by Tom Laughlin

Last Saturday I had lunch with some friends, Dr. Phil Schlegel and his wife, and I mentioned this column on the web wherein we list the Outrage of the Week – the most glaring abuse of power, corruption, deceit, and shameless manipulation of “We the People ...,” or the most frightening trend of behavior that’s becoming an acceptable way of life in America today. And on occasion, just revealing how unconscious we are as individuals and as a people, and in some cases, becoming more unconscious rather than less. Phil let out a big sigh, lowered his head and said, “How do you know where to begin, there’s so many?”

So here are a few, ranging from demonstrations of real naiveté and gullibility, to official acts brutally destructive to our way of life.

The media and two teenage bombers in one small town:
“I have a plan to do a rampage, if I ... snap, I’ll put Hueneme on the map.”
Those were the words 18-year-old Hose Carlos Herrera wrote in his diary more than a year ago, showing that the Hueneme High School student harbored violent fantasies of bombing classmates. In one diary excerpt, he wrote: “An explosion at school would sound cool on Fox News.”
   At the same time a few blocks away, a 16-year-old student at Channel Islands High School was sentenced to three years in youth prison for helping a friend plant fake bombs on campus following Columbine, so they could get a day out of school.
  President Kennedy once said that if someone is willing to give up his life in order to assassinate the President, there’s no way to stop him. In the same manner those hundreds of thousands of seriously ill teenagers (and adults), as well as those borderline personalities, who are willing to risk their life in order to have their fifteen minutes of fame on the news shows and print media who lust to cover the Columbines ad nauseum because it increases ratings, sales and profits, are writing in their diaries about their “rampage” as we speak, and you can be certain there will be three to five high school or similar copycat killings before the year 2000. Oh, yes, I forgot, there were seven separate arrests of teenagers in tiny Ventura County alone right after Columbine – but of course, the media doesn’t play a role in creating this kind of homicidal madness in our society.

Two “Chosen Ones” – the Dali Lama Controversy
In the religious section, I point out that the way the first religion began was when a cave man came out of a cave and said he had seen God. He instructed the people that if they very carefully believed what he told them, behaved in the way the way he told them to behave, and of course, paid him certain tributes so he didn’t have to work and hunt but could just concentrate on becoming more holy, if they did all of that they would be saved and spared God’s wrath. Sadly, every organized religion since then still operates on that principle of their being some divinely chosen intermediary between the people and the God who created them and loves them.
  I was reminded of this upon reading on the same day of the old controversy in the Catholic Church when there were two Popes who claimed to be the divinely inspired descendant of Peter, each battling to be the “Chosen One,” and each backed by a powerful group that had their own political agenda using the Pope issue to gain power. In Tibet this week, this same archetype re-emerged in the battle for which child, which ten-year-old boy was the true “Chosen One,” His Holiness, the Eleventh Panchen Lama, the second most revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism, both of whom live in the Chinese capital surrounded by police who supervise their every move.
  The Chinese government says 9-year-old Erdeni Chosgyi Gyalpo, who comes from a family of Nomadic herders, is the chosen one. But the Dali Lama, by some divine intervention known only to him, says that ten-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima is the real reincarnated Panchen Lama. Of course, to anyone not caught up in the Buddhist belief, the idea of a ten year old child being “divine” in any sense of the word is just plain silly. It is as silly as the attempt of devout hard-line Catholic theologians trying to defend the recently imposed belief on Catholics that the Pope is infallible (see my book on God as to how in the 1870’s a seriously ill Pope, truly crazed for power, and wanting to be declared “divine”, i.e., infallible, atrociously pummeled, strong-armed, and even excommunicated dissenting members of the Vatican council in his delusional need to declare himself infallible – which is of course silly, as every human being, without exception is fallible, and then some).
  (And loyal theologians, please don’t bombard me with how the Pope’s initials claims got watered down to declaring that the Pope is only divine, i.e., infallible as only God can be infallible when he speaks only Ex Cathedra on matters of faith and morals, pertaining to Apostolic times, etc.. There is no such thing as a human being being infallible, no matter what he’s speaking on, or how you twist it. Period! All of which I discuss in depth in my book on God.)
  This archetype to declare some human being divine and project onto that person all the power to speak for God and tell us how to behave is not confined to the Buddhists and the Catholics. It is as old as human history, and spans the entire globe to this day, from the ancient Pharaohs who were believed to be the Sun God Ra, to the Japanese who never heard the voice of the Emperor of Japan – ever – until he spoke at the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II. Why did they never hear their emperor speak? Because the emperor was divine. The emperor was the Sun God in human form. Hence, the emblem on their national flag of the rising sun ... all of which I cover in the book.
  For now, suffice it to say how strange it is at first glance that people everywhere and throughout history have a need to project out onto some individual, an obviously flawed human being, the belief that they are in some way divine, and that their only way to find the Living God is through that person and by doing and believing what they tell them. How different from Carl Jung, one of the three pioneers of modern psychiatry, and an even greater pioneer in how we can find and relate to God.
  In 1912 Jung made an earthshaking discovery – that there was something “alive” in his unconscious. He discovered that there was a “Living Thing” down there trying to form itself in me, and in the process form me. Jung spent his life learning what this “Living Thing” trying to form itself in him was, and what it wanted him to do to help “It” form itself fully and completely. Of course, the Living Thing was the Living God, and Jung’s greatest contribution is to show us how we can come to know and personally experience the Living God that exists both within our soul and within the universe without going through any intermediaries, whether they be ten-year-old boys, the Sun God Emperor, or anyone else.

