“I cry Bullshit!” Email from a dear friend

I am sharing this from a dear friend, it is an email and shared, as is, with permission. It’s the kind of email only a good friend can send you, built on years of love and trust. It speaks for itself and I hope it is as useful to you as is to me as I find my own ground and decide what I do next after a letter a day to number 10.

I think I can put a finger on what has bothered me for quite a while about all this.

We see what’s going on, we see what the fuckers are doing blatantly in front of the whole world, and we know they are doing more and worse covertly, under our radar. Yeah, we see that. We know there are thousands of people like us around the world who see it as well, and some of them write about it on blogs, at online news websites, at Facebook, etc. Great, fine, at least some people’s eyes are open and they aren’t trapped in the bullshit.

But you know what rankles? You know what’s just under the surface all the time?

It’s the fact that there are people who know all this, people who are in a position to have a really public voice, who just keep letting it slide, for, oh, their own positional expediency so they can stay as players, getting their modicum of attention and reward as long as possible. I’m talking about people who could bust it all wide open, who really could cause a ruckus that would even get the attention of the culture-drugged, complacent middle classes. These people are sitting on the benches of government, they are sitting in newsrooms, they are in the halls of diplomacy, they are on the ladders of corporations. I’m not talking about people like career civil servants, because they don’t have a broad public voice and are easily got rid of.

So we get a few voices, a few writers here and there, shouting through the megaphones of whatever media outlet they are part of. They cry from the rooftops. They point their torch beams at the fucking fuckers who are fucking the world over.

And if I say, “There are people who could really bust the system wide open, but aren’t doing it”, then someone comes back at me and says, “Then it’s up to you, the little voices, to do it.” And I cry “Bullshit!” Don’t you put the guilt on me! Don’t you lay that guilt on my shoulders! Don’t you inject that guilt into my heart and mind!

So here you are. You’ve seen the bullshit. You’ve seen what the fuckers are up to and what they are getting away with. You got to a point where you said, “I’m raising my voice! I have to! I have no other choice! I’m writing a letter. In fact, I’m going to write a letter a day to one of the head fucking fuckers. This is my megaphone. This is my voice.” You did what you had to do, what you needed to do, for your own sanity’s sake.

And during all that time, not one, not even one of those people who could bust the system open stepped forward. Not one.

I’m going to step out on a limb here and say that it isn’t up to you to take the burden of guilt into yourself. This idea that “if you aren’t doing something, saying something, then you can’t condemn anyone else” is part of the fuckers’, the Bernays bullshit. Do your thing, have your say, but for god’s sake, don’t think “I’m not doing enough!” That is exactly what those people I was talking about above want you to think, that it’s up to you, up to Kerry-Anne, up to Ken, etc, to expose the system. Do your part, all of you, but don’t you dare appropriate guilt that is not yours! (There’s a bit of telling for you.) Because if you do, you will make yourself sick with it! Perhaps you are making yourself sick with it right now. Do you think I might know what I’m talking about? Eh? I have been the Queen of Guilt. I drank in their twisted reasoning and believed it. I understand this tactic of transferring guilt. Passing possession of this guilt onto others. I hope you won’t fluff this off as just more of my bloviating. Maybe you won’t think this applies to where your head is right now. I guess that’s for you to know. I’m daring to step into your egocentricity. No, I’m not a psychologist. I don’t know about the human psyche and shit like that. But I do know what I’ve endured. I know what numbers have been done on my own mind. I’m slow, but I’m not a total ignoramus. I read your words. I understand them. I also read what isn’t written in your words, which is as important as what you’ve expressed. You wrote, “People know that we need a way out but no one knows what it is.” I say, “Bullshit.” Read again what I wrote above. There are people who know what it is, Keith. They just aren’t talking.