw your rotten tomatoes but don’t forget what I say!

Sequential commentary in response to Matthew Shaer’s blog post, published on September 14, 2009 on the Christian Science Monitor website.

The Big Stick

In 1969 Amon Düül II, a bedraggled coterie of Krautrockers from a disbanded Munich commune, released their first album, Phallus Dei (that’s “God’s Penis” to you English speakers). The band attained an “underground popularity for its free form musical improvisations” and “performed around the happenings and demonstrations of the contemporary politicized youth movement.” With their “liberal attitude to artistic freedom,” the former members of the “radical political art commune” valued “enthusiasm and attitude over artistic ability.”^*

Had Amon Düül II harbored more focused ambitions, perhaps they could’ve recruited an obscure economics professor to help promote their record in the United States. They might have even asked him to set up the band’s first American tour. After all, how could’ve our intrepid Krautrockers found anyone with a more perfect name than Dick Armey to help thrust God’s Penis deep into the hot-’n’-clammy fundamentum of America’s psychedelic rock-’n’-art-’n’-acid scene?

A Phallus Of One

Alas, it’s doubtful the Marching Dick would’ve accepted an offer to play with God’s Penis from a rag-tag band of Krautrock acid freaks like Amon Düül II. Instead Dick Armey would wait a decade and a half before groping for bigger things—god’s pecker, for instance. This particular appendage was attached to a different god, of course—the god of big business, political power and reactionary religious cults. During his 18 years as the U.S. Representative from Texas’s 26th congressional district—including eight years as House Majority Leader, and as one of the engineers of the “Republican Revolution”—Dick Armey found that wielding god’s pecker would prove infinitely more useful than anything he might have achieved by playing with God’s Penis.

The battles Dick Armey waged as a Congressional Representative ended in 2003 after he temporarily lost his grip on god’s pecker while engaged in a pissing match with James Dobson, the Focus On The Family kingpin, Republican king maker, and key architect of America’s theocracy-minded “Christian Right.” Dobson, who—according to Armey—“scolded” him for failing to sufficiently “deliver for Christian conservatives,” succeeded in momentarily snatching the (un)holy phallus right out of Armey’s grubby hands. Pecker in hand, Dobson pinned Armey to the wall with it while asserting that Republicans “owed (their) majority to him, and that he (Dobson) had the power to take (it) back.”^*

Although Dobson ruthlessly crushed Dick’s balls after Armey foolishly allowed their petty dickering to “come to blows,” all was not lost. Armey instinctively understood that—though his tenure in the Congressional Club’s ultra right wing was coming to a close—he could continue brandishing his “big stick” as he marched through Congress’s revolving door and straight into the “private sector,” where he could wield it to ruthlessly enforce the edicts of big business and high finance.

In recent months Dick mobilized his “Armey” in an obsessive drive to completely scuttle efforts by the Obama Administration to pass “healthcare reform” legislation. Dick’s Armey insists on total victory. They’re not satisfied that the proposed legislation currently “on the table” is a terribly compromised version of what Barack Obama promised to help deliver to the American People during his run for the White House. Dick’s shock troops have prevailed in a few strategically impressive skirmishes. Last month a large group of disgruntled “tax protesters” marched on Washington to protest what they claimed as “out-of-control spending by an expanding federal government.” According to an article on the Fox News website, the march “was part of the so-called Tea Party Movement that gathered steam in April.” Their arrival in Washington D.C. was “the culmination of a 34-city, 7,000-mile bus tour that began Aug. 28 in Sacramento, Calif.”

