Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most Americans into apoplectic fits -- which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United States.

That the world's great powers achieved "greatness" through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.

But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the genocide of indigenous people -- is of special importance today. It's now routine -- even among conservative commentators -- to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.

One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter.

Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it's also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians' land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving "wild beasts" from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, "both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape."

Thomas Jefferson -- president #3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the "merciless Indian Savages" -- was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn't stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, "[W]e shall destroy all of them."

As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president #26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway."

Roosevelt also once said, "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth."

How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? Here's how "respectable" politicians, pundits, and professors play the game: When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand wringing about the younger generations' lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history.

In the United States, we hear constantly about the deep wisdom of the founding fathers, the adventurous spirit of the early explorers, the gritty determination of those who "settled" the country -- and about how crucial it is for children to learn these things.

But when one brings into historical discussions any facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable -- such as the genocide of indigenous people as the foundational act in the creation of the United States -- suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, "Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?"

This is the mark of a well-disciplined intellectual class -- one that can extol the importance of knowing history for contemporary citizenship and, at the same time, argue that we shouldn't spend too much time thinking about history.

This off-and-on engagement with history isn't of mere academic interest; as the dominant imperial power of the moment, U.S. elites have a clear stake in the contemporary propaganda value of that history. Obscuring bitter truths about historical crimes helps perpetuate the fantasy of American benevolence, which makes it easier to sell contemporary imperial adventures -- such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- as another benevolent action.

Any attempt to complicate this story guarantees hostility from mainstream culture. After raising the barbarism of America's much-revered founding fathers in a lecture, I was once accused of trying to "humble our proud nation" and "undermine young people's faith in our country."

Yes, of course -- that is exactly what I would hope to achieve. We should practice the virtue of humility and avoid the excessive pride that can, when combined with great power, lead to great abuses of power.

History does matter, which is why people in power put so much energy into controlling it. The United States is hardly the only society that has created such mythology. While some historians in Great Britain continue to talk about the benefits that the empire brought to India, political movements in India want to make the mythology of Hindutva into historical fact.

Abuses of history go on in the former empire and the former colony. History can be one of the many ways we create and impose hierarchy, or it can be part of a process of liberation. The truth won't set us free, but the telling of truth at least opens the possibility of freedom.

As Americans sit down on Thanksgiving Day to gorge themselves on the bounty of empire, many will worry about the expansive effects of overeating on their waistlines. We would be better to think about the constricting effects of the day's mythology on our minds.

AlterNet orginally ran this article on Thanksgiving 2005.

As someone who teaches vegetarian cooking classes, I've seen many people turn away from meat, dairy and eggs and embrace the array of delicious, nutritious plant-based foods available to us. I've also seen them change the lens through which they view the world, which I think is critical for shedding the comfort zones of the past and creating new ones. Some people have a real fear that they will no longer have satisfying, filling meals -- especially on Thanksgiving. I can say with confidence that they can put their fears to rest.

Our Thanksgiving feast every year is full of comfort foods galore, prepared with organic ingredients from local farms: mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy, bread & nut stuffing, mashed rutabagas, cranberries with pecans, stuffed acorn squash, corn bread, Brussels sprouts, corn, peas, pumpkin pie with cashew cream, and apple pie. This was our menu last year, and I'm sure I've left something out. Indeed, there is no dearth of food on our table on this special day, as we share it with our closest friends and family.

For those who have never met them, turkeys are magnificent animals, full of spunk and spark and affection, with individual personalities and charms. These animals, who have been abused and discarded by human beings, whose beaks and toes have been mutilated, and whose genetically overgrown bodies are susceptible to heart disease and leg deformities, still display immense affection towards humans. They are incredibly curious and follow you wherever you go, and their wonderful vocalizations include an array of clucks, purrs, coos, and cackles.

Turkeys love to be caressed, and people often remark that they respond just like their own dogs and cats. Turkeys even make a purring sound when they are content, and not until you've had a hen fall asleep under your arm have you lived. She will literally melt under your touch, relax her body, and begin to close her eyes, softly clucking all the while. It's a sight to see, and I'm moved every time I have the privilege to witness it.

