To the rest of the world we are a young nation. We have been watched at times with curiousity, at other times with envy, by the poor and downtrodden hopeful and now fearful eyes as if we were entering our terrible teens. With our resources and work ethic, we became a wealthy nation. With our technology we became a world power. Some of our leaders have seen this as a great moral responsibility and acted accordingly. Some see it as the means to gain more wealth and power and cloud their ambitions with deceptions and lofty words.
These leaders are easily recognized, for they do not speak of responsibility or morality. They speak of justifications and means to an ends flowered by ideals.
The rest of the world does not see these ideals. They see and hear missiles, bombs and bullets. They see death, dying and disfigurement. They look at the nation that caused this and ask, why are they pretending to solve the problems of the world when they can't solve their own?
We are a young nation, we do not question what other nations think. We do not answer questions, for like all youth, we have all the answers. We do not know or care what it feels like to be invaded and ruled by a foreign people. We do not know or care to understand the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. We do not ask. We don't know or care how many times they have been invaded and by whom. In one's teens one does not question "might makes right," "survival of the fittest," "Manifest Destiny," for youthful exuberance declares itself invulnerable. Being invulnerable we do not need to question how our will became God's will. We do not need to ponder why our religion reverted back to Old Testament and became incorporated into government. There is no need to question what happened to the New Testament when might makes right.
In our short history, we have become a divided nation once again. This time it is not our fellow men but our ideals that have been enslaved, and an emotional subconscious war rages in our minds. (Do we trade freedom and ideals for comfort or comfort for freedom and ideals?)
Those who seek freedom lament for a leader. The brilliance and compassion of a Thomas Jefferson, a theosophist who spoke of the ideal of a utopian society made up of individuals who have no government and who enjoy complete freedom. These words alone would leave one locked up in a sanatorium or Guantanamo Bay. No, a Jefferson will not be able to answer the call.
George Washington's moral New Testament philosophy would be called naïve and foolish. He would be told to take his blinders off. He would be told the world has been redefined by George Bush and Osama bin Laden, and terrorism and oil and vested interests. He would be told this nation has answered, and freedom and ideals must not compromise commercialism. If he were to morally disagree, he would be plagued with a multitude of justifications. He would be told:
The people are curious if our new Manifest Destiny policy will take us where we want to go. For our safety, we need to convert the world to our image. For our life style to continue we must seize the world's oil supplies, so we will have cheap unlimited oil as long as we need it. We must forego democracy in the name of democracy to achieve this. If all this leads to Armageddon, then "bring it on," for is it not inevitable anyway? Our labeler and "decider" is only fulfilling a prophecy. No one would look into George Washington's eyes as they said this, though.
No, a leader will not save us from ourselves for we are the ones who have been wearing blinders.
We are a young nation. In our youthful arrogance, we realize but will not admit that we have become mass hypnotized by our fear, tunnel visioned by our narcissism and now, religioned by an Old Testament God. We hide our embarrassment by blaming the world for our confusion and mask our tunnel vision by our wealth and power. Secretly, though, in our hearts we know better.
We have become a divided people, for we are standing at a crossroad and neither path leads to where we want to go. If we could only pause for a moment to think instead of react we might take neither path. We might want to apologize to the rest of the world for our immature narcissism and youthful exuberance. We might make the conscious effort to try and understand the dream of the leader (who cannot surface) we lament for. We might take the time to think about what he meant by anarchy being a utopia. We might realize the sublime truth that if the people of this nation become moral, spiritual and original thinkers then there would be no need for leaders or followers. We might finally understand the leaders he spoke of were freedom and wisdom leading themselves. If we could only understand this, we might be able to express this incredible concept of freedom.
Then our bombs, missiles and guns would be nothing more than a deterrent. Imagine if the rest of the world liked what it saw, then all deterrents would only be a distant memory. We could choose this, we could courageously take our blinders off. We could become America the Beautiful.
We could leave our blinders on and live with war, perpetually.
It is our choice, not a leader we cry for or a leader we have. Our awakening from our narcissised slumber might be shocking and emotionally painful, for it has been a long slumber, yet could anything be as painful as living with war, perpetually?