Liars & Haters & Poseurs, Oh My!

“They speak of god and country, wave flags they claim to love, plant their flagpoles into our Native brethren’s backs. The god they speak of does not deserve a capital G—he has no mercy, no power beyond the power to buy. Their god’s churches are called Bank, Stock Exchange, Goldman-Sachs.”—Helen Noakes

Waking Point

By Helen Noakes

“Hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy.”—Liu Xiaobo

SAN FRANCISCO California—(Weekly Hubris)—8/10/2015—They say they don’t want us here—us immigrants with no papers to permit our presence. As if words on paper are worth more than the paper they’re written on. They call us vile names, accuse us of heinous crimes, these white folks with distorted faces, these usurpers in a foreign land.

How quickly they’re forgotten their own trespass on our Native brethren’s land, their own crimes of murder, torture, rape—not only of the people they called Indians, but of a land that once was pure majesty. Their elimination of creatures who once roamed these prairies, mountains, woods, committed for blind greed, was unprecedented.

They speak of god and country, wave flags they claim to love, plant their flagpoles into our Native brethren’s backs. The god they speak of does not deserve a capital G—he has no mercy, no power beyond the power to buy. Their god’s churches are called Bank, Stock Exchange, Goldman-Sachs.

They claim that this land they pounded into submission is the greatest on earth, that they are the saviors of the world. They send young people to die in foreign conflicts telling them they are fighting for god and country. What they don’t tell us is that these conflicts have only one purpose, to enable them to line their own pockets, to savor the taste of power, gorge on oil, mineral rights, and “strategic territories.” What they will never admit is that they themselves, their sons and daughters, will never be sent to die. It is the sons and daughters of the 99 percent they send as battle fodder, the 99 percent whose sentiments they whip up with lies of patriotism and valor.

They point to us as predatory miscreants, never acknowledging the atrocity of slavery which their forebears committed against our Black brothers and sisters. And if you believe that’s history, simply see the evidence of their continued contempt for the descendants of the Africans they transported to this country like cattle.

They feel entitled to subvert the rights of women; of men and women whose sexual orientation does not conform to theirs.

Rest assured that it isn’t just Hispanics, Blacks, Native Americans, Asians and Muslims they hate. They despise original thought, the ambition, creativity, resilience, and education of the 99 percent. They regard humanity as a source of income, a commodity to be traded but never respected. They promote mediocrity, purveying the opiates of consumerism, prejudice, and a deformed, oppressive, false religious ethic. They control and pay high prices for a lie-and-hate-spouting media, distorting the second amendment so that their robotic “believers” continue to sanction the daily slaughter of innocents.

Killing is the business of a great majority of these deluded folks, and business is good. They would see the poor, the infirm, those who do not conform to their metal-jacket caste system held in bondage to their scheme of control.

I am proud to say that I am an immigrant. My family and I came to this country when I was 14. We waited eight years for our visas. Fortunately, we waited in a country that was not oppressing us. But the latter is not always true of the people who come to America.

My family had such high hopes when we arrived. We all worked, never once asked for financial assistance, never broke the law, and yet my father was ridiculed for his accent and was only able to find menial jobs. It broke his spirit and his heart. My mother struggled to find work as a bookkeeper, a job she had done for years. After a series of dreadful jobs, she finally landed on her feet, here in San Francisco, where being a foreigner is not seen as something tantamount to being a mass murderer.

When I was in college, I took a summer job at a major bank. An overfed woman in their personnel department called me “one of those” when I gave her my green card. She said it as if I had a bad smell. Never a shrinking violet, I asked her if she was Native American. She indignantly replied, “No.”

“Then you’re an illegal immigrant,” I retorted.

Shut her up.

If you think I’m angry, or I hate these people, think again. I pity them, but I also know that they need to be brought to their senses. It is they who need to be controlled, because they have succumbed to the basest and most destructive of human instincts. With this article, I am simply doing what every human rights organization has done successfully for years—expose the predators, shine a light on their predatory behavior, demand that they stop. But my voice is not enough.

There was a reason for my listing the behavior of a few in power positions in our country, because what they are doing is dangerously close to violations of human rights. If you can’t see that, please reread what I’ve written, and please tell me which of their tactics you condone.

I’m sounding an alarm bell, asking you to wake up. It’s not enough to moan and groan about what’s going on. What happens next to you, to the ensuing generation, is up to you, and you cannot afford to wait and see. Stand up, be counted, vote, write, speak up, rally, petition, gather signatures: in short, be active in the political process. Drown out the hate-talk, expose the lies and, for God’s sake (this one deserves a capital “G”), don’t stop.

The question is who’s reading this? Who takes me seriously? Who gives a damn?

Never mind. I’ll keep writing.

Note: We include above here a Ben Sargent editorial cartoon that writer Helen Noakes loves.