Mark Crispin Miller, the author of "The Bush Dyslexicon," once made a striking observation: all of the famous Bush malapropisms - "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family," and so on - have involved occasions when Mr. Bush was trying to sound caring and compassionate.

By contrast, Mr. Bush is articulate and even grammatical when he talks about punishing people; that's when he's speaking from the heart. The only animation Mr. Bush showed during the flooding of New Orleans was when he declared "zero tolerance of people breaking the law," even those breaking into abandoned stores in search of the food and water they weren't getting from his administration.

What's happening, presumably, is that modern movement conservatism attracts a certain personality type. If you identify with the downtrodden, even a little, you don't belong. If you think ridicule is an appropriate response to other peoples' woes, you fit right in.

—Conservatives Are Such Jokers, NYTimes

Pupae. Spiritual pupae. First Timers, we call them in the lavender glow of the Cosmic Skating Rinks.

We seem to have become very sophisticated in presentation and method. Why did we choose artifice and finesse over honest communication, as we have excelled and moved forward as a people? We could have taken our progress in any direction. We could be all learning how to better be true, to know our own truth, to speak it, to reach others, to see ourselves in every person, and to reach out to that person, that part of ourselves that the universe manifests in the Other. We could have brought forth a second renaissance of reason and expression...or maybe I dream. Dream deeply...sleep soundly, under the hum of the everpresent TV, eater of souls and free thought, eroder of society. Forget your own stories and your family's. Here are some we've cooked up for you. They will tell you how we do. And what do to do. And what to be.

TV or no TV, either way, it is obvious we have chosen to make our progress in areas of messaging, framing, manipulating. Now spying, always killing.

People are getting better and better—not at expressing and communicating what they want to say, but at hiding what they really mean. Getting better at getting others to do what we want, to feel what we want, to think what we want. Truth be damned. The word and idea is as quaint as those Geneva conventions.

In many areas, I see the fear, the hate rise, this energy, this wall of inhumanity, this barbed-wire reflex, these machine-gun movements aimed at hurting or hating as many people from Over There as possible. All the well-stoked loathing, it blends at moments. Iraq people. Mexican people. Blacks. Poor people. Gays. Transsexual people. Republicans. Libs. So many people getting ready to make more war. On the Other.

What are we reaching for, in our animosity and will to violence? If we don't know these people, they can only be symbols. Yet so many of us seek to kill them. To strangle and crush these symbols. What are you hating, hater? Who are you running from? What throat do your dreamhands reach for? What lightswitch can your benumbed fingers not find?

And for what? Who led us down this path of destruction? Who is leading us to harm, covering our eyes with a woolen charm? Why do we believe the only answer to violence is more violence? Arguments from both sides of our two-party wooden nickle buy the same sorry answer. End hate with hate. Fight fire with fire, end bombings with greater violence and control. Kill the terrorists. Before they kill us.

We are the terrorists. Don't you see?

And I don't even mean in a Noam Chomsky way (whom I almost always agree with, not always). Although it is completely true and worth mentioning his words "They are only terrorists when we are on the wrong side of the guns."

No, what I mean is that we need to see terrorism as if we wanted to understand the humanity of these people who choose such desperate and deviant means of wielding power. We are them. This is our world, we all live here and despite the names for our religions, we all worship the same things, the same might, lust for the same glory, and the same powers. Ultimately, we are all hurting from the same ailments in many forms, and stripped of the differences in scale and efficacy, we all mock and mimic each others' solutions to those pains. It wouldn't take much to get at the root of our ills. If we wanted to. Given true desire for understanding and action taken on that desire, we could understand these things in about five minutes.

Yes, children in the White House, we DO need to understand them. But you know the truth of this. And you know that empathy would be your undoing. Understanding all of it would mean seeing all these political and military machinations for what they are. Which is why you scoff, like ten-year old bullies afraid of big words, at the thought of "understanding the Terrorists."

