I am a source of inconvenient truths, by embracing the spirit of unbridled speculation I have become the source of the facts that are unpopular but which support function.
Such an inconvenient truth is one I stated several years ago - to save America’s soul the people of this nation must impeach its President.
This is a nettle the Congress does not want to grasp; and, there is a powerful justification for that attitude.
In these perilous times when a President might have to react to a situation as urgent and as dire as the 911 attack, might his judgment be impaired - if he had in the back of his mind, along with all the other myriad ominous facts and circumstances; a mistake, or several mistakes might cause me to be impeached?
There is one circumstance that negates this argument; the fact that President Bush is a spoiled child who has always got what he wanted, whether it was a baseball team of his very own, to be the Governor of Texas, or, to be the President of the United States; he believes based on these experiences that if he is stubborn and determined enough, fate will accommodate his pressing and heartfelt need and desire to be ultimately victorious in his attack on Iraq.
Intrinsic to this mindset and the personality genotype it produces, is a complete disregard for facts; that he employs, and has always employed, the methodology of advertisers and other fraudulent tailors, propaganda and spin; he now tells us that we must trust the commanders on the ground to conduct the war, that we should not second guess them; further, that politicians, like Members of Congress, or, politics, in the form of political polls, should not determine strategy or dictate the course of the war.
What he neglects to remember, or very conveniently forgets is: that it was this approach that got us buried up to our noses in the quicksand of the civil war in Iraq in the first place; that it was politicians, not professional soldiers, who initiated and orchestrated this conflict; it was the hardliners, the war mongers in his Cabinet, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Vice President Dick Cheney, who contrived the justifications that mobilized political support for the war; and, ignored the advice of General Shinsecki and other military experts, that caused the army on the ground to be woefully undermanned and poorly equipped.
It is the character of this President, the very inflexible and potentially dangerous mindset of this President; that makes it necessary and imperative that we quickly and urgently proceed to charting the very dangerous course of impeaching a President while the nation is embroiled in a war.
Three decades ago I decided that I would dedicated my life to changing the world because of the unimaginably horrific incidents that I was witnessing that exemplified man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.
I decided that I could not use force in this transcendent enterprise because it was clear that this would not work, that it was the fact that humanity had to become adept at using force that had determined the nature, the intrinsic nature, of culture and opened the curtains on the human drama that has been so replete with tragedy, misery and suffering.
I decided that I would never be involved in the competition for power; that I would attempt to enlist the cooperation of my race in traveling the arduous road to peace; that I would make an appeal to the intelligence of human beings.
I became obsessed with developing ideas that would explain and support the efficient functioning of democratic societies; and assiduously practiced writing, the means to communicate these ideas; and fortuitously, found the means, the World Wide Web, that would allow me to reach everyone.
The methodology I applied, that of telling the truth no matter what the consequences; produced the insights necessary to achieving my objective, it also became the major obstacle to creating a world at peace.
The development and refinement of this new world view required time; human beings have come to expect instant results, because of the fruits of a burgeoning technology that has produced instant coffee, instant communications, and a supersonic airliner that can cross the Atlantic ocean in two hours; but, as I was to discover to my extreme discomfort, there was no instant fix to these problems, that the development of the body of ideas was relatively easy, that communicating it was the hard part.
The dichotomy that I confronted; one of the many that arises out of the fact that the human psyche is divided into two compartments, the conscious and the subconscious; was that while telling the truth was critical to unearthing the ideology that would support function; telling the truth made it impossible for me to earn a living.
I do not believe I have baldly and explicitly stated the corollary that is implicit in the statement by Jesus, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” - if a man tells the truth; and, as a result, know what he is doing, sees the connections between cause and effect, sees all the consequences of his actions, he has to do the right thing, that which supports function and does not result in discomfort or damage to others.
And, I was operating in a system in which human beings had become accustomed and habituated to having absolute power, the power of life and death over those subordinate to them; that power provided the means to force others to satisfy their selfish needs, wants and desires.
What that means in practical terms is that employers sincerely believe that their employees should do as they say - whether or not these actions are contrary, are diametrically opposed to the dictates of the consciences of these employees, or, God forbid, that the employee is certain that the long term effect of this or that policy will be distressingly and pervasively negative.
In Jamaica, on my merits, I helped prepare a National Development Plan, a notion that I was instrumental in promoting; no job I have had in Jamaica, or the USA, was beyond my capabilities or excellent work habits; what caused me to lose jobs, at an alarming, poverty producing rate, was that I followed the dictates of my conscience.
Nor could I have played the hypocrite and avoided the repeated, lengthy bouts of poverty I have had to endure; because I knew that it would have been so easy to slip back into to the habit of telling the truth opportunistically and again drown in the pit of iniquity and inevitable tragedy that was coercion based culture.