What makes mass mobilizations of people protesting “out-of-control spending”—instigated by the likes of Armey and his gang of would-be Dick-tators—so stunning is the near total absence of these same folks to protest the escalating hyper-pillage inflicted on regular people by Wall Street, big business, the Pentagon and other predatory institutions. A rapacious plundering abetted by their whorish K Street-walker allies in big government. Not only have these predations become more pernicious and systemic in recent decades—and dramatically more-so in recent years and months—but the devastation they inflict on the rest of us is almost impossible to miss. Yet when proposed legislation comes along that might provide at least some benefit to regular Americans, but could also threaten “out-of-control profiteering by an expanding Kleptocracy,” the corporeich’s brownshirts are immediately deployed. Presumably the only “out-of-control spending” allowed is that which stuffs massive wads of cash into the offshore bank accounts of our society’s most ruthless crime lords on Wall Street and in plush corporate boardrooms.

Killing Hope

For a regular schmo like me, what’s most disturbing about these spectacles is the cultural malaise they represent. We live in a culture that has completely lost its way; victims of our own self-abuse in a society gone mad. Even our culture’s most substantive pretenses at “debate” are merely tawdry sideshows: lowbrow performance art fueling our collective hallucinations. Our business and political elites, with rare exceptions, relentlessly sell everyday people like you and me down the river to achieve selfish, short-term gain. But the worst is that we regular folks have all-too-often gone along with this madness. We buy into their senseless wars, their absurd economic dogmas, their planet-destroying consumer culture with its strip malls, gas guzzlers, endless sprawl, and the horrifying psychic sewage mercilessly pumped into our nervous systems through television tubes, radio signals and computer monitors.

The “self-regulating market” ideology driving much of this horror has long since been proved a sham. But we can’t seem to break free of the delusion. Part of the reason is because corporate-funded opportunists like Dick Armey and so many of his ilk have mastered the art of playing us off against each other. Keeping us off-balance. Provoking us to fight their battles for them. Over the past three or four decades the result has been an immense transfer of loot from our pockets to a handful of criminal kingpins on Wall Street, in business boardrooms, in government offices and into the hellbent-for-theocracy covens of our society’s most notorious religious cults.

Even though the policies foisted onto us by these charlatans have plundered our pockets, ravaged our natural surroundings, trashed our economies, tossed millions of our neighbors into prisons and poisoned our minds with theological hucksterism and planet-destroying consumerism, the perpetrators can’t see fit to toss us the occasional bone. Like allowing us to piece together a rational method for healthcare delivery. One similar to any of the healthcare delivery systems enjoyed by people living in virtually all of the other “developed” countries, and even in a handful of the “developing” nations. One that would cost a hell of a lot less and deliver much better results than the corporate protection rackets currently forced down our sore throats and up our HappyMeal McAsses.

For any of you Tea Bagger’s who’ve plowed into this blog post this far, I’ll ask you for a favor, although I’m sure it’s probably too much to ask. Particularly from members of a “grassroots” organization foolish enough to christen themselves with such a vulgar epithet like “tea bagger.” But here’s my request anyway. Do your homework. Discover how fascist movements take hold in a society. Compare the similarities of those movements with your own. Then observe what happens to societies that allow themselves to sink into such depravity.

Hideyuki, in your letter you quote a phrase, “There are no images of the defeated.” What were you thinking about? … (W)hat about Vietnam? There are an infinity of images of America in Vietnam. How absolute was the American defeat? Since this defeat on the battlefield brought Reagan and Bush to power, since it gave birth to the strategy of the New World Order, and later imposed the necessity of some war, any war, like the Gulf War–was the original defeat in Vietnam not the start of a process during which the USA would eventually commit Imperial suicide? If so, it is a defeat of global proportions, an epic like “The Fall of the Roman Empire,” documented in the most minute and thrilling detail.
Robert Kramer, “A letter to Hideyuki”

British Empire’s Invasions, Wars & Occupations In Afghanistan
- First Anglo-Afghan War: 1839 – 1842
- Second Anglo-Afghan War: 1878 – 1880
- Third Anglo-Afghan War: 6 May 1919 – 8 August 1919
Collapse of British Empire: 1945 – 1997

Soviet Union’s Invasion, War & Occupation In Afghanistan
- Soviet–Afghan War: 27 December 1979 – 15 February 1989
Collapse of Soviet Union: 1–31 December 1991

United States’ Invasion, War & Occupation In Afghanistan
- Operation Enduring Freedom: 7 October 2001 – [day] [month] 20xx
Collapse of United States of America: [day] [month] 20xx

The arms merchants and the generals each had a problem. The arms merchants wanted to increase sales; the generals needed a new mission. Their solution was to conjure up a “need” for a “secure Homeland.”

