Deconstructing deadlocks

A rancorous tide of deadlocked issues is rising to create a nationally historic flood. Remember when we had a more independent media which facilitated honest debate of real issues? Back then, deadlocks were deconstructed. One or both sides won because truth was employed to deconstruct the deadlocks. We had a freer press, honest investigative journalism, and much less simple regurgitation of party lines of conspiring government-big business oligarchies.

When I came home from college in the mid-sixties, I had formed a new interest in national politics. Investigative reporters with Reuters and the NY Times wrote about President Nixon's secret commitment of our nation's armed forces in the nation of Cambodia. American blood was being shed in a secret war. American bombing pilots crashed in inaccessible places. Bodies were not recovered. The official Pentagon news was that they all died in Vietnam. Nixon fought to keep the war secret, but after the Pentagon papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg and were carried by the entire media, the deadlock began to be deconstructed. Then, Watergate happened.

After my mother found out about Watergate, her faith in God and country was shaken. To her, God had placed Richard Nixon into the nation's presidency. That meant opposing him was like opposing God.

"Mom," I said, home from college on Christmas vacation in the late sixties, "If Nixon is a Christian, he's not our kind of Christian. He lies, cheats, and has blood on his hands—blood of American soldiers."

She cried. I was mortified. She had experienced the deconstruction of a deadlock which had been built by the media over Richard Nixon's integrity.

This personal deadlock with my mother was the first I had ever experienced with my family over politics. Across the country, information the media released which showed President Nixon had indulged in criminal behavior was pitted against the traditional views of people like my mother. The deadlock was deconstructed with real information. It was stressful, but keeping Nixon's secrets was far from our best interests.

We were fortunate then to have independent investigative reporters – we don't have many anymore. With the internet, we can access international sources like The Guardian, Ha'aretz or Al Jazeera. Wikileaks is piercing the wall of secrecy erected by our government-business collusion, and doing it for our ultimate national interests. Yet, Wikileaks has been soundly attacked and discredited to the max possible by our government's military-industrial complex. Some of us are familiar with this deadlock.

This brings up our central deadlock desperately needing deconstruction. Some people say our response to 9/11 was right. Others say we are wrong. It's a deadlock going way back. Deconstruction will ultimately reveal government, religious and political leaders have led us down the wrong path – leading us anywhere and doing anything to anyone we happen to momentarily hate.

What do we get from being the world's policeman? Enormous national debt, cuts of essential services and inevitable tax increases used to take over lands and send record numbers of military and private citizens to build military bases in the ludicrous quest of being the world's policeman. We invoke fear of imprisonment, torture and death in anyone who opposes the friends we have chosen to support on foreign soil. In doing so, we have ruined indigenous infrastructures far more capable of fighting against the hatred we deplore. We have failed to deconstruct the deadlocks which mistakenly diagnose our much-hyped religious and political fears as a reason to war.

As a nation, we can still build on our primary strength: our citizen's capacity to address wrongs and make them right. Neither our government nor its wealthy corporate controllers will. This is demonstrated by the immense profiteering of publicly endorsed private sectors during our recent wars.

We have an awesome history of a strength that now trumps our capacity for war. We faced down the wall of racial segregation in America and deconstructed intractable deadlocked issues with their false perceptions. We won battles in Birmingham, Atlanta, Selma, and the entire South for a fair and just society. It doesn't get nearly as much attention as bombs and bullets, but we can do it again.

Last week, the largest statue on the mall in Washington, D. C. was dedicated to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He battled the wave of deadlocked racial animosity that escalated into enormous civil unrest and shed his life-blood doing so. In deconstructing the deadlocked racial divide in America, the primary battle he won for the nation was the battle against our second civil war. That war was beginning in the early sixties and many warfare experts said then it was inevitable. It didn't happen. The American civil war of the 1960's was defeated. See Dr. Vincent Harding's recent book, Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero. It's a book founded on the true strength of America.