There it was, hiding behind that Paul Miller entry ...

The thing that's been troubling me for a very long time. It has to do with education in the abstract; what's happened to it, and of what that foretells about the future. Maybe what we have here is one of those assessments only available to those of us who've lived long enough to begin to connect the dots. Wonder if anyone will listen...? Those younger are busy creating those dots, which is as it should be, maybe.

If we really do understand that the nation's takeover began many years ago in a successful campaign that only now is unfolding in such broad strokes that few can deny its existence. If we now understand that it was a bold 30-year conspiracy with many players and hidden networks that became cross-generational and international. To this Fox Network-defiled mind, I've begun to see the Bohemian Grove gathering, the Tri-Lateral Commission, the Illuminati, and the Skull and Bones as one huge centuries-spanning conspiracy with a single common denominator -- white European descendant males! How's that for paranoia? Suddenly everything I've ever heard about such conspiratorial enterprises has melded into one giant mosiac with no international boundaries and a single goal; world domination by any means necessary.

The problem foreseen by the white elite in this country -- the singlemost powerful on the planet -- was that it was fast becoming one in which the European ruling class would be soon replaced by a society in which majority status would be lost to the "unwashed." It was only a matter of time. At least three irreversible factors were operating. Each spelled the eventual elimination of white dominance. One was the burgeoning immigration of Third World peoples flooding our shores and crossing our borders; another was dreaded mescegination, and the third was the birth of equal opportunity for non-whites in education and in the promise of access to the workplace. All threatened the continuance of white dominance. The militias and super-Christian preservationists were ham-fisted in their response to what they saw as a "white holocaust," while those in positions of unprecedented wealth and political power were clever and brilliantly manipulative with the ability to set in motion long range remedies to the threatened loss of control of the nation and, ultimately, the world. Control of the earth's resources was unquestionably the key; and for the moment, petroleum is king.

In this country, I was first aware of the assault upon public instruction under the administration of Ronald Reagan who gave the first signs by the attempt to abolish the Office of Education. Someone foresaw empowerment of the underclass as threatening to the existing political power structure. We, the people, should have seen it coming. But we felt protected by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, didn't we, without fear that these institutional powers could ever be eroded from within. How foolishly trusting. How naive, as time would soon prove.

The Right To Life movement never targeted black or brown abortion clinics as far as I know, in fact, many black women on welfare were undergoing mandatory tubal ligations at a time when Planned Parenthood was in constant threat of outright assassinations and bombings. Those most active among the Right to Lifers were and are white males, if you'll notice. White women are being forced to carry to term those precious little lives that will be sorely needed in the struggle to continue world dominance while black and brown babies are facing lifetimes of poverty and starvation from societal negligence. White women are being seen as little more than incubators for the next generation of rulers. It's a frightening step back into history to a time when women were little more than powerless possessions in a male-dominated world of empire builders. To their credit, many women are working hard to save themselves from such a fate. The current attempts at seating anti-abortion federal judges signals a reversal of Roe v. Wade and a return to women as chattel -- or to an American version of a pschological wearing of the burkah.

It matters little how multiracial or multicultural this nation becomes, the white "majority" will continue to see power to rule as its rightful legacy, and all others as less than equal by right of inheritance from the founding slave-owner fathers. They've created God in their own image and claim rights to all that flows from their creation. It's a complete bastardization of Christianity. And -- it's a cynical misuse of teachings that should have continued to nurture peace and love in the world for at least another half-century.

Thirty years out we're seeing massive disenfranchisement of non-white voters, funneling of young non-whites into the armed forces by virtue of lack of opportunity in the country's economic system; one in 3 black or brown men living behind bars in the greatest incarceration rates in the nation's history; the closing of the doors to higher education by pricing it beyond the reach of all but the offspring of the elite, and, by deconstruction of the system of public education that insures that only the elite will be capable of ruling. Many Black and Brown youngsters are winnowed out of the system through tracking by the time they reach upper middle school. In the state of California 49% of Black and Brown students drop out by the tenth grade. Despite desparate attempts at salvation by many highly motivated teachers and administrators, they're already lost to the deadly competitive underground economy fueled by drugs, untargeted rage, resulting in senseless death on the streets. They're as often as not slain by little more than ignorance and/or lack of opportunity for anything resembling the good life.

