Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [128]
Another reason I don’t think I could be president today is that I’m incapable of lying. Every president in my adult lifetime, except maybe Jimmy Carter, has lied to the American people. Think about LBJ and Vietnam. Nixon and Watergate. Reagan and Iran-Contra. George H.w. Bush and “No New Taxes.” Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Is that what it means now to be president of the United States—to be able to keep a straight face on TV and lie? Why have we become a country that doesn’t want to hear the truth? Think about baseball for a moment: the only ballplayer telling the truth about his use of steroids was José Canseco—and he’s the one who got destroyed for doing so. Jesse Ventura was a truth teller as governor of Minnesota, and there was a huge attempt to destroy me, too.
We’ve become what the corporations set out to turn us into—as though we’re lemmings plunging suicidally into the sea. (Should I have dedicated this book to “all the lemmings?” I thought about it). There is no job security anymore. I’m seeing my friends, at age fifty, losing their jobs, left and right. And it’s being done by corporate America. It’s a lot cheaper to hire a twenty-year-old than to keep someone who’s given you twenty-five years of loyal service. But loyalty is becoming a thing of the past in the business and work world, among both employers and employees. It’s survival of the economic fittest. Look at what’s been happening with the breaking of unions. It’s frightening. We’re in big trouble.
The definition of fascism, as Mussolini once expressed it, is a wedding between the corporation and religion. Today, we have corporate America joining forces with organized religion to control the country. I would say that we’re past the point of being afraid fascism might happen. I think it is happening. We’re beyond the warning point, just as with global warming. I still believe in humans’ ability to withstand and prevail, but we’re on the verge of dire and, perhaps, catastrophic consequences. And I see fascism as alive and well in the United States of America.
Many of the American people have it very cushy, and I don’t exclude myself as someone who fits into that category. Because of that cushiness, no one seems to want to rock the boat at all. When will people wake up to the fact that apathy breeds bad government? Right now, I think we’re living with some of the worst government imaginable. Why? Because of us. Because we’re not diligent, we’re not holding them accountable, everybody’s waiting for their neighbor to say something. Imagine if we’d had that attitude back when we were under England’s rule. We still would be a colony if people hadn’t stepped forward and put themselves on the line. The sad part is, going into politics today, you have to be as mentally focused as if you’re going to war—and then be prepared for every underhanded tactic you can imagine.
So I keep questioning myself. Is it worth it to put my family and me out there, to take on a force that most of the American people are willing to go along with? Somehow we’ve lost the concept of “We the People.” The government is supposed to be us, and it’s not us anymore. It’s been hijacked.
Just when is somebody going to do something?
Or can they?
CHAPTER 16
A Character in Search of an Ending
“A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt.... If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall