One person that Caliban is counting on most, to help guide usin finding our way back to sanity, (in the governance of our lives and nationalaffairs), is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. I most certainly count him among thefront ranks of my own “really good ones”, and he is a recipient of Caliban’srepeated impositions on so many prominent people’s time. (Whether the busycolonel bothers to read my tedious recountings of my fretful worries isunknown).

As a reminder for those who don’t know, Colonel Wilkerson was Colin Powell’schief-of-staff, both when General Powell was the highest ranking officer in themilitary, and when he went on to be US Secretary of State under Bush theYounger.

In my own spotty reading, (Caliban does his best), of ColonelWilkerson’s work, it seems that at some point in his career he came toexperience a rather sudden, and certainly transformative, expansion in his personalconsciousness. He came to ‘see’ things that he could not, or did not ‘see’ whenhe assisted Secretary of State Powell in helping the blood-thirsty neo-ConZionists of the Bush regime, lusting unashamedly for 'absolute power', ("full spectrum dominance" they called it), to invade Iraq, after a brutal “Shock and Awe”bombing of its cities.

For those who don’t remember, in the early first minutes of“Shock and Awe”, (the neo-Cons’ own prideful name for their evil behavior), wewere treated to live footage overlooking Bagdad, as the truly, staggeringly,shocking spectacle of the power of high explosives of the greatest magnitude raineddown on a defenseless population. A few woeful Iraqi anti-aircraft gunssputtered here and there, uselessly drawing dramatic tracer lines to decoratethe macabre scene as the cruise missiles delivered their deadly cargos. (It waspretty much “defenseless”.).  

Those people who perpetrated that blatantly proud crimeagainst Humanity were so deranged, so demented, so morally depraved, that theywere actually so proud of their shocking barbarity that they showed it to uslive, in real time, in our own living rooms, on TV.

In my considerable shock, (to be sitting in my own home, in the verynation perpetrating the barbarity, watching said barbarity live on TV), Ithought of the scene in the movie ‘Manhunter’ where the deranged and cunninglypsychotic serial killer says, “You owe me more than fear. You owe me more thandread. You owe me AWE”. 

Our nation, by our deeds, stood before all Humanity, andmade that deranged psychotic killer’s statement. “You owe The Empire AWE!”     

“Shock and Awe” … Live on CNN … (and every other channel) …

Even as Secretary Powell did his duty, a subtle perplexedfurrow in his expressive brow seemed to belie the well-practiced sincerity of aman confident of his own moral certainty.

Secretary Powell, and no doubt his own trusted aides aswell, trusted the cooked intelligence. They trusted people who were not worthyof trust.

Should Secretary Powell have known? Yea … Well … A soldieris trained to duty … To follow orders … To trust the chain of command … Yea …The Nuremberg Principle looms, but has never really been exactly defined … Whenshould an officer break, or even consider breaking, the chain of command? When should a soldier disobey a command? 

He surely must have had some inkling, (that furrowed brow?),but when the bugle blows, sabers are drawn, and spurs are set to every horses’haunches … The time for questioning is done …  The time for action has come … And every brave soldier doesher or his duty…

Some of us could see the obvious … We could think rationallyeven in the face of the Mass Media echo chamber’s mind-numbing onslaught. Theyhad Hussein where they wanted him. Demanding that he give up what they KNEW hedid not have.

They did this right in front of us, right out in broaddaylight, right before our very eyes. Bush himself told jokes about the Big Lie, the WMD that were never found. And then, with Cheney’s Machiavelliansneer on all their faces, they looked us in the eye, gave all decent Humanity‘the finger’, and said, “we’re an Empire now, and when we act we make our ownreality”

America uber alles!

***

I don’t know anything about Colin Powell these days. He isno doubt prospering on what must be a very generous set of government pensions.One can only wonder what new consciousness has come upon him in the years sinceit was definitively proven that he had acted, (wittingly or not), as a song-and-dance ‘front man’ forevil-doing.

A good man had allowed himself to be used by evil people todo evil. (Can we speak the simple truth and call rendering innocent people tobloody meat because their nation’s leader, its head of state, would not followUS orders, what it is? Is there a better word for it than “evil”?)

As we all soon learned, there never were any “WMD”, of anykind, in Iraq.

It was all a self-aware lie. They deliberately, with verykeen malice aforethought, “cooked the intelligence”. Then they got the perfectguy to prop up to use his well-earned credibility to ‘sell’ their murderouslyevil scheme.  

And ‘they’ were PROUD of their evil cunning, and were especiallyproud to have duped a person of General Powell’s stature into being the keyfulcrum of their evil plot to ‘sell’ lies in order to dupe our nation intocommitting barbarous brutality on our fellow citizens of this forlorn planet.

