It is amazing that the likes of Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck can use their theatrics and phony behavior to lead people into believing that white is black and enslavement is freedom, but I guess anything is possible in America these days.  With the GOP finally giving in on debate on the floor on Wall Street reform, you have to wonder if this is just another smoke and mirrors show that will ultimately give them what they have wanted all along, just like the mandatory health insurance law in health care reform.  How do you combat a group of politicians, media idiots, and corporate powers that are determined to undermine this nation and lead her to destruction so they can make a few bucks?  Where do you start – to fight back, to get even, to stand up and be counted?  How do you take words that once held real meaning for people but are now twisted into something unrecognizable, and make the words whole again?

There are several things that are currently wrong in this nation, and everyday we read about them in the news, and on the Internet.  We have people whose sole source of information is a news network that would not know the truth if it walked up and bit them.  They talk about things like insurrection, and taking back our country from a form of government that our Constitution enacted (but of course they say that is not the kind of government we have).  They blather on about abortion and that a woman should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term without recourse because they do not care about the child or the mother, but rather the power to control someone else’s life in the most horrendous ways imaginable.  They talk about rioting in the streets and then are surprised when people become violent.  They talk about killing and then are surprised when someone does exactly what they said should be done.  This is the pattern of FOX News and it is both dangerous to people, and to our society as well.  Unfortunately, while they would deny others the right of free speech in disagreeing with them, they scream like stuck pigs if someone even suggests that they be shut down for acts of sedition or incitement to kill a President or Speaker of the House.

Words have power, and we as a nation have forgotten the power of words because we have forgotten how to use them.  We no longer adequately teach English in our schools – you know the kind of thing like parts of the language, sentence structure, constructing a research paper, reading comprehension – and instead, pander to groups who undermine our language programs because they claim they are discriminatory.  We have forgotten that the use of words correctly will allow a person to communicate ideas and ideals, create open discourse without misrepresentation, and lead to better public policy.  We must re-educate ourselves in how to use the English language.  That would be a good place to start.

Another place to start would be in teaching our children about history and our Constitution, and how our Founding Fathers were liberals – after all you do not start a revolution against the most powerful nation of your time without being a little liberal!  You teach them that this is not a Christian nation, and was founded by many Deists, not Christians, and it was control of the church by the state that led to many of the complaints of the colonists who were not Church of England.  It is important that they understand why this separation is so important in a nation where we have hundreds of different religious denominations or faith systems or religions  and that we recognize in our nation no one faith can dominate not only people but government.  That would also be a good place to start.

A third place to start is with local governments taking control of how their communities act, and working towards each community being independent from state or federal controls on such issues as education, energy, climate, food, transportation.  This is what the Transition Initiatives have begun to work on and it could be a very effective starting place.  But, it requires us to be pro-active in this process as community members, and that means we must turn off our TVs and start talking to our neighbors.  This would also be a good place to start.

But in the end, it all boils down to we must educate ourselves honestly and we must make sure that our children are educated with facts – provable facts – and taught to think critically.  We absolutely must work together to create a new type of nation where the people actually have the ability to control what happens, without mega-corporations or TBTF banks, and that means working at the local level to create a new approach to governance and community action.  And to do this we must educate ourselves and our futures depend on educating our children differently.  This is the first step in actually creating lasting, sustainable change in our society – and we must move now, even in these tight economic times, to do this.  We have no more time to waste – we are running like an out of control train heading for a wreck, and we must be able to take care of ourselves because no one now is going to do it for us.

I am working at trying to start a new type of school – videos about it are on YouTube under Devon Noll (Common Sense Initiative School Mission)- and reaching out to people to educate them on what our possible future may be if we do not envision ways that we can work differently and create something better.  This is not something that one person or even a small group of people can accomplish alone.  It requires each of us to come together and work as a collection of community members to change our communities and work to create new policies that make our communities independent.  Only when we have the ability to reach out in this manner can we find a common place to start to overcome the damage of the last 30 years of poor climate, energy, economic, and other policies that the dying world of the GOP right-wing are fighting so violently to hang on to.  We must determine where we are to start, and it starts with each of asking “Where do I start?” and then taking that first step.

