Nightmares, fear, truth and lies.

I awoke at 4 am, sick with fear. I am again facing threats.  Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness.   I am falsely accused.  The lies are heinous. I’ve been here before. But the dreams are of those who held me hostage and brought guns to point in my face, knifes to thrust under my chin, to make their point.  The bold faced long necked lies are more insidious. The greed that drives deceit is more deeply disdainful.  Last year was particularly trying, the death threats and the threats to kill my dog when a former dog had already been sacrificed.   I still refused to comply with extortion.The extortion is the same. The punishment follows the refusal to reward deceit.
I am here at a conference of doctors. Others are speaking of their fears.  It’s becoming universal.  Except for the elite or perhaps the mediocre. So many shudder, the ripples felt as uneasy laughter, voices kept low in hope that no one hears whispered conversations.    Stand up and you make yourself a target.  I am disheartened to hear of doctors who have left their community because they are not allowed a conscience.  They are purposely being subjected to means to break them. There is no compromise.  Christians are persecuted all over. More so, these days of aetheist communist control and sharia language restraints. To speak is to blaspheme except for the chosen.  And who are the chosen. That debate sizzles.
I am by contrast criticized for transparency.  There are no secrets in our society today. I once “hacked" into the places where all the personal records recorded by governments  were left open to all because then anyone could, legally, look.  Security cost and though I was offered pay I didn’t want to address the mess.  They had not seen the need to protect the privacy except their own because they wanted easy access instead.  Repeatedly I fought repeatedly for confidentiality till the matter became irrelevant.  The illusion of privacy is just that, our government and countless agencies for business and even nefarious designs spy on us continuously. Wikileaks has told us what we all know, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Sexuality and private communication were once sacrosanct but no more.  The RCMP, FBI, NSA and all manner of public agencies spy on citizens routinely. They pay lip service to maintain appearances.  In hospitals the privacy at all levels except the top is like the gown afforded the patient.   There is pressure on the courts for transparency now.  We need the  full context of body language and secondary communications that slant all information to understand any verdict.  The back rooms prevail but only with bugs and cameras strewn around them. .
Transparency is the only protection, really.  We live in a glass house.  We are only protected by the truth. Relative truth is the illusion.   We know the media skews truth for profit.  Memories are false in hours or days and yet individuals insist their memory is true.  Then memories are fought back and forth before referees little different from those who wear black and white stripped shirts in soccer matches, convene. It’s always political.  Outcomes are bought or won.  The rich prevail.  The winner writes history.  All strength remains with the State, the King, the Big Man, the Big Woman.  Families and tribes compete.  Nation states are struck down. The rule of law is little respected when truth is no more.  Alibies are maintained by tribes and gangs.  Groups and primitive structures that predate nation states prevail.  Individuals are sacrificed or crucified.  Virgins, the young and so often Christians and especially Jews have always been the favoured entertainment in the games.  Animals and gladiators play to a different sort.
I am always anxious.  I am more anxious older.  I have served a society that once wanted law and order but the very structures of that old group are now torn asunder. The pedophiles I saw locked up will have their revenge on me.  The liars are more powerful each day as the power  shifts to celebrate the mob.  Marches upon marches define the present. A media chosen spokesperson with camera angles and lighting lies.  I’m not a marcher. I’m afraid in large crowds.  The young and physical prevail in war.  I was promised protection.  I was bred a hot house plant.  Old, academic, scholarly, a doctor, I have no more place in this physical fray.  
The campaigns to smear celebrate the actors and actresses. I wasted my time in libraries and labs.  The gossip mills were training new men and women when I was in the morgue. I have consulted the dead while reality tv was teaching debates. I am a minority view. I am a marginalized citizen.  There are favoured groups but my own group held onto truth like Shrodinger’s cat, lucid dreaming and fractals..  The world is any way you slice the pie.  Perceptions are self serving and compete by force.
I cling to the remnants integrity.  I have been violated sexually.  I have been violated physically.  My morality has been questioned. I have studied ethics ad infinitum if only to be aware in the increasingly unethical and uncultured world I live in. My RCMP friend said she joined the force to be a crime fighter but left when all she was allowed to do was be a crime recorder.  I feel a kindred spirit as we increasingly are called upon to promote disease by any other name.
I am tired in the morning.  The nightmares return and disrupt my sleep.  I struggle to remain.  Suit up and show up. Do the next right thing.  I resist the allure of self pity by exercises of constant gratitude. I thought block constantly. Prayer and thanksgiving. I seek to forgive but it’s always hard to be forgiving as one  is ducking arrows.  The nature of the work is in the midst of competing factions, more confused and confusing as the day goes on.  The armchair Monday Morning quarterbacks and the space station dwellers debate your worth.  Any moment you can be collateral damage or cannon fodder.  There is no concern above. Middle management is a casino, the players vying to skim the genius from the games to give back to the House.  The higher one climbs,the more bodies one leaves behind.  The greater the right to privilege and the more one is willing to do to keep the status.
I’ve come and gone. I’ve given up millions and turned down millions. I’ve walked away and wondered  if I’m meant to be a monk or if honourable death is better to the constant grind of facing people who want you dead so they can steal and take what they feel entitled to.  They would have your experience without the time in chains. They would have your reputation without the life of  shame.  EE Cummings called them ‘those people’.  Leonard Cohen spoke of the game, that ‘everyone knows”.
We are rats in a maize. Advance cockroaches in a dream.  Monkeys with minds and nice hair dos.  The question is truth and the judge claims to know this.  Bsseut increasingly all he holds is the gun and jailor’s keys. There are no Solomon’s in the drug addicted hoards.  Consensus is a commodity.  The guillotine is Occam’s razor. The one who fears most is left standing in the end.  The paranoids are proved right as Freud said.
And I am only afraid as long as I forget.  Anxiety is a measure of one's distance from God.  So again I turn and trudge towards Bethlehem.