Whispering Back To Power

At the rate that has been demonstrated, and the lack of concern on the part of so many, we may lose most of what was obtained by the longest and hardest struggles (see your history fellow citizens!). What rights that workers have obtained will have to be fought for long and excruciatingly all over again.

Congress is not a collection of representatives “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” but instead a club of, by, and for millionaires, billionaires, and corporations.  Working for, or at least compromise for, the common good, is so rare it is effectively inconsequential.  We have a one-party system with two factions, effectively controlled by a five letter word, MONEY.

A system that, on its present path, cannot deliver the one thing that the most extensive worldwide polling ever done has revealed is the most ardent desire of the present-day adult the world over:

A good paying (livable wage) job.  The very thing that this corporatist, maximum short-term profit, world system is least capable (and least desirous) of delivering.  And because the system doesn’t do that most foundational thing it NEEDS to do, nearly every other problem we have cascades into near insolvability.  The system is on track to so monumentally under-deliver, it doesn’t take a soothsayer to see the problems coming at us.

And yet we keep thinking the “magical market”—yes, the twisted, manipulated, corporate-and-plutocrat-controlled “free market”—is somehow going to deliver for us what we desperately need.  But it is the same system whispering its continuous barrage of weakening diversion and subjugation: “Embrace The Illusion.”

Boy, do we need a lot of people to, with quiet but firm determination, whisper back: “Not Me.”

Childish labors and smokescreens and diversions

Consider the deceiving smokescreens of concern about “child labor,” and how little Johnny and Mary are being prevented from working for Granny and Granddad on the farm or the like.  No parent or grandparent has been arrested, in my research, for employing their child or grandchild, and it is deliberately misleading to try to whip up people that they have, and that “laws need to be changed.”  The family business is mostly left alone, as is much ag really temporary labor. 

But that’s not what others would have you believe.  Therefore, when you hear their rhetoric, tell yourself you will look at motives inside of what is being said, and who is saying it, and who is behind saying it.

When they cease to be able to intellectually and emotionally whirl us around at their whim, we will have taken a giant step toward getting ourselves and our democracy back from what one commentator, borrowing from Transformers, terms “the Decepticons.”

Inside Your? Valentine

Refusing to accept something does not make it untrue.  How many women (and men) find it incomprehensible “how he/she could ‘cheat’ on me.”  This “cheating” (I despise the word for a whole host of intellectual and presumptive/insinuative reasons) is a complex thing, much of it biology driven (drive of men for sexual conquest and subliminal procreation), some of it relationship and missing needs driven, some of it thrill-seeking and excitement driven, and even a bit of it at times a reaction to psychological-emotional damage of the past in one or more of those involved.

And now comes one more contributor: Oxytocin.  Apparently, new research suggests, the presence (or lack) of this emotional attachment hormone helps plays a large part in determining how monogamous someone FEELS (which, as we know, often, although not always, determines how one acts).  “Cads,” “players,” “sluts,” “cheaters,” etc.—the reasons for their behavior may be a lot more understandable now.  Conversely, the relative ease that some couples and individuals have with monogamy may also be a lot more understandable.

But I can hear the significant others now: “I don’t care if you did get tested as low on the hormone; if you do anything, it’s CHEATING, and you’re SCUM!” :)

And so it goes. :)

What’s really interesting is to observe one person in a relationship “cheat” on their “significant” other, and then be hurt and incensed when they find out that the other has done the same thing.  The hypocritical outrage and condemnation is truly a thing to behold!

Ah, the genders.  Never a dull moment!  Of history repeating itself. 

Over and over and over and over…

The original drama?  Long before the Greeks “created” it, certainly! :)

Envisioning the Non-Spectacle

We have, at state and national level, complex problems of a complex society.  But with legislators spending between 1/3^rd and 2/3rds of their waking hours on fund raising (by necessity), where do they find the time to read the lengthy bills, do the research, absorb the briefings?  The answer is:  they don’t.  Just when we need them to work full time on our problems!

What would help? Shorten the campaign season.  Radically.  Ban ads; they’ve become mostly corrupt twisted lies spreaders.  Don’t discourage debates, sure.  Encourage forums and town halls for direct questions, yes.  But also, especially, encourage written (truly thoughtful, non-sound bite) answers to questions put forward by journalists, academics, League of Women Voters, etc.

It would be a start in the right direction away from the spectacle that passes for our political process.

Channeling Eisenhower

The Framers’ reading of Roman history was correct, and their marked fear of, and guarding against, militarism was justified. If they were around today, they would remark that the limitations they put in place were not strong enough, and that Rome was being repeated. They knew that having large standing armed forces is a danger to both economy and democracy/the republic. It causes threats to be inflated or invented; it colors both perceptions and options in regards to international affairs; it breeds wars of aggression; it produces enemies from those who might be neutral or even friendly; it tempts its unwarranted use by policymakers; it obscures true self-defense and true national interest; it promotes and enriches selfish, corrupt, and connected individuals and organizations; it feeds, infuses, and justifies itself; it breeds non-producers and penalizes and weakens the non-producers, to the utter detriment of economic and social health; it drains vitally needed resources from the infrastructural and social needs of the society; it separates the population from the responsibility and involvement and meaningfully felt consequences of military actions taken; out of arrogant power, it fosters conflict instead of cooperation; as the social and economic society decays around it, it becomes the proficient and respected force that people look to for some sort of salvation, leading to further increase in its power; and its members, and especially its leaders, come gradually to both lose respect for civilian decision makers (and their authority), and to insert themselves further and further into the processes of politics.

America needs to shake off the obscuring hegemonic dust from its eyes, dust that is as old as WW2, and realize that it MUST both envision and make happen—soon—a much smaller standing military. Rather than structure itself for some nebulous “war on terrorism,” while simultaneously structuring for some big WW2/Cold War pan-conflict, and all the large forces that postulates, it needs to go in the opposite direction. It needs a very small, highly proficient force of special operations and related troops that can address the asymmetrical warfare likely, and leave to the National Guard (the militia; remember, those folks the Framers spoke of in the Constitution?) having cadres of specialized instructors and officers who can plan and provide for the possibility of needing to mobilize large numbers when true threats to the defense of the US and its true interests arise.

This would break the military-industrial complex, will lose some established expertise, and comes with it some risk. But the risk to continuing on our present course is no risk at all—it is certain self-decay and self-destruction.