“Frodo:I wish the ring had never come to me, I wish none of this had happened. Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times but that is not for them to decide, All you have to decide is what to do with thetime that is given to you.”
Lord of the Rings, by Tolkien
I have been afforded the luxury of getting old. Not that being sixty years old is ancient in our day and age. I have been blessed with a stalwart and robust physiology, a keen mind, empathic and sensitive nature, and a fierce disposition. Granted I have not seen the worst of times, been abused as thoroughly as others nor have I been blessed with an easy life.
The United States has had it’s run. The great experiment of democracy, flawed with elitism, slavery, genocide, filled with excess european elites, the criminal elements, and the poor. Later the dreams and aspirations of those with humbler histories than their equivalents in europe, sell a story of success. The luck that was carved was made mostly by ruthlessness than actual great endeavors. It is ever thus those who do, are competent, and intelligent will be taken advantage of those that don’t deserve a damn thing, except there general organizational skills (still stolen from others) and their exceptional abilities to get others to do the work for them. Granted there are the few exceptions, and with great luck, and their own bit of shiestering, made it big.
The war of 1812, the British offered freedom to the slave and the indentured. The United States doubled down on keeping slaves. The Civil War was much about regional power as it was about slavery. The North and the Union won the right to make everyone else wage slaves. Every expansion was marketed, managed and anyone who made it big with it, was just a stepping stone for the Oligarchs to expand their power, and make the rest of us wage slaves. Here is where the multi-generational family took its first hit, with families separating, brother vs brother over politics, power and stakes in the country’s future that they had no real stake in.
For a large country to succeed you have to have communication, transportation and resources. And those who control them, control the country and the people. The first set of Unions were for the people who worked in transportation. One of the reasons for the war of 1812 was to keep Britain from stealing our sailors, and boats. Railroad owners took advantage of workers to work long dangerous hours, make them pay for the privilege of room and board, and keeping wages from wives and widows. Unions were created to make sure at least widows got the pay earned. When railroad unions had strikes, for livable conditions, they were met by Federal troops. Coal miners, took to strikes and were met with Federal troops, the original red necks.
Meanwhile, in the name of Christianity and Bigotry, we committed genocide on the Native American Indigenous peoples. We may have pretended to give them their land and rights to vote, but we still steal their land, and allow murder, rape and all manners of abuse til this very day.
Since the Civil War every successful city, financial endeavors, homes, the ability to vote for the African Americans, has been met with, mass killings, lynchings, murders, rapes, legalized theft of every kind and injustice.
Every group of immigrants have been relegated to ghettos, directed to the most mean and cruel jobs, and given such an abuse, that communities created within toughest sectors of cities were created and discriminated each in turn. Only to look forward to the next set of immigrants to take their turn of hell that wasn’t as bad as the hell they came from.
The depression came, the ruthless rich stayed rich, those that weren’t positioned well fell into obscurity. What was left of multi-generational families were scattered across the country. Even with the bigotry, villages, towns and local centers, with multigenerational families and the elites, brokered power locally, and made sure that they had representation along the way up to state or national representation. Of course, thieves stole, the powerful controlled, but in the end, there was representation of the landed people. After the depression and efforts to get the country back on its feet and prepped for World War II, the people of the United States were regimented into corporate lives in suburbs, associating in tight ageist and socially stratified but isolated groups. Mobility was initiation to one group to another. Those who didn’t make it into a group, was denied any social mobility. This is where the young, the poor, the socially different, were disenfranchised and pitted against other poor, the minorities and the disenfranchised. We lost multi-generational families, and we lost the concept of community. Those who took for granted their socialization with well mechanized ushering from one segment of society to another lost the view of a real family, community, the diversity that was minimal at best is now gone. The expectation of fitting in and becoming homogenized in this cattle trough of socialization are totally blinded by their self made shackles and self imposed expectations.
Today Germany is leading the way and working with other nations to keep the European Union strong and integrated. Germany is anti-fascist after WWII. The United States has taken on nationalism and corporate socialism, is how Mussolini described Fascism. Israel and the Israelis have taken on committing genocide of Palestinians. The Hasidim and orthodox have been replaced by conservative secular Israelis. They are supported by a brand of Zionism there and in the United States for a manifest destiny of some religious prophecies. The millennialists took the Utopian vision of a Jewish Diaspora, and WWII with a Jewish state, imbedded it in with conservative and evangelical Christian cults or sects, to support what looks like a fascist apartheid state in Israel. The millennialism doctrines were created by people putting these ideas in the framework of a “prophetic visions and sayings” from a mentally challenged child in the early 1800’s. That concept is an anathema to most of these American branded modern evangelical protestant cults. Of all the headway on minority rights, women’s suffrage, civil rights, union rights, the civil freedoms of citizens, have been eroded by bigotry and ethnocentrism of isolated groups of people manipulated by hate and fear.