Marines Court-martialed for Anthrax Refusal
Remember how GIs were used as guinea pigs in the Nevada desert by placing them near ground zero and then setting off atomic bombs to see what effect it would have on them? Remember the Tuskeegee Institute experiments using helpless and unknowing African Americans as guinea pigs? Remember Agent Orange and how the highest scientific experts in our government for decades insisted – and some still insist – Agent Orange had no ill effects on our innocent troops callously sprayed with it? How stupid these GIs were to try to argue that a chemical that destroyed everything it touched in the jungle could possibly have any ill effect on them.
  Now, five marines have been court-martialed and busted out of the military in disgrace for their refusal to accept anthrax vaccine shots, and two more face the same fate. Approximately 200 other marines have been similarly removed or disciplined for refusing to accept the vaccine, which they have scientific reason to believe is potentially unsafe, ineffective, and unnecessary. Their defense attorney wanted to call witnesses that would prove the Pentagon had not sufficiently studied the effects of the vaccine, and other witnesses that would prove there were unknown risks to this vaccine. But the military judge refused to allow that defense, which he said was irrelevant. He narrowed the question to whether or not they had refused to obey an order – which was kind of obvious by the fact they are in court at all. Funny, isn’t it, during the Nuremberg trials we did not excuse those responsible for the massacre of six million Jews whose defense was they were simply obeying an order and if they had disobeyed they would have been court-martialed. At Nuremberg we said it is incumbent upon a good soldier to disobey a bad order, but obviously this pathetic military judge either never heard of Nuremberg precedence, or he was under orders to find them guilty, period.
  Most amazing of all is that this trial could have given the Pentagon the opportunity to explore in-depth whether or not this idiotic order was dangerous, and whether it was effective, so they could be certain not to needlessly endanger the lives of hundreds of thousands of decent, loyal, hard working American citizens in the military. What’s frightening is the military leadership didn’t care whether they were hurting their own troops, perhaps even risking their lives. How is it possible these gold-braided morons sitting behind the desks would not put the need to find out the safety of the vaccine, and of their men and women, above all else. The first thing you’re taught in OCS and the Military Academies is that you are responsible for the safety and well being of those in your command.
  The behavior of the military in this matter is not only outrageous, it indicates a very deep sickness in the military leadership today that continues to drive troops out of the service as fast as they can get out. We’ll have to wait for the lawsuits that will follow in the years ahead from all those “good” soldiers who took the vaccine and became seriously ill or disabled. Only after spending millions of our tax payer dollars on these lawsuits will we find out why the military leadership has made such an incredibly stupid and cruel decision – a decision that flies in the face of what this country is all about, Accessibility and Accountability of all officials, and Absolutely no Abuse of Authority.

The “House of Lords”, i.e., the Supreme Court, destroys the lives of millions of Americans.
You though the Civil War was over? You thought the battles between the Federalists and the Republicans was finished 200 years ago? Wrong! In a decision that can only be described with extreme adjectives such as astonishing, astounding and unbelievable, the Supreme Court, in a close 5-4 decision on June 23, 1999, stripped away the rights of millions of Americans, leaving millions of state employees with no guarantee of overtime pay, and no power to collect it, leaving inventors, publishers and software makers not able to sue over stolen patents and copyrights, and much, much more.
  For example, the State of Maine had refused to pay overtime wages to a group of parole officers as required by federal law, and the court ruled that these workers cannot sue the state over the issue ... and that’s just for starters. 4.7 million of the nation’s state employees, by the vote of one person, have no way to enforce any of their rights, such as their rights to minimum wages, overtime pay, working conditions, etc. At the same time, there is no remedy for someone who has their invention, patent or copyright stolen by a university, even though in 1992, Congress passed laws to make clear that states could – and should – be sued for such violations. And there’s too much more to go into here.
  Remember the previous ruling of the Supreme Court that it was okay for the President, Congressmen, and government officials everywhere to take bribes from giant corporations and others as long as they “didn’t act on those bribes” -- as shocking a decision as could possibly be rendered by men and women who pretend to be moral, ethical and protectors of the Constitution and the rights of the people.
  The whole purpose of the founding of this country, and everything in it, was, as I said above, the five A’s – Accessibility and Accountability, Absolutely no Abuse of Authority. And with one stroke, the Supreme Court, supposedly the protector of the Constitution, throws out the Constitution whose sole purpose was to guarantee people the right to hold all officials Accessible and Accountable. Please, find me the Constitutional scholar who can show me – anywhere – where it says though all sovereignty and power is in the hands of the people, not in the government, and though all government officials must answer to the power of the people, when it comes to the states of these United States, state officials do not have to answer to the people, are not Accessible and cannot be held Accountable in the courts for violating the law.
  Walk through Williamsburg, Virginia, the birthplace of the great ideas that formed this country. See how the one thing the Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Madisons were determined to do was to not have a governing body of the people, similar to the House of Burgesses, be simply overruled by the elitist House of Lords, or the Governor who could throw out any decision made by the people on just a whim, if he wanted to. Can anyone show me why this group of nine people are different from being a modern day House of Lords that can, with a stroke of a pen, throw out the Constitution and all the liberties and power given to the people by that Constitution.

As Thomas Paine said, “These are times that try men’s souls.”
Indeed, these are times that try our souls, and at the same time challenge our way of life and our right to control our lives by controlling elected and appointed officials. These rights have been taken from us, and continue to be taken more each day. What are we going to do about it? What are you going to do about it?

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