We all surely know the story of Paul, and the meaning of theterm “on the road to Damascus”. At some point in his own witness of events asthey have unfolded, Colonel Wilkerson apparently came to a fuller understandingof what he was witnessing, as he watched things happen in the light of his rolein helping to cause them.

It is a powerful moral position to stand and testify beforeall ones’ compatriots: “I know the evil that was done, in great detail. I knowbecause I was there, I was ‘inside’, I helped do it. My mind and heart haveopened to now see the evil I helped do, and my shame has taken the morepositive form of a driving passion to rectify the consequences of what I havedone”.

I have never heard or read of Colonel Wilkerson sayinganything exactly like that, but to me, (in Caliban’s mountain-ape sense, somuch to ponder in best tree over good bananas), as far as I am familiar withthe good Colonel’s work, he is driven, by the passionate energy of an epiphanalawakening, to right the wrongs that have been done.

He is a person of great stature, because he knows ‘firsthand’. When the great machine grinds through it’s dangerous and often deadlymotions, Colonel Wilkerson knows how its fine gears and great levers move.

Please understand that I do not know Colonel Wilkersonpersonally. I have only met him long enough to shake his hand, after anexcellent two-hour (or more) talk and presentation he gave up in New Hampshirea couple or few years ago. He does a lot of very good video work online,(though the video quality is often not that good, just his mug straight intohis laptop in his study). How much does he travel to speak ? … I have no idea.

But I can tell you that when he speaks, we all shouldlisten. His voice should be heard much more clearly, by many more people, thanit now is.

But all my praise here for the good Colonel is respectful prefaceto my disagreement with a thesis he presents in a recentarticle, (which people can read here).    

I’ll not present more than an outline of an argument of myown in my friendly and respectful rebuttal. I would not roil these already turbulentwaters even further disagreement if I did not think this is a crucially important aspect forus all to understand.

I agree that Trump must be removed from office. I just don’tagree that it is the bells-clanging five-alarm sirens-blaring emergency thatthe most dominant and powerful faction, among the syndicated Elites who ruleover us, wants us to think it is.

I’m not 100% sure that Colonel Wilkerson realizes that, whatever his own reasoning may be, he is cheerleading for that dominant faction’sagenda, while telling us we should "forget" that faction. 

I would be more comfortable with his promotion of oustingTrump from office as an ‘emergency status priority’ if he had more to say aboutan awareness of the atmosphere that may very well be left behind should Trumpbe driven from office “by any means necessary”.

Trump’s ‘support base’ may have shrunk somewhat, (so ‘they’say, but only a foolish general would trust intelligence coming from anadversary), but whatever is left is ‘dug in’ and ready.

Maybe there’s a few less, but we’re still talking about tensupon tens of millions of our fellow citizens, among them many of the yeomenfolk of the nation, who believe with self-righteous ‘religious’ passion thatTrump represents them in a ‘just cause’.

A disturbingly large percentage of our nation’s yeomen folkare seeing the best interests and good fortunes of foreign born immigrantspromoted above their own, and, in fact, to their very sharply disastrous detriment.

VERY large numbers of people have had their lives impactedin disastrous degree by the massive tsunami of immigration that has beendeliberately engineered since the signing of NAFTA by the Clintonistas in December of 1993.

Repeat … (for emphasis) … These people believe their causeis JUST … and many may very well believe that it is a ‘blood cause’. We’retalking about the welfare of these people’s families.  

What does Colonel Wilkerson suggest we use on these, ournation’s folk, when they stand to defend their 'just cause'? Water cannon? Vicious dogs? Poison gas? Clubs? These people are,for the most part, well-armed. How far does the Colonel suggest we be preparedto go?

The police are all ‘ready’. They have heavy armoredvehicles, automatic weapons mounted in turrets, in armory garages somewhere inevery important city. Urban police are all outfitted with heavy personal bodyarmor and assault weapons.

“I can hire half the working class to kill the other half” …Jay Gould

This is REAL, folks …

We have an election in one year. That’s barely enough timefor any credible candidate to even prepare the ground.

There is no way to know what degree of ‘uprising’ mightoccur if Trump is ‘railroaded’ from office. Voting him out of office has manyadvantages, only one of which is that Trump’s confused followers won’t have any‘casus belli’, and we can have more time to use to win over their hearts and mindsinstead of meeting them in the field.

We must first start by creating and issuing an ImmigrationPolicy that holds the interests and welfare of our own citizens above those ofthe world’s multitudinous BILLIONS of its most desperate people.

We must start talking SENSE to the American people, (to theyeomen folk).

