Everything We Tell Ourselves About America and the World Is Wrong

[center]I Pledge Allegiance
To The
FALSE KARASS

And To The
GRANFALOON
That Is America
[/center]

Erasmus said that in the country of the blind the one eyed man is king.

Erasmus was a flaming optimist, in the country of the blind the one eyed man is thought to be mad.

eye of the one eyed man. And the blind would call him Cheney."

I am being flip, but what you wrote is very thought provoking. If we consider today's society as blind, how would we know which of the many claiming to have sight are true?

being of african descent america has always been a myth. ive always look at the hypocrisy of this nation in every situation including the mythology of its democracy. when they talk about bringing democracy to the world ive ask myself who wants this shit.

how ironic is it that they talk about freedom in the world but dont want it for everyone in america. america is at the bottom for everything good and up top for everything bad

the right cries about the constitution like they cry about the bible.

they are quick to bring the I but forget the first damn word of the consitution is "We". like the bible they talk about it but ignore all the teachings of whom they suppose to follow. all they have is thou shall not murder(babies) and anti-gay. nothing else. thats there whole existence to stupidity

Usually,the places to which we want to bring freedom,have some resource,(oil),that we want...Same with countries that are supposed threats to the world.......North Korea,for instance....If there were oil fields there,we would be bringing "freedom and democracy" by the truckload....It should go without saying,that the folks who operate under that mindset,mostly have a little (r) by their names..........

Resource War, INC. That's our USA!

is the oil and the minerals.

Less well-known is that most born into the ruling class are taught that the stories are lies so that they will be better prepared to carry the power they are born with forward.

When you're old enough, you might try travelling to other parts of the world.

Then you might learn that this country is far from perfect, but not that much

farther from it than other countries in the world.

Belated welcome to DU!

But that was in the 50s when the illusion was rampant.
But that was soon changed by my experiences in the real world and a bullet from the Grassy Knoll.
Then I opened my eyes and looked around and noticed that it was just a fake and a fraud run by fakes and frauds.

Most people just sleep walk through life cause they are so busy with life...and it makes it easy to perpetuate the illusion.

There is a lot that needs doing in the world but to say that 'everything is wrong' is kind of unproductive.

with wreckage, carnage and death, to look around and say, "Something has gone terribly wrong here". That is where we are at, America has been wrecked.

What kind of threads you would like to see woven into the new story of people? What does your heart say?

For an extended period as I did the last decade in a dictatorship and you realize there are some very exceptional things about America. They are just not always the official story.

Also grew up in the 50s:

My mother would mention the depression every now and then
I would ask if it could happen again and she said, no, the government made laws that will stop that from ever haoppening again.
Look at us today!

the government made laws that stopped monopolies.
Over the past 35 years I worked for a large corporation.
In the 80s they said that the larger corps. would buy out the smaller ones and we would end up with 3-4 major companies in our area
I wondered what happened to the anti-trust act?
Now look at us.

We have been sold out by our elected leaders and now it is going to take the next ten years to get things back on track again.

We are working now to stop the wealthy from gaining enough control to tip the country past the point of no return.

We have allowed the wealthy to take more than their share over the past 35 years.
It is not asking too much for them to get the economy back on track.

We need to acknowledge that the Republicants are still feeding money to the wealthy every chance they get.
and, they are stopping the banks from being devided and/or prosecuted.
We need to stop the lobbyists and the flow of pay-offs back to the members of congress who are playing the game.
special interest groups are not the American people.
WE ARE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

The economy will grow because of the middle class!

Upper middle class neighborhood that was like living in that famous Seurat painting. My first notion that something was wrong was when I saw the bodies on the TV from Jonestown. That image has stuck with me. It all kind of went down hill from there. Then I remember in junior high drawing pictures of mushroom clouds and thinking that nuclear war would be pretty cool, at least the zombie apocalypse aspects of it. It was Ronnie Rayguns presidency after all. It's depressing when I realize that a Democrat has only been in the Oval Office for 16 years of my lifetime and I'm nearing 50.

In my opinion, Charles Eisenstein is one of a small handful of contemporary thinkers who really understands What's Going On™. Fortunately, he is also one of an even smaller handful of contemporary writers who can express it so that your heart can hear. This piece is pure triple-distilled Eisenstein, one of his clearest expressions yet of what's happening right now.

I urge anyone who hasn't read it to spend some time with his book "The Ascent of Humanity". If you're interested in how and why we've ended up in this pickle, it's a must-read.

Why Socialism?

http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism

Our species is evolving. We are germs living on an tiny organism in an ever-expanding universe.

What the author is experiencing is called 'growing up' or 'peeling the onion'.

He feels that humanity is moving out of its adolescence and into adulthood. Such times are never free of drama.

It's just too bad that as teenagers we trashed the place so hard...