The Republican party has always been about the corporate elite controlling the country. Democrats evolved out of the disenfranchised the various types of Mob control of cities. The support of the disenfranchised, ruthless as mobs are there was economic growth and support of the communities. You can’t steel from those who have nothing. In the 60’s the Republicans made a token party platform of supporting social issues. The Democrats moved to add minorities and civil rights in the south and split the Dixiecrats that got absorbed into the Republicans GOP. The very bigotted south joined the party of Lincoln, and support to this day the destruction of the middle class, for the increasing wealth of the corporate oligarchs. The south didn’t rise to win. It rose to give its soul to the very thing that they hated. Between Democrats infiltrating and usurping third parties, and the early third parties a century ago being infiltrated by communists, the conservatives vilified both as being socialists and communists. The Republic onslaught can be identified step by step. Nixon got rid of the Gold standard. Started negotiations with China, which now is the premium source of cheap labor. Non-gold standard banks support the world’s oligarchs and have made it a point to destroy countries that held to it, so far except China. The state department and the pentagon was infiltrated by the political and corporate powers as another solid revenue stream of corruption. Reagan’s tax reforms, immediately made as many loopholes in Income tax and the middle class kept on paying more in taxes. Did away with the FCC control of insisting that TV and Radio presented news and education. Bush Sr. attacked Social Security, and insert privatization of retirement funds that can be managed, thieved and stolen by the rich. Bush Jr. Administration saw to that. NAFTA agreements from republican congresses pushed onto the Clinton’s administration, saw industries leave the united states and retirement plans and funds disappear before workers reach retirement. We have made corporations people, but they don’t serve or pay taxes. Money becomes freedom of speech, so all the voices of the under represented will never be heard, or now can be brain washed thoroughly. Campaign reforms were totally changed so at a national level only those who coddle the ultra rich oligarchs have a chance of being elected. We have facade of a democracy, and have a defunded education system creating non-critical thinking constituents.
Russians in the Soviet days, were Anti-Fascists, are supporting the Anti-Communist republicans, and the republicans are complicit in their relationship to Russia that is run by a Mobocracy that keeps corporations and the oligarchy from ruining the country.
I have had the misfortune of being ears to first hand witnesses, where they have chosen to stay hidden, or who have died, of many conspiracies that turn out to be in fact true. Power can make you look away from the bodies that they kill and make disappear.
Christians are supporting Israelis Zionists in Genocide, and those in politics who support misogyny, bigotry, the dismantling of the rights of the citizens, and supporting the abuse of anyone that doesn’t fit in a tight bigotted racist christian state. All the while supporting politicians, who are racists, bigots, rapists, pedophiles and liars of every stripe. The alignment with the dominionists 7 hills strategy, is the very 7 hills of rome and the anti-christ that fundamentalists were warning against 50 years ago. They are embracing if fully.
The hypocrisy and anti-christian behavior here astounds me. I do look fondly back in the days were my first social acceptance was in a Baptist Church. The hypocrisy of being forgiven every sin, including the ones people continue to commit is still beyond me.
Peter Sellers last movie “Being There” as Chance the Gardner,
Chance the Gardener: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.
The tawdry details of my misadventures notwithstanding, and all of the above I have one irrational belief. I believe in the inherent goodness of people, and human beings do have a chance to evolve. The constant disappointment in observing what people do is painful. The joy of goodness and justice as sparse and infrequent as it is, gives me hope.
Cassandra of Troy blessed with prophecy by Apollo, and was also cursed by Apollo, for spurning an agreement to a relationship, to not be believed. Were someone blessed with prophecy today and yesterday, they would not be believed. Not from some divine curse. The relationship with Apollo would have been the association with power. Without power, who cares what you have to say.
We will have Civil War. It will be lopsided. A lot of good and innocent people will be murdered, who have chosen not to arm themselves. The Government will develop an autocratic state, the government we know will be gone and replaced. For the most part it already has. While the country may have just had the Democrats recently taken control of congress, the corporate controlled infrastructure will take the teeth away. Looking powerless, the country will acquiesce to the oligarchy. All that will be left is to parade the corpse of democracy around until decency and corruption will force people to lay it down.
What to do. We have to change and evolve. Those who have must survive, to teach to keep the dreams and hopes of a just and fair civilization. That is all I have left to give. It is the idea of a family, clan and society structure for a tribal unit. It is designed to create leaders, that support a diverse group of people. It won’t work unless it is heterogeneous and diverse. The indigenous cultures that we have almost destroyed, have the culture or atleast its history of how to create and maintain tribes. They also had means of working with other tribes. Was it working 100% everywhere, no. Each group of people either grow the elders and leaders with wisdom, or they grow groups of people who are parasites to the community killing it. People Embracing Change was framed with this idea. The idea is great, but it is worthless if there is only less of a handful of people willing to work it. The Elders of People Embracing Change, are devoted to help people become thinking caring authentic people; and, not to become a rubber stamp of ersatz molds of a society who takes everyone for granted. People talk about community, they support leaders who do all the work. And, they tear them down because they offer no work or nothing better. Or they want to fill some egocentric need that just serves to destroy a group.
We need communities that work by a commonly developed wisdom and effort, not by a carrot and a stick. Soon there will be no carrot and only a bloody stick.