Some turkeys are more affectionate than others, climbing into your lap and making themselves as comfortable as can be. At an animal sanctuary I frequent, a particularly friendly turkey became known for her propensity to hug. As soon as you crouched down, she would run over to you, press her body against yours, and crane her head over your shoulders, clucking all the while. It's amazing how so generous a hug can be given by something with no arms.

They're not all saints, but some are heroes. One turkey became my personal protector when I was trying to clean a barn and was continually accosted by a particularly rude and aggressive bird. Each time the aggressor would begin to close in on me, my hero would waddle over and get between me and his barn-mate. It was remarkable, and it happened over and over (turkeys are very persistent). What made this scene even more touching was the fact that these toms suffered from bumble foot, abscesses on the footpads that resemble corns, a common occurrence in domesticated turkeys. Between their grotesquely large breasts and inflamed feet, turkeys walk very awkwardly and with a lot of effort. I was very touched that such an effort was made on my behalf.

I grew up eating turkeys' breasts, turkeys' legs, and turkeys' wings, and I'm still making amends to these extraordinary animals. I believe we're able to mutilate certain animals for our gustatory pleasure because we don't have relationships with them. We've never meet them face to face. Once I met a turkey, I was never the same again. Once I began to celebrate Thanksgiving as turkey-free holiday, I learned for the first time what "Happy Turkey Day" really means.

Colleen Patrick-Goudreau is a recognized expert in plant-based cuisine, a food columnist for VegNews Magazine and a contributing writer to Satya Magazine.

When USA Today published an article on May 11 alleging that the National Security Agency (NSA) had teamed up with major telecommunications companies to obtain access to Americans' communication records, Cowie sent an e-mail to Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, asking if the company was taking part in this program. After ambiguous responses from Verizon, Cowie filed a complaint with the Maine PUC. According to Cowie, the "PUC is supposed to determine whether the complaint has merit and if it does, it's supposed to open an investigation and have a hearing." (He would know -- part of his former position there was managing these very complaints.) After two months of silence, the PUC finally acted, asking Verizon to swear under oath to the veracity of a May press release the company issued in response to the USA Today allegations.

That release claimed that Verizon was not providing records to the government, but was ambiguous enough to leave room for doubt. A deadline was set for Verizon to respond and about an hour after the deadline passed, a response was received -- a Justice Department announcement that it was suing the state of Maine.

The department invoked the state secrets privilege and claimed that for Verizon to even affirm that their previous statement was true would endanger the country. That's ridiculous, says Cowie. "[If] Verizon's public statements had classified information in them, they would have gone to jail."

Minutes after receiving notice of the Justice Department suit, Verizon submitted their filing, which stated that it could not verify its previous press statement because of the lawsuit that had just been announced. At that point, the Maine Civil Liberties Union (MCLU) got involved. The MCLU maintains that the Justice Department has no legal basis to sue the state of Maine for enforcing state law. Shenna Bellows, executive director of the MCLU, says that the department's claim that forcing Verizon to verify its previous statements would threaten national security "doesn't pass the straight-face test."

The Justice Department has sued four other states that launched similar inquiries: Missouri, Connecticut, Vermont and New Jersey -- where the DoJ sued the attorney general for subpoenaing telecommunications companies within the state.

Doug Cowie's call for an investigation in Maine has now been backed up by some 400 other Mainers. That the PUC has yet to be assertive in its investigation confuses him. "I honest to God don't understand it," he says. "I'm so disappointed. The PUC should have tried to do the investigation based on unclassified data. I've been basically told that the staff has been told not to talk to anybody about this." Because the PUC refuses to pursue Cowie's complaint, legal remedy can't be sought.

While the legality of the NSA program has been challenged, the Bush administration has been pushing Congress to keep the cases out of the courts. Bills sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) would redefine electronic surveillance and force the cases against the NSA and telecommunications companies into the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, effectively keeping the cases, and any judicial remedy, from public eyes.