See http://www.letfreedomring.community.officelive.com for more information on what I am doing.  Please post here what you might do in your community as your first step.  Good luck!

I have been inspired by the drive by Alternet to create a positive vision for our country.  It is an ambitious plan, I will admit, but one that I hope and believe may be a good start for a better nation.  And, now I need the help of people from across this nation and the world who come here to Alternet to read and debate on the future of this nation and the world.

As many of you know, I have over the last year tried to generate a populist drive to DC to support our government while asking it to address the real needs of Main Street, but health stopped me.  I have tried a series of educational videos on American History, Critical Thinking Skills, US Constitution and Government, and Sustainability and Civic Participation, but technical problems and a lost video camera thwarted by efforts at consistency.

And at the same time I was working on a dissertation that was not getting to the root of the problem of civic participation in sustainable governance the way I had hoped it would.  This gave me pause over the last few weeks to think about what was truly needed if this nation is to change, and I realized that it has always come down to the way we educate successive generations of our children.  The last truly innovative generation, as a whole, was my grandparents’ generation – those born before 1910.  This was the generation that survived the Great Depression, WWII, and Korea.  It was this generation that built our national highways, Hoover Dam, schools and universities, sent us to the moon, and developed computers and many of the mechanical things we take for granted today.  It was the generation that gave us the automobiles and airplanes we have today.

I am a baby boomer, and my parent’s generation built on this foundation, working side-by-side with their parents to give us a better life than they had had.  The baby boomers were saved from having to live through a serious depression until 2006 or so, and many of the things that have been lost with the passing of our grandparents and parents will have to be relearned from books and those few still alive to teach us.  We were so intent, or at least our business leaders were, on building paper fortunes and living la dolce vita we failed to realize that at some time you have to pay the piper – or in our case, the credit card companies and banks.  We have failed as a generation to properly teach our children, and now our grandchildren, about things like compassion, honor, hard work, nature, and humanity, not to mention reading, writing, math, history, or just that their food comes from other than McDonalds or Pizza Hut.  We need to change this, and that is what my new project is all about – changing how we educate the next generation and the next and the one after that.

This project is about free education, paid for not with tax dollars from DC, but rather from donations from private citizens within communities who will benefit from what they all learn.  It will be financed by educational grants that will not have strings attached from private resources who believe that education that builds a better generation of citizens and thinkers and small business people is worth investing in.  This project is about innovation and reskilling and preparing our children for a world that will be totally different from what we have today because of the lack of cheap oil (or any oil at all for that matter) and ever increasing climate change.  It will allow them to develop knowledge and skills that will make the economically resilient and adaptable to hard times without sacrificing their quality of life.  It will teach old skills like preserving jam next to new skills like computer design; farming with horses alongside solar technology; auto mechanics alongside furniture building.  It will have trained teachers and it will have knowledgeable volunteers to teach our children and ourselves the skills that can build a new word for the next generation.

We can build a new world if we start now, but it requires us as baby boomers and GenXers to re-train ourselves in the skills of our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, so that we can pass these skills along to our children and grandchildren.  We need to start thinking about how we can help them create a better world to live in, and help lay the foundation for that world today.  That is what this school/farm/training center is all about – and it must be free to those who attend the K-12 program so that it can be made available to anyone who wishes to attend school there for the next generation of citizens.  And those who come to Alternet can help to make this all possible.

Please go and watch the video at YouTube – Devon Noll. It is in two parts and is titled “Common Sense Initiative School Mission Video”.  (The URLs are http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHILxeSw4rQ – Part 1, and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0_T2PxUH8g – Part 2) By then I will have put up the school program on my website at http://www.letfreedomring.community.officelive.com, as well as a donations page.  Please re-read my post on what a future world (A Future for My Grandchildren – A Vision for A New America) could be like, and if you agree with the video and with the previous posting, or even only partly agree with it, please contact me, or donate to this effort.

