"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"

I wrote this for someone's website almost three years ago and just dug it out to review it.
Does it still seem relevant? Does it push your buttons? Check it out and let me know.
Les Aaron: Hubmaster@aol.com. Sometimes I feel as if we are the Minutemen--the last ones standing!

How do you feel?

Les Aaron


Where have all the flowers gone?

An essay by
Les Aaron
Editor, Hubgram

Five years ago, I was beginning to feel as I did when John Kennedy took office; it was beginning to seem to me that after many years of Republican rule, that somehow good sense was being restored to our society. Optimism was becoming commonplace. And it was clear once again that all things were possible….and, perhaps more importantly, doable. In my then optimistic view of the world, thought that it would be possible to treat our planet gently so that all of its abuses would heal. I thought perhaps naively that humankind was capable of reaching its full potential; that all people could live in peace; that technology would make it possible to wean ourselves away from our dependency on oil. I thought it would be possible for everyone to get a higher education; to find that particular job that gave them satisfaction instead of being tied to a thankless job that just paid the bills and locked you into a life of servitude.

I dreamed what it would be like to take up oceanography or environmentalism or art expression of some kind. I envied those younger than I for the myriad possibilities that life promised. I felt there was so much opportunity and so much to do. It was stimulating to think of all of this potential waiting to be unleashed. In my mind’s eye, I saw the reality of sustaining our environment, of building homes that used the heat of the sun for warming and the winds for electricity. I was enthused to see people thinking about doing charitable things for their fellow man. We were starting to think about recycling. And developing products that were actually earth-friendly. It was as if there was nothing could stop us from applying the latest technology to improve the quality of life, sustain the environment and make a better, more user friendly place for us all to dwell. I was beginning to believe again that there were no limitations on what could be accomplished. Happily, the world was coming together. The iron curtain had come down with the Berlin wall.. The futility of war was becoming something that everyone had come to terms with. Yes, we could have a future that we could believe in. And more than anything, there was hope. And the belief once again in the brotherhood of man. It was a good time to be alive.

How that has changed in the course of so few years. With 9-11, we have all grown older, grayer. We now know that there are those in the world who see us as the penultimate evil no matter how good our intentions.. Yet, it was clear that this was a problem that the world shared and demonstrated concern about. We had friends abroad who shared our grief. Our world had suddenly grown smaller, more intimate.

Surely, we were all transformed by the actions of a few. And we realized that the dangers would not go away overnight. But we all realized, too, that we would survive and we would overcome these obstacles. Overall, the brotherhood of man remained intact.


What we did learn and painfully so is that we are all vulnerable. Perhaps we couldn’t appreciate that before; perhaps we were too concerned with our ambitions. It is hard to say. Perhaps, too, we lost sight of reality; we failed to perceive and understand the lessons of the second half of the twentieth century. And then our world imploded whether we were at ground zero or not.

We never thought these things could happen to us. We thought we were safely insulated against such possibilities. Nevertheless, on an intellectual level, we understood that there bombings in Northern Ireland but we rationalized that there was an answer for that. And, yes, in Israel, there was a conflict going on that was one hundred years in the making. But these were in places far away, across the great ocean. We believed, foolishly as we now know, that we were immune from the realities of life.

What a great shock it was then to learn that no one is really insulated against terrorism. That we are all vulnerable to the vagaries of madmen’s minds.

Nevertheless, New Yorkers dealt with it as did the rest of the country. In those early days, we showed that Americans stuck together; that we were a nation of people with a common belief system; a nation that had the capacity to heal its own.. In those early days, Americans had the support of most of the world in ending terrorism. And we were beginning to make rapid progress towards that end when something happened. Maybe we crossed some invisible line.
But in a very short time, our government was transformed from the representative of a compassionate people to an arrogant, avenging bully..

Things had changed. And some of these changes did not sit well with the population. We were told that the world harbored all of our enemies. And our enemies list was added to almost daily. This Administration chose 9-11 to let the world know that it was extending its mandate without discussion, without due deliberation characteristic of a democratic people. The more savvy of our population began to worry.

