(from Barbara Deutsch)

Uncle Sam is YOU

by Adam Engel

Dissident Voice
May 19, 2003

Bloated and paranoid addicts of sugar, salt, lard, beer, nicotine,
aspartame and MSG - Oh, Boobus Americanus, carnivorous sheep,
slaughtering and led to slaughter - Uncle Sam is YOU!

Fighting fighting fighting. Against whom? Has any "foreign enemy" ever
tried to mess with my freedoms? Any man, woman, or child from the
Mid-East (or France) ever once caused me grief and aggravation by
obliterating people, forests, cities in my name while simultaneously
snooping on me, stripping me of my "cherished freedoms," all on my dumb
tax-payer dime? No way. Never ever. It's YOU, Jackson. It's always been
YOU. THE MAN says jump and YOU jump. THE MAN says "Wreck the joint" and
YOU smash everything in sight, and leave me holding the bag.

I can't, I won't blame "America," for what is not a nation but a
fiction, a set of laws agreed upon by its people, in a real democracy,
or enforced by its elite, as in whatever we have now? America might not
be such a bad place if YOU stood up to the MAN instead of running to
fight every war HE gets himself into, waving HIS symbols, hating HIS
enemies even if formerly they were HIS friends, even if his enemy is
YOU. That's the deal isn't it? YOU'LL do anything HE says, so long as
the enemy ain't YOU.

And why? Cause it's "YOUR" country? It is not YOUR country, it hasn't
been for years (if it ever was), and YOU know it. Even so. If a band of
thieves broke into YOUR house and wrecked the place and abused YOUR
children would YOU excuse them because they did it all in "YOUR" home?
When they decide to do the same thing to some poor family two blocks
away, a family YOU'VE never met, a family YOU have nothing to do with,
will YOU go along with them on their terror-fest because the idea was
hatched in "YOUR" home? Do I have to push the analogy further or do YOU
get the point? I know YOU'RE not big on subtlety, but this seems pretty
cut and dried.

YOU are an ignorant, violent, boorish people addicted to bad food and
overpriced drugs. I know, I know: it's the Media, the Corporations, the
Government, the Evil Gnomes From Outer Space. Well, maybe if YOU weren't
so dazed and confused we wouldn't be in this mess. What kind of power
would a first-rate third-rater like Dubya possibly have over a free and
informed populace, who would demand the truth from ALL media sources and
probably wouldn't care to buy ninety percent of the junk the
"all-powerful" Corporations sell daily by the Hefty Bag-full? Such a
people would never buy the idea that a legal fiction had the "rights" of
an individual person (whoever thought THAT one up deserves to be
dictator, as opposed to Il Dufus who merely stumbled into the job).

Don't gimme that crap YOU don't know about the thousands slaughtered for
no damn good reason in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine just cause YOU
didn't see the corpses in the New York Times or YOUR local gazette. YOU
saw the photos of cruise missiles smashing into cities. Think Uncle
Sam's gonna waste millions in hardware to smoke empty buildings?

"We" did it all for the thousands killed in the WTC. Oh really? Then why
aren't "we" clamoring for an investigation into just who did all that
killing? I grew up with someone who died there, as did my wife. I
smelled the burning from my West Side apartment. YOU didn't. Yet YOU
wave yer little flags just as when teacher told YOU in the fifth grade
about how grand it all was. Send teenagers (who should be living and
studying life instead of destroying it) thousands of miles away to kill
other teenagers and teenagers' children just so YOU can feel safe in
your twice mortgaged shoe-box of a house, so you can march off to your
corporate cubicle or whatever cage you sweep for your keep?

That "it's not the American people's fault, it's their government" line
wore thin years ago. Isn't this supposed to be a government "of the
people, by the people and for the people?" Then how do we point the
finger at the government if the government is us? Of course, it's not
us, not even remotely so, but that doesn't excuse YOU for pretending
that it is. There's the "evil," as Dubya, who wrenched that term back
from the 19th century, might say. Pretending that "we" are all in this
together. "United We Stand." Isn't that what the corporate-sponsored
billboards and banners say?

So, what to do?