Alternet has asked us to be visionaries this year.  We must all embrace that if we are to get out of the mess that our government and our corporations have put us in.  We must not only work diligently in the present, but we must train and educate our children to meet the future and we MUST insure that they have the ability to create a better world than this one.  I am going to work to make this first school happen within 5 years, and I hope others will work with me to start similar projects across this nation.  Thomas Jefferson believed that a free public education was needed to insure a free democracy through the involvement of educated citizens.  This project is going to move forward on the premise he put forth is correct – and a free education for the next generation and those that follow must be supported by the society in which it is provided.

Please follow the vision, and contact me through my website so we can work together to make this a reality.  It is only a beginning, but like the garden in the video, it will provide a great deal to a great many people if only we work at it.  Thanks for any and all help, now and in the future, as you pass the word along, help to raise funds, offer to volunteer, or attend a program once it is up and running.  And many thanks to Alternet for making the idea of a vision something positive and possible.

I am not sure what emotion is raging in me right at this moment – but I can tell you it is somewhere akin to murderous rage and homicidal inclinations against the pharmaceutical industry and the irresponsible people who prescribe drugs to our children.  I cannot call these people “doctors” because they are nothing but legalized drug pushers!  As for the parents of small children who allow these corporate drug pushers to prescribe anti-psychotics, mood stabilizers, and all the rest of the psychiatric pharmacopoeia for their children – they should be arrested for child abuse and endangerment.  This behavior is intolerable in our society and needs to be stopped!

I have worked with children who had serious problems as the result of trauma in their lives off and on for many years.  I was a registered counselor in Washington working with these children for many years.  I never met one child that required the level of medication described in the Alternet article today, and NEVER, NEVER would have considered an active toddler as needing medicating.  Children between infancy and puberty are usually (exclusive of mentally challenged children as the result of physical illness or birth defect) active and sometimes they have temper tantrums that can last for hours.  They are not hyperactive – they are healthy children that have not been turned into drones by a school system that restricts their ability to be active.  They are not usually aggressive or violent – they are the usual children who squabble over toys or playmates that we all were as children.  THEY ARE CHILDREN! We have a responsibility to teach them to control their anger at life’s unfairness, to find ways to constructively use their energy to be creative and innovative.  They are NOT abnormal – they are NOT mentally ill.  THEY ARE CHILDREN!!!!

As for the parents of this generation of children who think that such drugging is acceptable – WAKE THE HELL UP! You gave birth to these children and unless you are totally ignorant of how children behave, you should not be allowing any doctor to use these drugs on your children.  Learn to care for your children.  Except for wellness check-ups or medical emergencies, stop listening to these drug pushers.  Infants and toddlers do not usually have mental illnesses that are not physically connected to drug or alcohol abuse by the mother, birth defect, or post-birth trauma like neglect or abuse.  Contrary to what some doctor tells you, your child is being normal when they cry, run, play, get angry, laugh, talk, and want your attention.  The fact that this kind of behavior is being diagnosed as mental illness is disgusting.  IT IS CALLED CHILDHOOD! It is the child’s way of sharing their world with their parents, and if you did not want that responsibility – you should never have had a child!  Stop looking for chemical solutions, and start paying attention to your child.  Stop putting your life first – you gave up that right the minute you conceived that child.  Start being an involved parent and stop listening to overworked teachers, school counselors, and doctors who want to drug your child!  Take them outside to play, spend time with them learning about their day and their interests, include them in your plans for the family, spend time interacting (not fighting) as a way of encouraging them to explore the world.  In short, start parenting and stop listening to so-called “experts” and drug pushers posing as “doctors” or “social workers”.

(Note:  to those parents whose children are affected by physical or mental results of abuse, drug or alcohol fetal syndrome, birth defects, or other verifiable health causes, my comments do not refer to your specific problems, and reputable doctors can help you deal with them.)

