Agenda 21 by Glenn Beck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I can't even say enough good about this book. I think it's the 21st century version fo 1984. Excellent. And scary. Very scary. And very currently true. You just have to read it. HIGHLY recommend it. Especially to understand the 'today' we live in and to RECOGNIZE and SEE what is happening right before our faces.
Some quotes:
“We pledge our allegiance to the wisdom of the Central Authority. We pledge our dedication to the Earth and to its preservation.”
- Pledge, Agenda 21 by Glenn Beck, Chapter 16
-- - - - L O N G Q U O T E that will give you a taste for the book: ------
“Follow me”, Lizzy said. We went back to the supply cupboard. Lizzy sat in the rocking chair and motioned for me to sit on the step stool. Lizzy rocked, and her torch bounced up and down, shinning off the walls, off the [baby] bottles of nourishment, sweeping past the clipboard with its list of names, up to the ceiling, across my face, down to the floor. The step stool was low, and my knees were up around my chin. My back was cold against the wall. Somewhere down the dark hall a child was coughing. We sat that way in silence for what seemed like a long time.
Finally Lizzy spoke, her voice gruff: “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” She kept rocking. My mouth felt dry, as though my tongue were made of shoe leather.
“Nothing,” I said. The words seemed to quiver and hang in the air in front of me, as Lizzy stopped rocking and the torch settled on my face.
“You bet you got nothing to say.” She rocked a while, the chair creaking with movement. “And I know why you don’t understand. You were home-raised! Aren’t many of your kind left, thank goodness. Bet your momma never taught you anything, now did she?”
“She told me about the Before-Time.”
“Before-Time!” It’s over! Forever, over! So why even tell you about it? I heard she was a little bit crazy. Word gets around.”
Through the window slit I could see dirty, gray clouds slide over a sliver of the moon.
“Heard she didn’t like the idea of ‘change’. None of them liked the idea of change! They were stuck in the muck of the status-quo! That’s what I heard.”
I could hear Randall walking past the building, making rounds; his footsteps shuffling.
“If you had been Village-Raised you ‘d know the REAL history! Like I do. Had to memorize it! Got good grades too. That’s how I got this job. Real history had its beginning with The Republic. So let me tell you about it, then maybe you’ll understand.”
She sounded proud, and sure of herself. She paused, as if deciding where to start. Then went on -
“Did she tell you how hard people had to work before The Change?”
I thought of the photograph of mother holding me. The way she was smiling. How GREEN the grass was. The big house behind us. “She never said anything about working hard. Nothing like that.”
Lizzy interrupted me. “That just proves she was crazy! See, before The Republic, people had to work HARD. Either grow their own food, work and get money to buy food. Had to pay for their houses too!And clothes, all that stuff! Big, big companies made the rules, because they owned the energy and drilled the earth for it. Regular people didn’t have a chance! The EARTH didn’t have a chance.”
From the nursery I heard a baby cry. I wanted to go there. I didn’t want it to be Elsa.
“Sit still!”, Lizzy said, as though she could read my mind. “It’s all part of their learning. Sleep when it’s time to sleep, eat when it’s time to eat. I was raised here. I learned it. They will too! That’s how it works.”
“But they’re just babies!” I said.
“They’re citizens!”, she answered. “We all live by the same rules.”
The crying slowed. Harder to hear. A brief quiet. Then it started again.
“Back to your history lesson,” Lizzy said. “Stuff your crazy momma never told you. Bet your daddy didn’t tell you much either.”
“He taught me a lot!” (‘Do whatever they ask’ she thought)
“You don’t act like he taught you a lot. Guess he had his hands fulls keeping your momma under control!” She shifted in the chair, crossing one leg over the other. Her pant leg pulled up and I could make out the bonny knobs of her ankle. I stood up and stared down at her. “Don’t talk about my parents like that! You have no right! They loved me and took care of me!”
“And where are they now?,” she asked, in a cold, flat voice. “Are they here NOW?” She stared back, blinding me with her torch. “Sit down! We’re not done!”
I reminded standing, ignoring her command. She either didn’t notice, or didn’t care.
“Things got worse,” she continued. “Some kind of new crisis every day. Food prices skyrocketing, energy shortages, riots in the streets, people grew restless, scared. That’s when The Republic was born. One wise, and powerful man became the ultimate authority. His name was Fabian. He chose other wise and powerful men to join his authority, and the people became citizens. Proud citizens! Praise be to The Republic!” Her voice had slipped into a monotone, almost trance-like. Another baby was crying, then another. The babies needed me. I needed to go to them! I started to walk out of the room.
“Sit!,” Lizzy said. “I’m still teaching! Remember I can report you for sleeping [note: this all started because Emiline had noticed Lizzy fell asleep on the job, while Emiline was tending the babies], for breaking the rules, and Randall will too! And then what will happen to you?” She rocked, babies cried, I felt tears behind my eyes, a burning pressure. “But it wasn’t easy,” she went on. “There were some who didn’t believe in the Central Authority.” She said ‘didn’t believe’ in a way that I could imagine her lip curling up over the words. She rocked harder. The light from the torch bounced faster, like lightning in all directions. “Your momma didn’t believe, and her mother and sister didn’t believe.”
