THAT WAS THEN
We the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) and the Silent Generation (born during WW 2) were part of a revolution that began the transformation of America and the world. We didn’t trust anyone over 30 and questioned authority at every level. We ranted, raged, marched, protested and demanded justice for all. Everything that is happening today was put in motion by the actions we took back then.
THIS IS NOW
If you are happy with the way things are working out today then you need read no farther. If however you don’t think your government represents you or gives a damn about what you think we have work to do. We need to be clear eyed about the result of the actions we took and how they impacted what is happening in America today. That is difficult to do because this is not the Vietnam era where we had a free press holding the government accountable. Today the press and news organizations act as spokespersons for the government.
Think of what the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s would have been like without a free press holding government accountable. How badly would the Civil Rights Movement have been damaged without the constant press reports? Without the Civil Rights Movement would there have been a movement to oppose the Vietnam War? What if there had been no Pentagon papers, No Watergate investigation. No Walter Cronkite comments after the Tet Offensive? No My Lai massacre report? No Church Committee? We know how corrupt and oppressive government can be. We were not wrong then when we said question authority. We must pick up that mantra again and live by it!
We need to begin by questioning if there has truly been a global elite, big Pharma, big Tech/Media takeover of America? We need to dispassionately question whether lockdowns and mandates worked. Question the impact of deplatforming doctors and Scientist offering a different opinion on healthy practices. We needed a healthy debate over the Nuremberg Code and natural immunity.
QUESTION AUTHORITY AGAIN
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it
If that is true and I believe it is we are at a very dangerous moment in our history. I believe we must go back and examine the Church Committee in light of what is happening today. Certainly the release of the Twitter files with the FBI, DOJ and State Department involvement point to further government abuses. We can not allow ourselves to be manipulated and divided into partisan camps. The Church Committee uncovered government abuse that many believe continue to this day.
Reading the history of the committee report and following up on links is mind blowing. It certainly foreshadowed the 2013 global surveillance disclosures by Edward Snowden, it also unearthed Project SHAMROCK in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA.
A story by Carl Bernstein from 1977 lays out the relationship between the CIA and news organizations that the Church Committee covered up.
Perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves about today has already been asked and answered. On August 17, 1975 Senator Frank Church appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, and discussed the NSA, without mentioning it by name: “In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. (…) Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything— telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”[23]
This statement was long before the internet and the communication platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Google) we have today.