#'breaking the cycle of violence' is propaganda of those who are being benefited by the violent system itself

[anger-and-red-flames]

Me: throw this war criminal fascist character to the gulag where they gotta produce items like school books to improve the material conditions of the people she oppressed

Arcane fans: actually you need to be thrown into the gulag!!!!

Other Arcane fans: I hope a billionaire steals your work to train the dream-crushing-machine!!!!

Me: yeah you surely sound like the kind of person to think there is nothing wrong with arcanes caitvi

[out-of-heaven-and-hell]

"You say 'Exterminations benefit them [Hellborn] as overlords and sinners exploiting them are forced to perish'. But that is untrue, Elder One."

"The Exorcists slaughter sinners indiscriminately, preying upon those they can reach: sinners without the shelter or protection that overlords can afford. The impoverished, homeless, the abandoned, those bound and left outside as punishment for crossing an overlord, those who cannot run or defend themselves---including children."

"Meanwhile, the overlords remain. They seal themselves within bunkers, arm themselves well and hire protection because of the wealth and influence they possess. Their evil endures, no matter how many other sinners are culled each year. For them, Hell is much more akin to a paradise---for there is no force of law or divine intervention sent against them, no further punishment for their repeat offenses or worse deeds."

"The petty thief is obliterated whilst the serial murderer walks freely. The drunkard is impaled upon holy spears whilst the enslaver takes warmth and comfort from his chattel. The sinners who consume the narcotic toxins perish as the maker of such continues to peddle for another year."

"So what is accomplished by these annual exterminations? An exorcist can smite upwards of 250 souls, but many thousands more arrive each day. Those whose sins could be forgiven are placed in such conditions that they must steal, exploit and kill to survive---their souls becoming more rotten. The overlords remain, always peddling their poisonous products, rewarding savagery, exploiting and murdering at their leisure. This vicious cycle continues without end: more souls become corrupt, corrupt souls become more so, more violence is done, those abused continue to be abused."

"And yet, there is an even worse consequence for Heaven: in allowing the exorcists to gleefully butcher all but the very worst in Hell, you inspire hatred of God. Imprisonment, a sinner might accept, but to be herded into a pen and slaughtered like cattle? The exorcists provide Lilith with all the arguments she requires. You send souls directly into the welcoming embrace of they who would usurp you, Elder One. She need not sing a word to rally her forces and she need not be present to lead them."

"Extermination will solve nothing, Elder. Wanton slaughter never achieves anything good on Earth. Why would it be any different here and now?"

---Ramon, @king-of-wrath

"...I'll give you this, out of the many arguments I've received against the exterminations this has been one of the most thought out and well worded arguments so far. For that I commend you, however some of them are faulty, though not for the reasons you may think.

Hell would have hated Heaven regardless. Lucifer has hated all of us since his fall, sinners already resent us simply for the fact they're in hell and this is heaven. Lilith, Belphegor, Satan, all of them have had years to spread their own propaganda, their own turns of events, and do what they've been doing all before the exterminations had ever started.

Perhaps the exterminations have not helped in that regard, but they've made it clear time and time again we're not weak and it's kept away any sign of rebellion. And they've kept Heaven protected for thousands of years to come. In terms of that, they do what's necessary. They keep hell's population in control, they keep away rebellion and they prevent heaven from being attacked.

250 might not sound like a lot but that's one soldier and we send at least 100,000 thousand if not more every year. If they all hit at least that number, imagine how it adds up."

"In terms of the overlords, I'll concede that they are harder to reach than other sinners. However, you act like they've never been killed at all when they do. They can hide yet but when exterminators can't find sinners out in the open they break into others homes and the seldom are able to defend themselves. Some will survive yes, it'd be ridiculous to promise that only the worst of the worst will be killed long before those who have committed minor crimes. We do not have any way of knowing what sins they have or haven't committed.

And frankly even then, if it's not overlords being killed I'd wager it still benefits hellborns in other ways. It frees up jobs, room, and ensures less violent people roam the street. People are in hell for a reason, maybe an exterminator kills a petty thief but you have no way of knowing whether said thief would stab a mother of several children to gain what little savings they have. You have no way of knowing if that drunkard doesn't go home and beat his wife.

