THE UNITED STATES is run by drug lords ... no, not necessarily the heroin, marijuana cocaine type ... these are the drug lords of media, pharmaceuticals, and image who have stealthily programmed our minds and taken over the fields of medicine, communication, politics, and dictate what is considered acceptable. In essence, we have been drugged into a state of mind that is malleable and easily manipulated.

Pharmaceuticals and Freedom
In relation to the drug lords of medicine, pharmaceuticals have had a heavy-handed role in determining what can and what cannot be considered appropriate treatment for disease. In the process, they have subsumed the FDA, whose original role was to monitor the safety of medicine for human consumption. What the FDA has become is a puppet arm for pharmaceutical companies, who do everything to blot out any form of therapy that they do not control, and have effectively created a country that promotes drugs and surgery as our only choices for healing; this in a country that is supposed to be governed by freedom of choice.

Our freedoms have been relegated to which drugs we can take - within a narrow parameter. We are being bombarded on television by commercials that tell us to tell our doctor that we want this or that latest drug, many of which are no more effective than the original ones formulated years before. The difference? The old ones have gone beyond their patent life and can be made generically. Therefore, "new" drugs are made so that exclusive rights are granted, and oftentimes the cost of these drugs is astronomical in comparison. Further, no studies have been made to see how effective the new drugs are in contrast to the older ones. Why would they? In most cases, there isn't any difference. Many doctors have told me privately that they liked the old ones better!

You may think the viewpoint of drug lords is extreme, but take the following cases as point of reference.

Any therapy that involves homeopathy, vitamins, or forms of treatment not under the arm of pharmaceuticals is deemed either quackery or dangerous. In the name of "protecting" the public, these alternative therapies used in other countries that are not yet under the dominion of pharmaceuticals, are hunted down, and the practitioners thrown in jail or banished from their practice as physicians.

Chemotherapy in Exchange for Research Dollars
Further shameful behavior on the part of pharmaceutical companies involves the over-use of chemotherapy - a highly profitable drug of choice. I was personally informed of a case in which a woman with cancer went to prestigious Sloan Kettering for treatment, after feeling that she needed a second opinion. Her own doctor was connected to one of the most prestigious research hospital staffs on the west coast. When she went to Sloan Kettering, they gave her a reduced amount of chemo based on her size, and when they had finished the treatment, told her in no uncertain terms that this was all she should have. Her cancer was going into remission, and they strongly warned her not to have any more chemotherapy. Upon return to the west coast, and on subsequent visits to her cancer specialist physician, she was told that she most certainly must continue on the chemotherapy regardless of what Sloan Kettering had said. She believed her doctor, and went ahead with the chemo. The result was death.

The details of this are very sad, but what is more outrageous is the story behind this that most of us have no knowledge of. Many major research hospitals receive grants and donations from pharmaceutical companies based on the amount of chemotherapy they use. In other words, treatment oftentimes has nothing to do with what is needed by the patient, but what is needed to continue the funding for research that these hospitals have come to rely on! Pharmaceutical companies have shown again and again that they are motivated by only one thing - high profits.

Little Secret About Drug Testing
Another troubling fact is the way in which test results are obtained. A drug can be tested over and over again until the desired outcome is achieved. To be FDA approved, the pharmaceutical only needs to have one more person who has achieved benefit from their drug than from a placebo. ONLY ONE MORE!!! And I have talked with many doctors who openly laugh. They know what is going on. I was informed by one physician that it is common knowledge in the medical research field that you have to know the outcome of your study before you do it, or you won't get funding. And so, the researchers will take the funding, do the study, and on the side do research that they really want to do in order to advance knowledge. This is not only revolting, it is despicable.

Also, the number of reported deaths and serious drug interactions are totally unreported. The numbers are staggering. Yet, when a vitamin or herb has any adverse reaction, the information is widely touted as proving the lack of safety that modality demonstrates.

When you put the power of decision into few hands, the opportunities for corruption is unfortunately very high. We have seen pharmaceuticals and insurance companies tighten a noose around health care in America. We have seen the results of medicine no longer being about the best course of treatment, but about which drug to use. And another pathetic piece of information regarding drugs is that the physicians often receive their knowledge of drugs from the drug dealers - the sales people who come to "sell" them to the physician. We won't even go into the associated "perks" that are offered to entice a doctor to choose one brand over another. It is ludicrous.

