Knocking

The plutocracy have drawn nearly all the effective resources to themselves.  All media not directly or indirectly controlled by them are usually paupers, forced to ignobly ask for donations from a public which itself has few resources.

Have to keep talking about these things.  The public may have its headphones on and can’t hear, but truth’s insistent and persistent knock will eventually be heard over all the banal noise.

A Lost Generation?

Those who follow the Professor & The Housewife blog know that I had the flu.  I am back.

Today came a report from top world economists that income inequality and lack of real opportunity for the mass of people in much of the “developed” world is a millstone around the world economy recovering sufficiently. There is real concern that we are creating a “lost generation” of the young who should be attaining work skills and experiences to make the economies strong for the future.  A bad trend.

The social breakdown of too many young—especially young men—with too much time, too little real opportunity, and too little guidance, or worse, the wrong guidance, is insidious.  That general pattern has the potential to have the same explosive effects here as elsewhere.

The Selfish Man Who Pokes His Own Eye Condemns Others For Living In the Dark

Fools think that if the world is clamoring for “stuff”—Iphones, cars, CDs, soft drinks, fast food, retail, etc.—that that is a sign of prosperity.  We might have the largest aerospace company (Boeing), the largest biotech (Amgen), largest retail (Walmart), largest petrol (Exxon), largest software (Microsoft), comm equipment (Sisco), and heavy equipment (Caterpillar), but what does that mean, and is it always an advantage for the country?

We do have universally appealing attributes of pluralism, economic opportunity, and cultural openness, but much of that has become brittle or façade-like anymore.  The asymmetric threats we presently face might not be existential ones, but if they sniff our weaknesses, we are more vulnerable than thought.

Because while the medieval, unmodern, unconnected chauvinist power mongers of the terrorist world may be off base, so are we.  They can be wrong, but not all the way wrong.  And we can be overall “right,” but with enough wrong that we give power and motivation to our enemies, and self-weaken what should be our strengths. 

Fix ourselves, and we will go far in dissolving the drive, power, and allure of those terrorist organizations.