We have no way of knowing it's just the baddest of the bad being killed, but we have no way of knowing it's innocent people being killed either because there is none. I have not seen a single soul enter hell that doesn't deserve it in some way or another.

And you can claim they solve nothing, but have they been keeping the population in check? Yes. Have they been stopping a rebellion? Yes. Have they prevented a war on heaven? Yes. This isn't earth, this isn't humans fighting over land or something akin to that. This is sinners repenting for their sins via divine intervention. They simply aren't the same thing and you can't compare the two.

Even then, what do you suggest we do? Let Hell, get overpopulated? Risk hell finally being strong enough to bring us down like they've wanted to do since hell was created? You want me to risk these good people simply being targeted? Charlie's redemption project shows promise but even then there's no way to redeem souls fast enough to avoid hell from becoming over-flooded. And even then you truly think every soul can be redeemed? And that sinners wouldn't exploit that type of system when it offers them free food and board?

This has not been an easy decision. However, the decision works. You might not understand it and you might not like it, I'm not asking you to. But there is no alternative."

[vanessaadelle]

Are you an animal lover? Do you care about our environment? Do you care about your health? Do you value compassion? If the answer to any of these is yes, please read on. If the answer to all of these is no, read on anyway. This post is long, and yet it will only scrape the surface of all there is to unload about this issue. Because it is an indescribably important issue. One that reaches down to the very depth of our souls, plumbs the darkest crevices of our humanity and our inhumanity alike, and  begs the very question of who we are as human beings. The ultimate question being: is the human being the custodian and caretake of our great planet and it’s creatures? or is the the tyrant king of all creatures, the one thriving being in a world filled with lessor creatures suffering at his hands for his benefit alone?

I don’t eat animals or the byproducts that animals create. I don’t eat animals because I don’t believe in killing innocent beings who have no wish do die. I don’t eat animal byproducts because I don’t believe in stealing away resources which individuals have created for their own comunities through their own bodily processes or labors. I believe all individuals should have the rights to their happiness, their families, and their health. All of which are taken, in various undeniable ways, from non-human animals who are subjected to animal agriculture.

I think that the average meat eater looks at this view I’ve just expressed: that using animal byproducts is stealing, and thinks it’s like i’m saying “I’m opposed to breathing because I don’t want to steal the oxygen from our atmosphere.”

Meat eaters think this way because we’ve all been taught that non-human animals are here on this earth for the purpose of being consumed by humans, and that just as it is in their nature to be consumed, it is in our nature to consume them. This is the argument many meat-eaters fall back on when asked to consider the morality of their choice to contribute to the premature deaths of animals.

The average internet-user is bombarded by propaganda on a daily basis from companies all trying to make a case for why their cause, their product, their diet is a change for GOOD. Good for your hair, your health, your summer bod, your relationships, your self-esteem etc.

In order to keep up, Animal rights activists are often faced with the very strange work of making their goals seem MORE selfish, so that the public

will listen to them. Vegan activists are seen as radical, crazed, and unrealistic because they want to make a change for the good of animalkind, and not JUST humankind. For that, they are seen as reductionist, dangerous; capable of threatening the delicate cycle of human selfishness that human beings have so diligently established here on earth.

Animal rights activists want to see an end to industries in which animals are kept in horrifying conditions, their living bodies treated as edible flesh vessels. These are people who would rather see animals roam free and happy on sanctuaries than rot away diseased, caged, and desperate, their lives cut short and what remains of them sold for a profit. This is a cause for a different kind of GOOD. Good for another. A “greater” good, if you will.

Because animal rights itself is a selfless cause, activist have the bewildering task of shifting the conversation to the human health impacts of eating meat, the human disease spread caused by factory farming, the impact on the environment we depend on to survive, the human labor issues involved in the meat industry, and the links between eating animal flesh and cancer.

Thankfully, as you can gather from the long list of options i’ve just given, It has been incredibly easy for activists to find more “relatable” less “radical” reasons to give up meat then simply admitting to ourselves that we do, and should, feel empathy towards those outside our own species. There are many legitimate and terrifying consequences that humans have been and will continue to suffer because of our contribution to and participation in the abuse, slaughter, and consumption of animals through animal agriculture. But these are simply the symptoms of a much greater, much more terrifying disease. It’s a virus made up of complacency towards systems that harm others, as long as we feel those systems benefit us. Its a virus of blindness towards abuse when that abuse is done in a setting in which we can normalize it. It’s a sickness of widespread violence condoning.

