Witness to an Execution

Witness to an Execution
By David Glenn Cox



I didn’t ask for this and you didn’t ask for this. It would preferable to talk of picnics and pretty things, of coins that jingled in my pocket and women who once said that they loved me. Illusions are like that, we dream it and want it so to be so. So we pretend and we pretend and we make excuses and excuses to soothe ourselves while we damn those who dare to speak the truth to us. Truth is painful and illusion is soft and fuzzy, warm thoughts of the morning, good reviews of last night's dreams.

But I am the iconoclast, the destroyer of comfortable dreams and grand illusions, burning your crops and killing the livestock of things that never really were. I’m just telling how the magician does the trick; I’m not killing the doves in his coat or the rabbit in his hat. It is he that is deceiving you, not I. I am not crying wolf or yelling fire in a crowded theater because, you see, there really is a wolf and he’s at the door and there really is a fire. And the movie isn’t real either, merely special effects wizardry of wars where men don’t bleed and children don’t die.

I didn’t ask for this, I did not ask to drink from this chalice. I was the little boy who saw where the bullets hit the street, where the assassin fled and I was watching when they shot him dead. So I can’t believe the truth no matter how many times it’s stamped official by the officials in their official capacity. Official truths are empty boxes shipped home to grieving parents. I’ve seen them shipped from the deepest jungles and seen them shipped from the desert sands. The truth is no better than a lie and a lie no better than the truth. We don’t like truth; we prefer official lies to grating, uncomfortable, fatal truths.

You’re being robbed, do you understand? Theft by government, do you understand? The banks lost all their money so the government lent them new money. All’s fair in love and war but banking is about pillage and forced sex. The Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air and lends it to the Treasury.

Pretend that it's doughnuts and each doughnut costs the treasury $3.45 to make. The treasury is selling doughnuts to the banks for .25 cents and billing you, you, you, for the difference. A theft unrivaled in human history while the banks brag of paying the government back in full.

Due to bad trade policy and bad tax policy and a bloated military obsessed with world conquest our economy is like a leaking bucket. After we dip out fifty percent for the military and spoonfuls for social programs and our debt obligations, well, guess what, chillins? We done runs out of monies and we best cut dem social programs, sho nuff! The banks? They can get all the money they want; it’s only a phone call away. Do you want some? They’ll let you borrow some, too, at $3.45 plus nineteen percent or twenty-four percent interest.

But instead the banks would rather lend the money in the Chinese market because their balloon is still going up, up, up. Or they can drive up interest rates and profits in countries where they smell blood in the water. They have to lend and lend fast and lend quick because their own bad debts are chasing them like a junkie’s drug habit. Or if they want to play at home they invest in Wall Street where profits are based on raw material exports and dim-witted cash imports. The old pump and dump, oh but Wall Street executives would never do that to save themselves, would they?

The séance continues and the ouija board says, “R is D and D is R.” What could that mean? What about Sarah Palin? What about the teabaggers? What about the immigrants? The pointer is moving now as it spells out “s,u,c,k,e,r,s." Suckers? What does that mean? It answers mysteriously, “Keep the suckers occupied.” But, but, the teabaggers and Sarah Palin and the immigrants. It answers, “Never let your dinner guest know he’s on the menu. Never let the lobsters know when you’re going to drop them in the pot. Keep it all friendly with smiles all around.”

Let us continue into Dante’s lowest level of hell and let us practice the black arts to divine the truth of black arts. The squeamish and sensitive among us should depart from here now because the darkest secrets could be too much for them to handle. Repeat this chant only here and never utter it where the uninitiated might hear you.

“If McCain had won the election the Democrats would be screaming about the war.
If McCain had won the election the Democrats would denounce his plans for nuclear power.”

One is all and all is one.

“If McCain had won the election the Republicans would have praised the GM bailout.
If McCain had won the election the Republicans would have praised health care reform.

Are Democrats denying the truth? Are Republicans denying the truth?
Do they both love the truth or hate the truth or just not dare speak the truth?

One is all and all is one
One is all and all is one
One is all and all is one

I have no idea why I was chosen for this task; there is certainly no money in it. The money’s in infotainment, keeping the suckers busy while they’re being robbed blind. But somebody’s got to say these things, as unpleasant as they are. This government in all branches and both parties have thrown the people of this country to the wolves. They’ve locked the doors of the burning theater with the people left inside.

These are not theories or conspiracies but plain fact. We have: A jobs program that is based on tax cuts. A mortgage rescue that’s left up to the very pirates that sank your boat. A war in Afghanistan that is spinning out of control in both blood and treasure. There's no talk or public debate of what to do about that, just pour in more and more of both. On top of that, on top of all of that we have this grand give away of national wealth almost like a national going out of business sale.

Maybe it’s because both of my parents lived through the Great Depression. Maybe it’s because I was in Dallas in November of 1963. Maybe it's because I was in Montgomery in the summer of 1965 or in Chicago in 1968, I always felt that I was given a front row seat to history. Now it feels instead like I am a witness to an execution, watching the greedy grab with both hands while the victim doesn’t know the prosecutor from the defense attorney. Not that it matters, the court is fixed too, There is only one party and you’re invited to dinner.