Regardless of the outcome, Cowie intends to spend his retirement making sure Americans' constitutional rights aren't violated. "Who the hell wants to take up all your time doing stuff like this?" asks Cowie. "But something has to be done. You just gotta do it."

Onnesha Roychoudhuri is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer. A former assistant editor of AlterNet, she has also written for MotherJones.com, Women's e-News, and PopMatters.

The EPA's precipitous move to close the libraries was based on a $2 million cut in Bush's proposed $8 billion EPA budget for 2007. EPA bureaucrats did not wait to see if Congress might restore the funds or shift budget priorities in order to save the libraries; it acted immediately to box up documents for deep storage, and shut the doors.

While the official EPA line is that all of the documents will be eventually be digitized and made available online, this will cost money that the agency does not have, so for practical purposes, all of the thousands of reports and maps that now exist only on paper or microfiche will be lost to the public and to agency scientists. They might as well just burn them.

Closing the EPA libraries is the perfect symbol to characterize the methods of the Bush administration. Since 2000, the Republicans have cemented their reputation as ushers of a new dark age. They have sought to shroud the light of science by closing libraries and by suppressing scientific reports. They have gagged their own scientists and persecuted whistleblowers. They have cloaked government in secrecy, a prime example being Dick Cheney's secret meetings with oil companies to draft an industry-friendly national energy policy. But that era is now winding down.

Just before the election, Barbara Boxer and other senators sent a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee calling for restored access to the libraries. There is every reason to hope that the Democrats will follow through with their newly won power and get those libraries reopened. But this will be just the beginning of a Herculean task to clean the muck out of the stables and restore an environmental regulatory function to government.

For those who have labored in the environmental trenches, who know the true size of the mountain of excrement that blocks our path to good environmental policy, even the task of listing the environmental tasks to be done feels overwhelming.

In the early days of the Bush reign, the Natural Resources Defense Council began compiling all of the Bush administration rollbacks and assaults on environmental quality. By the November 2004 elections, it had listed more than 300 Bush "crimes against nature." NRDC stopped counting a year later, but you can still see the list at their web site.

So it's hard to say what the Democrats' environmental priorities should be. Climate change, energy, clean air and water, forest and wildlands protection, toxics, endangered species -- they are all important, urgent and critical. The common thread through all of these environmental issues is the need to understand and follow the science. That requires two things: good information and good people. Without the presidency, the Democrats will be limited in their ability to enact new policies, but they should do their utmost to block bad appointees, encourage and protect whistleblowers, and pump some money back into starved and understaffed agencies like the EPA and the Forest Service.

Some recent history shows what can be accomplished under less than optimum conditions. I began my career as a forest advocate in the latter half of the Reagan/Bush I years. That government was characterized by the anti-environmental "we might as well use it all up because Jesus is coming" philosophy of Secretary of the Interior James Watt.

Our hopes were raised when Clinton took office, but passing health care reform, not forest protection legislation was his priority. We got a "forest conference" instead and instructions to the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to protect spotted owls. A court ruling was the only backstop. Then, after the Gingrich revolution, there was no chance to pass proactive wilderness or forest protection legislation.

But forest advocates continued to lobby the Clinton administration, and after eight years, we began to sense a sea-change in the managing agencies. They became much friendlier to science. Not only did Clinton manage to appoint Mike Dombeck, a wildlife biologist, as Forest Service Chief, but the number and status of the "-ologists," the biologists, hydrologists, geologists, and other scientists had risen. We found that even in the absence of strong conservation directives, with good people in place and respect for the science, forest management was greatly improved.

Then that dark day fell in November 2000. By Thanksgiving, as we swallowed hanging chads with our turkey, we knew that our carefully built edifice of protection for forests would be attacked. We hoped to limit the damage, but Bush and company have had a long and destructive run.

Still, it could have been worse. If anything, I think the environmental movement is stronger now than it was when Bush took office. As the environment continues to degrade, people are no longer taking environmental protection for granted. As the public sees what a dark ages approach to the environment looks like, there is a greater appreciation for science.