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In our search for a way to break free of violence-condoning mindsets we need to ask ourselves the questions we like to avoid. Do we deserve healthy lives free of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and pandemics, when we contribute to this? Do we deserve to raise healthy happy children in an environment that they can thrive in, when we deprive non-human animals of their health and happiness, take their children from them, and profit from the breast milk we deprive their babies of? Do we deserve to go home to the comfort of our beds when night after night billions of animals struggle to rest amid the stench of feces and death, unable to get a morsel of comfort in their miserable lives, their feet growing into the wires beneath them, so that farmers can profit?

Not a single meat eater I know could do to an animal what is systematically done to animals on a daily basis on the farms they get their meat and dairy from. Not unless they believed it was their ONLY means of survival. But because we don’t participate in the actual “raising” of animals, and by that I mean the abuse and enslavement of animals, and we don’t participate in the slaughter of the animals we eat, we absolve ourselves of the guilt in the act that we pay for. People have become comfortable with distancing themselves from the guilt in this issue, and they not only condone it in others, but any suggestions that eating animals might be morally questionable causes some to become so defensive that they are altogether incapable of participating in a conversation. Why is it such a touchy topic? because most of us LOVE animals. We don’t want to imagine that we are responsible for the deaths of our furry friends. But if we eat meat or dairy, then we are.

We’ve become comfortable with the lie we tell ourselves that we actually have no hand whatsoever in what happened to the animal on our plate. That death was simply inevitable, people tell themselves.

It would seem that people don’t like to believe they can make a difference, because then they would have to make a change.

Peta estimates that on average a person can save 100 animal lives every year by going vegan. But thats not the truth. Because you don’t save lives by going vegan. You stop taking lives. I went vegetarian at age 16, and I went vegan in just January of this year. I have contributed to the deaths of over 1600 animals. I made a difference then, when I chose to eat animals, and I make a difference now, by choosing not to fund those who will profit off of their deaths. We make choices. Our actions cannot be excused by our culture just because our society tries to make our hideous actions invisible to our own eyes.

SO yes, eating plant-based is better for your personal health, yes, by going vegan you stop funding an industry that will likely be the source of our next pandemic, yes, by going vegan you will lessen your negative impact on your environment. If you need a more personal motivator to stop eating animals then feel free to pick any of the valid and pressing issues above that are directly related to Animal Ag. 

But should you need any of those incentives to know that we should not pay industries to willfully deprive non-human animals of their longevity, their families, and their health, and that we should not uphold a “food” system that confines and abuses living beings in order to profit off of their bodily functions? No. So please stop killing animals, and start making a positive difference.

Condoning Violence: our widespread complicity in Animal Ag’s inhumane acts Are you an animal lover? Do you care about our environment? Do you care about your health?

[titheguerrero]

Issues at the 18th International Anti-Corruption Conference

Many issues brought up at the 18th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Copenhagen, Denmark, were relevant to the problems of conflicts of interest, crime and corruption in health care which we often discuss on Health Care Renewal, and hence bear repeating here.

