When, in
disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my
outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless
cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing
me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like
him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art, and
that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented
least, Yet in these thoughts myself almost
despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my
state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From
sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate
For thy sweet love
remembered such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change
my state with kings.
— William Shakespeare,
Sonnet #29
Yeah, I know. Love is a cheap word, one that is thrown
around with more disdain for reality, with more ulterior
motives, than perhaps any other. I love Entenmann’s chocolate
chip cookies. I love “freedom,” a word larded with control
mechanisms if there ever was one. And of course, I love the
Orwellian word “peace,” right up there with “democracy” as a
meaningless utterance of thoroughly deflated connotation,
constantly kicked around in the dirt by such rabid butchers as
Nixon, Reagan, and Bush.
And yet as I stand on my porch gazing through the
screen door at the leafy green bounty of my backyard, I take
that Shakespearean sonnet and direct it in my mind to my
e-mail list, which perhaps more than any other thing in my
life has convinced me that life is worth living, that I do
love myself, that there are many people in this world with
whom it is an absolute joy to be. Because unlike the tawdry
and lamentable deceptions of savage social life spewed forth
by what we numbly call “the media,” sincere truths shared with
two or more people, and the humble, ironic laughter that
usually accompanies such unpretentious gossiping, exemplifies
the shimmering value of life and friendship, the joy of mutual
understanding, without which we would go mad and silent into
darkness.
Oh man I’m rambling. To so many I only wish to say:
thank you for inspiring me, for reassuring me in this time of
rank superficiality and discount-store violence, that some
people do care about the difference between gathering trivial
toys while ignoring all those dead people in the desert, and
striving to somehow serve the force that has given us our
beautiful lives. Though I possess this knowledge myself, it is
great comfort to me that many others have it as well, and
enables me to nurture my own desperate hope that humanity may
yet blossom into something more than the killer lemmings we
see paraded ceaselessly on the TV
screens.
The point of this lament is about honesty, about what
we really need, and how to get it.
Is it possible to achieve honesty in this world of
ours, this material cornucopia where deep in the reflexive
crannies of people’s behavioral habits, goodness is measured
by beauty and worth by wealth? Where the truly decent people
go wanting and see their lives destroyed because they are
unwilling to consign their souls to moneymaking schemes that
cheat others?
And so we come to the fork in the road upon which
depends every decision ever made by humans on this planet. A
flash of memory from forty years ago flits into my mind as the
best way to explain this dichotomy.
I
was standing in my childhood living room arguing with my
father about the Vietnam war. “We’re killing all those people
for nothing, for no good reason,” I bellowed, shaking my
shaggy adolescent hair in vibrating rage. My pop looked at me
with tender resignation, and bellowed back (we were bellowers,
as if you couldn’t have guessed): “You’re thinking about the
wrong things! The only thing that counts in this world is
money!”
What followed that collision of ideologies was twenty
years of silence between us, which fortunately for us both,
ceased a few years before he died.
Perhaps that was the defining moment of my life. I
always believed that life was about much more than money, and
I guess as a consequence have never had much of it. It’s
shocking to contemplate my Social Security printout and see
how little I’ve made over these four decades of work history.
And yet, still standing firm in that living room of memory, I
stand by my teenage story. “We’re killing all those people for
no good reason.”
And ironic that now I should be talking about those two
things: killing and money. And how they go together, the yin
and yang of civilization, the thing that prevents us from
starving but compels us to keep on killing each other. The
witless demonic dance of the predator
species.
We can’t have peace in the world because we need to
make money and war is the most profitable mode of operation.
That could be the epitaph for our
civilization.
Particularly in the area of environmental
contemplation, the argument always runs that we can’t protect
the nest that’s keeping us alive because we don’t have the
money to do it. Somewhere down this road is where we will cash
in our chips for good.
The billions of people killed over the millenia since
Oannes first crawled out of the sea and started organized
civilization somewhere in what is now Iraq (according to the
historian Berossus) has all been about money, as our decision
now to endorse the same slimy show in the same strife-torn
place is most certainly about cold hard
cash.
Money, that root of all evil, both keeps us alive and
keeps us from being human. Unless being human means a lot less
than I thought it always did.
One thing is certain: honesty is an impediment to
making money. Just ask a banker, who fiddles with his
derivatives income statement as he smiles at you and says
everything is just dandy, as long as you have collateral. Just
ask any of the principal honest news gatherers and principled
journalists on the web, who try to tell the truth without
ulterior motive. None of them has any money. That’s probably
the biggest reason the real story about 9/11 isn’t more widely
known. The people with money don’t want it known, for one
reason or another. And the people who do want it known don’t
have the money to adequately publicize it, especially since so
many of those in the media with money are dependent on
cashflow from those who have some reason not to want the story
to come out. It is the story of human history, I
think.
