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Change is coming: catastrophic changes that have been in the works for
decades are about to take their place at the core of society.
What does that mean for us? It simply means that we cannot have it all. For
longer than most of us can remember this society has treated all the things we
do as just currents in the vast and subtle waves of change that have always been
a part of every generation.
Like most things there are elements of truth in that, and elements of
self-deception.
In the dustbins of history we can see how most of what each society tried to
do, was in one way or another connected to the growth and change required, as
each society grew and moved in new directions toward a better life. Many could
not often see the literal connections that gave these alterations their license
to exist; yet for the most part, the validations were there. With the new
millennium, the USA began to disregard this centuries old way of vetting the
things that we chose to add to what we do, and how we choose to live our
individual dreams. In these last, four long years, we have seen what it looks
like to suspend our beliefs, to deny the facts beneath our nation’s choices,
and most of all the new way we’ve chosen to ignore the obvious, in so many
aspects of our lives.
In the arts the direct connection between people and the arts has been
diverted. Music and song were part of how lives were lived, just as literature
and stories once had more to do with the bits and pieces of our lives, than they
did with the flash and fancy of other people’s dreams: These changes were
largely enacted by people living in privately cocooned lives of too much money.
This has created an imbalance in the thrust and direction of creative
expression, as benefactors have become more uniform, and far less reality based,
in what remains of those fields. This is not to say that all is gone, just that
these trends do not favor the point or purpose of the arts in the overall health
of real life.
The arts spring from the need for personal expression and from the
connections between people and ideas, between people and their world-view. But
that ended when the arts became the plaything of the wealthy, and was converted
into merely another abstraction without meaning for most of those who looked to
them for connections
The public has lost the thread of what once kept societies together, which
was the well being and the connectedness of the general public. For this, the
"me first" generation must take most of the credit. Along the way
"politics" was left to the least among us, not the best. This has
resulted in massive crimes that go unpunished, corruption unbounded by ethics or
law—and in the pathetic non-choices now facing the public this November, in
far too many races.
As life in the technological age has continued to move ever-faster, people
now seem to be gravitating more and more toward becoming mere extensions of that
high-technology, that both symbolizes and destroys the basic human values
between and among people. True, we can do many things much faster, some say this
is far more efficient, others that we are losing the whole point of living: But
since life doesn’t come with an "owner’s manual" there is no right
or wrong way to live any particular existence, so we have delayed grappling with
the kinds of changes that are occurring at an alarming rate. Just as we have
left behind human operators in favor of electronic "menus," in
everything from business to government – we are losing the ability to talk to
each other, never mind the ability to think about what we do, or why we stay on
any particular path.
This has also led to our failure to question almost anything that we might
choose to do with our lives. Given our personal ambivalence toward almost
anything we encounter, we have become nothing but footnotes in the lives of
those who have designs on what we do, on how much we are paid, and whether or
not we shall have a future. It is then, no wonder that our politicians and petty
tyrants have taken most of the things from us that we once so highly prized—beginning
with our individuality. Yet no one can take anything from another if that person
firmly and clearly resists the theft. We have not resisted—so we have lost
almost every important aspect, at the core of what is needed, to make our lives
worthwhile.
Billions if not trillions of words have been written over these most recent
four years, in an effort to discover the culprits beneath the fraud, the
failures, the misdirection’s, and the schemes that keep unfolding daily. This
is not a black and white affair, and it cannot be summed up in bumper-sticker
slogans that seek simple or ready answers. We must look deeper.
It is probably too late, but what’s important is that we have failed to
understand that the patterns of our lives were entwined with much older and
time-tested ways that were valid because they worked. People need to be able to
associate themselves with others, in open and uncensored dialogue. People also
need to consider the ways in which they treat other people, as an everyday part
of their own lives, and it appears that we’ve lost these two extremely
critical abilities; rather, we have chosen our own agenda’s over the viability
of others in the world, whether here or overseas. This isn’t just some simple
act of generosity, it’s a necessity for mutual living – and we have flaunted
this as something that only "suckers’ do. We have Ronald Reagan, and
ourselves to thank for that: because while Ronnie pushed it, nothing would have
happened if we hadn’t collectively "bought" and implemented this
idea.
This goes way back in time, and cannot be laid at the feet of either party,
or any one president, it’s been an integral part of the way we began to view
the world after WWII.
Over all that time America has come to believe in "Manifest
Destiny," and that it is our right and our place, as the remaining
Super-Power to rule the planet.
Any society that has no idea who they are as individuals, cannot hope to be
the dominant anything in a multi-dimensional world. Internationally, in
education, we are somewhere near tenth place. In medicine we claim to be the
envy of the world, yet what is pointed to are the prohibitively expensive
breakthroughs that only the world’s wealthiest can afford; while most of our
citizens can barely manage the threadbare health system we have—a system that
is nothing but extortion and one that provides not at all, for any real medical
difficulties. In choices for the young, our colleges and universities have
become mere tech schools, cranking out diplomas, for jobs that no longer exist
in the USA. But with the draft that's coming all this will change as well, along
with the national economy that will not be able to function with everyone
between 18 and 34 in the military.
Employment is a disgrace. We have allowed the government to fail to count the
unemployed in vast numbers, because once the benefits run out, those people are
just dropped as though they got a job or simply tired of looking—as if one can
chose to just stop working. This "accepted practice" is a horror all
its own, because by buying into this lie, we accept the complete fallacy that
the nation provides real jobs for its people.
At the end of the day, between the fantasies of the unqualified to lead, and
the dreams of greed among many of these same outlaws, this nation has embarked
upon a course that can never be sustained. We have stood by and watched while
our career fields were destroyed, or sent off shore, we have listened to the
lies and to the constant drumbeat of fear and attempted intimidation—without
raising our voices. Now comes the piper of reality who must be paid, and that
farce that we call our national-international balance sheet simply cannot be
reconciled. We have wasted our theoretical surplus, and added unconscionable
trillions to our national debt, while causing blood to flow around the world for
lies and constructs that only the truly self-deluded could believe. We have done
almost irreparable harm to our stature in the world, and most of all, nearly 50
% of our citizens say they don’t believe one word of the above.
This is not a debate, its life, and actions do have real and lasting
consequences. Those who "lead" us now, are going down, whether in this
election or sometime soon after, not because of popularity, but because nothing
they have offered nor anything that they are proposing, can ever really work in
a world where the people play a part in their own lives, everyday.
No nation that has reached for the brass ring of Empire has ever succeeded
for any length of time, and the USA shall be no different. The world is simply
too large, and the variables too great for that to ever really happen. So much
has already been lost, shouldn’t we begin to try and stop bleeding? At the
very least we must alter course!
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