The discussion certainly got at the complexity of fighting corruption, seemingly one of many necessities that has come into light in the new political era.  Unfortunately, while the complexity is fascinating, it suggests this fight will hardly be simple.  Since warnings about corruption go back thousands of year, we already knew it would not be easily, if ever totally won.  Whistle-Blowing Holding Leadership Accountable At the Opening Ceremony, Lars Lokke Rasumussen, the Prime Minister of Denmark, underlined the importance of journalists and activists holding leadership accountable. Yet the corrupt will tend to defend their interests by attacking such people. (Thus we have noted that corruption in health care, in particular, has long been a taboo topic, the anechoic effect.) Things can get very bad when a country is governed by the corrupt, and worse when these rulers are despotic. The hazards of being a whistle-blower, activist, and/or journalist holding the powerful accountable were emphasized by Huguette Labelle, Chair, International Anti-Corruption Conference Council, in that same session, who remembered those who have lost their lives for doing so.  Also at that session, Delia Matilde Ferreira Rubio, Transparency International Chair, warned that despots may hijack the narrative, turning watchdogs into their lapdogs, and into attack dogs against their political opponents. On the other hand, watchdogs who refuse to cooperate may be punished or killed. At the Day 2 Plenary 3 Session on Exposing the Corrupt, Knocking Out Impunity, Barbara Trionfi, Executive Director, International Press Institute, noted that deception, propaganda, and disinformation may be used to mobilize attacks against whistle-blowers and real journalists, perhaps government responses to such attacks might help, at least if the government has not been totally captured. At the Day 3 workshop on Is the American Anti-Corruption Model Broken, Frank Vogl, Advisory Council Member, Transparency International, noted that there are now daily threats in the US to the free press, while the opposition party is assailed as a “mob.” Moreover, the US government institutions, such as the Department of Justice and the FBI, that often used to protect the free press, among others, from threats of violence, are themselves under constant attack from the top of the administration. Authoritarian/ Despotic Rulers Hijacking the Anti-Corruption Cause in an Era of Conspicuous Corruption At the Day 1 Fighting Corruption in“Post-Truth” America workshop, Danielle Brian, Executive Director of the Project for Government Oversight, noted that pre-2016, her organization was mainly concerned with the problem of conflicts of interest created by the revolving door, especially to and from the defense industry and big pharma. Since the election, the administration generated an atmosphere of “conspicuous corruption in which shame does not matter, and in which human rights are now under threat." (See what we recently posted about fighting corruption under a corrupt regime.)  At the Day 2 Fight Against Corruption as a Threat to Democracy workshop, one participant suggested that fighting corruption at best requires stable, functional specific anti-corruption institutions. While some countries have such institutions at the national level, the US does not. So at the Day 3 workshop on Is the American Model of Anti-Corruption Broken, Harvard Univeristy Professor Matthew Stephenson noted that the current US susceptibility to corruption may be partly due to the country's history of relying on norms rather than laws to address corruption. The Trump administration has set itself up as a norm violator, with so far little pushback. Furthermore, people subject to corruption may tend to go down extremist pathways, as noted at the "Post-Truth" workshop by Sarah Chayes, former Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.  At that workshop, Nora Gilbert, Director of Strategic Projects and Partnerships, Represent.US, asked whether populist anti-corruption rhetoric, e.g., about “unrigging the system,” could be leveraged without going down the authoritarian pathway?  If not,  corruption may generate despotism, which in turn generates more corruption, a positive feedback cycle. The concern about how emphasis on fighting corruption could have the unintended effect of boosting authoritarian or despotic rulers was the subject of the Fight Against Corruption as a Threat to Democracy workshop. The audience was asked not to attribute quotes to participants, but I noted the following sorts of observations.  