When that choice inevitably confronts us, we choose
survival and luxury over sharing and compassion. Who can blame
us? There is always the handy excuse that it’s simply too
difficult to attempt to do both. Let those starving fellows
go. There are simply too many people on the
planet.
That’s the real history. What gets regurgitated to us
through our history books is really quite
different.
I’ve been struck dumb recently reading a book about the
history of our so-called Founding Fathers and their creation
of our so-called Constitution. They sound like a bunch of
savage neocons. Democracy was the farthest thing from their
mind. Property ownership was everything. For purposes of
tallying population to proportionalize states’ shares of
federal largesse, they counted black people as three-fifths of
a person.
And if you think the 2000 election in Florida exuded
the stench of a back-country latrine, you should check out how
they ramrodded a Constitution past a mostly illiterate
electorate in 1776. Just like the way they do politics today:
by bribing the wavering opposition, fast-talking the rest, and
rigging the vote. And of course promising those who oppose the
idea that they will have an opportunity to make changes “down
the road.” Ah, the ubiquitous promise of
tomorrow.
That’s where the Bill of Rights came from, you know. As
a reluctant afterthought to the original Constitution, a
concession to those with consciences after the baronial
landowners had set the whole deal up to assure the dominance
of merchants and landowners over the common folk. And it has
been the same kind of rigged deal ever since, as you can
clearly see by the nature of public participation today. It
takes more than a few million just to get into the game, just
like it was way back when.
That’s why I get a little sad, a little nervous, when
Patriot types rise up and say, “We have to return to our
Constitutional principles.” Because it wasn’t so good a deal
to begin with. The seeds of empire were sown, and the rest is
bloody history.
And honesty? Allegiance to a noble ideal? They teach us
in school to put our hands on our hearts and promise to kill
anybody who gets in the way of the big red, white, and blue
machine. We never really know what they’re talking about, but
we think it’s good and do what they say. Only later, very much
later, do we understand the devil’s bargain we have made. We
will kill whomever we choose to get whatever we want. And from
this feral promise, the faithful grow teary-eyed over American
patriotism.
This is about the distance toward enlightenment that
any civilization has ever traveled. And today we sit squarely
in this location, watching the blood-drenched boys brought
home in secrecy, and the flag-waving mothers with brave but
glazed eyes waxing eloquently hollow about patriotism and the
sainted Founding Fathers.
But when the tears are dried, and the expendable chess
pieces laid to rest, the eternal question remains: shall we be
honest, or shall we eat well?
And thus we come to yet a further irony, one for which
I am forced to admit my father might have been
right.
I
made my choice and don’t regret it. But I don’t eat well. For
the past two years I have been combing every nook and crannie
of cyberspace to try and discover what it is that makes us
tick (and sick), and more precisely, to identify the facile
strategies used by so many to shoot to kill. I understand
their way of doing things is very profitable, and from that
standpoint don’t really blame them. After all, animal nature
is all about predation, and perhaps they’re just behaving
naturally.
But somewhere along the line I got a message that
humanity is something more than that. Being blessed/cursed by
the knowledge of our limited time frame instills in us a
higher realization. That we are gifted with the knowledge of
mimicking the beauty we have been given, and to not live up to
that responsibility is truly a sin. Most of the population,
regardless of what they say on Sunday, do not do that. Which
is why we’re in the fix we’re in — facing extinction because
we’ve poisoned the garden that sustains us.
What I really believe, as many of you know, is that we
are committing suicide as a species because we’ve never been
willing to confront the terms of the deal we’ve been given
when we are born, and instead pretend that we are immortal,
invent strategies to convince ourselves of this delusion, and
kill others who oppose our methods of achieving this
objective. If we were immortal, that would make us the only
thing in the universe — except the universe itself — that
actually WAS immortal. So how stupid an idea is
that?
Still, the question of whether we are immortal — as
well as the one of whether we are honest — need not bear that
much on our lives. As long as you can manifest kindness and
compassion, you can pretty much live up to your human
potential. You don’t need to follow any silly rules. You just
need to be kind and thoughful, and understand that the other
fellow is in the same boat as you are, no matter what his
color or his habits.
So that’s why I’ve tried to point out lies,
hypocrisies, behaviors that hurt others. And, if I may be so
bold, that’s why you like to read what I scribble onto this
computer screen. I have tried to be honest, because that’s
what friends are for.
But as I said, and have learned repeatedly over these
chaotic years of the late 20th century, to be honest is to be
poor, because honesty doesn’t sell well. Honesty does not lend
itself well to markups and fire sales, and if we all were
honest in this disease called usury that has enveloped world
society like a poisoned fog, perhaps we’d all be broke.
