We are burning through our buffers. Our environment has supplied raw
materials and a safe climate for millenia allowing civilization to
expand and humanity to thrive.

We have arrived at the point where we are exceeding maximum carrying
capacities, environmentally, economically and politically.

The United States is only around 5% of the global population but has
been able to “punch above its weight” due to our stable leadership
(and only moderately self-interested policies). Similarly, our nation
has respected the words of our Presidents when they called on us to
resist Fascism or reach for the Moon.

Today, both global respect for our Nation and the credibility of our
Presidential office are in steep decline.

We must stop these erosions of our environment and our democratic
institutions by voting in a Congress that will check and reverse these
ominous declines in our Nation’s health and future freedoms.

Capitalism is a malignant disease. It has transformed society, using
existing human institutions to create a world where money is the only
thing that matters.

The vector that spread it worldwide was an economic theory called
neoliberalism. This theory placed the market above government and
human need. It used bought-and-paid-for academics and politicians to
implement its global spread and used debt to force open underdeveloped
nations to the parasitic workings of the global financial system. It
also used those same politicians to forge rules that guaranteed that
the vast bulk of global profits went to a tiny number of global
capitalist elites.

The only way to undo the ongoing damage is to pass a Constitutional
amendment that affirms corporations are not people and legitimizes
limiting campaign contributions to avoid the current system of
rule-by-dollars destroying our democracy.

Once that is in place we can finally think of a new system, built on
real human needs.

The right excels at blaming others for their own sins. They decry cultural relativism claiming that they are the ones adhering to a strict moral code. Yet they have redefined truth to be anything their dear leader claims it to be. They have unmoored themselves from truth and are standing with a proven liar.

At the turn of the twentieth century a conservative Supreme Court held that unions were illegal since they were considered a conspiracy. Yet today, the myth of shareholder value holds that corporations exist only to enrich the shareholders, employees and communities be damned; that is a far worse conspiracy, one that robs working men and women of their just rewards every single day.

Billionaires from entrenched industries are using their influence to shred environmental, worker and social justice protections.

Anyone who thinks there is not a savage class war being waged is not seeing clearly.

The goal is to reduce most Americans to abject poverty in order to exploit them more effectively without annoying rules or regulations to limit their cruel actions.

We need to find protection from this assault. I suggest supporting those organizations that can buffer you from attack; I include such groups as the ACLU, and the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America). At least they see clearly the nature of the current war and will be willing to lead the counterattack needed to restore balance to our society.

Mary W. Shelley wrote Frankenstein’s Monster (His Backstory) as a cautionary horror story about a scientist who took parts from the dead and reanimated them to create a monstrous and terrifying creature.

Our 21st Century American legal system has created an even more terrifying creature; Corporations with the rights of human beings.

Starting originally as a legal fiction, with limited roles and lifespans, corporations have morphed into insatiable profit-seeking creatures with many of the rights of free human beings but none of
their empathy or compassion.

They have begun to take over our political institutions, with our venal politicians playing the role of puppet to their master.

We must end the current ban on public funding of elections in California if we ever want to put these Supreme Court created genies back in their noisome bottle.

Most letters to the editor these days are replete with attacks on Trump’s many despicable deficiencies. They are all missing the mark.

Trump is a symptom of a sickness that has overtaken our national soul.

That sickness values only externals like fame, fortune, and success rather than what all religions and philosophies emphasize: loving all our fellow humans; supporting the weak; seeking justice for all and preserving the wondrous planet we are blessed to live on.

Until we find our way to such a spiritual renewal, one that values the means by which we live our politics rather than simply the attaining of ends at any moral cost, we will continue to spiral downward to a cruel Hell, rather than growing up to become a kind civilized nation widely valued as a great asset to the future of the world.

 

In the new TV series “Damnation” set in Depression-era Iowa, a country preacher (who is in reality a revolutionary activist) faces a set of enemies bent on destroying his movement before it can begin.

In an early episode he exhorts his audience of rural farmers to not think of themselves as isolated individuals but as members of a group, “God’s people”, that can be stronger together than all of the forces arrayed against them.

Similarly, if we think of ourselves as “Democracy’s people” and together stand up for our fundamental rights under such vicious attack today, we can prevail against the millionaires and billionaires who are trying to subvert our nation, turn back progress and destroy the gains that “we the people” have made over the last century.

Check this out; great insight into our energy reality

The New Order

Baby boomers having busted
find that leaders can’t be trusted
joined by others down on their luck
Trump’ed up charges get them unstuck
votes are counted and they say
Trump is in and night is day
Pundits quail and nations tremble
as his nasty troops assemble
We are going God knows where
Led by a fool with orange hair

In watching Ken Burns’ Vietnam documentary I was awed at the sacrifices endured by the Vietnamese people in their struggle for independence. While I am no fan of communist dictatorships, I admire the individuals who spent their lives seeking to gain control of their own country from foreign influences, enduring terrible suffering in the process.

We here in the U.S. have lost control of our own government to billionaires and corporate special interests. These interests are working furiously in our legislatures and courts to recast our democracy into a rule by the rich for the rich.

Unless we the people can find in ourselves the capability to sacrifice our narrow interests to the goal of restoring a popular democracy, the tipping point is near where what we have had for 200 years (our independence and freedom) will be lost forever.