“Her mother? Her sister? That would be my grandmother and my aunt! But I never knew a grandmother or an aunt, so how did Lizzy? “How stupid. How very stupid they were! The Central Authority was promising to take care of them, give them food and clothes and housing, meet all their needs, and at the same time protect the earth!” She had slipped back into the monotone. The rocking slowed, and she fell silent for a long moment. Then she started again. “Those stupid people tried to organize against The Central Authority! Can you imagine that? Organize against the Central Authority?!” She made a snorting sound, like a hiccup and a laugh mixed together. “And when the relocation of citizens began, they held protests, right there at the train station! PROTESTS! Big protests by small people, status-quo people.”
“Why don’t you just stop talking?,” I asked. She ignored me.
“What do you think happened next?”
“I have no idea!”
“They were shot, right then and there, in front of everyone!”
“Shot!?” I tried to imagine that scene. I couldn’t! I couldn’t imagine it. I’d seen guns on there army members, when they marched on display at the social update meetings. But they never seemed real, until now.
“Yup. Shot. Killed. I heard that your grandmother and aunt were shot right in front of your momma. Others were too. Guess there was a whole pile of bodies! Different people told me that. Randall saw it for himself right before he got on the train.” The room was silent, except for the rocking. Except for the noise in my head. In my ears. “From what I’m told, that’s when your momma starting acting crazy. Some of the others did too. Your daddy worked hard to keep your momma from acting out. Had to remind her from what I hear, had to remind her not to say anything.”
Again. Silence. In that silence, in that darkness, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Did David know all of this? Did Joan, and John? Surely they did! But no one ever told me! Father never told me. Piles of bodies and nobody told me? Mother digging at her skin with her fingernails, and turning away from me when I asked questions; the questions, the memories, tumbled in my head, pushing against each other, throbbing and pounding, making me dizzy, making me feel like I was going crazy.
“Only reason they didn’t shoot your momma was that she had to raise you. They didn’t have a children’s village yet. See, they were busy making sure everyone else had food and shelter. And they had so much to do to start healing the earth, the most necessary things first. So they needed her to raise you. From what I’ve seen so far, they’d been better off if they’d shot her! Right then and there. You’d understand the rules better. Raised by a crazy momma, that’s what you get!”
“She wasn’t crazy! She was my mother! How dare you talk about her like that!” My voice was shrill and loud. I wanted to slap her oily, dull face. She rocked again. The creaking of the chair loud and regular.
“I talk. You listen. That’s how it works here at the Village. Understand now?,” she asked. Oh, I understood alright. I understood hatred. I understood fear of the authority. I understood, perhaps for the first time in my life, what it felt like to be TRAPPED.
- Agenda 21, Chapter 34
- - - - - - LAST LONG QUOTE for another taste and we're headed for if you don't wake up NOW: - - - - - -
***
“Her eyelids were heavy and swollen. For the first time I saw her as more than just kind. She was defeated too. ‘We we’re wrong, we didn’t see what the others saw, we trusted too much!’ There was that word again: trust.
“‘Who did you trust? What did you trust?’ She went back to her desk and sat with her head in her hands……
“Finally, Joan looked at me and started to talk. ‘We trusted, John and me and a lot of the others, the way things were, we couldn’t imagine anyone being able to change that.’
“‘And does that mean, “the way things were”?’
“‘Our life, our family, working. We had our farm. If we worked hard we would succeed. Same as your parents. A work ethic. Individuals could work and be rewarded for their effort. Not just farmers. Teachers, factory workers, anybody. Some were more successful than others of course… we didn’t mind the work, really. Maybe others did I guess. When The Authority came into power they said we didn’t have to work so hard. Said everyone could share everything. We would all be equal. They called it the Fair Well Plan. They spoke so eloquently and they made the changes so quickly, seemed like almost overnight…’
“I had to get her back on to the Before Time, how it had all happened. ‘And this work ethic, how did it change, under The Authority I mean?’
“‘Think about it,’ she said, ‘Your energy board, for example, say you are young, full of energy, strong. You want to walk your board past the peg, gain, gain credits, maybe get an extra [nourishment] cube. What happens? What happens when you walk your board?’
“I had never thought about it like that. When my energy board meter pegged that was it, I didn’t have to give anymore. I would get my [nourishment] cube once it pegged. When it pegged I stopped. As GOUGH she could read my mind she said, ‘When it pegs you stop. Right?’ I nodded. ‘So nobody can be better than anyone else, no one can be stronger or smarter, no one can be outstanding. All citizens are equal. All get the same rewards. There are 3 ways a citizen can be different… One way a citizen can be different is by not meeting the standards set by The Authority. Another way they can be different is by needing more than other citizens. Giving less or needing more. Both of those ways are punishable… The third way is for one citizen to report another to The Authority. Report them for acting or talking against The Authority. The reporting citizen is rewarded.’
“‘And the other citizen? The one who is reported?’
“‘No one ever sees them again.”
- Agenda 21, Chapter 43
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