In the end, it comes down to people. People have voted out the Republicans and voted in the light of reason. Without access to information, reason cannot operate. Let there be libraries!

Kelpie Wilson is the environment editor of TruthOut.org.

One of the problems the students faced was finding a creative way of getting everyone in the group on a wooden square that was approximately 18 inches across. Every group member must have at least one foot on the square, and no part of their anatomy was permitted to touch the ground for five seconds. No one was allowed to be placed on top of another.

It was always interesting to see how events evolved within each group dynamic. At first, the students invariably did the same thing over and over, always with the same predictable result: plenty of bodies on the ground and a complex unsolved problem staring back into their bright little faces. Precipitated by intensive planning, great effort was expended to solve the problem. Sometimes it was an agonizing thing to watch, especially when a group of students could not think outside of the box and were unable to solve the problem, which was, fortunately, a rare occurrence.

Eventually, someone would see the predicament differently than the others and a new strategy was visualized and implemented. The solution suddenly appeared obvious and the problem was quickly solved. Then it was on to the next event

This is the image that continually came to my mind during the 2006 mid term elections, as a wave of euphoria swept across the nation and lively celebrations ensued. Millions of naïve voters actually believe that something resembling revolution was accomplished in a bloodless coup by replacing Republicans with Democrats in the House and Senate. Conservatives foolishly thought the same with the so called Gingrich revolution of the 90s.

There hasn't been a revolution in America in more than two centuries, an idea openly embraced by none other than Thomas Jefferson. We are long overdue.

Meanwhile, the system rolls on, and the people are left feeling that something significant was accomplished, and that they made it happen by voting. There will be no need for further action until the next election cycle. Like innocent children trying to crowd and shove their way onto a small wooden square, they keep doing the same thing and getting the same pitiful result. They are not grasping the problem and so are not nearing a solution. By acting in a system that precludes real choices they are not participating in a democratic process; they are, in fact, playing with loaded dice and thus assuring the continuation of the status quo, which is the antithesis of democracy.

But history, and the consistency of America's governmental polices through 230 years of practice, contradict this immature view. Reality is a bitter pill to swallow, so we choose to ignore it and hope it goes away of its own accord. Like an ominous storm cloud portending disaster, it hangs over us and casts a dark pall over everything we do. It must be dealt with.

More astute political observers who are more familiar with history realize that nothing has changed. Once again the people were fooled into thinking that a corrupt political system can be reformed from within. All that was accomplished is that one set of Plutocrats was replaced by another. The moneyed system that created both sets of Plutocrats remains intact and in full control.

What evidence is there to support the widely held belief that this American government serves the people? All of the evidence suggests otherwise, as does American history-particularly as it pertains to war and conquest and the exploitation of the working class.

What essential difference to imperialistic policy does the mid term elections make? Does anyone honestly expect the Democratic majority to energetically work to repeal the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act? Will the Democrats even attempt to get the NSA and the FBI out of our computers? Will they cut off the funding for the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq? Will it subvert the planned bombing of Iran? Will it halt the government's unconditional support for the criminal Israeli occupation of Palestine with its doctrine of brutality, subjugation, and ethnic cleansing? Will the Democrats even attempt to restore habeas corpus?

Can we reasonably expect the Democrats to passionately oppose the outsourcing of jobs to regions of the world where wages are lowest and regulation is non-existent? How many of them voted against NAFTA and GATT? Democrats support free trade agreements about as widely as Republicans because such policies accrue wealth to the Plutocracy of which they are a part. It is of no concern to them that the workers are harmed and wages are diminished. CEO salaries and corporate profits continue to rise, and that is what matters to them. They take care of their own and we should do the same.

The money changers still own the system and their intent is to use it for their own purposes, as they always have. Unimaginable privatized wealth and hegemony is to be realized through the use of military might, the continued exploitation of the working class, and private ownership. Pax Americana and the New World Order are the result of capitalism, and nothing will change that until we move beyond capitalism and put a more humane and equitable system into play.

