by James Glaser
October 21, 2002

Yes, I think "sad" is the right word to use when talking about the mood in this area of the country. People are talking about a Sniper in the Washington DC area and are wondering if they will ever catch him or will he be like the Anthrax killer of last year. People are talking about the non- debate in Congress about attacking Iraq, where those against the war were mostly shut out.

Many people of all ages talk about how this President is following in Bill Clintons footsteps and lying to the American people while looking them in the eye. Like many rural areas we have many older Americans that are being robbed by drug companies. I know that many people are making hard choices about how they spend their money and health care is taking a big bite out of their budget.

Here we are in Rural America 160 miles to a mid size city (Duluth) and 250 miles to a Big city (Minneapolis/Saint Paul). Even with the safety of distance any kid can get any drug he wants right out here in the sticks. Washington's War on Drugs is making lots of rich people richer, while killing many dirt poor farmers in South America. The War on Drugs is filling prisons to overflowing and now America has more people in prison than any other country on this globe.

Our War on Terrorism is only making more terrorists with every innocent mother or child we kill and we are killing, yes, thousands. Spraying nasty chemical herbicides on tens of thousands of acres of farmland in South America. The same land that innocent people live on and grow their vegetable gardens on. We are also spraying the rivers and streams that they drink from and bathe in. America has become a terrorist nation on a grand scale because we can not control our own appetite for cocaine

American corporations have moved the good paying manufacturing jobs from the USA to third world countries that have no rules on employment nor environmental laws. These corporations can destroy whole communities with their dumping of hazardous waste and when the people start dying they can move to another country.

American groups that speak out about how these poor people are being treated are branded as "ecofreaks." People that don't care about the American economy and will hurt industry to save some rivers and streams that aren't even in this country.

Things are starting to change and it took some one as awful as George Bush the Younger to wake America up. Trade unions have now found that those environmentalists are not trying to take their jobs from them, but George Bush is. Some main line Christian churches are starting to see that America is no longer out to help the poor, but make money off of them.

Americans are sad now, when they figure out what our country and our government is doing in their name. In the not to distant future those same Americans that still believe in the things that our country was founded on will rise up, not in violence, but in the election box and remove the sickness that has infested Washington.

At one time in my life I would have thought of violence as the answer, but that is what President Bush wants. He wants to tighten the laws to such a point that he can put away anyone he wants, with no charge, no trial, and no court system. He is doing that already to some American citizens and it makes me sick.

Nonviolence by the masses is the only thing George is not prepared to take on. I have no doubt that he and his cronies have a plan for Marshall Law if any excuse is given to them. Hey they had that Patriot Act already to go before that hole in New York had even stopped burning.

Homeland Defense is just another way to break the unions that work for the federal government and will be an easy setup to George Bush's Gestapo. Yes, there will be knocks on the door in the middle of the night and many innocent American citizens will suffer before George Bush is voted out of office. We know and that makes us sad.

It will take a long time of "fence mending" before America can get out from under the fear of terrorist attacks. Remember it took many years of abuse by America's minions that we have kept in power all over this globe. It also took a lot of years for those people that were getting oppressed to figure out that it was America that was propping the dictator who was abusing them.

I truly wish none of this was true, but it has just been the last twenty years that Americans started seeing what we were doing to other countries. Every group that has fought for freedom in this hemisphere has been thwarted from that goal by our government. Washington has gone so far as to sell arms to one terrorist group to get money to help another terrorist group.

Sad, embarrassed, or ashamed, any of these words could be used to describe how more and more Americans are feeling about our government.