Something Is Frighteningly Wrong With The American

People Now

By Diane Harvey



June 21, 2001

What is it that all of us involved in environmental

and activist issues have in common? It isn't just the

wretched fact of being bombarded with sickening unknown

substances whereever we turn, by unknown persons, for

unknown reasons. We have learned a little about what

is being done to us and why. But this is not comforting

either, because most of what we experience directly is

just the tail of the technological dragon.

What really brings us together is something much deeper

even than this. And that is, that all of us see the

disappearance, before our eyes, of all influence on

our own future, and on the future of our children and

grandchildren. On the surface, we are brought together

by an investigation into what must be the most complex

and expensive secret operation ever perpetrated on an

unsuspecting population. So, beneath this set of outrageous

monumental techno-crimes, is the much larger specter of

an absolutely out-of-control runaway government.

"They", whoever they are, are dragging us, wherever

they are going, by force. We aren't being asked for our

cooperation, or for our votes. This means that the very

word ''government" is now effectively meaningless. WHAT

government? Where is it? Who is it? Can we say we know

the first thing about who is in fact actually running our

country? No. And this what lies at the very bottom of all

of our very justifiable fears.

On any practical and meaningful level, we are no longer

citizens of a Republic at all. The sham of our supposed

leaders, pretending to conduct a free and democratic

society in our name, is a despicable insult to our

intelligence.

This is a very terrible fact we are looking in the eye

here. And it leads us directly to the other important part

of the eerie historical moment we are living in. Which

is that, not only do we have no idea who is making the

decisions for us now, we don't even have a population

that cares.

There is something frighteningly wrong with the American

people right now. A mysterious fog has settled down over

people's minds. Something beyond run-of-the-mill human

apathy has overtaken this society. People have lost

something so fundamental to human life that we can hardly

believe it, even though we see its effects constantly. We

can describe what we see, but we can barely grapple with

the meaning of it. This is something new under the sun,

and it is very strange.

But it is real, and we know it. People are disconnected

from basic reality at a level that actually seems

impossible.

The fact that our government has gone off without us into

dark secret places is a great crisis for our nation. But

if our country were populated by alert, responsible and

indignant citizens, this would not be happening.

"It is not the function of our government to keep the

citizen from falling into error; it is the function of

the citizen to keep the government from falling into

error." Justice Robert H. Jackson

It has taken a long time to entirely sever so many human

beings from their own consciences. It has taken decades

of slow, careful, deliberate numbing on many fronts. To

send most of a nation into a kind of life-long sleeping

sickness of the mind has required methodical planning, and

the enthusiastic cooperation of the people themselves. This

peculiar condition of mass entrancement we are grappling

with now was no accident. A hundred years ago it would

not have been possible to radically alter the environment

itself right under the noses of the public without them

noticing.

This basic point is extremely significant to our effort. We

are trying to awaken people who, quite often and very

decisively, do not want to know what is happening to

them, or to their country. Most of our fellow citizens

are literally in a self-induced trance state. They

have actually unconsciously decided not to comprehend

what they are seeing and hearing. They have renounced

common sense, in order not to be disturbed. It takes a

tremendous effort, intelligence, skillful timing and the

right approach even to make a dent in this epidemic of

willful ignorance.

There have been hidden influences acting behind the scenes

in this country for a very long time. What we are looking

at in our generation is the result in the present of a

very long history of corruption and secret influences.

The roots of the present evil are old and deep. Even in

his day, Henry David Thoreau looked around very carefully

and said: "How does it become a man to behave toward

the American government today? I answer that he cannot

without disgrace be associated with it."

Far too soon after the glorious beginnings of our nation,

the American people began to display a tendency to let

things go on without their involvement, and in this we

haven't been different from other people in other nations.

Relatively few people have ever felt responsible for

trying to fix what was wrong with the power structure of

their time. In essence, relatively few have ever wanted

to understand or to undertake the responsibilities for

human freedom. Self-government by any people has had

a very short shelf life in human history so far, for

reasons that are sadly obvious to us today. Thomas Paine

understood this, when he warned: "Those who expect to

reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of

supporting it."