The war on corruption can be seen as a war on politicians, parties, and institutions, and so can increase cynicism while risking pulling the whole system down. Even so, since strong supporters of certain politicians tend to disbelieve any negativity about them, including corruption allegations, such a war can leave the most corrupt offenders standing. Yet corruption is itself a huge threat to a reasonable democratic political system, because it robs people of votes, free speech, and the rule of law. Corrupt politicians do not shrink from protecting themselves by attacking votes, speech, and legal actions that threaten them. Ideally, it is thus better to tackle moderate corruption early, because a scorched earth attack on severe corruption may be as hazardous as the corruption itself. (Not to toot our own horn, but at Health Care Renewal, we have been trying to challenge health care conflicts of interest, corruption, and crimelong before the current unpleasantness.) Trans-National Kleptocratic Networks At the Fight Against Corruption as a Threat to Democracy workshop, Sarah Chayes noted that now in the US and many other places, corruption is now systemic, the standard operating system of trans-national kleptocratic networks. At an IACC a decade ago, embedded networks of influence were shown to be vehicles of corruption.  They have apparently gone global. They may use extreme measures to preserve their power. One they have become especially good at is exploiting identity divides. At the Day 2 Plenary Session, Breaking the Global Corruption Web, Sarah Chayes further discussed how the networks were enabled in an era of predatory capitalism in which everything has its price. The networks' work is facilitated by finance firms, shell corporations, and reputation and money launderers. Rajiv Joshi, Managing Director, the B Team, noted that the Lewis Powell memo of 1972 provided the blueprint, by showing how big US corporations to use their public relations/ propaganda resources to capture the US government. Claudia Escobar, former Magistrate of the Court of Appeals of Guatemala, stated that the networks intertwine private companies, government, and organized crime. (Note that we have discussed some of the links between organized crime and the current US administration.) The melding of these entities was further emphasized by Monique Villa, Executive Director, Thompson Reuters Foundation, who urged us to always follow the money: asking again and again, cui bono? Who benefits?  Deception, Propaganda, and Disinformation Corruption is enabled by deception, propaganda, and disinformation. A participant at the Fight Against Corruption as a Threat to Democracy workshop noted that traditionally democratic systems seem to depend on the idea that lies are easily counteracted. In an era of public relations, propaganda, and disinformation, lies are the currency. This was underlined by Kumi Naidoo, Secretary-General Designate, Amnesty International, speaking at the Breaking the Global Corruption Web plenary. He accused some parts of the global media, plus social media technology corporations, of complicity with the global kleptocratic network. He suggested that in the US, the in your face corruption of the Trump administration is enabled by the large minority of Americans who only believe what they see on extreme right-wing media and social media. Yet as Thomas Hughes, Executive Director, Article 19, pointed out in the Day 2 Plenary, Exposing the Corrupt, Knocking Out Impunity, the way to attack deception, propaganda, and disinformation may not be government regulation which risks censorship, especially if the government is corrupt, much less despotic. Will Fitzgibbon, Reporter, International Consortium of Investigatve Journalist, suggested it would be better to form alliances, preferably international, of journalists and whistle-blowers, like the group that published the Panama Papers. Summary The good news is that the problems of corruption and crime in health care can now be more easily seen as just part of  larger problems.  The bad news is that this has only come into view as the problems of US and global corruption become profound.  Furthermore, as we think about more corruption, the issue seems much more complex.  At least conferences like the 18th IACC provided a venue to being to address the complexity before we are totally overwhelmed. Article source:Health Care Renewal