It is up to us as responsible adults to get our government to put a stop to this kind of abuse of our children.  Oh, what am I thinking?  The government that allowed the pharmaceutical industry to control health care reform?  Not likely to happen – so it becomes the responsibility of the parents to act.  Demand that the doctors present you with proof that your child has a verifiable source for the diagnosed mental illness, and not just assume that they are acting in your best interests.  If you are tired or overworked, do not ask for something to control your child’s natural behavior.  Instead, take your child outside and play with him/her.  Let the child run around with other children or if the child is an infant under 3, take them for a walk and play with the child at home to stimulate them mentally.  You will find that your child will sleep better at night, which means you sleep better at night.  IN addition, by bonding with your child in this manner, you both begin to form ways of communicating that will assist you both in living together peacefully.  Remember, small children cry, yell, throw temper tantrums, laugh, run, jump, crawl, and get into to just about everything.  This is not mental illness – this is childhood.

I raised a daughter and she and her children lived with me while they were infants and toddlers.  I established a three-strike rule for all behavior, except one.  The rule worked like this:  when a child broke a rule or acted badly, they were told why the act was bad, that it was not be repeated, and that was the first strike.  If the behavior was repeated, they lost a toy or a privilege, and had to earn it back.  But, it was clearly understood, that if there was a third strike, they had better not be anywhere around when I found out.  I never said what I would do, but they never pushed me to find out either.  The only exception was on the question of drugs – and on that there was only one lesson:  you do drugs, I would take them out of this world as surely as I had brought them into it!  That rule has NEVER been challenged, not once ever in 37 years!

I took the time to spend time with my daughter – we traveled together, talked together about everything, I held her when she cried and we laughed together, when she threw a tantrum I told her I was not impressed and let her work it out – then I talked to her about her problems, in short we worked together from the day of her birth to build a loving, supportive relationship.  She has done the same thing with her children, and they are a closely knit family that supports each other.  None of her children ever needed to be put on drugs, and neither did my daughter.  They were allowed to play outside, laugh, cry, argue, and yes, even throw temper tantrums (which did not work for them any better than they did for their mother).

I look at children in our schools today, and I cry for the loss of the generation that is currently being denied a decent education and are being told that living on drugs for your whole life is normal.  IT IS NOT NORMAL – AND IT MUST BE STOPPED! If we, as parents and citizens, demanded better from our schools by demanding the return of recess and physical education as part of the K-12 curriculum; the exorcising of poorly educated school guidance counselors who think drugging our children is good classroom policy; and a return to programs that give our children thinking skills, encouragement in innovative ideas, and nature/community oriented curricula, we might find that our children do not need drugs to control their moods or their ability to think.

If people want to protest something in DC, why not protest for the future of our children – free from prescription drugs, an ability to think and reason, and re-connection with their communities, their families, and nature without living in a drug induced haze?  Have we become so blind to the dangers of what is being pushed on us and our children that we feel no sense of outrage at articles like the one on Alternet today that we are not going to organize a march to DC for our children, but will do so to protect an un-threatened right to carry a gun?  If these are our priorities, then we are lost.

I will not give up on our children – and to that end, I am going to start to raise money for a school/farm that will teach our children how to live in harmony with nature and their communities, without drugs, and with self-respect, patriotism, tolerance, and creativity. I hope those who read this will help me achieve this goal.  Look for my videos on YouTube this week, and a re-designed website within the next few weeks.  The children of this nation are our future – and unless we start to change how we address them NOW, there will be no future for any of us!

Today I have read about marches for protecting 2nd Amendment rights that are not under attack by this current administration; civil lawsuits against Goldman Sachs for fraud, instead of criminal suits; the usual rantings and ravings of FOX News, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party crowd about everything from health care to unfair taxes; and an article on HuffPost that was a follow-up to one here last week by Simon Johnson.  Add to this mix a smattering of articles on the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, local matters here in Washington State, and you get the impression that this nation is going NUTS!  So I felt compelled to add my two-cents worth of insanity to this mix.