We must NOT ‘scapegoat’ immigrants. We must appeal to ourfellow citizens’ decent humanity that they understand the desperate straits,the degree of human suffering, that drives mass migrations.

We must get people to understand that this tsunami ofimmigration has been deliberately caused by our nation’s syndicated Elites, whoused the terms of NAFTA to weaponize surplus US corn, by dumping it on Mexico,and forcing tens of millions of Mexican farmers and agricultural industryworkers, to the brink of actual starvation.

They had no choice. They had to migrate to survive. Withinabout a decade, (maybe 12 years), of the signing of NAFTA,fully 10% of the entire population of Mexico had migrated to the US. 

The Syndicated Elites had first exported every job theycould, then they set about to import a huge tsunami of ‘excess labor’ to dothose jobs that by their nature could not be exported.

This was the one-two left-hook right-cross combination that the Elite Syndicateused to beat American Labor, including American Organized Labor, bloody andsenseless.

By 2006, the most powerful US labor union, (the “aristocratsof labor”, they were often derisively called by envious working people), themighty United Auto Workers, had been forced, gun to their heads, to sign acontract that cut wages for new hires in HALF! (In HALF!).

When you are making $25/hour for hammering nails, and yourgreedy boss comes to you one day and says, “Hey, I got all these immigrantslined up here, hammers in hand, say they’ll do your job for $15/hour”, what areyou going to say back?

We must defeat not merely Trump, but “Trumpism” itself.

A large segment of tens upon tens of millions of thenation’s yeomen folk, native-born and/or legally naturalized American citizens,can see that their nation has turned its back on them, and thus, from wherethey sit, trying their best to take care of their families and loved ones,their cause is JUST … RIGHTEOUSLY just. (And many of them are well-armed).

Unless we would ourselves become fascists, we cannot defeat“Trumpism” by defeating these people. We must win them over. We must win theirhearts and minds.

And we cannot do that as long as we give our de factosupport to de facto Open Borders Immigration Policy. That is the granite blockupon which Trump’s entire power base is built.

As long as we give our de facto consent to de facto OpenBorders Immigration Policy, that is how long we are telling American workingcitizens to "go fuck themselves".

***

Again … We must NOT ‘scapegoat’ immigrants. We must bringimmigrants and American citizens to ALL see that they are being victimized bythe same Syndicate of the Elites.

Amnesty, including a legitimate path to citizenship, is theonly sane policy. We cannot deport 20 million+ people. Trying to do so willonly cause even more economic devastation for many more people.

But we MUST come to understand that our borders serve as‘picket lines’ in American working people’s struggle to make a living wage. When‘scabs’ cross a picket line, it is often desperation, even starvation, thatdrives them to do so. But without that picket line, working people have nochance at ALL to organize in defense of their own interests.

We now have a legal immigration quota of a million people ayear, with that many more coming illegally. 2 million more desperately poorpeople a year, 10 million every ten years, to compete for survival with our ownmost destitute tiers of citizens, who are barely maintaining their own grip onthe caboose of the nation’s train.

It is imperative that we understand that Open BordersImmigration Policy is a ‘blood policy’. Men will spit between their feet andspeak, steel in hand, “This in mine!” People will fight for what’s theirs. There is no deeper or stronger human instinct than 'territorial imperative'. 

If we undertake to defeat Trump by defeating and subjugatingthe nation’s yeomen folk, we are setting ourselves upon a fateful, and likelybloody, path to our own failure. 

I believe that Colonel Wilkerson should explore acting as acatalyst for forging political alliances. Who better than he would know the“really good ones” in key positions? Surely the good Colonel is acquainted withCongresswoman Gabbard?

The Democratic Convention is coming in July. Winter is agood time for reflection, for staring into fires, for laying plans. Spring isthe time many an ‘offensive’ is launched.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson’s voice must be heard by morepeople precisely because he comports himself as a person who has earned painfulinsight into his own fallibility, and thus is open-minded to thoughtfulcritical challenge.

I now entreat with the good Colonel that he reconsider histhinking that has led him to conclude that we must “forget” the EliteSyndicate, and focus ALL our attention, while bells clang and sirens blare, onremoving Trump from office by hook or by crook.

Yea … I hear the bells and sirens … Dangers do indeed abound… Many of them compellingly emergent, but we MUST remember, and always keep forefront in our minds, that how we respond to those emergencies nearest at hand may very well determine themagnitude of events in the not so distant future.

Only fools go to war against the yeomen folk of a nation andthink their political fortunes in that nation will rise.

Caliban

R Zwarich

Bent Birch Farm

63 Webber Rd.

Brookfield, MA 01506

774 449-8030

rzwarich@gmail.com