Are we acting rationally within a lunatic doctrine (to further an American Hegemony)? Or are we adding to to the voice of the world's other Super Power (for yes, there are two)?There's the American Ruling Class, and Worldwide Public Opinion (including the opinions of America's own sensible and intelligent civilians). It needs to be clear, and we need to remind ourselves and others each day, that it is not American civilians who are evil, self serving, greedy, shortsighted, power hungry and ultra-destructive, but merely the ruling elites that control them. And their goals are not ours, their ambitions are not ours, and their concerns are not ours. One way we can see this is when a majority of voters do not approve of their leader, or of his warmongering, but he nevertheless continues to commit the lives of vast amounts of people to an Imperial Strategy. They want a world in which we don't care about others, not in a real way. They want us to care about ourselves, and what we need and want, in terms of our function in the market mechanism. In Hegemony And Survival, a book by the esteemed linguist and intellectual, Noam Chomsky, he says just that, in almost exactly those words. We are faced, in our generation, with this vital choice. To wake up and participate in our own survival. We may have not noticed it yet, but we are living in a time when the other Great Power, has declared its willingness to go to war and destruction when it wants to. To aggravate and antagonise other nations (using its disposable citizens) for the furthering of its own unassailable power, and the entrenching of its security on the rest of the world. This war on terror means whoever it decides is the enemy, is the enemy, and is the enemy for as long as there are terrorists (which is to say, forever). The result of these behaviours are enemies that learn that the only way to contain this unbridled aggression, is to develop nuclear weapons (as North Korea has, and North Korea has effectively got the Americans negotiating over a period of years). Watch the war on terror become the Infinite War in our lifetimes (that is to say, now). The Iraq process will spill over now into Iran. Expect Saudi Arabia to be massively de-stabilised. Be aware of the rising probability of WMD attack in a major American city from now on. Begin to see that all you see and hear (on television, in newspapers) is not reality, but a collective view of it, a particular opinion of it, and one that does not really support our idea of what is happening or of what we want to see happening, or of how we want our countries to be led, or have someone speak for us in our stead. To say that the framework within which most of us live is actually irrational is really plausible, and not hysterical, or paranoid. We are meant to be dazed consumers, caring only about consumption, and nothing else. Is that what we are? If it is, then surely we do deserve the fate that is in store for us in the not too distant future. If it is not, then we need to wake up, become conscious of who we are, co-ordinate ourselves and co-operate in social movements, and have the will and resolve and imagination to see and to pursue the opportunities and actions that will bring about the sort of world that makes sense.