More, at some point my writing skills from practice improved so that I became aware that I could write fiction and better my lot; that I could write from a memory on longer lamed by repression, the truth, under the guise of fiction and escape poverty forever; but I could not pursue this option either, for I was sure that if I was comfortable I would no longer be motivated to scale the walls of ignorance and superstition and bring the light of truth, the balm of reality to the issues that created the wretched of this earth.
So I have set up a situation where by the only exit of this rat from the maze of suffering and despair that the circumstances I have outlined has engendered; is to communicate the message that telling the truth will set you free to a species that for many millennia has carefully and assiduously contrived to be unaware of what it is doing.
At this point I am constrained to interject a disquieting confession; one that, to the intense discomfort of any reader, causes me to fall off the pedestal that I have laboriously erected.
To keep me honest and preserve my objectivity, I have to confess that I issued an ultimatum to other human beings, that I entertain intense malice and animus toward certain other human beings, towards my brother and sister.
An Aunt in Jamaica, my father’s sister, died some time ago; and, my brother administered her estate and sold the house that was the major asset of that estate, and, the funds that resulted are now sitting in a bank account in Jamaica ready to be distributed.
I must interject that I would never, never have survived telling the truth in any social system for three decades - if I were not possessed with great ingenuity and rationality.
When I decided that I was drowning in the ‘state of nature’ that exists in South Florida and decided to relocate; this circumstance, that these funds were in the offing, was what I relied on to make this undertaking less insane and taxing than it appeared on the surface, I hoped that my brother with these funds as collateral would provide the support I needed - if I ran into trouble.
But I reckoned without taking into account that my siblings might have other plans for my life, that ran counter to my objectives; that they might have decided that I should live with my mother and take care of her until she dies, and, how far they would go to achieve that aim.
My mother, is more than eighty years old, the circumstances of her life conspired to cause her to be extremely selfish; she is so old now that she needs a caregiver, she has fallen in the drawing room of her comfortable domicile and broken her ribs; but she is impossible to live with, specifically, she is impossible for me to live with.
She was, while she was present, and, even after she migrated to the USA; the personality that dominated my existence; when I was little more than an infant she physically abused me for hours, I have memories with a clarity and poignancy undiminished by the passage of time, of her beating on me literally for hours, of her kneeling above me choking me, of feeling the scratches on my throat from her fingernails burning long after those episodes of intense cruelty had ended.
She was wont, for the slightest infraction, to lock me in a fowl run in which roamed very threatening and terrifying to a small child, ground lizards; and, of her remaining impervious, unyielding and obdurate, ignoring completely the screams elicited by my intense fear.
Her personality has not improved with age; I would speculate that she never matured psychologically beyond the age of sixteen, when the most dominant personality in her life, her father; arranged a marriage for her with an old Chinese gentleman who was one of his cronies.
The years that have passed since that tragedy; since that moment in her life when too early, before she had developed the wisdom and resiliency to bear it, ‘the tigers came at night, with their voices soft as thunder, and, killed the dreams she dreamed;’ the time that has elapsed since has not healed that wound in her psyche, it has deepened that wound and exacerbated its effects; so she is now a lost soul, exceedingly bitter, wholly selfish and without consideration or awareness of the needs of others; someone impossible to live with.
So my siblings have decided that my poverty and the weakness inherent in that situation, has determined that I should be the one to be her companion until her death; and, have proved that they will do anything and everything in their power to coerce me to accept their consigning me to that living hell.
When my brother refused to help me a year ago when I ran into trouble this did not prompt me to resist; but when after a year has passed and his position has remained unchanged, that he, and my sister, have refused to simply communicate which banking organization hold the funds I inherited, they managed what no other human being achieved in several years, they have ignited my malice and caused me to issue ultimatums.
They not remember that when our mother decamped to the USA; and our father continued to do what he had always habitually and perennially done, repair to a bar after work and to the company and solace of his drinking buddies; my siblings conveniently forget that I tried with all my might to be the parent and the head of my household.
I am constrained to add that I was a very poor parent, since I was hardly more than a child myself; so I never taught any of my siblings to be anything more than ‘takers’ because all I could do was give all I could to attempt to fill the void created by the absence of our parents; I could not teach them courage, but I fought to the best of my poor abilities, their battles.
Moreover, they were observers of the evolution of my transcendent enterprise but never had the least idea of what I was about; when I began to tell them the truth, or latterly never attempted to coerce them, if I was no longer what my sister described me to be - the prince of fear; they had no idea that it was because I rejected completely being an agent of coercion based culture, they concluded that I had become easy prey.
Once I witnessed an incident in the small zoo that was located on the lowest slopes of the Blue Mountains in the Parish of St. Andrew in Jamaica, a scene that is so analogous and redolent with the circumstances, relationships and currents that underlie this situation that I recount it here.
A pride of lions were kept for the edification of the public in a fenced enclosure; some individuals were prone to take advantage of their predicament, and, the fact that these denizens could not reach them; to throw missiles at them and prod them through the openings in their cage with sticks.
