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"You Blew Up Our Towers, Now You’ll Feel Our Power"

- Melissa Hopkins

Do we lack all sense of history? As a world consciousness, do we have no memory of our past and what brought us this far? Do we actually believe that war is good for us, will serve some pleasant purpose?

Maybe "we" do, and maybe that's why I feel so separate from the rest of the world right now. Maybe I'm not quite plugged into that network of idiocy and base instinctual behavior. Or maybe "we" don’t, and we just think we do...

For progress to be made on earth, there must be some intent to progress. Instead I feel that there is actually intent to keep things the same, or worse. In the US this is not as obvious as it may be in other countries.

In countries we like to call "third world" or "underdeveloped", people often have little to no education, cannot read, have no food, and cannot understand the world around themselves enough to make changes in it. It is obvious in their tent-style homes, dirty fingers, skinny bodies.

I am just sitting, wondering how that is different from my neighborhood.

In the community I live in, there are many people just making it. There are many who are under-educated, who cannot read, who are struggling to feed their children. There are many people who are angry.

Just as many other countries keep their people down, so does ours.

How?

With shows like Jerry Springer, Elimidate, 5th Wheel, Jenny Jones (whose Thursday, November 1, 2001 episode is titled: "Somebody Give My Daughter A Whipping, She Wants To Make Her Money Stripping"), Ricki Lake, Temptation Island, and many more. People are beginning to think that these shows represent the way the world works. They used to be like freak shows, now the shows that don't feature fist fights and paternity tests are the minority.

People are always saying that the television shows our children watch will affect their behavior. Well, I'm not sure this phenomenon is limited to children. Do the shows exist because the people really want them? Or do the people want them just because they exist?

Maybe if I didn't have a "fruit roll up" to crave I would crave the actual fruit? Maybe if I didn't crave a "hot pocket" I'd make myself a real sandwich that was less than 50% preservatives.... wait, I don't think I can buy bread that has less than 50% preservatives.

They keep us down by placing books like "The Rules" at the front of the bookstore. They keep us down by making the poetry section only four books wide.

If you were a smart child, did you get picked on? Of course you did. And most likely not by the students alone, but also by the teachers. Why is the attitude in a place of learning that the more you learn, the less popular you'll be?

There is a mood among the people. It is greatly influenced by media, government, advertising. It gives us our ideas about how to behave, what is normal, and what is wrong. We still see every ad for every cleanser featuring some woman wiping up after her kids and husband. Sure, she has on a business suit instead of an apron, but there she is, with all her new responsibilities, showing all of us how easy it will be to wipe up grape juice with bounty paper towels.

This does affect people. This does decide who cleans up the mess. This decides who thinks about the cleaning up. This decides who makes the spill in the first place. Whether we realize it or not they are manipulating us.

So now, they are trying to manipulate us into a war. An unjustified war that will unquestionably kill many. Many of "us" many of "them", and as corpses I don't see much difference, just people who died for no good reason. At the end of this everything will be worse than it was at the beginning, and yet somehow everyone is cheering on our military like it was on jerry (episode titled "You Blew up Our Towers, Now You'll Feel Our Power"). We are not a nation of idiots, and we shouldn't act like one.

They are keeping us down, and we have to push through. We have to start to reach up past the invisible shrink wrap in which we are trapped, break out of the general consciousness, and think about why and how to live another way.

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