Lobbyists Control Washington
The lobbyists in Washington from pharmaceutical and insurance companies have effectively blocked meaningful legislation that will provide insurance to Americans in need of lower cost health care, and try repeatedly to restrict the options Americans have as to what type of health care they want to choose. The list of abuses by companies intent on protecting their industry at the cost of the greater good is astounding, and a whole other article in itself. We as Americans are becoming more disillusioned, and rather than speaking out, most are just sitting back, throwing our arms in the air, and shaking our heads. After all, what can one person do in the face of this onslaught of power?

The Role of Advertising
Media now being in the hands of a handful of conglomerates furthers the incestuous relationship that has been forged between corporate interests to manipulate a public that is fodder in the hands of those who choose to mold us into whatever they want us to be. It is difficult to unplug from this created mindset because it is everywhere. We used to be bombarded by commercials on television and radio. We would be visually appealed to in magazines. But now, the ads are on our computers and cell phones. If we use any form of communication, the hooks of mind control are all around us. Big Brother is indeed watching over us whether we are aware of it or not.

Is It Really Food?
We are further plagued by consumption of foods that are no longer food. We have become pawns in a game of selling us stuff that is termed food, but when we look at ingredients, we find little that actually is more than flavor enhancers, aroma stimulators, and a list of preservatives to give the "food" long shelf life. There is nothing alive or enlivening in these things that we are being assaulted with on a daily basis.

In the movie, Supersize Me, the film maker ate a fast food restaurant diet for 30 days, and in that time, gained 24 pounds and endangered his health. His experiment was done to show that fast food couldn't be harmful, but the results were terrifying. However, this is not even the worst of it. The secret in the manufacturing of food is that chemicals are added that enhance flavor and stimulate appetite. Aromas are created in a laboratory in New Jersey to create a craving on the part of the customer. We are being conned into eating stuff that is terrible for us, and we crave it due to the additives designed to "get" us. You don't believe it? Then look back at what the tobacco industry was doing in America. The investigation that exposed them came about because of an inside whistle blower, and it was discovered they added addiction-forming ingredients to hook people into smoking, and they often targeted their ads to the young and impressionable. Can't happen in America, you say? It did, and it does. All the time.

Begrudgingly, news is coming out about the obesity issue in America. It is blamed on food and lack of exercise. And this is indeed a large contributor to the problem, as are the addicting ingredients that cause us to eat more and want more. However, there is another, more insidious perpetrator of this dis-ease in America. It is the image being fed to all of us as to what is "acceptable" and what is not.

The Image Makers
In a recent movie, a comment is made that sums up one of the issues we are facing. In The Devil Wears Prada, Meryll Streep comments that size 6 has become the new size 14. The reality of that statement is horrifying, because we have an entire society that is seeking to fit into a body type that naturally only fits approximately 2-5% of the population. With this as the focus, how can any impressionable girl and young woman NOT end up with eating disorders? And when a person cannot fit into this ridiculous idea of perfection, how many turn to horrible diets that completely throw off the body's chemistry, or eat themselves into oblivion because they don't measure up?

Beyond this, though, is a much deeper and darker underpinning, because if we look at the roots of the movement to make women look like little boys with artificial breasts, it goes back to a time that coincided with something else ... the serious rise of the femininist movement in the 1960s. Until such time, we had role models in various shapes and sizes. We had Sophia Loren and Gina Lolabrigida, who were amply shaped women. Marilyn Monroe was said to be a size 14, while Audrey Hepburn was a naturally tiny woman. It had something to do with bone size, and all were welcome to the table of acceptable identity. However, as the Women's movement rose, an interesting thing occurred. A model named Twiggy was found in England, and the powers that be touted her and her look as "the" way we should all look. Funny that Twiggy looked like a very skinny little kid with a very short boyish haircut. This twig figure was certainly non-threatening to a male population that was beginning to sweat through the shifts and changes in society as women declared their right to equal pay for equal work, and wanted to have a larger piece of the pie that heretofore was not offered to them.

The Revenge of the Patriarchy
Beyond this seemingly coincidental rise is a much larger archetypal issue. I call it The Revenge of the Patriarchy, and it coincides with the shift of ages that we are facing. It has become a subconscious implant in our culture, and we are all victimized by it, because the rise of feminism is a major threat to the patriarchal hierarchy. We can see the blatant nature of this heavy-handed treatment in the way the Taliban viewed women in Afghanistan. They are the epitome of the patriarchal rule concept. In the United States and western nations, this outright form of cruelty is unacceptable, but subtle forms of control are definitely not.