. With a very fragile advantage, this government began to act in ways that seemed at cross purposes with our Democracy, in ways that ironically aided and abetted the intent of the terrorists. Free speech was now considered suspect. If you weren’t with us, you were against us was the mantra that this government was starting to spread. The people were being manipulated for its own ends by the government in power. Those who cared enough, saw the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution gradually being abrogated. Overseas, we were becoming perceived as not only a great military power but an arrogant, insensitive one at that. We were changing as a nation. And our enemies seemed to multiply virtually overnight. Our government painted the enemy in biblical terms. It was becoming a conflict between ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ . To effectuate the government’s secretive policies, it had somehow become necessary to limit Americans freedoms. Wasn’t this precisely what the Evil Empire was attempting to accomplish? We saw a postponement of habeas corpus. It was no longer possible for a suspect to meet in privacy with his/her counsel. People’s conversations and transmissions were increasingly becoming fair game for snooping government officials, the innocent as well as the guilty. People were being encouraged to turn in their neighbors for suspicion. Something to rankle anyone who has lived through WWII.

It was clear that this government was going to operate in as much secrecy as it could muster. And the end game of that secrecy was policies that eroded our Constitutional rights. New policies were brought on-stream without discussion or debate. The administration ignored Congressional attempts to serve in its traditional role as ‘checks’ and ‘balances.’ Arbitrariness and certitude with a limited historical perspective began to characterize this administration. This was demonstrated by our dealings with other countries.

We were quick to throw our weight around. We would sever the ABM treaty, an accord that kept this country safe for more than thirty years. We would pursue a reckless AntiMissile Defense system that would cost upwards of 400 billion dollars and probably not work if one could believe those objective scientists who had no axes to grind. We introduced the idea of pre-emption which would allow us to declare war on those countries before they had challenged us, an idea that wasn’t even thinkable just twenty years before.

It became widely known that the U.S. had become unilateralist in pursuing its own interests and the interests of others were irrelevant. This was demonstrated by our contemptuous approach to the Kyoto Accord which we snubbed. The South African Conference which addressed world challenges was barely attended and treated as if it were insignificant.

No, America demonstrated increasingly that the concerns of the rest of the world meant little or nothing to us. Therefore, it should have come to our resident hawks and ex-Cold Warriors that our arrogance and excesses were costing us more friends in the world than we could afford. That we were being audacious in the pursuit of policies that were predicated on self-interest and letting the chips fall where they may had become mainstream policy.

Such adventurism reached its ultimate manifestation in the pursuit of a dictator who we had no trouble charging with being a purveyor of Weapons of Mass Destruction—even though it was never proven to anyone’s satisfaction. Again, this willfull government was going to extract it’s pound of flesh no matter who was to suffer for it. And so now, with a government that can not reverse a stock market that has fallen to its lowest depths comparatively since the days of Hoover,….a government that is unable to create jobs (At this time, we are losing in excess of 60,000 jobs a month; while under Clinton, jobs were being created at more than double that number!), a government that has failed to curtail abuses in the corporate world, we find ourselves in a very vulnerable position outflanked and outmaneuvered in a world where increasingly we are seen as the outcasts.
Investors are troubled by excesses of chief executives and outright fraud at the highest levels that has not been probed or policed. People have seen their retirements wither away as confidence reaches new lows. The private sector has been unable to take up the slack. The Federal Reserve reduces the interest rate but this is also a two edged sword that comes back and impacts the income of the retired and those planning for retirement.

What has deferred economic Armageddon, the last prop in the economy, the consumer, is ready to pull out, to defer spending until the direction of the economy becomes clearer. This troubling prospect which is all too real has us looking into the maw of deflation, a prospect that this Administration fails to address with its foreshortened and insensitive point of view.

But this only skims the surface. For in fact the environment is undergoing stress. We are seeing weird things happening. We have failed to demonstrate our moral authority in third world nations who savagely attack their forests and green belts reducing the supply of fresh oxygen to the environment. Global warming increasingly can no longer be denied. The government wants to drill in pristine areas for two years supply of oil that will forever impact certain species and preordain them to extinction. Tides are rising as global ice flows begin to melt. If that is not corrected in good time, it is possible that the
“accelerator” responsible for the Gulf Stream will stop and the temperate climates that we have become used to will simply disappear, leaving us open to the possibility of another ice age.

All, indeed, very troublesome signs that this administration simply does not want to know about with its selective hearing. One might posit the question: Does this administration care one whit for the rights of the people it rules. And if this is the case, does it not violate the responsibilities of the executive body that swears to uphold the interests and well-being of the people?

Of course, these are issues for Constitutional lawyers and those who earn their living in the interpretation of what our government documents support. But with the rapid changes we have seen and with their potential for changing the political, human and environmental landscape, it is very clear that we can no longer wait for change to occur on its own. We must first understand what our rights are under our Constitution. And we must work to restore those rights before our country is transformed into a totalitarian landscape where human rights have become a figment of our imaginations. Towards that end, we need to commit ourselves with untold vigor or share in the consequences of inaction.

Les aaron
hubmaster