One wise lion stood with hindquarters within easy reach of the fence; and, when one of these callous, craven individuals took the opportunity to prod that king of the jungle with the branch broken from a nearby tree; that assault immediately precipitate a thick viscous very yellow stream of urine that struck his assailant in his face, and, wet him through and through before he could overcome his shock and surprise; and, escape this very unexpected and unanticipated deluge of lion piss.
Those spectators who witnessed this unforgettable episode so replete with simple justice, a group which included me, were moved to expressions of ridicule, to engaging loudly and repeatedly in hoots and howls of laughter, pointing, and other more obscene gestures and exclamations denoting their support for the lion and their extreme contempt for his assailant.
I cannot engage in any suitable or equitable reaction to the behavior of my siblings, such responses would be too far a departure from my principles; I cannot even do what I threatened, give a statement to a notary public that contains the information that my mother under her given name, Mavis Albertine Chung, was deported from the USA in 1954, and, that she returned to this country on July 18 of that same year under an assumed name, Mavis Williams; and, forward that affidavit to the Clerk of Courts in Fort Lauderdale, the nearest city to her address; nor, can I cause my brother and his abettor, my sister, to suffer poverty, even for a few days, as they deserve.
However, I can metaphorically and figuratively piss on them; and so vent my spleen, confess my sin and retain my contact with reality; and, demonstrate to my readers the pervasive, ubiquitous nature of coercion based culture.
This is part and parcel of my approach to life - that I will admit and take responsibility for the mistakes I have made, something the current President is wholly incapable of, something no rabid skunk could do.
Need I state the obvious - that President Bush has the power to do much more damage than a rabid skunk loose in any neighborhood; he can, prompted by his blind stubbornness and hubris, attack Iran, and start World War Three.
There are those blind, conflicted agents of coercion based culture, notably Senator Joe Lieberman, who think that an air sortie against the installations in Iran that are enriching uranium would redound to the benefit, to the short term or long term interests of the USA and Israel, I am constrained to disabuse them of that dangerous fallacy.
It will have the same effect that kicking a hornet’s nest has; fighters will begin to stream into Iraq to engage the infidels to such effect and in such numbers, that eventually the Allied Forces to stem this tide will have to cross the border into Iran - which will start World War Three.
But this essay, in common with all the essays I have written, has an exceedingly more urgent and more crucial objective; it demonstrates the positive effects of practicing the discipline of truth on the problem solving capabilities of human beings; that this prescription can heal the grievous injury and damage done to the intellects of human beings done by repression.
Suppose I am completely wrong, and we dodge the bullet inherent in the occupation by Allied Forces of Iraq; that would not significantly decrease but only defer and delay occurrence of the awesome prophecy and seemingly implacable destiny - the prediction that human civilizations will be destroyed by fire, in a nuclear holocaust, something that became a clear and present danger when the crew of the Engola Gay detonated a nuclear device above the city of Hiroshima.
Evolution from a ‘state of nature’ must inevitably result in the adoption of coercion based culture by any sentient species; it must result in competition becoming the ethos of that culture; that that culture embrace the roles of territorial predator and prey; that a small elite come to accumulate a preponderance of the existing social, political or economic power; that the inequities and injustices that produces this effect generate conflict, that escalate to a create tragedy, misery and suffering for a majority of human beings.
There is only one way to stop ‘the tigers coming at night, with their voices soft as thunder; to destroy the hopes and aspirations of individuals and groups,’ human beings must renounce force as the means relied on to motivate the other and embrace positive reinforcements in their relations with other beings; an outcome that can only occur and become meaningful when a bare majority of human beings in any social system overcome the effects of the repression that lames their intellects by being educated or by the practice of the discipline of truth.
I hasten to add that humanity needs to retain the ability to use force, even deadly force, to protect itself and survive; but that force needs to be freed from the laming effects of repression and be prompted, not by impulse or blind emotion, but by an intelligent appreciation of the facts, circumstances and, most of all, after due consideration of the consequences of such actions.
I suggest that the intelligence and problem solving capabilities that I demonstrate are a direct consequence of my telling the truth; it has the same genesis as the logical and empirical approach that has produced the burgeoning, scientific and technological Establishments that now threatens the very existence of the human race; it has no supernatural content, I was an atheist when I began this journey of discovery in October, 1975 in that small park in Israel.
I believe in God now but this might be because the task I set myself was of such a magnitude, that it began to assume such gigantic, awesome proportions that I greatly doubted my ability to complete it without Divine Intervention.
I suggest that anyone who practices the discipline of truth will eventually develop similar problem solving capabilities, and become, a voice of peace.
William E. Virtue
Copyright Retained, All Rights Reserved
3222 Airways Blvd # 312
Memphis TN 38116
Ph: 901-201-8090 or 901-332-3800
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