What the Future Holds

How I wish I could say that the future is bright, but I've know since I was a child that it wasn't. As Art Linkletter put it, kids say the darndest things. I used to shock those around me with my dire predictions for the future of the Earth. Listen to kids today. They know where all this is headed, too. Really...take the time to listen.

Perhaps this is what must be. Perhaps we must suffer what is (in my mind, no doubt) coming because we have taken the easy road. We have chosen entertainment and comfort over life. That choice always leads to the same end--heartache and destruction. We always get the life we deserve.

Flashback: I was on the phone to my mother just before the election that would put, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, W in the White House the first time. I thought I was going to lose my mind. My mother and I have a good relationship. We are no longer mother and son, we are both adults who have known each other for a very long time and, so, can argue without taking it personally.

My mother has always voted republican. In the case of W, no exception. She thought the guy would do the country good. She'd lived in Texas during his gubernatorial term and thought he was charming and a good leader. Go figure.

I mention how my mother and I can argue without taking it personally as a lead up to the description of this "conversation." I was screaming at her over the phone. I remember well where this conversation took place. I was at a pub in east Sacramento, meeting some friends for a beer or two. Music was blaring on the patio, where my friends where situated, so I took the phone out into the parking lot. Eventually, feeling self conscious about how loud the talk was getting (on my side, at least) I moved further out into the alley. I'm not proud to report that my friends could still hear my ranting over the sound of the music on the patio.

This is not a normal state of affairs for me, that I'd get this loud. Sure, I have been known to make impassioned arguments, but this was something else. I knew, in the depths of my soul, that with this election we were turning a corner as a country. Things were about to get bad...bad in the way that I knew they would get even as a child. What I was saying to my mother in an overly loud voice was that her vote for W was a vote for everything she claimed to hate.

I told her that if he was elected, we'd be in a war in the Middle East inside a year. I was close in my prediction. I told her that a vote for W was a vote in favor of the completion of all the conspiracy theories we'd discussed and debated over the years. He would bring with him a cadre of people who were connected to all that sought war and manipulation of humanity for their personal gain.

Shortly after our argument, I apologized to my mother. No one deserves to be yelled at like that. I've since given up that kind of interaction. It does nothing but breed isolation and hurt feelings. And, I relate it here as a matter of record and as a confession, of sorts. I feel ashamed by my outburst...but I was right. My mother even agrees with me, now.

She, like all of us can be, was taken in by appearances and wishful thinking. It happens to the best of us. It happens to me all the time. The key, here, is to realize that these appearances are not happenstance. What appears to be true, what you and I are sold as our own thoughts, are carefully crafted. This is not "conspiracy theory," this is demonstrable fact. We think we look out on the world and make our own judgments about right and wrong, good and bad. We don't, unless we have worked very hard to get to that point. We see exactly what we are told to see.

Even worse, those who are programming us are not human beings. Don't worry, I'm not going into the Twilight Zone here with an Enquirer sort of story about alien mind control. Maybe that is the case. I don't know. I'm talking about something more down-to-earth. I'm talking about psychopaths.

You and I are being fed thoughts, through the media, by psychopaths on a daily basis. These are people who don't have even a moments hesitation about manipulating you, using you, then discarding you when you have lived out your usefulness to them. These are people who have the appearance of being human beings, but are lacking a critical component of humanness--a conscience. They can't feel compassion for another or remorse for their actions if they tried.

We--you and I--are being lead to our deaths by people without conscience. Think about it. We are at a crossroad. Never before, in generally accepted human history, have we been at a point where we have had the weaponry to wipe out all life from the planet. In addition to that, we have the global communications technology available to control those weapons from anywhere, and to put thoughts into the minds of people in every country.

Let me put it very bluntly and without losing my cool like I did with my mother. If we do not wake up to what is being done to us, we are screwed. Our leaders are not necessarily what we think they are. I do not accept that they are incompetent, making mistakes in going to war against Iraq and threatening war against Iran. They (or some of them, at least) are cold, calculating psychopaths who feel NOTHING for the lives of human beings. The deaths of thousands (or millions?) are nothing more than statistics.

Time to wake up. The snooze button has run out. Personally, being of the conscience filled human sort, I can't stand by and watch my fellow man go down in flames.