Monday, May 30, 2016

Bill Moyers Memorial Day Essay


Bill Moyers: "Over some 40 years now it has seemed to me that as time goes by we tend to remember wars, and the suffering they bring, as if they were inevitable, natural acts of history, rather than politically inspired choices. But war, as was famously said, is politics by another means - the lethal legacy of failed leadership, enabled, even ennobled, by propaganda, the partisan opiate of politics. It is good to be reminded, as my friend Louis so eloquently reminds us, that war is too important to forget, and that's one reason to observe Memorial Day. There is another - to hold before our face a mirror, so that we might see the images of war reflected in our own eyes."

Please go here for the full transcript and video: http://billmoyers.com/content/bill-moyers-essay-memorial-day/

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I am so deeply grateful for Bill Moyers who again and again and again reminds us of deeper truths by illuminating larger pictures than what we are presented with in American culture and by the corporate media which is invested in serving the Military Industrial Complex and the plethora of other faces of Dark Money which have permeated and poisoned our democracy. As Ron and I walked around our local Fred Meyer yesterday and I saw all these little American flags at the end of each check stand, my heart felt sickened. Because the story we are fed is that those who died in war died out of necessity and "for our freedom," rather than in support of wealthy transnational corporate interests. And then there are the veterans who suffer profoundly who survived the war only to come back with traumatic brain injuries and PTSD and addiction and depression and violence that they can't leave behind, with many - 22 each and every day - commiting the ultimate act of violence: suicide. It is so vital to stop sending our children to war to kill other people's children, which only serves to line the pockets of the wealthy while fueling violence and terroism rather than diminishing it. It is vital to stop the madness and horror and suffering and tragedy of war by exposing the deeper truths through countering the propaganda by giving voice to the reality of this shadow side to America and the belief systems that need transformation. War is not peace. Peace is the way. Another world is possible.

Peace ~ Molly


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