by AnnaLiviaPlurabelle » Tue Jul 19, 2005 3:27 pm
Thank you, gallant teachers, for your most helpful and thoughtful replies and links. (I spent a long time at that Portland Indymedia site in particular, and found valuable and pertinent further info and discussion there.) will investigate recommended books next. <br><br>Myself, I have the idea that the only “true” divide is between the house of have and the house of want (it still astonishes me that billionaires are allowed to walk around on this planet in plain sight), and therefore I place great importance on following the money trail. It is an attempt to keep in a healthy balance that makes me question whether I place too MUCH importance on such largely unseen funding sources. Overall, I can’t see how you can “defeat the devil” when you’re on his payroll, so to speak. Mostly the question for me is, yes, wondering who is “in cahoots” vs. who “just beez dumb”…so to speak again. It becomes harder and harder to trust anyone, the further one digs, sigh. Makes for a lot of us having to repeat the same work each for his own, but I can’t see any way around that, and mostly just lament the time-consuming factor of that since the clock ticks so ominously these days.<br><br>That leftgatekeepers site is part of the very reason I am here at RI, and I would like to share that story. I was never at DKos or DU, but experienced a striking parallel to what some here were subjected to at those sites. I was enthusiastically involved in a (seemingly) innovative electoral politics project at a little-known site, and at the time (this past spring) still thought a true reform could/might be achieved through the track we were on. I thought I was working with people who were true to their stated values, but then came events which caused me doubt. Specifically, an anarchist entered the forum, and was group-attacked with haughty (and childish) derision I could not understand. Why would these “enlightened folks” be so adamant in their aversion to simply hearing him out? When I called (only for) letting the man be heard, the attacks on me started as well. <br><br>Then another forum member started pushing the 9/11 truth. He saw the exposure of the real deal behind 9/11 as the greatest key we have been given to unlocking a lot of locked-down minds in the usa, and tried to persuade that our energies were far better applied to exposing this issue, than to what “my group” was working on.<br><br>But none of these “strident lefties”, very proud of their “warriorism” (and very dismissive/derisive of “The Feminine” I might add), would listen. I became more and more flabbergasted at the vehemence with which this man, too, was attacked. He was a brilliant debater…maybe the best I’ve ever seen…and though none of them could lay a hand on his evidences in battle after battle, he was relentlessly painted as a dis-info agent trying to sabotage “the left”. Calls soon came to ban him…as they had for the anarchist guy…and I totally had to rethink. Again my own calls were basically for letting all voices be heard, reminding the others what glowing things they had said about this guy when he’d first arrived there, trying to gently get my forum friends to see that they were saying one thing and doing another.<br><br>That was it. how dare I question them and their superior alpha-male knowledge. I was ruthlessly attacked then myself, and in the end left the site with great disappointment but glad as glad to know the truth about people I had actually once looked up to.<br><br>The 9/11 guy went by the name of Knight Templar (and I’m aware that might seem a strange moniker at first). I owe him a great deal for helping lift more veils from my own eyes. He is the one who linked me to sources which linked me to leftgatekeepers and other places…until I finally found myself right here at RI (was it via link at Kurt Nimmo? I just can’t remember, I’ve followed so many trails by now). Certainly was surprised to find that just as I arrived, others too were finding this place a refuge from the same kinds of intolerance and censorship and denial that occurred at Kos and DU.<br><br>I’ve said before that this forum is one of the most civil I have seen, and that’s a big accomplishment considering what gets discussed here (the unallowable thoughts). I cannot say how wonderful it is to have found a place with so many truly thoughtful minds willing to consider/examine/chew…virtually everything under the sun. you are courageous thinkers here, and jiminy it’s refreshing to my soul to find such a place exists.<br><br>In a perfect yin-yang kinda way, it’s also exhausting. Someone posted that article about the 8 veils, and I guess I’m past number 5, now examining number 6. call me too new to the stuff past that sixth veil to be making discernments yet, and I expect it’ll be a while before I can decide, but I am willing to GO THERE AND LOOK. (although deep-study of Finnegans Wake with a genius mentor I have the great fortune to know, has in some ways taken me to the realm past veil 8 even…more on which some other time.)<br><br>to know a little more about me might give you who have been in these trenches much longer some…dare I say it…hope. That’s because I always thought I am the biggest skeptic I know, and yet I grew up as much a sheeple with the wool pulled over her eyes as most other Americans (and most people, period). I am not higher-educated; I am a workingclass homemaker from “the heartland” with slim financial resources who went looking for some sanity right after 9/11. I hadn’t even been on a computer before that. Made my kids show me the basics of how to navigate, and what can I say but what a long strange trip its been ever since.<br><br>I was one of those who, much as I despised bushco, could not believe that a president of the usa would help murder his own countrymen like on 9/11. I posted to that effect in the first forum I was ever in (egad!!)<br><br>Perhaps it was precisely the lack of formal education that saved me…that, and an insatiable curiosity (and james joyce). I knew I didn’t know, but I wanted to, thirsted to. When I would come across revelations that were entirely verifiable (think northwoods documents, etc), my own reaction was “well, I’ll be go to hell! What the bleep ELSE don’t I know…or have wrong as wrong?” Time to research!<br><br>So you see, the most “ordinary” people CAN wake up. I’m walking proof. Yes, it has been agonizing, carrying that burden of knowing in a sea of deniers and the willfully ignorant. (it is seriously white, dangerously ‘christian’, and nauseatingly right-wing where I live). Yes, that blue pill tastes like steak. But I think we’re fast reaching an escalation point that will cause (either our demise or) the collective psychosis to snap apart at the seams (and like Knight Templar I think 9/11 truth has a great potential to expose what’s really going on).<br><br>This is too long now, so I’ll wind up saying big thanks again for your responses to my question. I do so appreciate the help. You all know how hard it is to sort through all the disinformation, details, credibility of sources, etc., and how difficult it is for the psyche to accept what it would rather avoid. Your own bravery feeds my courage.<br><br>Namaste,<br>AnnaLivia<br> <p></p><i></i>