First, I am not a conspiracy nut, but I do love puzzles.  I love a good mystery, and often read action thrillers like James Bond or Clive Cussler’s books or Tom Clancy’s books to relax.  I read history and public policy and books on educating our young people in things like democracy and civic participation as part of my doctoral work.  So please understand that what I am asking about is based as much on this rather quirky assessment of current events as it is on real concerns that maybe we are all being conned as a nation by something that we are not even aware of.

I cannot precisely point to a time when this suspicion began to tickle my brain, but over the last few years it has grown from a small question mark to a screaming siren in my mind:  Who is pulling the strings that are unraveling our nation?  Who is that person in the shadows that is as slippery as an eel and as ethereal of a ghost, yet through the use of power and money is controlling our nation’s destruction, and with it the world of freedom and free will?

Here are the facts:

1.  Corporate America is not led by stupid men or women, yet they have tanked our banking system, control our media, control our education, sent our jobs overseas, and took our homes.  This is not just stupid, it is not just self-serving, it is ultimately fatally destructive to them as well as the rest of us.

2.  Rupert Murdoch controls a media empire that not only twists the news, it also controls the news cycle for days as other media outlets refute everything he puts out thereby spreading his lies repeatedly across all networks.  Rupert Murdoch is a good businessman without ethics or moral conscience, but he is not that smart nor that capable to control that much “group think” effectively, which is why sites like this thrive on the Internet to spread the word.

3.  There is a concerted move by the telecommunications industry to restrict access to the Internet now that they have the immunity to tap our phones under government orders.  There seems to be a concerted drive to limit the availability of inter-personal communications so that people cannot talk to each other safely and exchange ideas or compare ideas in an effort to make sense of the insanity.  Disrupted communications leads to the spreading of rumor and innuendos, and lies that become truth without examination.

4.  The banking industry, thanks to the Clintons and the GOP, have all but trashed the world economy, not to mention ours.  And the US government has been forced to bail them out or have martial law shoved down our throats if one Republican representative is to be believed by the Bush Administration.  We, as citizens, have lost businesses, jobs, homes, college for our children, and our retirement funds, while the greed and excess of Wall Street has continued unabated.  Why?  Because our government is controlled by the same forces that control us – our bankers.  I am sorry, but I have listened to these guys and gals of Wall Street, and what I come away with is that not one of them would be smart enough to devise such a far reaching plan as the financial destruction of this nation – but they are more than willing to carry out orders to do so if it means more money to them.  I am not so naive as to believe that they did not know what they were doing, and so should be held criminally accountable, but I am not sure they know why they did it, the real reason they did what they did.  After all, what did it actually gain them other than money – fear of death, the inability to appear anywhere in public safely, threats against their homes and families, the undying hatred of their fellow citizens?  If they do not see this trade-off for their money as unacceptable, then they truly are stupid, and therefore, again, incapable of planning such a high level of financial manipulation.

5.  The industrial leaders that have led us into the failure of our American manufacturing and agricultural bases, as well as two wars that have cost thousands of lives, are also driven by greed and the belief that the US citizens will not hold them accountable for their part in our destruction.  When companies like Monsanto can destroy our food safety and security; when companies like Exxon and Halliburton and Massey Energy can control our energy future; when the auto industry is so integrated into our nation that its failure could cripple us – we have a problem.  Because we have allowed our government to engage in free trade agreements and to offer tax offsets for corporations with foreign operations, we have allowed our largest corporations to avoid the payment of taxes for years now while recording humongous profits.  Why?  Not because these corporate CEOs were all that smart or even that organized, but rather because they were promised money beyond their wildest dreams if they did exactly what they have done – take America hostage, quietly, subtly.

