Change

 

(This was obviously written right after the first trump presidential election. It’s enough said that though nothing changed in the political environment or the state of the nation since, it gives pause to believing that anything will now.)

Change

 

Change came to Paradise, Ca this month. No one asked for it, no one deserved it, but it happened because it was the Will of God, Mother Nature’s whim, mismanagement of the forests by overdevelopment or ill planning by government agencies, or by just plain dumb, bad luck.

Build it and they will come. That’s our idea of Paradise. Build a senior center, the seniors come. They trust they’ll be taken care of when the time comes. Like parents and their children trust the education system to imbue the children with the proper ideals to make them successful in the real world.

Hard work, knowledge, decent wages, good things should follow along with the good and properly lived life.

Change is good or bad, sometimes at the same time. Dependent on whose perspective, whose purpose.

In 2016 the people of the USA voted Donald Trump into office, according to the constitutional structure designed by Founding Fathers and maintained, redesigned by other men, mostly men.

In 2016, the people of Britain, practically the stepfather of the USA, voted to leave the European Union, which was set up to unite the European block countries in a common currency as well as to make other economic agreements easier.

Major changes. Scotland which has always been at loggerheads with England votes to stay with England rather than be on its own. Right wing dictatorships the USA supports such as Brazil, Phillipines, N.Korea, Honduras, Saudi Arabia, Guatemala, Israel are counter balanced with left/socialist regimes the USA dislikes such as Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, any country friendly to Russia.

Is there any significant differences between any of these countries that would require special considerations based on arbitrARY, assumptive conditions of hostility or friendliness? They, like the USA are all swimming in the same shark infested swamp of patriotic fervor, corruption, nationalism, aggression, and religious fantasy.

All these changes are deserving of our attention and the news gives it to us non-stop, 24 hours, but is any of it really telling us what’s wrong?

We human beings have become the fodder for the cultural, political, and economic wars raging between idealistic and fascist minds who control the wealth or who want to control the wealth.

But that’s only part of it. If we are fodder, then it is our fault. We’ve let it happen. The amorphous, abstract god we originally gave to the churches, priests and religious demagogues to be our connection to our beliefs has been usurped by the nation state. In this day and age, it’s america that carries the mantle of Supremacy. Why do millions of citizens as well as immigrants look to america for relief from their problems and enforcement of their humanitarian rights?

George Santayana’s warning that those who don’t remember their history are bound to repeat it.

The fact that the world, growing as it is, cannot sustain the destruction of resources required to support the american dream, let alone the rest of the world.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an isolationist, just the opposite. I don’t think a world-wide consortium of wealthy, corporate profit minded masterminds should manage us either.

It’s in us. Our increasing reliance on Drugs, uncontrolled reproduction, accumulation of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, false belief in remedies like wars, sanctions, violence are all ingredients for our destruction as Free beings. If it were just climate, we could survive.

 

 

Drugs.

Being from the 60’s generation where not just marijuana, which has always been around, was acceptable but the acceptance of hallucinogens as contributors to enlightenment, I experimented enough to understand with the type of work I did that being high was not conducive to well- being. There is evidence that many drugs, used properly, can become the tool to enlightenment. It’s interesting that with many things on my list of negatives, the illicit drugs become the outlaw drugs while the “controlled” drugs, those of the government sanctioned pharmaceutical companies are acceptable.

It really is a difference between philosophies. One, used properly, can suggest a movement toward change in one way and the other, a control for things to remain the same.

Drugs and alcohol and the emergence of gangs and military’s forces that control them has brought many countries or certain parts of other countries to a standstill. As with wars and tax laws that have depleted the treasuries, drug enforcement and warfare has exacted a huge toll on the general population. In American and the western societies, the drugs are controlled by the pharmaceutical companies based in a profit motive while the costs of drug rehabilitation and addiction are borne by the society at large, usually through under financed and under manned nonprofits or agencies. Even with that in mind these society orbs are under strict guidelines, strictly controlled and regimented by the very companies and government agencies that are the source of the problem.

 

 Wars

Today’s wars have changed us in a lot of ways we can’t fully understand without at first studying PTSD in the light of not just direct conflict, but the damage inflicted on the human psyche by inference or subjective overexposure to all the political, cultural, and moral implications on warfare which is no longer purely defensive but more offensive in nature. There is an ancient Babylonian axiom that if someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill them first. And that’s why America and many other countries have taken on that role. America sees threats everywhere mostly based on the pseudo truth that Envy makes the world the way it is. It’s an odd principle to believe that those who want more freedom want to come and take ours, like Freedom is some sort of jewel in a museum. America doesn’t really have any more minerals and natural resources than anywhere else yet not having enough of one thing creates a void in our national needs and wants.

According to the costs of war project, the costs and use of oil and petroleum projects alone in the military industrial complex put nearly half of America’s global contribution to climate change.

Not to mention the depletion of monetary resources to the cost of 5.6 trillion, yes trillion. The irony is that progressives who wish things were otherwise are constantly criticized by the powers that be as well as their more common, even decent followers, that the entire repertoire of  progressive thought is detrimental to America’s future, little realizing that even if you don’t believe so much in America’s large contribution to the human caused side of climate change that the way wars are financed has changed so much that the entire burden of financing America’s present wars is a swift way to bring America to bankruptcy, not to mention it comes straight from the wallets and pocketbooks of the lower levels of wage earners through tax cuts for the wealthy and special incentives.

As mentioned above, PTSD puts tremendous pressure on a gun society that fosters the notion that the learned and acceptable way to resolve issues, either at the personal level or at the international level is by a two-thousand-year-old Babylonian axiom. Ironically, the belief that PTSD is only a warfare type of disorder has diminished its true significance, specifically in communities with high rates of poverty, gang/gun violence, and a low safe and secure living environment. Looking at gun use in america one could conclude there is a consensus that anywhere there is a gun, there’s going to be violence.

 

History

One interesting feature of Change is the rewriting of history. We can, if necessary, see that some of the legislation that has befallen upon common citizens, such as tax cuts, came about through several presidents, both democrat and republican, and who have escaped the pointing of fingers because along came trump who like the others just made sure he got his share by upping the ante (by lowering the upper percentage points share). From Clinton, bush, Obama the baton has been passed and perhaps the buddy type of relationships of those past presidents will end with Trump never joining them on the golf course, summits that enjoy.

There is no doubt the history of these United States never quite settles in on specifics but the media, the education system, the politicians continually treat American anomalies, such as offensive war and it’s implied purposeful ethnic and religious cleansing by treating civilian populations as enemy’s ( though to illustrate the difference between us and Them, trump recently said in protecting the crown prince of Saudi Arabia that our agreements are with the Saudi government and not with one person) thus excusing murder in lieu of economic commitments,  racist policies in law enforcement, discriminatory practices in voting rights, to name a few.

It’s also imperative to maintain the past lies as truth. A house of cards in more ways than one.