This history we are so habituated to, of a politically

apathetic and disinterested population, has added up to

a cost most people never foresaw. The price we have paid

without noticing has become all too clear. Our country, as

it lives in our imaginations, no longer has any existence

in the real world. Unfortunately, the perennial themes

of letting things go, generation after generation,

has culminated in a government that has now entirely

disappeared out from under us. Whatever and whoever it is,

it is holed up somewhere out of sight. We are left holding

the bag of misdirection: empty words, empty gestures,

and empty appearances. We are here because we have eyes

that can still see, and ears that can still hear. We have

hearts that are still open and minds that still think. And

above all else, we still hear and obey the dictates of

conscience.

Each of us knows that this is nothing special, but merely

living as we were created to live. But it becomes a very

special way to live when the majority of our fellow beings

renounce all responsibility for their own lives at the

most dangerous moment in history. When so many other people

refuse to see and hear and understand, then the Accidental

Activist is born.

There isn't one of us who could ever have imagined

spending so much time and energy this way. We are

activists by default, because the majority of people have

renounced their responsibilities as citizens. We become

self-appointed voices of our national conscience because

we have no other self-respecting choice. Each of us has

accepted the single pertinent fact: If not me, then who?

When Democracy actually exists, it is not necessary to

have credentials or affiliates or titles other than that

of concerned citizen. As Ralph Nadar pointed out: "A

couple of thousand years ago in Athens, a man could get up

in the morning, wander around the city, and inquire into

matters affecting his well-being and that of his fellow

citizens. No one asked him 'Who are you with?'"

Has the majority of our population always been unwilling

to notice what is inconvenient to notice? Has the majority

inevitably left it to the few to demand justice for all? We

can see that it has, and in this way we are re-enacting

an old pattern.

But there are many worse aspects to our present predicament

than those who lived before us had to contend with. What

we are obliged to tackle, merely by being aware of it at

all, is the lethal combination of concealed power, secret

technology and an unprecedented level of materialism that

powerfully induces mass sleeping sickness.

We have a de facto clandestine government, practicing

without a license. The long arm of the military is growing

in the dark, reaching out to affect every living thing on

earth without the slightest oversight or agreement from

the profoundly affected. People have, on the whole, traded

normal awareness for highly destructive substitutes, and

the evidence of their senses for the short-lived comforts

of being undisturbed by reality. What is there then to hope

for, in looking at so many kinds of dark forces arrayed

against us?

There are hopeful elements in this picture, despite

appearances to the contrary. One great hope is in the fact

that we have no leaders. Good government in our country

has so far relied heavily on the existence of occasional

great leaders. Since such people are always rare, in a

very real sense this has been a serious weakness inherent

in the practical working out of the democratic ideal.

Great leaders have come and gone, but the citizenry, the

supposed bedrock of a freedom-loving people, has not been

sufficiently involved in national life.

Yet things are so bad now that more and more people

are being forced to realize that they have been tricked

and abandoned by the wayside. We are not rare specimens,

but part of a significant number of people who see things

going disastrously off the rails in various ways. In every

country human beings are looking around and wondering why

they should put up with having no say at all in their own

world. We might be surprised at how many of us there are,

still divided by different issues, yet united in the basic

understanding of what we are looking at.

But the price of such dedication to the original principles

of active citizenship is extraordinarily high these days.

When so many are so afraid to exercise their basic rights

and duties, those who choose to do so are forced to pay

dearly for their efforts in behalf of all. Simply by taking

our own Constitution seriously, we make ourselves outcasts.

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get

yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is

to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding

fathers used in their struggle for independence." Charles

A. Beard

It is a hard business to endure being seen as a dangerous

and tedious eccentric when you know you are merely awake.

It is harder than we could have imagined, to spend so

much time, energy and money trying to make up for what an

entire nation ought to be doing along with us. And it is

hardest of all to suffer, as many have, painful discord

in relationships with family and friends. What is more

agonizing than being obliged on occasion to choose between

truth and justice for all, and a comforting personal

relationship? We do not romanticize the difficulties of

serving a great cause- we have experienced the hardships

far too acutely for that. But we have in common that

what we know has swept up our personal hopes, wishes,

and dreams into another and far larger field of life.

We are living now in a larger world of extreme human

necessity. Our source of nourishment is the spirit of

freedom itself. Because what is slowly but surely coming

into being, through all our efforts, is the renewal of

the original energy that created this country in the

first place. The deepest truth in all of this is that

we are serving the sacred purposes of life itself at a

critical and momentous time in human history. And for this

opportunity, despite all our difficulties, and despite

the forces arrayed against us.