Nothing. Shut yer yap, if YOU know what's good for ya. Eat yer
Beef-a-Roni. Suck yer Bud. Chew yer corporate cud, crud, crude, cruel,
crucifixion of the real. What's on TV? I hear they're making last week
into a movie. Or was it next week, or the week before? Well anyhow, one
of these weeks is going to be coming to a theater near YOU. Then on
video. They signed Today and Tomorrow to play the leads. Yesterday's in
it too, but YOU know how it is in show biz once you're 30 hours old. The
roles stop comin'. Gotta get what you can. Supporting character's not
bad. As Boris Karloff once said, "A Yesterday is a working Day."
Something like that. Remember Boris? The guy whose make-up informed YOUR
nightmare visions of Frankenstein's monster (that's Mr. Frankenstein, to
YOU, Jackson). Speaking of FrankensteinŠoh, never mind.

Peek-a-boo. I see YOU. Eating snacks before the telly. Man on the screen
says

"We like you."

Astounded, mouth full of chewy goodness, YOU gurgle,

"You like _me_?"

"We love you. Very much."

"Love. Loooovvvvve. Love ME?"

"We've always loved you."

"Love. Gooooooooood. Love good."

"But there are people who want to hurt us."

"Hurt _you_?"

"If they hurt us, who will love you?"

"Love. Good. No hurt. No hurt you!"

"You wouldn't want bad people to hurt us, would you?"

"Bad. Bad. No hurt. Love."

"You'll protect us, won't you?"

"Me. Protect. You. You me protect. No hurt love. Kill. Kill. KILL!"

And so on. YOU'VE been through it all before, I'm sure. And it's a good
thing, a noble thing, that YOU want to protect the guys on TV who appear
to love YOU, beasts that YOU are. But let's be clear. What do I get
outta this? I'm not the guys on TV. In fact, I hate the guys on TV. It's
not me they claim to love, but YOU. And to be honest, I'm not alone.
There are almost six billion of us, and we hate those guys on TV.

So, it comes down to this. It's us against YOU, whoever YOU are, and the
Guys on TV. I refuse to take any blame for all this. I've been fighting
YOU since Reagan. True, I should have done more to protest the First
Gulf Massacre, but it was such a tidal wave of YOU, YOU everywhere with
yer oompah music and waving yer little flags. And it seemed to be over
pretty quick - until the sanctions.

YOU are a danger to myself and others. Think about it. Would THE MAN
have any power whatsoever without YOU? Who's he gonna get to do HIS
dirty work, me? But with YOU and your unquestioning obedience HE's got
Auschwitz, the Gulag, Hiroshima, Vietnam, Iraq and all sorts of global
chess games - and guess who's the pawn? I mean, YOU put Hitler into
power (or your Nazi counterpart, Fidelius Germanicus; same thing). True,
YOU and your kids ended up cannon fodder ten years later and had your
cities bombed, but I ended up in concentration camps (and I'm not just
talking about Jews and Gypsies, but Communists, Anarchists,
conscientious objectors, clergymen, intellectuals, dissidents; in short,
all the folks who are what YOU are not: free.)

I guess, ultimately, it's YOUR cowardice that gets me the most. I don't
honestly believe YOU'RE stupid; -- willfully ignorant, yes, but not
stupid. YOU'LL just do anything, ANYTHING to anyone to save your pasty
skin. Be honest: YOU'RE terrified; hence, the "war on terror." YOU hope
maybe THE MAN will make fear go away? The fear that began when DaddyŠuh,
okayŠlet's not go there. Suffice it to say that THE MAN controls YOU
through fear - and that's a lot more powerful than Stupidity.

Anyway, YOU and I are through. There's nothing left between us. I
believe in what the founding fathers said about the peoples' right to
dissolve a government that turns on them. And hell yeah I believe in the
Second Amendment, though unfortunately, with a mega Trillion Military
built on "the American peoples' tax dollars," the opportunity to form a
"well-regulated militia" to protect myself and others against the
tyranny YOU support is long past.

But don't worry. I'll think of something. Me and the five billion
some-odd other folks who want to save the world from YOU.

-- Adam Engel is not YOUR "countryman" or "fellow citizen." He'd feel
safer confronting a real enemy, with or without arms, than a mob of rats
like YOU (patriots seldom travel alone, eh?) with YOUR symbols and
"United We Stand" yackety yak one Nation under a vengeful, psycho god in
love with DEATH go tell it to Dubya and Perle and the Gang. Johnsons and
other Free People can contact Engel at bartleby.samsa@verizon.net. No
patriotic SPAM or pre-fab slogans, please.