Perhaps I have been wrong about everything I’ve
said.
However, not having a boss, a corporate watchdog,
censoring my thoughts and limiting my suggestions has enabled
me to cut right to the chase on so many issues without fear of
alienating advertisers or offending politicians who might be
providing legal advantages that enable my employer to cut
corners and increase profits. No, what you get from me is the
whole story as much as I can comprehend it, with no
restrictions due to so-called commercial or political
realities.
During this almost two-year run on the Internet, I have
written 107 essays, usually about the 9/11 coverup, but also
about other subjects, foremost of which is probably the fetid
scam known as religion. About a year ago I collected the first
27 of these into a book and called it, only half-flippantly,
“America’s Autopsy Report.” Good fortune and public interest
have enabled me to sell about 800 of these books, mostly on my
own, without the help of public relations geeks or an
interested publisher.
More recently, I cobbled together a pamphlet titled
“The Day America Died,” a tight roundup about the provable
lies of 9/11. To date I’ve sold about 1,600 of those, making
either $3 singly or $2 for bulk on each. These two projects,
plus numerous gifts from a small circle of well-wishers, have
enabled me to stay alive and keep
writing.
I
had hoped profits from these first two publications would make
me enough money to fund a second collection of essays titled
“The Perfect Enemy,” which consist of many of the pieces
you’ve already read, and many of you have written me about,
both pro and con.
About three months ago it would have been very timely,
and it still is, though conscious writers like Michel
Chossudovsky and others have begun to flesh out the theme of
my title essay that the worldwide terror network called
al-Qaeda is actually the brainchild conceived and operated
through deep cover strategems by the CIA and the
Mossad.
But it hasn’t worked out that way. Though I live very
frugally, the cost of existing has simply eaten away my
profits, and the new book, while ready to roll, sits on my
hard drive, awaiting a turn of fortune that will enable its
publication, and from whose profits I would likely be able to
financially survive the rest of the year, which given the
state of affairs these days, is about as far as any of us can
afford to look ahead.
So, the ultimate irony of this piece about honesty and
money being the crucial dichotomy of thought that is tearing
both human society and the natural world apart at this time in
our history is that if I am to continue to do what I do — and
if this is any value to you — I would ask that you contribute
to sustaining my ability to comment on the complex deceptions
of the world.
In a valid way, it is you who are responsible for my
modest past successes in penetrating the slimy curtain of
deceit that well-paid media types drape over the events of
recent years, twisting their meaning and disguising the
villains in the warped confabulations of corporate
concealment. Because had I not had such a positive response
from so many, I would not have continued belaboring these same
points that I think are vital toward rehabilitating our social
structure from profit-oriented poisons and rescuing our souls
from the treacherous lies that result in so many needless
deaths.
It has been a great feeling to know the people I work
for want only the best and most honest information I can filch
from the clutches of those who seek to restrict our freedom
and stunt our growth, and I have endeavored to produce items
of relevance that will enable us to fix or at least forestall
our worsening predicament.
For many of you, I know from your letters that you are
not in a position to help, because the waterline of
pennilessness has risen as close to your nose as it has to
mine, and we’re all likely to be submerged sometime
soon.
Nevertheless, in order to continue my quixotic quest, I
must, like the musician at the train station, ask your help
once again in allowing me to continue nipping at the bastards’
heels. If what you have read by me has been of value to you,
kindly toss a few coins into my violin case as you pass
by.
Should that case fill up to some extent, I will publish
my second collection of essays and sell that at the same price
as the first.
From the perspective of fortune and men’s eyes, I am a
financial failure, because the price of truth is cheap. In
fact, most of the time it costs you nothing if you know where
to look for it.
But as you can plainly perceive, the cost of the lies
that ensnare us in this decaying marketplace we now observe as
an increasingly enslaved human society will continue to
increase to the point where no price will be too high to pay
for truth, because you won’t be able to get it
anywhere.
In any case, thank you for your kind attention. Just
because my voice may be stilled because I couldn’t find a way
to profitably package what I published does not mean that your
voice cannot find a way to help to build a world that we can
proud of instead of one we are afraid
of.
John Kaminski is
the author of "America's Autopsy Report," a collection of his
Internet essays published on hundreds of websites around the
world. In addition, he has more recently written "The Day
America Died: Why You Shouldn't Believe the Official Story of
What Happened on September 11, 2001," a 48-booklet written for
those who still believe the government's version of that say
day. A second collection of his essays, titled "The Perfect
Enemy," will be published later this summer. For more
information, or to make a contribution to his work, please
visit http://www.johnkaminski.com
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