POSTER CHILD FOR VILLIFICATION

“America … You Are Not the Country That I Love” …by Cindy Sheehan / May 30th, 2007 … EXERPTED
I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called “Face” of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such “liberal blogs” as the Democratic Underground. Being called an “attention whore” and being told “good riddance”are some of the more milder rebukes.
I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.
The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?
However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”

To have, hold, possess and dare to enunciate any position not fostered and sanctioned by corporate mass media and “blessed” by your corporate owned elected representatives in Washington DC makes one the quintessential poster child and target for overt and hostile vilification…!

My heart goes out to Cindy Sheehan, not all together for the position she chose to take on our illegal war in Iraq, but rather for her tenacity to stand up to the continuous vilification to which she was subjected.

Tragically Cindy, like many others, believed there was a difference between Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Alas as she painfully discovered the veil between the Republicans and Democrats is indeed transparent and they are both beholding to the same corporate masters.

“We” – that’s you and me – continue to be treated as mere pawns in the chess game being played by others on the world stage. “We” remain content in “ostrich” positions with our heads buried in the sand.

“You can't be free if in any fashion you’re holding the hand of fear” … Ram Dass