Most Americans know that the framers met for three months in closed session, but this is generally forgiven on the grounds that the then Congress of the United States had not commissioned them to write a new Constitution, and neither revolutionaries nor counter-revolutionaries can do all their work in the open. What few modern-day Americans realize, however, is that the framers did their best to ensure that we would never know the details of their deliberations. All the participants in the convention were sworn to life-long secrecy, and when the debates were over, those who had taken notes were asked to hand them in to George Washington, whose final task as chairman of the convention was to get rid of the evidence. American's first president, it appears, was also its first shredder.

Fortunately, not all the participants kept their vows of silence or handed in all their notes. But it wasn't until 1840, a half century after the Constitution was put into effect, with the posthumous surfacing of James Madison's extensive notes, that the American people could finally read what had happened in those three crucial months in Philadelphia. What was revealed was neither divine nor diabolical, but simply human, an all-too-human exercise in politics. Merchants, bankers, ship-owners, planters, slave traders and slave owners, land speculators, and lawyers, who made their money working for these groups, voiced their interests and fears in clear, uncluttered language; and, after settling a few, relatively minor disagreements, they drew up plans for a form of government they believe would serve these interests most effectively. But the fifty years of silence had the desired myth-building effect. The human actors were transformed into "Founding Fathers." Their political savvy and common sense were now seen as all-surpassing
wisdom, and their concern for their own class of property owners (and, to a lesser, extent, sections of the country and occupational groups) had been elevated to universal altruism (in the liberal version) or
self-sacrificing patriotism (in the preferred conservative view).

The founding documents were designed to reign in the "mob" - the mob that had actually fought and won the Revolution.

(Thanks in advance to xchrom for permitting me to post this in response to his OP)

Below I'm pasting something I wrote in a separate DU group earlier today. For those who resonate with xchrom's post here, perhaps you'd be interested as well. Reading Eisenstein's latest made me focus on this even more and put it "out there."


Visionary storytelling has been in my awareness for several years. There are so many creative people on DU, people who share a similar worldview, that I've always felt this group -- anyone who stumbles upon this post and resonates -- is where the storytelling can begin.

Lately, however, what I can't get out of my head is TRANSFORMATIVE STORYTELLING.

The Charles Eisenstein blog post reminded me of this, and I was hoping to engage some of you in fleshing this out further.

Regarding my desire to engage in visionary storytelling, this excerpt of the Eisenstein piece speaks to that:

What about a world where we know that our daily activities contribute to the healing of the biosphere and the well-being of other people? We need a Story of the People that includes all of those things – and that doesn’t feel like a fantasy.

Yes, that's precisely what I've said previously myself in trying to engage others to tell such stories, stories which can provide a blueprint for our future. Such content is what xchrom, marmar and others often post about, which I appreciate tremendously.

However, it now makes sense that visionary storytelling must wait until the transformative stories can be shared. We can't see the "how's" of moving forward...not in a clear, unified, PRACTICAL way which inspires us to join together en masse. We're in between stories, as Charles wrote.

To me, TRANSFORMATIVE storytelling can open hearts and minds, and provide a way to connect in a profound, human/humane way. As collective transformation takes hold, we can then begin to envision the future and our way forward -- as individuals and as a society -- more clearly.

I feel compelled to make Transformative Stories part of Wishadoo in 2013. I've never interviewed people before and don't know that I have the skills to do that effectively, but I'm thinking one way to move forward with this is to interview people around the world about their transformative stories...people who were profoundly changed by something or someone in a positive way, and their story can contribute to the collective opening of hearts and minds.

I'm not sure that I actually have a transformative story, per se. Well, that's not true, now that I think about it.

I've always been empathetic and acutely aware of others' suffering, so unlike Mr. Eisenstein, who said he felt the world was fine and would be fine during his childhood, I was aware of the suffering and disconnect all around as early as I can remember, which was a VERY early age.

There was one pivotal moment in the 4th grade, involving racism and degradation of another child, which I witnessed up close and personal. That singular event kicked my desire to have others wake up to have more respect for human beings and life in general into high gear.

Maybe I should write about that as my first transformative story?

Maybe that is how I should frame this Transformative Storytelling Project:

What stories do you have to share which opened your heart and mind, and could help others do the same?

Do you have any thoughts? Is this something you'd like to be a part of, creating blog posts at Wishadoo to share your stories?

I'm thinking stories which accompany Wishlist posts would help that tool gain momentum and humanize the various needs, wishes, hopes and dreams shared there.

I've always known that people need to open their hearts and minds before the practical tools offered at Wishadoo can be appreciated.

It seems Occupy stories are part of this as well...that I should reach out to the various Occupy networks regarding this project. Speaking of which, check out www.occupycompassion.com


Sharing any thoughts that come to mind as you read this would be most appreciated.

Thanks much.

and now crave more. Someone once told me evil is not cruelty, but indifference. The more we become like computers/machines, the more we change the entire dynamic of the human race.

and thanks.