With help from their friends in media and government, they issued dire warnings of grave “threats” that “terrorists” presented to the “Homeland.” To adequately defend the Homeland, the generals told the people that “we must fight the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.”

Sadly, the Homeland’s inhabitants foolishly overlooked the most glaring flaw in the generals’ argument: killing “terrorists” “over there” will only produce more “terrorists” everywhere. Distracted, self-absorbed, corrupt and cowardly, the people went along with the generals’ plan.

As directed by the generals, the Homeland’s mercenaries ruthlessly slaughtered all “terrorists” they came upon “over there,” aided by chronically burnt-out “kill-machine pilots” back in the Homeland. But for each “neutralized” terrorist, several more would immediately emerge. Eventually the mercenaries and the other hired killers succeeded in killing every single human outside the Homeland, all having converted to “terrorism.”

Outraged that nobody outside the Homeland was left alive to produce their consumer goods, buy their debt and pamper their every whim while traveling abroad, the Homeland’s people focused their wrath on the generals, and on the generals’ friends in the media, government and the arms industry. Naturally the generals considered the peoples’ responses “acts of homegrown terrorism,” and ordered their mercenaries to eliminate these new “internal threats to the Homeland.”

Caught up in their own genocidal fury, the mercenaries not only slaughtered every one of the Homeland’s citizens, but also managed to kill each other. Surveying the carnage wrought as a result of their campaign of “global war on terror,” the generals suddenly felt remorse, followed by anger. They began pointing fingers and blaming each other.

Their recriminations grew more hostile. Suddenly one of the generals reached for a sidearm. The others quickly followed suit, and each shot a colleague in the skull point-blank. Realizing that no other human was left alive, the last general left standing once again reached for her sidearm and quickly shot herself.

At last, the Homeland was secure.

For God so loved the Gold, that He publickly offered His only beleaguered Son, that whosoever investeth in Him should not be impoverished, but have everlasting wealth.
John 3:16 (King Lucre Version)

I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Satan’s Résumé

Upon close examination, it’s clear that “great deceiver” (more accurately “deceiver of the whole world”) stands out prominently among the knowledge, skills and abilities listed on Satan’s résumé. This in mind, a “Christian” dogmatist might do well to reexamine her or his understanding of how such a primary nemesis like Lucifer (also called “Light-Bringer,” “Morning Star,” “Devil,” “Adversary,” “Enemy,” “Accuser,” “Old Serpent,” “Great Dragon,” “Tempter,” “Beelzebub,” “Belial” and “Author Of All Evil”) might employ his hard-won craft. For that matter, those of us who consider “Satan” more metaphor than incarnate might do the same.

Now if you were the Great Deceiver and got your jollies by tricking “Christians,” where might you begin? Where better than by perverting famous declarations like “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”? Attributed to Jesus Christ, it’s hard to imagine better bait with which to lure a nearly endless stream of eternally lost souls to your brimstone villa on the hellfire shores of the netherworld’s Great Fiery Lake. The mystery is why so many who make up Christendom’s “faithful flock” fall for this deception. Have they failed to clearly examine the résumé of their own Christ, the one they claim to worship?

