NOTE: This article comes from Rick Stanley's newsletter (2007). Since it was distributed in a format (e-mail group) which tends to corrupt the composition, paragraph structure, etc. I have tried to clean it up as best I could, without editing or changing a word of text.
But overall, I felt it was worth the effort to publish. Why? My sentiments exactly......
BHP
March 6, 2010
America The Beautiful?
By Judith Moriarty
3-20-7
O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain!
60,000 plastic bags used every five seconds
America! America! God shed his grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.
America has the largest number of citizens (2.3 million) incarcerated.
Besides Wal-Mart the private (for profit) prison industry is our fastest growing industry.
O beautiful for pilgrim feet whose stern, impassioned stress a thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.
Ethel, age 89, died (multitudes of others) in New Orleans's scorching heat: due to the ineptness, incompetence, and criminal negligence of local-state politicians, the Army Corp of Engineers, and the federal government. We can reach the most inaccessible rain forests for oil, dance amongst the stars, photograph the mighty Titanic (that even God couldn't sink) but we couldn't reach dying, drowning, folks in New Orleans. I note that the Blackwater's private mercenary army had no problem reaching the homes of the wealthy (unflooded) to guard them and deliver delicacies!
Hundred of whales and porpoises are beached, due to the depravity that has sonar military exercises rupturing their ear canals and brains. Millions of fish are dying in America's rivers (becoming feminized) due to corporate profits taking precedence over protecting the environment. Congress and the EPA (influenced by lobbyists) remain silent.
Where have all the children gone off to war, every one when will we ever learn?
O beautiful for halcyon skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains majesties above the enameled plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee till souls wax fair as earth and air and music-hearted sea!
Corporate industry (coal, incineration of waste, chemical plants) has poisoned the waters of the nation! Where's the 'danger stranger' alert for nature?
In the name of profit the mountains of West Virginia are being destroyed. EPA has no problem with this and Congress is per usual, oblivious (as is most of the nation).
O beautiful for pilgrims feet, whose stern impassioned stress a thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness.
TV was my teacher far into the night it taught me to buy everything within sight.
Till selfish gain no longer strain the banner of the free.
With billions upon billions spent on defense these past years we are made to believe that 19 men with simple $1.98 box cutters and a few lessons on antiquated crop dusters gave us a Pearl Harbor event. Lesson: We have no defense system for citizens.
O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife.
Once upon a time in a place called Paradise - Pennsylvania, evil entered in to kill innocence.
Undimmed by human tears.
O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years.
Who more than self thy country loved.
War is forever for some men.Note that the tragically wounded are never used in photo-ops or lauded at the State of the Union Address! They are not pictured on any recruitment posters, announcing "An Army of One"! Our wounded, as we've read (some of us) are being treated in facilities with mold covered walls, rats and cockroaches. They (brain injured limbless) are made to maneuver through a bureaucratic nightmare of paperwork (taking up to 18 months) before they are RATED as to disability compensation. How is it that our do nothing legislators (Executive Judicial) with their obscene pension plans (yearly cost of living increases) aren't RATED?
Millions in the land are homeless and dispossessed (living in tents- cars-under bridges) due to multitudes of jobs lost to outsourcing of manufacturing-textile-IT workers to foreign lands. HUD is a disgrace with billions unaccounted for. Lesson: In times of crisis you're on your own due to many programs (no safety net) being cut to pay for the never ending war, costing approx. 2.3 billion per week (all borrowed) and interest payments on this borrowed money, $41 million an hour.
God shed his grace on thee.
Thousands of men were once employed here (Bethlehem, Steel). Our steel mills today are echoing and rusting. In the event there would be a catastrophic happening in our nation we would not be able to supply needed weaponry for defense (it's all outsourced).
May God thy gold refine till all success be nobleness and every gain divine!
Hate is pandemic, as different factions rip and tear at one another.
This serves a higher purpose; in that if the people can be kept divided in their religious extremism, environmental malaise, hatred of various races, cultures, politics, they will never come to the realization that this is a class issue with the few robbing the multitudes/destroying the earth for their insatiable greed and lust for power. Nowhere do you hear that the failed policies of various trade agreements (GATT-NAFTA-FTAA-CAFTA) and the draconian methods of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund as being the reasons for the vast exodus of economic refugees.
And crown the good with brotherhood.
The Religion of Mammon, counterfeiting as Christianity today; is a bunch of Elmer Gantry, hucksters fleecing the flock for their disgustingly obscene lifestyles. So much for emulating the life of the One born in a manger!
Our reservists and National Guard were never meant to be a standing army. These men are being sent back to Iraq over and over again until they eventually suffer terrible wounds or die. Besides being sitting ducks, in a bloodbath, they are exposed (as are the Iraqi citizens) to tons of radiated depleted uranium (first used in Bosnia, because it cuts through metal like butter). Result breakdown of immune system cancers, deformed offspring. Meantime children are given cardboard cut-outs.
As Marine General Smedly Butler ( 34 years most decorated) stated, "All war is a racket". War is ALWAYS about the conquest of another's resources/land for gain. The recent hydro carbon law in Iraq proves this as the once nationalized oil wells have now been given over to private oil companies. "The first casualty when war comes is truth". U.S. Senator Hirman Johnson There are billions of barrels of untapped resources in Iraq - thus the hysteria of staying the course. And so we have the children of one land sent to kill the children of another so that satiated corporate hollow men along with their shills, lap dogs, and compromised drones might live the good life!
And once upon a time, in a land called America, the people would come in from the farms, their mountain cabins, farms, and mill towns with their young ones to joy in the closeness of community on warm sultry summer nights. The American dream was never about grand mansions, designer wear, exotic vacations, health clubs, silicone implants, Viagra love affairs, fortress malls, boutiques, forever war, the prison industry, or slave labor junk stores.
It was about a man being able to make a living for his family. It was about a simple life of small town living, where people congregated on Main Street for the Fourth of July parade. It was about swimming holes, country lanes, fields of corn, teachers who challenged the young to greater heights (not social engineering! ), doctors (not technocrats), marshland songs, a whippoorwill, splashing streams, and woodlands with secret paths. It was about rain washed streets; where barefoot children splashed in puddles, blew magic bubbles, caught fireflies, and played hide-and-seek long into a muggy summer's night. It was about concerts in the park, the clink of milk bottles, and visits to Grandma's house; with her blue hair, flowered dress, and flour dusted apron. It was about the certainty of love with the slamming of a screen door, a child running in flowered meadows, and at days end, neighbors gathered on darkened porches, holding tight the wonderment of the day. It was about Hometown - U.S.A.
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great".
--Mark Twain
JM