Voting in the absence of choice, pitting conservative against liberal and Democrat against Republican, is just another hoax perpetrated upon the American people. There are differences but overall they are more subtle than people think. The working class has no representation in government from either political party. Such division keeps us distracted from understanding the root cause of our problems, and from even holding meaningful discussions about them. We have been conditioned to believe that capitalism, free markets, and Democracy are interchangeable terms representing the highest degree of human freedoms. These are, in fact, euphemisms created to deceive and throw us off the scent.

Corrupt self-serving government is the result of over two hundred years of choice between lesser evils: the effect of which is cumulative and permanent. Year after year, election after election, the American voter adds to these strata of evil, like the making of a reef that lays fathoms deep on the ocean's floor. We are making things progressively worse while deluding ourselves into thinking they are getting better.

The problem is really quite simple: It is us against the Plutocracy; us against the most dangerous crime syndicate the world has ever known-the Plutocratic New World Order, the Illuminati. It is the same old class fight it has always been. Freedom, if it is to be won, will not issue from the vote. It will come in the streets, through resistance to evil, and through the willingness of enough people to struggle and sacrifice for the common good and for justice. That is how freedoms are always won; and their continuation will require constant vigilance, and direct citizen participation.

Until enough good people are willing to struggle, to fight, nothing will change. It behooves us to cease looking for easy answers and quick fixes to complex problems that were centuries in the making. None are forthcoming. There are no political solutions to social problems. We do not need saviors or leaders to take us to the Promised Land; there is only we the people, organized and mobile. That is our power and our salvation. We have only to exercise it. Revolution could give meaning to the vote.

Charles Sullivan is a photographer, free-lance writer and social activist residing in West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at csullivan@phreego.com

Recently, we've been plied and pummeled with the absurd proclamation that "the system worked" -- that our congressional representatives listened and took note of the collective, antiwar fulmination of the people, registered in our faux republic's latest, sham plebiscite ... Yes, I suspect, the political classes of Washington did hear the people's thunder -- and then went running for cover within the comfort zones of their sheltering smugness, constructed of the brick and mortar of arrogant power and inequitable privilege. Just ask Joe Lieberman: He's the self-satisfied fellow seated comfortably upon the large, plush lounge chair, stuffed with campaign dollars, nearest the door with access to K Street.

But we must not let ourselves -- the true beneficiaries of empire -- off so easily: Our national tragedies (from all the corpses amassed, buried and forgotten in our imperial wars -- to our intransigence and denial regarding Global Warming) are a collaborative effort with our leaders: A joint and living lie of the mind -- made manifest by collective desire and remorseless pursuit.

Upon the occasion of our cultural confabulation of colonial hagiography dubbed "Thanksgiving," a tradition when we stuff our overweight bellies by devouring big, growth hormone-injected, flightless birds in order to celebrate, what in truth was, a Thanks-taking of this land by our ancestors from its original inhabitants -- (but a hearty salutation of "Happy Genocide Day" doesn't exactly stimulate the appetite, does it?) -- I will address the following missive to you -- my fellow unindicted (perhaps even unconscious) co-conspirators in the crimes of our country.

Let's begin with the things nearest to us: The structures and objects we see before us, everyday. And it's not a beautiful sight to behold.

Due to the banality, blandness, and flat-out ugliness of the stripmall/big box store/fast food outlet, prefab nowhereland of our contemporary landscape, life in the US under corporatism is as seductive as the glare of florescent tube lighting in a convenience store.

The architecture of the US looks as if Aldophe Eichmann grew bored endlessly calculating the human weigh capacity of death camp bound boxcars -- rose from Hell -- and went into the prefab structure design business.

Now, don't get ugly, you admonish.

Tell me: What is truly ugly -- the composition and dissemination of a heartfelt, political jeremiad (or even an angry rant) - or the squandering of the passing hours of our finite lives within ugly suburban subdivisions, oversized, ugly-ass motor vehicles, soulless stripmalls and sterile office parks.


Man, have we let ourselves go: and its not only the sprawl around our middle: it's the phony way we comport ourselves in manner and deed. Our shallowness - our hollowness - our lack of conscience, self-awareness and conviction ... all of which, the architecture and accoutrement of our commodified nowhereland merely reflects.

