My grandmother had a favorite saying. She’d listen to some typical hypocritical nonsense, and say, “The pot calls the kettle black.” She said it in a good-natured, uncritical way and no one ever took offence.
Some became a little more circumspect in their subsequent comments, suffering the unexpected embarrassment of exposure as somewhat less than a paragon of truth. Such response, of course, requiring a conscience, a commodity in short supply these days.
My grandmother was an uneducated woman, but she had an unerring sense of character. She could recognize truth when she heard it. And deception. Unlike the captive, uninformed audience our insidious government and controlled media manipulate daily.
So-called “news” is accepted blindly, with no consideration that our “pot” is as black as the “kettle” we accuse of the same crime. Hypocrisy has been elevated to an art form. I can only advise that you consider the source and accept nothing at face value.
A prime example of pot and kettle hypocrisy is the State Department’s annual report on human rights conditions in 190 countries. I am given to understand that, at one time, this report was respected globally for its accuracy and objectivity.
Past tense. Since we demonstrate the approval and depraved indifference of legalized torture in our own country, we have lost the moral high ground and the right to lecture the leadership of other countries. About anything.
Thanks to the Bush crime family we can’t, with a straight face or any semblance of credibility, claim to any professed concern for human rights, freedom from torture, freedom of the press, children’s rights, the rule of law, or anything else. When we hold as an American value the legal right to inflict pain - sometimes to the point of death - on another person, we have lost our reputation and respect. Perhaps forever.
Russia is one country no longer hesitant to point out the double standards in our latest human rights proclamation. The Russian foreign Ministry issued a statement rejecting criticism from a country that “has in effect legalized torture, uses capital punishment on minors and denies responsibility for war crimes and human rights violations in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
China is another country that will no longer accept our holier-than-thou dictates, accusing us of hypocrisy and branding our invasion of Iraq as “the greatest humanitarian disaster” of the modern world.
Responding to our criticism of China’s human rights record, the Chinese government declared “America’s arrogant critique on the human rights of other countries are always accompanied by a deliberate ignoring of serious human rights problems on its own territory.”
These are just some of the kinder observations contained in China’s own human rights report, noting that “The United States has a notorious record of trampling on the sovereignty of and violating human rights in other countries.”
Their report also noted that “Secret prisons and torturing prisoners have become synonymous with America.”
Most Americans are completely unaware that their country has lost all respect all over the world. The word democracy is now synonymous with the theft of other contries assets, and the murder and totalitarian control of their citizen-victims.
Maybe it has something to do with more than a million innocent Iraqis dying from disease, malnutrition and lack of medical care during 12 nightmare years of the most devastating economic sanctions in history.
It might have something to do with the 4 million refugees we have created, or another 4 million in desperate need of emergency aid.
According to Vice Dictator Darth... I mean... Dick Cheney, all this has been a successful endeavor. Never mind that Baghdad is now the most dangerous city on the planet - a city of walled-off ghettos, boiling with ethnic and sectarian violence we have been happy to create.
Remember the pictures of Saddam’s palaces that Fox News and CNN showed over and over again to try to convey a picture of dictatorial extravagance? How often have you seen a picture of our own billion dollar embassy in Baghdad - the size of Vatican City - the largest in the world? It puts Saddam to shame - but, of course, Saddam didn’t have access to American sheeple tax money.
A million other examples of the pot calling the kettle black exist, but this is meant to be just a little, informative over-view article, not an encyclopedia. I’ll mention just one other area of obvious hypocrisy, to demonstrate that, in addition to our acceptance of torture as an approved American value, we should also be known as a nation of pathological liars.
I refer to the subject of elections. We have a nasty habit of criticizing elections all over the world. We form committees of so-called elections observers to witness the electoral process of others, decrying the absence of “democracy” and pronouncing those elections as invalid.
No mention is made of the fact that we have a tendency to interfere in other countries elections all over the world - financing puppet-candidates of our choice and inciting violence wherever we can.
Complaining about America sponsoring popular uprisings against elections in Georgia and Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry said, “The U.S. uses the struggle to spread democracy and the defense of human rights as a cover to advance its own interests.”
No mention is made of the fact that elections in the United States are rigged, manipulated and completely fraudulent. As such, we have absolutely no credibility and no right whatsoever to criticize the elections of any country in the world. Perhaps we should allow observation of our own elections by committees from such bastions of democracy as North Korea or Zimbabwe.
Hard to believe? No, it’s not. It may be hard to believe only when the facts are twisted, hidden, manipulated, distorted and censored by the disgraceful tactics of that governmental propaganda arm known as mainstream media.
Without going into any detail about the nefarious activities taking place in the current so-called election here - and just to demonstrate my point that absolute proof exists showing election results are rigged - I thought I would tell you, as if you were at all curious, the identity of your next president.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce your new leader and Diebold candidate of choice: Hillary Rodham Clinton.
She was your choice, wasn’t she? You approve of war-without-end, don’t you? And mandatory health insurance which will now enforce a fine or other penalty if you’re too poor to buy it? You gladly accept governmental control over every aspect of your life, don’t you? Hang on tight and enjoy the ride. It won’t be a long one.
But we’re getting off subject. Something about pots and pans. Pots and kettles? Who wants to talk about kitchen utensils anyway?
My grandmother enjoyed another saying: Don’t shut the barn door after the horse is gone. Meaning? Prepare for things to go wrong rather than worrying about them after the fact. Yes, opportunities - the horse - have been lost. Incredible opportunities. Consider Ron Paul, for example - the single most qualified presidential candidate who might actually have restored this country to a semblance of what it once was.
Gone. An opportunity lost. Forget the barn door. Consider what you have really lost - and what you are likely to lose unless some modicum of sanity returns.
Here’s another interesting proverb: Don’t spit into the wind.
You figure it out.
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