The Emperor's New Clothes--Again

"Let us learn our lessons. Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events." Sir Winston Churchill.

Why can't this simple truth be remembered and heeded? We are at present a nation in denial, hoping against hope that the greater good will be served by the current wrongs. We follow a man because there is no one else, deluded by fear into believing that the faith he professes will somehow substantiate character and integrity not exhibited, that the power his administration wields will somehow make everything right--against our better judgement.

An old fable tells of an emperor in a small kingdom. Like most aristocracy, he had been seduced by power into a false sense of superiority, and he was out of touch with the governed. His imagined realm of supreme entitlement and inerrancy was soon exploited by someone more ambitious and unscrupulous. A conman sold the emperor a garment suppossedly made of cloth so fine it could not be felt or sceen. He appealed to the emperor's ego and told him no other kingdom on earth possessed such attire, and that it would be essential to his country's continued prominence in the world and the peoples' patriotism that their leader represent the very best, stand for something significant and important. Actually, the conman just wanted to be rich himself.

The emperor was anxious to display this visible proof of his eminence and arranged a grand procession before his vassals. Every9one was too afraid to say anything and were ashamed that their monarch could be so foolish. Only a child, who hadn't yet learned to fear, pointed and exclaimed, "The emperor is naked!"

Today, an unnecessary war is being waged by this country that costs the lives of honorable Americans in military service and untold numbers of innocent civilians. It is a conflict sold with lies by unscrupulous and powerful men to a gullible president blinded by his own agendas and forced onto a fearful public shamed by their own powerlessness.

On this Christmas of the year 2005, in the spirit of the child born two thousand years ago to lead the world with faith and courage, who will have the courage of a child to stand up and speak the unpopular truth and the faith to do something about it?
J. Wallace

Presidents

It has been said that for the past two hundred years this country has been led by members of an elitist, ruling class that does not represent the cultures, cares, ideals or wills of the people they govern. The amount of money needed to win political campaigns narrows the field of potential presidential candidates to a select few backed by wealthy families, people who have exploited this flaw in our political process to hold on to their power through succeeding generations.

With few exceptions, candidates are groomed from infancy to be completely dependent on and to protect the advantages and comforts of the insular world of wealth and influence that produces them. Most are educated in Ivy League preparatory schools and colleges and socialize almost completely within these environments. Their values and principles are in turn shaped by their peer group and long-established obligations to the dynasties that have supported them. Law schools callenge their mindsets of absolute right and wrong and realign their ethics to ones more "situationally specific and productive." Friends from the same background assume their positions within the ranks of corporate business and banking and establish invaluable allegiances for financing the political schemes and agendas of the privileged. The presidential candidate becomes an investment in the future perpetuation of the status quo: that those who have been in power stay in power.

Unless the American style and institution of presidential selection and election is completely overhauled, and its system of campaign financing effectively restructured and policed, the wealthy elite will continue to run things as they see fit and protect their interests, and the United States will remain a democracy in name only.

Jeffrey Wallace