Worse yet, we no longer even see it. We are inseparable from our environment in the same manner e-coli bacteria are inseparable from feces ... The nowhere-scape before us exists in equal measure to the nowhere-scape within ...

It seems as though: Our landscape has become so vapid and banal, it can't even rise to the level of being tacky ... Whatever the case -- even an attempt at tawdriness would show some kind of low-grade involvement. Instead, there is an overall feeling of flimsiness - a sense of a world devoid of substance. And the pervasive unsubstantiality creates an underlying aura of anxiety - the feeling that all of it can and will be leveled and scattered in some approaching cataclysm ... In this way, we hear the death rattle attendant to a closed system in entropic runaway ... The system is still replicating itself, exponentially -- yet, in equal measure, it bears and spreads the seeds of its demise.

This is why I have come to squat in your comfort zone, until you take notice.

Because the manner we're living is as salubrious as a tsunami.

And is about as sustainable, body and soul, as Elvis Presley's final binge.

Our emptiness is compensated for by the gigantism we see everywhere around us: from an epidemic of obese children to bloated McMansions. But whether its wooly mammoths or SUVs -- or Elvis, stuffed into a sequined jumpsuit -- or the fate of unwieldy armies of over-extended empires, bogged down by local insurgencies -- gigantism is a precursor to extinction. Worse, at present, this phenomenon is transpiring on a global basis.

Corporatism has rendered us analogous to the last days of Elvis ... Puffy, bloated -- we wheeze our way through our set ... Guarded gate communities are our own private Graceland where we die in excess and isolation. The electric lights sequined across the entire planet, now glow from space like one of Elvis's Las Vegas costumes. But does no one see the dying man beneath the jeweled jumpsuit? The land and The King are one.

America has left the building.

Because, like any disorder of the psyche, being the organic system a culture is -- pathology will increase, exponentially. Inevitably, a collapse will come ... Then it can and will get even uglier: Homegrown Brownshirts emerge, brandishing bibles and automatic weapons (convinced when Jesus returns the first thing he'll do is apply for membership to the NRA and then saddle-up and ride a Cruise Missile, Slim Pickens-style, aimed at the false god idolizing hordes of the Muslem world). Then will come detention camps, built by Halliburton and guarded by Blackwater rent-a-thugs ... In time, the sky will be darkened from the floating ash of the furnace-devoured flesh of those pushed into the flames lit by collective psychosis.

Hyperbolic, you say. No, it's an understatement. Remember we're speaking about the country that committed the most sustained, large-scale holocaust in human history, right here on our own soil -- the genocidal destruction of the Native American Nations. Happy Thanks-taking, America. Holocaust museums should be as prevalent as shopping malls, upon the blood-sodden soil of this land. In addition, while we're chronicling the carnage, let us not forget that we're the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons as an act of war (the most massive terrorist attack of all time) wherein we killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians for no other reason than to put Stalin on notice that we were to be the lone colossus bestriding the war decimated post-war world.

As the years have passed, we Americans now stand before a contemptuous world: bloated in our subdivisions, waddling through Big Box retail stores, languishing in ignorance and anomie -- living caricatures of the grotesques of doomed empires. Therefore, we must take a long, revealing look at ourselves: Our breath stinks of carbon monoxide -- it's like we've been French kissing the tailpipe of a Humvee. Sometimes, I wish, America, you'd just wrap your lips around that tailpipe and commit suicide by internal combustion engine fellatio. (I mean it's coming to that anyway ... But must we take the rest of the world with us when we go?)

Or: the process of awakening and renewal can begin. It's our choice, collectively; It's our responsibility, personally -- to be aware of and then widely proclaim the stakes involved.

First and foremost, it's up to political activists, artists, online pamphleteers, et al to agitate against the neo-feudalist order of corporatism.
The present order is anathema to the soul-making of creative endeavor.