Look at the idea of woman. In other ages, she is shown in her fullness and roundness - not obesity, but fecundity. Her fertility abounds with rounded hips and breasts as part of the differentiating factor between herself and her male counterpart, whose hips are almost non-existent. His shape is more of the straight line. Hers is the curve. So, as this provocative feminine energy emerges as a power source, it can be threatening to an ego structure that has held this vision in submission. As long as the feminine did not make waves, her fertility was non-threatening. But when she rose up from the ashes, the power of those curves and the strength of her fertility was jaw dropping. She became a real threat to a form of control held for centuries. And as we know, nothing that is threatened goes lightly - especially the male ego.

If we were clever, how would we counteract this type of movement so as to remove the threat, or the threatening aspect of women rising? What if we devalued the physique ... what if we touted the straight line of male as the only right and acceptable form? What if we made women into stick figures? How would that feel, and what would it do to them? How would it be to tout children as the acceptable form for women? Make them into little kids - and more than that, remove the sexual fecundity, and in its place create a look more homosexual than heterosexual? And then ... how about demeaning the natural shape and sizes of breasts. Make small breasts unacceptable. Put on silicone ones isntead. Make them hard - fake - anatomically a joke. And if a woman has large breasts, make her self-conscious - out of place - have them cut down to size. And oh, yes ... let's standardize what the "right" size "should" be. Great.

Now we have cut the curves out of woman. We have shaped her in the image of the straight line. We have allowed her to play in the arena of men as substandard clones of men, and we have disempowered her full strength and beauty by trivializing her body so that she is physically non-threatening to the weak male ego. And just to make it more interesting, let's have her portray the whore. That way, we don't have to respect her, either. Let's make her dress in clothes that are for our pleasure, and show off those boobs that we want to play with - created the way we want them - not in the way they came. Now we've really got her where we want her - created again in our image of what she "should" be. That keeps her in line ... our line.

Sounds implausible, doesn't it? Nobody could manage to turn an entire society into this stick figure model of "perfection", could they? In the end ... who wins? Patriarchy seemingly triumphs, and society is diminished because once again the FULL value of both men and women is denied to conform to something that is no threat and ends up causing a huge number of would be emancipated women to become slaves to fashion and figures that they cannot possibly fit with ease. Again, they have been devalued and put in their "place" through the subtle manipulation of media, marketing, and mind control.

Add to this scenario the fact that any woman over the age of 40 has to quake in her boots because unless she has the good fortune to be Barbara Walters, she is in severe danger of being devalued, denied, and dumped from her position as a person of interest. Interestingly, the deadline for women is around 50 - just after she is no longer a hostage to biology, and just as she is entering her true power - the Crone years. Patriarchy does not want to deal with crones, so the entire image of being an "elder" woman is met with disgust. Not for men. They are considered wiser as they age. The gray hair they tout is "distinguished", but woe to the woman who allows her hair to be its natural color. And do everything possible not to have wrinkles or any signs at all of "aging" - because the last half or 1/3 of life is spent in exile if you can't fit the image.

The age thing does affects both men and women, but not equally. Yet, men are as manipulated and disempowered by the mindset we're being fed. Everyone loses when each person is not valued and is unable to portray the fullness of themselves without a limiting view that is perpetrated in the name of fear or power or control.

So, I've painted a pretty disgusting scenario of some of the major things we are now facing as a society. We have been brainwashed regarding our health, our food, and our bodies. We are dumbed down by an educational system that is operating on an Industrial Revolution model, being pandered to by a media that exploits sex and violence, and lied to about our rights as human beings to be all that we can be - to investigate, to gain knowledge, to think independently, and to help create a life worth living that values all of life in its various forms and ages - celebrating diversity and embracing it rather than condemning and vilifying what doesn't fit the image we've been brainwashed to believe is the only right one.

This is food for thought. Think it over. Look at where you fall into mindless stereotypical roles that don't even fit who you "really" are, and where you are bombarded by dictates that demean or trivialize who you are, what your shape is, or who you want to become.

Think about it. Look a little deeper into what you are being "fed". Investigate, and question so-called authority.

It's time.

© Kathleen Jacoby, 2006

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathleen Jacoby is writer and author, publisher, columnist and senior editor. Her focus is on the awakening of humanity essential at this crucial time in history. She is aware that we must become the ones we have been waiting for, and overcome the isolation of self-interest to understanding our interdependence with all life for the wellbeing and betterment of everyone and every thing.

You may read PLW's serialization of her book, Vision of the Grail through the coming months, and visit her website and Blog site for further information and insights.

Kathleen welcomes your e-mails: Visionofthegrail@aol.com.