"soft peter"

"The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." - morpheus

I was talking to my old man recently about his Army years. He was a member of the 82nd Airborne division at Fort Bragg during the Vietnam war. In fact, he had orders to go to Vietnam. But a drunken driver broad-sided him in a pretty serious collision less than 48 hours before he shipped out; leaving him with a broken collar bone and concussion, ultimately keeping him out of the war. He fulfilled his two year commitment to the Army by jumping out of airplanes and training, you know, life on an Army base. Recently when he was reminiscing on those days, he shared something with me I had never heard before. He was telling me about how they'd start each day with 5 mile runs in Army boots. Then they'd eat. They'd do field drills. Then they'd eat. They'd run some more, do more drills, man their posts, etc. Then they'd eat. A barrack full of testosterone driven men, outside of a few skirmishes, getting along pretty well and sleeping in close proximity of each other every night, with no problems? What's wrong with this picture? My old man said, it was pretty common knowledge that every time they ate, something was being slipped into their food. Most thought it was being put into the potatoes since potatoes were served at every meal. It was a little substance the soldiers referred to as "soft peter". Let's just say, "soft peter" kept their nature down. No sexual frustration meant fewer fights. And most importantly, it meant the barracks that houses all those men at night, felt more like a male dorm, than a prison block.

This got me to thinking. If this is a common practice of the Army, what kind of "soft peter" is the government slipping to the masses? No, I'm not implying they are literally putting something in our food (i'm also not saying they aren't). But maybe instead of trying to keep our nature down, they have a vested interest in keeping our anger repressed. Think about your family and friends. There is a war going on RIGHT NOW. How often do you hear them complain about it, or even talk about it for that matter? Now, on the flip side. How often do you hear them talk about their favorite tv show? The finale of American Idol? Their favorite sports team? Or what they bought on sale at the mall? People, we are being distracted. We're being fed a daily dose of "soft peter" in the form of television entertainment and news half truths. American culture has allowed a handful of people to enjoy a manufactured existence called fame and celebrity. That carrot is dangled in front of us every day, slowly hypnotizing us into living vicariously through people whose lifestyles, for all sense and purposes aren't even real. And the allure is so strong, that most people would much rather tune into Entertainment Tonight, than the evening world news report. Why? Out of sight, out of mind. Which makes me think, maybe it's time we start taking a closer look at what's really going on.



"Either war is obsolete or men are." - R. Buckminster Fuller

War is brutally ugly. It's mere presence is so startling, that even if it forces you to look away, it begs an emotional response, an investment of thought. So far 4,000 U.S. men and women have died in Iraq. And that's doesn't even count those who died in Afghanistan. But that's only part of the story my friend. Soldiers from other nations, who are apart of the Iraqi Coalition have died there too. So have Iraqi soldiers, along with innocent men, women, and children. But every day, our news outlets give our ugly war a makeover. Instead of amputees and body bags, we see images of healthy soldiers or a president sitting behind a desk talking about "progress". We see the story about the healthy soldier reuniting with his family in a nearby airport. But we never see the guy who lost his legs, in that moment when his family sees him for the first time. And we never see the guy with the nervous twitch who has the bad nightmares, whose family feels like they don't know him anymore, and aren't safe around him. Sure, we know how much money the war has cost America. But we'll never be able to measure how much it's damaged the reputation of our country, or the lives of families on both sides of the Atlantic ocean. Even sadder, so few of us have seen the ugly side of this current war, that although the war has been going on for five plus years, most of us have yet to make a sizeable emotional or intellectual investment. Well my friends, it's time we do.

Something is in our food. It's in our music. It's in our television programs. It was put there by our government to dupe us. To keep us distracted and passive. Everything from Britney Spears on the front of grocery aisle magazines to 50 Cent and his latest beef rants. Even the gas prices and fading economy are designed to make our living experience so arduous, that we'll choose to escape that reality, any time we can. And thoughts about the government, and unjust wars, will be pushed into places so far in the back of our minds, that they will cease to no longer matter. My advice. Stop eating what they're feeding you so willingly. Digest something different. Something real. With any luck, your numbed senses will become acute again. And when they do, you'll start to see and experience the world, free from the affects of "soft peter". Then you'll get mad. Mad enough to organize. Mad enough to demand a change. Maybe even mad enough to strategically create a resistance to force a change. Now that's the kind of world I want to live in. One luv.