Art movements, from Paris in the 1920s, to the Beats and hippies, to the flannel-clad, guitar-poet wretches of the Northwest in the late 1980s and early 90's had one common factor, in all those flowerings of life-vivifying creativity -- cheap rent.

Rilke once said something along the lines of: Everybody has a letter written inside their heart and if you don't live the life your heart yearns to live, you won't be allowed to read this letter before you die ... Hence, we might infer: There exist, across the land, dead-letter offices, vast and cavernous, where our mail awaits, unopened and unread.

Ergo, one of the prevailing miseries of our era is: Most of us are to busy earning a living to live. As rents go down, levels of risk and inspiration rise. Moreover, we need the reflective power of art to end this impasse. It is imperative that we awaken to the realities of this death-dreaming empire.

Apropos, forgive me (or don't) for the angry tone of this missive -- for I am overwhelmed by the immensity of our nation's collective capacity for denial, casuistry and flat-out lying in regard to the death and destruction that has been inflicted in our names.

We must begin to grasp the unsettling knowledge that the things we, as a nation, inflict upon the world -- we will eventually inflict upon ourselves. It is imperative that we start to ask ourselves this question: When so many external and internal forces work to thwart, degrade, and destroy our essential selves -- hence the world -- what can help to restore us?

Therefore, I'm calling you out -- the hidden side of our national character -- right here, right now. Show us who you are: reveal to us your blank face, in all its banal symmetry - and finally, and at long last -- give us an accounting of yourself.

I'm not naive. I realize you feel you're under no obligation to do so. You feel no more need to explain your actions than does Death itself.
Although you have many faces, deep down, we know who you are: You're a clean-shaven lobbyist, a sharp-elbow careerist, a public relations expert, a land-decimating real estate developer, a rent-inflating landlord, a cunning advertising executive, a weapons designing technocrat, a pentagon planner -- you're the bastard driving the SUV who is perpetually tailing my ass in traffic, you're my blank-faced, next-door neighbor, lacquering his hybrid lawn in insoluble pesticides. -- In short, you're all the quotidian and respectable -- therefore -- highly deceptive faces of Death. You're our own face, personal and private, individual and collective: yours/ours is the murder's countenance of empire.

Even though we all know the truth about you and our own complicity in your crimes, we push the knowledge from our minds, as we trudge though our days. And this is the reason: You promise us safety -- even as, you deliver us, incrementally and ineluctably, to destruction.

How do I reach you - how do I beseeched you to cease the madness?

You name the place where I can confront you: On a thronging sidewalk on Fifth Avenue, during evening rush, as we're brushed and buffeted by the squalid grace of crowds. Perhaps, you might take the barstool next to mine and speak too loudly in my ear, jabbing my chest with your bony index finger to punctuate the pointless palaver of your self-justifying lies. How about: Let's take a cross-country drive, you and I, and see the fever dream of our sick nation unfurl before us through the dusty windshield of a grasshopper green, 1975, AMC Gremlin ... so that we might have time to talk this all through.

Because, I want you to realized this: There are hidden reservoirs of hope within us: reservoirs as boundless as the reach of your ruthlessness. These waters are as deep and potent as you are, at present, shallow and shameless. Yet, they're inaccessible to you -- as long as you insist your drink of choice will continue to be oil and blood, mixed with the runoff of melting Arctic glaciers.

What you do not know is this: From these inner reservoirs emerge rivers of renewal that run between all of those who turn away from the dry, dead landscape of your lies.

These streams of inspiration and renewal silently flow between those who have glimpsed this: That each generation must struggle against the soulless seekers of absolute power, that each era is a wasteland, that every person learns life is unfair, yet must seek to drink from the waters of hope -- so that our tongues will not wither to cynical dust.

Empires rise and fall, but hope remains, flowing through time and place, bearing all things to the sea and back again, perpetually returning, bringing new life to the dry, dead land, slaking our thirst, cleansing our wounds, delivering to us the strength to make and remake the world anew, and, at day's end, lulling us to restful sleep to the timeless cadences of its ceaseless currents.

Phil Rockstroh, a self-described auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com.