Through the Looking Glass...

I had a dream the other night - nightmare actually. It was absolutely horrible. Terrifying.

Everything seemed normal. People went to work. Lived their daily lives. They seemed oblivious, but something was deeply, sickly wrong. It hung like a thick invisible cloud over me, my friends, family - over the country. I looked around to see what it was, but I could only see glimpses. Awful images in the corner of my eye that were far too devastating to face directly. An awful tragedy. The screaming of jets overhead followed by thousands dead in thunderous column of smoke, fire and dust. Bodies crushed into powder.

I turn away, but everywhere I look - it's worse.

The sounds of machines, tanks, explosions, far over the hill - out of sight - out of mind. Cordite burns my nose. Blood trickling into the gutters. Getting thicker every hour. Not too quickly so that the people walking by notice. They still shop, and dine alfresco - they still laugh - but they can smell it. I know they can.

I can see a TV. The News doesn't explain the blood. They speak of weapons not found. Urgent Memos ignored. Meetings not held. Desperate requests for assistance and a change in strategy unheeded. The President talks about our enemies and their relentlessness. He says that we are in the midst of a great stuggle of civilizations, one we can not afford to lose. He rails at those who disagree with him, even within his own party and says it's "Unimaginable to think"...anything other than what he tells us to think. He says that the opposing party has grown weak, would "appease" that enemy. His Secretary of Defense warns of their "Moral Confusion". The Speaker of House says they want to coddle terrorists.

War heroes are accused of being cowards if they dare criticize the President and his policies. Diligent CIA operatives working to uncover the missing weapons have their covers blown for the sake of political expediency. Jobs to help the public and reconstruct the destruction of war are doled out based on someones political leanings, not their qualifications.

A young woman walks into a shopping center, opens her jacket to reveal blocks of some substance taped to her body and then disappears in a flash of light and smoke. The screams are deafening. It happens again. And again... and again.

Through the thickening smoke I see children being raped by soldiers with our flag on their shoulder.

I see innocent men, women and children being rounded up - hooded, freezing, doused in cold water, nearly drown while held upside-down, buffetted by loud noises - unable to sleep for days, weeks even - some are sexually assaulted, but no one hears their cries. No one can move to aid them.

No judge will take their case. No trial is scheduled. No charges filed. No relief is possible. Habeaus Corpus is obliterated, like in the country of some third-world tin-pot dictator. But that country is now our home.

The sound becomes background noise against the sound of the traffic, everyone is too busy... in too much of a hurry to worry about that nagging inch on the back on their ear. So they shove the earphones of an IPOD into them. 2000 songs in your pocket - more than enough to cover up the smoke, the stench, the blood. It's too much trouble to scratch that inch, too dangerous. And when the IPOD stops working they keep themselves too busy to be concerned by watching the unfolding mystery and saga of a latest lone single missing blonde teacher/cheerleader/bride/debutante/pagentress/ex-model/stripper.

Shocking Bread. Aweful Circuses.

Our leaders bleat about a "Culture of Life" yet hundreds of thousands are slaughtered by warring tribes in Africa and our government does nothing, then vows to stay the course on that plan of inaction.

A massive storm approches and leaves a devastated American city in it's wake. Those who promised to protect us, to shelter us from such storms - stand by and withhold supplies while the city drowns in it's own sewage. More thousands die. Some claim the survivors are better off living as homeless "refugees" than in poverty. Only a few are offended by the crassness of the remark.

I feel like I'm being watched. I want to call someone, but I'm afriad. The phones are tapped. All of them. No warrants are issued, none are needed the President claims. Our emails are being tracked. Our libraries are being monitored.

We have to be afraid of what we say, who we talk too, how we think. I refuse, knowing that it puts everyone I love at risk. But the real truth is - no one is listening. Not anyone that counts. Not the public, they've gone voluntarily deaf and blind to the carnage.

One lone broadcaster dares to speak up, only to become the target of a mock domestic terrorist attack.

Allegations of voter fraud abound, but aren't taken seriously. We try to fence ourselves off from the world, but the real dangers are from inside the walls, not outside.

Yet -- at the same time, a male prostitute pretending to be a reporter can walk in and out of the White House a hundred times and no one notices. Congressmen are taking bribes from one of the White Houses best friends, Cavorting with hookers, even soliciting from the male teenage pages who attend them. No one in Congress asks what happened to the armor our troops were supposed to receive, no one asks why their water is contaminated, no one asks why civilian contractors receiving 5-times their pay for doing the same job, while the red-ink side of the ledger is starting to cover the entire page and flow directly into the torrent of blood filling the gutters. American blood and Iraqi blood. Our blood. Our treasure. Wasted.

It seems there's no way to staunch the flow. No way to end the suffering. Even with the ruling party now in complete, total disgrace and failure it still seems that they just might retain control, barely - How is that even possible? How is that even conceivable?

And still from the people there is no outcry - oh, surely in some corners I can hear the frustration, the rage building - but only on the so-called "lunatic" fringes. The average person, living the Walmart-life, feeling safe and secure in their ignorant bliss - I hear nothing, until I wake up screaming.

At which point I realize, as of course you well know if you've read this far, it was no dream.

But it is indeed, a nightmare.

Vyan