Christ’s Résumé

Among Christ’s (also known as “Jesus,” “The Anointed,” “Messiah,” “Yeshua” and “Prince of Peace”) many wonderful qualities, several stand out: Healer of sick, lame, demon-possessed and dead people. Nourishment provider to hungry folks. Denouncer of those who worship money and power, yet non-judgmental forgiver of sinners (asking only that they “go and sin no more”). Against this backdrop, why do so many of the “faithful” interpret Jesus’ “way, truth, life” declaration as their Lord’s attempt to peddle “Brand Jesus”? Why have the “faithful” diminished their Great Healer into a tawdry traveling salesman? A seller of spiritual snake oil? Judea’s Jim Jones; Galilee’s David Koresh?

Let’s forget about pointing to mistranslations, misreadings, misunderstandings and deliberate misguidings perpetrated upon the Bible, its authors, and its many thumpers. That argument is already too obvious. Flogging a shopworn idiom, it’s “shooting fish in a barrel.” Anyone with at least one functioning brain cell has already figured this out.

Why not instead focus on what Jesus was all about? Even if a specific “Jesus” never actually existed, the authors of each of the Gospels all point to this enlightened being’s core attributes: love, empathy, compassion, forgiveness. Jesus is depicted as a healer, devoid of ego, who teaches truth while denouncing hypocrisy. So when he tells disciples “I am the way” or “follow me” why would so many of his supposed “followers” use these words to turn their Savior into a spiritual huckster? An egotistical and self-serving brand pusher? A messianic cult hawker?

Your Résumé

To focus on this question, let’s examine your résumé. Or rather, the résumé circulated by your shoddy little mind. The representation of you put together by your soulless, squalid and depraved little ego. Hmmmm… looks like fear, hate, greed, jealousy and self-absorption compete ruthlessly for top spot on your KSAs. A bit further down the list we find gluttony, self-pity, apathy, worry, lust, envy, self-righteousness and restlessness. C’mon baby! Where’s the luv!?! We’re havin’ a hard time spottin’ it on this greasy little document. (Exclamations like “I loved watching that movie” or “I’d love to have sex with [this or that celebrity] all! night! long!” or “I would surely love another slice of your sweet cherry pie” obviously don’t cut it.)

You claim to “love all God’s children” while supporting a culture that slaughters them. How many of the “droid jockeys” who sit in front of computer terminals in windowless “command centers” outside Vegas, where they fondle joysticks that pilot Predator Drones to wedding parties halfway around the globe, then push buttons to shower the wedding party’s guests with Hellfire missiles, do you suspect show up for church service on Sunday morning after they’ve blown a bunch of men, women and children into tiny, bloody bits? Who, or what, do they worship as they sit in the pew, getting sermonized from the altar? Did you know they’re working on your behalf? Whether you like it or not? How can a culture that supports this kind of depravity show any genuine love even to our own offspring? Clearly we can’t, and we don’t.

What, then, does Jesus actually mean by his famous “way, truth and life” directive? The answer, of course, is clear and obvious. Rather, the answer becomes clear the moment you slow down your feverish thought-stream a bit and let just a tiny speck of enlightenment come into focus. To observe that speck, forget about what Christ purportedly said. What did he actually do?

Ironically, Christians get at least one thing right, albeit in a mostly wrong sort of way. They correctly trace humanity’s many woes all the way back to an “original” (if utterly misunderstood) “sin.” Setting all dogma, nursery rhymes and fairytales aside, it’s likely that Eve’s first bite into the “forbidden fruit” from the “Tree of Knowledge” represents the dawn of human speech. This enabled our species to chop up our holistic understanding of reality into degraded, fragmentary concepts. Some time afterward came the written word, violently plunging our already dulled, speech-addled minds deeper into the cesspool of thought-based delusion.

The available evidence clearly shows that organized thought is perfectly capable of putting together ideologies to enslave the mind and dogmas to ensnare the soul. Yet it always produces terrible religion. Please don’t take my word as the “gospel truth” on this; your responsibility is to examine it for yourself. Either that, or you can merely “take it as a fairy tale” as you cling desperately to your “inner deceiver.”