But it is too late in the day to think you can just draw up walls, shake your fear-phallus, and crush any in opposition. There is too much opposition in your own land to do this. The people see the shadow of the Empire growing, and it falls upon them, cold, and foreboding. Stone veins snake out and steal energy, steal light, disturb the soil, poison the ground, disperse disaster.

Those people who were content to live their lives and let others be now feel the shadow, as it intrudes upon even their simple lives. Just as those who want to live without being watched every minute now feel the shadow. Just as those who want to send money to their familia in Cuba feel the shadow. Just as those who now sit on large lodes of oil feel the shadow, just as the campesinos en Mexico feel the shadow, just as the indigenous trying to live their lives feel the shadow, just as those people that want the USA's bases out of their lands feel the shadow. The larger this shadow grows—this cold spell of hunger and submission that the Empire and all its minions who seek its power casts over all—the greater number of people will grow cold. And the more people feel cold, the more will seek relief, and seek light.

The way to the sun will not be found through the barrel of your gun.

The barbaric gun vs gun philosophy, death vs death, might vs might, violence for violence paradigm that the government sells us is wrong. This only leads us to a more violent world, harsher measures of punishment and surveillance, more police, more deaths, more fear. This will draw the divisions harsher. Deeper between poor and rich, between light and dark, between Elite and Rabble. Which is why some sign on so heartily. They understand what the "Terror" is that they war against. It is not Arabs. It is not car bombs. It is the terror that the Heap will collapse. That the divisions are being attacked.

This is why the War on Terror is not our war. It is the war for those who want those divisions drawn deeper. This does not serve you and me. We must stop buying into it in all ways. It is a trick and a trap. Think of all those who want this war. I promise you they have reasons to draw divisions. Where are their feet?

Do you?

No matter how many walls and drones and DNA checkpoints a government creates, it cannot corral the truth. It will rise. Resistance to what is true only hurts s/he who resists. It does not deny truth. It cannot. As they say, "what will be, will be." This doesn't just mean "Oh, Que sera, sera." It means that what is meant to be WILL be. Despite all the tortured movements you make in hopes of wrangling away from it.

Why now are you deciding to hate The Iranian? You don't know. Our government and the news people say that we hate The Iranian. People rise up and agree. Curse Columbia University, didn't you know? Evil Hath Landed????!! Worse than a television audience, this crowd, this jeering crowd hoping for the hangman. You never thought for yourself, and its too hard to begin now.

I think sometimes some people don't really care about a Why. It feels good to hate. As a song I wrote in '92 said, it is Easy to Hate. Even the laziest child can do it. Even the most unskilled, unworthy, uncaring and undeveloped soul can do it as well as anyone else. Hating takes no time, no work, no challenge. You simply cease resisting your own entropy and fly into the dim parts of your heart. It feels comforting to fall. It feels strong to take aim at something. Like scratching infection forbidden.

You can see it on a collective level, sure. Damn it we need to be mighty again. We need to kill people. To bomb something. Machine guns at the border. Aliens. Crossing our borders. Sneaking in our airports. Living off our taxes. The devils are after me. Dark devils are after all of us.

But you see it on a personal level, too. Hey, we can even see it on ourselves. Which is probably where we ought to spend more time pointing. The most dangerous and capable antagonist and obsructionist is not at the border or in the closet or the airport. It's your own mind. It lives wrapped tight in a threadbare shawl of fear.

I was reading about Blackwater. I think we are in a story. And I think Blackwater is a ghost or evil spirit that we have given life to. It is our dark side, the hidden fruits of our very system. And just look how it thrives now, even exposed to the light.

First of all. Unless you are in a children's fantasy book for the first time, you don't need to discuss the benefit or cost of having a company called "BLACKWATER" involved in matters of life and death. The fact that this is the name that guides the company's feel, agenda, and purpose, I'd say it's a no brainer. That is not the name of a beneficent outfit, or one prone to hosting ethics seminars during down time.