6.  And, we cannot forget the likes of the The Family or the other religious zealots who think we should be ruled by them in our personal lives as well as our public ones.  This particular group of citizens are especially dangerous because they seek power under the false banner of faith.  Faith is something that does not seek rewards – it is a belief in something unseen.  These people want you to see – they want to be seen for believing in something that is not about being seen, but rather about being anonymous.  The Family believes that only the wealthy are the Chosen of God, and they pander to those who seek power, and they offer the same services as any group of panderers offer to sexual dilettantes with money – a place and privacy for their actions in exchange for the coin of the realm in DC – influence.  They are not interested in the teachings of Jesus, but they love to watch when zealots like Bachmann or Palin preach their word.  They understand that nothing sells like sex, and these two women push it to the limit with their attitudes and their actions.

7.  And finally we come to our two American political parties – the Democrats and the Republicans.  Two groups who have proven themselves to be for sale to the highest bidder.  Their approval of our current Supreme Court Chief Justice and Associate Justice Alito was the final deliverance for this power in government.  Those currently serving are afraid, all of them, not of the American people but of something much greater, and it is why they always look so scared.  If they feared the reaction of the American People for their policies, they would not enact them so blatantly with disregard for the majority opinions of their constituents, but they continue to do so, on both sides of the aisle.  They are all cowards, but what they fear is not a loss of power, it is deeper and so strong that they will abandon their ideals to save themselves.  Paul Wellstone may well have been the necessary example to bring this group into line.  Any deviation from their path will be met with retribution of the worst kind, so “shut up, do as you are told, and forget what is in the interest of the American People” has become their motto in Congress for both parties, and probably even the White House would now fall under that umbrella with the level of hatred being manufactured against our current president by the very people his policies are helping but who have been conditioned to believe he is acting against him.  I fear for this President because he is trying to buck the conspiracy and that has never gone well for politicians in this country or in that office.

I could go on, but you can begin to get the picture.  None of the leaders of these groups could ever orchestrate such a long-term effort to undermine this nation so effectively (over 30 years).  While they are intelligent people, they have egos the size of Texas, and greed is their main driving force – greed for money and for power.  None of them is by themselves sufficiently strong enough to hold the group together for this long or to create this much damage alone.  So I find myself wondering who is behind this systematic overthrow of our nation, and the repercussions internationally its demise would lead to.  I find myself wondering who is pulling the strings and how do you find the one string that when pulled will unravel the whole thing. Who is so powerful, yet unknown to the outside world beyond power and wealth, that he/she can instill this kind of fear or exercise this level of control in all aspects of our democracy?
Call it paranoia, if you will, or call it confusion, but I find that all this talk of bad banking or corporate news management or corporate controls or right-wing radicalism as a smoke screen for something infinitely more sinister.  I look at Rupert Murdoch and his media empire and see a propaganda arm.  I look at the likes of Dimon and the bankers and I see a financial arm.  I look at corporate leaders like the Koch Brothers, of all the top industries, and I see an industrial base.  What I do not see is the person behind all these people who is pulling the strings, the one who is so subtle and so powerful that he/she acts without ever being seen, but is always there.  All of these individuals are intelligent and unethical in their actions, but to orchestrate what is rapidly becoming the benign overthrow of a democratically elected US government in such a coordinated fashion, that takes a cohesive plan which these people could not come up with individually or even collectively because there does not appear to be a leader.

So in my paranoia, I am going to ask this question:  Who is behind this well-orchestrated plan for the overthrow of the American way of life?  Who is sufficiently benign, but with ties into every aspect of American and World culture, that he/she could bring together so many greedy egotists in a concerted effort to destroy the world?  These people are not able to work long enough together to be successful at such a plan, but working within their areas of expertise, they could succeed with the proper leader.  So my mind keeps coming back to the question:  Who is pulling the strings?

Call me paranoid, if you must, but something is most definitely not right with the scenario we are seeing played out in this nation today.  It may seem like ignorance from the masses are the problem, but make no mistake, it is only the smoke-and-mirrors that hides the real agenda of just one person.  We need to find the puppeteer, and we need to find him/her NOW!