I strongly believe that the deconstruction of the nation's public schools in favor of privatization has guaranteed that white dominance will be assured throughout most of the next 50 years, at least, unless those proverbial dots begin to come together in ways that the mainstream can see their meanings and begin to stop the cabal in its tracks. The privatization of prisons has turned them into schools for crime and people banks in which to deposit all those we've failed to educate or socialize into the mainstream.

The battle over illegal immigration at our southern borders while no attention is paid to the northern borders is clear evidence that there's a major skin color problem here. Why are not the Minute Men militias gathering along the Canadian border?

I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that suggests that -- down deep -- I'm already convinced that it's too late to stop the juggernaut. There are so many fronts to be fought on simultaneously that the chance of winning back the country seems slight, indeed. Do we hit the streets to stop the war? Which war? Is there a chance in hell that joining the next march to Sacramento to challenge a corrupt governor's school budget cuts will make a difference? What about dealing with the micro? Is the macro simply too huge to take on without first creating enough man- and womanpower to assure success? And what will be the cost of waiting for some right time?

I don't have nearly enough understanding of the worldwide implications of what I seem to be culling from the almost hourly barrage of incoming news reports, but it's more and more difficult to find a local response to events that are so far beyond me. The temptation is to allow my mind to go numb and busy myself with what I can manage -- like can I really afford to continue to run my car on gasoline that's now hit $2.67/gallon? Or, why on earth did that wild-eyed young woman flee from her impending wedding? And, will West Wing and Judging Amy continue into the fall season and what on earth will happen to poor weird embattled Michael Jackson? And, will that obviously mentally-challenged young female soldier at Abu Graib really be forced to take the fall for higher ups who surely are culpable for the inhuman torture of prisoners? ...and why are there not women in the streets in protest?

Is the answer continuing to work through MoveOn and People for the American Way and reading TruthOut and Alternet, continuing to support the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU? Watching for signs of other like-minded folks to link to in order to continue to mount the challenge that may turn things back on course? Do I keep drawing spiritual sustenance from those whom I continue to admire as the selfless heroes who still have the power to stop us in our tracks by their courage and derring-do? There are those stalwarts like Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, and Pacifica's Amy Goodman, attorney and political activist Van Jones; cartoonist, Aaron Magruder; Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky who is using the arts to create revolution; columnists, NY Times' Frank Rich and the Berkeley Daily Planet's Jesse Douglas Allen-Taylor whose incisive writings stir action in others? They've all learned to magnify their voices through their ability to inspire others.

Sounds pretty depressing, right? I know. It all feels so hopeless -- and my inability to watch the smirky arrogant faces of Carl Rove, George W. Bush, Rumsfeld, et al, is beginning to rob me of any sense of control. How on earth can I find any pathways toward action if I can't even bring myself to see or listen to the voices that are ruling the day? They've seized the media and rule the legislative process by blurring the lines between all avenues to power.

Perhaps the answer is to take another drive out into the wildflowers bursting into bloom along the creekbeds and leave world-saving to those better equipped to deal with it... .

Maybe I just need a shot of whatever-it-is-that-deadens pain... .

Maybe I've earned that right.

Perhaps that's the privilege of age, and has always been. Recognition that the work will never be done before it's time to leave is -- maybe -- what creates the grand design of civilization by leaving tracks to follow and then making a timely stage exit into the unknown. None of us gets to ring down the final curtain or declare the game over ...

unless ...

we've been convinced of the certainty of and the need to work diligently to fulfill a biblical prophecy known as -- "The Rapture" --, or,

can control the dropping of the next nuclear bomb.


And when did I earn the right to speak only in declarative sentences? When I crossed the Rubicon of Old Ladydom and ...

if I can't do it now -- then when?