BLACKWATER is the name of our collective thirst for and addiction to violence given shape. BLACKWATER is the manifestation of amorality willed forth as a tool to enable the Shortcut to work. It is our approved disapproved way of operating. We outsource morality so that we can run wild in our darkest desires. Politicians hire them as security because they want to live, no matter what. If these mercenaries cross some line in doing this, that is worth it to them. The cost is not hidden. It is agreed upon. Just foist it off to BLACKWATER, they know no law, they only run wild in the land of the Iraki-Beast, they only kill unreal people. The government wants BLACKWATER to exist because the War on the Strategic Ellipse cannot take place without these people. Everyone who is getting away with something in this latest crime against humanity needs BLACKWATER to exist. They are our prized/denied. We made them, and they, too are us.

The people in Blackwater, given what is obvious to me as well as judging by the many reports of their behavior in Iraq, use BLACKWATER in the same way. This is the place they can let the demons loose. They join this outfit understanding that they are outside of any moral obligations. They can cut loose. They understand why people use them. I don't know on what phrase the wink and nod land, but I know they are there. Blackwater is the child of all of us. We want to stuff it in the closet when it wails too much, or brings home bad marks, or gets expelled. But it is ours, and we created it.

BLACKWATER is not a cancer on our upstanding war operations! (And neither was Abu Ghraib a bunch of bad apples.) They are a wart, just a more obvious symptom of a virus that runs through our national and international and social agendas. We want certain things. We don't care if not everyone can have them or if our getting them makes some people suffer. We we are willing to pay any price for those certain things. We try to keep the price hidden. But when the tab starts getting very high, perhaps it gets harder to keep out of sight. Maybe someone begins waving a piece of paper in your face and demands a cashout. Blackwater is a monster we have breathed life into, a zombie bartender who won't go away, who demands his pay.

It seems to me that those things we overlooked once upon a time, or those ideas we tried to pretend weren't a threat are becoming more of a threat. I think we see symptoms now of an illness in many different places. And illness that we have let fester for far too long. And the threat that now evidences itself is maybe not always to us personally. But I think we all need to take this type of behavior as a very serious threat to our collective humanity and social fabric. I mean the behavior of BLACKWATER, I mean nooses being brandished, I mean Mexicans being demonized, I mean turning our backs on the poor. I mean this Us Vs. Them thing.

If we need an Us vs. Them, let us make it Us-Who-Care-About-All-of-Us vs. Them-Who-Care-Only-For-Themselves.

The harm done is all one and the same. Waving nooses, shooting people who run to a land of plenty to keep the plenty to yourself, selecting one group of children who may suffer over another who we will help, allowing mercenaries to run wild in MurderLand—this is a rot that grows rampant from our neglect and our greed and a general lack of wisdom and empathy with all life on this planet. From a subscription to tall tales, an habituation to emptying pails of runoff into the ground where we sow what it is we eat. This rot stinking up our pretty garden spells entropy and the gradual dissolution of all people and our planet. This illness underlying, this ailment in our human soul will grow larger by our ignoring it any longer. Or by ducking for cover when we hear ghouls in the street, in the public square, on the radio; we don't escape this malaise by renaming it, or blaming it on Rush and Billo. We must all be vocal, in all and any company, about what we stand for in all these contexts. And divided into all our smaller fights, we give up the advantage of indomitable force that Good always has over Evil.

We must value the health and heart of all humans, not just white ones, not just American ones, not just Liberal ones, not just straight ones. We must stand for Good, for the Good of all, even the poor, even the filthy, even the unappealing, even the feared. We must join hands and be larger.

It's radioactive, stance and attitude. It's radioactive, acceptance or rejection of a meme, a social current, an emotional and spiritual virus, a deadly and popular fad. It is catching, a sense of conviction. It is teaching, to speak on what's Right.

The time is now. A rot grows on our collective bounty, ghosts again rise from this mowed-over green. If we ignore them, they continue to animate our hands when we are not looking, they continue to poison us as we sleep.

We must know we are in a new time, where what we say and do and what forces we feed matter greatly. It always has been so. But now more than ever it is time to take a position, and to make an unmistakable stand.