[clubofinfo]

Expert: This country has been having a nationwide nervous breakdown since 9/11. A nation of people suddenly broke, the market economy goes to shit, and they’re threatened on every side by an unknown, sinister enemy. But I don’t think fear is a very effective way of dealing with things—of responding to reality. Fear is just another word for ignorance.” — Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalist Another shooting, another day in America. Or so it seems. With alarming regularity, the nation is being subjected to a spate of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country’s fragile ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry. Take this latest mass shooting that took place at a small church in a small Texas town. The lone gunman—a former member of the Air Force—was dressed all in black, wearing body armor, a tactical vest and a mask, and firing an assault rifle. (Note the similarity in uniform and tactics to the nation’s police forces, SWAT teams and military.) Devin Patrick Kelley, the 26-year-old gunman, had served a year in military prison for assaulting his wife and child in 2012. Domestic disputes aside, Kelley—like many of the other shooters in recent years—was described as a “regular guy” by those who knew him. This “regular” guy’s shooting rampage left at least 26 people dead. President Trump and the Governor of Texas have chalked the shooting up to mental illness. That may well be the case here. Still, there’s something to be said for the fact that this shooting bore many of the same marks of other recent attacks: the gunman appeared out of the blue without triggering any alarms, he was dressed like a soldier or militarized police officer, he was armed with military-style weapons and clearly trained in the art of killing, and the attacker died before any insight could be gained into his motives. As usual, we’re left with more questions than answers and a whole lot more fear and anxiety. As The Washington Post reports: For some, the church massacre … reinforced a sense of unease that no place could be considered immune from possible violence after a concert ground in Las Vegas, a Walmart in Colorado, a Nashville church and a bike path in New York all became scenes of death and bloodshed over the past six weeks. That sense of unease is growing. How do you keep a nation safe when not even seemingly “safe places” like churches and rock concerts and shopping malls are immune from violence? The government’s answer, as always, will lead us further down the road we’ve travelled since 9/11 towards totalitarianism and away from freedom. Those who want safety at all costs will clamor for more gun control measures (if not an outright ban on weapons for non-military, non-police personnel), widespread mental health screening of the general population and greater scrutiny of military veterans, more threat assessments and behavioral sensing warnings, more CCTV cameras with facial recognition capabilities, more “See Something, Say Something” programs aimed at turning Americans into snitches and spies, more metal detectors and whole-body imaging devices at soft targets, more roaming squads of militarized police empowered to do random bag searches, more fusion centers to centralize and disseminate information to law enforcement agencies, and more surveillance of what Americans say and do, where they go, what they buy and how they spend their time. All of these measures play into the government’s hands. As we have learned the hard way, the phantom promise of safety in exchange for restricted or regulated liberty is a false, misguided doctrine that has no basis in the truth. Still, why do these things keep happening? We have been plagued with trouble at every turn, from racial unrest and political upheavals to environmental disasters and economic bad news. Clearly, America is in the midst of a national nervous breakdown. Things are falling apart, and the inmates in the asylum are starting to turn on each other. This breakdown—triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment), a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing corruption, the government’s alienation from its populace, and an economy that has much of the population struggling to get by—is manifesting itself in madness, mayhem and an utter disregard for the very principles and liberties that have kept us out of the clutches of totalitarianism for so long. When things start to fall apart or implode, as they seem to be doing lately, I have to wonder who stands to benefit from it. In most cases, it’s the government that stands to benefit by amassing greater powers at the citizenry’s expense. See, we’re like lab mice, conditioned to respond appropriately to certain stimuli. Right now, we’re being conditioned to be reactionaries capable of little more than watching and worrying. Indeed, we are fast becoming a nation of bad news junkies, addicted to the steady and predictable drip-drip-drip of news—be it sensational, devastating, demoralizing, disastrous, or just titillating—that keeps us plastered to our screen devices for the next round of breaking news. Just consider a small sampling of headlines from two days’ worth of the news cycle: Senator Rand Paul suffers five fractured ribs after being tackled by a neighbor while mowing the grass at his Kentucky home. Donna Brazile rocks the political sphere with a claim that the Democratic National primary was fixed to favor a Hillary Clinton win over Bernie Sanders. Kevin Spacey joins the lineup of celebrity men to be accused of sexual assault. The Pentagon hints at the possibility of a ground invasion of North Korea. And then this latest mass shooting, supposedly over a domestic dispute, in Texas. No wonder America is breaking down. So much is happening on a daily basis that the average American understandably has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from reality. We are suffering from “the crisis of the now.” As investigative journalist Mike Adams points out: This psychological bombardment is waged primarily via the mainstream media which assaults the viewer by the hour with images of violence, war, emotions and conflict. Because the human nervous system is hard wired to focus on immediate threats accompanied by depictions of violence, mainstream media viewers have their attention and mental resources funneled into the never-ending ‘crisis of the NOW’ from which they can never have the mental breathing room to apply logic, reason or historical context. Professor Jacques Ellul studied this phenomenon of overwhelming news, short memories and the use of propaganda to advance hidden agendas. “One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones,” wrote Ellul. Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man’s capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandists, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks. All the while, the government continues to amass more power and authority over the citizenry. When we’re being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it’s difficult to stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this. As long as we’re tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles, we will remain tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms This is how the corporate elite controls a population, either inadvertently or intentionally, and advances their agenda without much opposition from the citizenry. Rod Serling, the creator of the Twilight Zone, imagined just such a world in which the powers-that-be carry out a social experiment to see how long it would take before the members of a small American neighborhood, frightened by a sudden loss of electric power and caught up in fears of the unknown, will transform into an irrational mob and turn on each other. It doesn’t take long at all. As Serling concludes in the Twilight Zone episode of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”: The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone. Among the 26 people killed in that small church in Texas, at least half of them were children. One was a pregnant woman: both she and her unborn were killed. Devin Patrick Kelley may have pulled the trigger that resulted in the mayhem, but something else is driving the madness. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re caught in a vicious cycle right now between terror and fear and distraction and hate and partisan politics and an inescapable longing for a time when life was simpler and people were kinder and the government was less of a monster. Our prolonged exposure to the American police state is not helping. As always, the solution to most problems must start locally, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in our communities. We’ve got to refrain from the toxic us vs. them rhetoric that is consuming the nation. We’ve got to work harder to build bridges, instead of burning them to the ground. We’ve got to learn to stop bottling up dissent and disagreeable ideas and learn how to agree to disagree. We’ve got to de-militarize our police and lower the levels of violence here and abroad, whether it’s violence we export to other countries, violence we glorify in entertainment, or violence we revel in when it’s leveled at our so-called enemies, politically or otherwise. Unless we can learn to live together as brothers and sisters and fellow citizens, we will perish as tools and prisoners of the American police state. http://clubof.info/