This is a terrible time to live in America. What is happening now in Washington infuriates any decent citizen.
The horrible people doing these things are counting on you to not take action, to not stand up, and to not be counted. They want you to go quietly away while they perform their neo-fascist fantasies.
Each one of us is powerful in our own right. Yes, that is a fact. We are not atoms flowing about helplessly in society as one famous right-wing loon claimed. We are human beings with the rights and privileges associated with self-government.
Each of us is powerful but in association our power multiplies. And you are not alone. All over the United States, there are million of citizens equally appalled, equally angry and desperate to take action.
Now, here’s the rub. This isn’t a problem that can be solved in a week, a month or a year. Are you willing to commit to laboring for justice and right for years on end? Is it important enough to you? If you have doubts, maybe your desire to fight for your country and its future is not enough to sustain you for the long haul?
I know it is awful to have to fight for what is obviously right against outright nut jobs and fools. And I know that we as a people and as a nation go over the same ground and the same issues, year after year after year. And it gets exhausting.
If you are going to commit to repair the damage done and live in a working democracy, understand that it is a major decision and it will affect a great deal of many other things in your life. There will be pain. There will be obstacles. There will be friends and family who don’t get why you care and worse, there will be friends and family that actively oppose you. Many, many families are cursed with members whose devotion to the neo-fascist cause is more important than other family members, their friends or their duty as patriots or citizens or as Christians. Consider them lost, casualties in a war for the soul of our democracy.
The first step in struggling against what is happening, against the threat of a burgeoning fascist state is to decide to act.
If you have the heart of a warrior, fight! If you believe in the visions of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, fight! If you have seen the sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the struggles against dictatorships and evil, and you don’t want them to have suffered and died in vain, then fight.
Welcome aboard. You’re going to make a lot of new friends and you are joining a just cause for representative democracy. God bless you!
(That is essay one. This is the first of a set. I will write the next one very soon.)
I have been exploring the concept of social capital recently and find it fascinating. During the dark days of the candidacy of Trump, the ties that bind together as the American people are becoming increasingly frayed.
Rasking is talking about the oil and gas industry. They were aware of the dangers of global warming for decades and not only concealed this knowledge but made it difficult for the general public to understand the issue and actively prevented action to remedy the situation. He is, of course, right. We owe the oil and gas industry a lot for their use of lead, their propaganda to encourage our use of natural gas, and their willingness to cut corners and costs while letting the public bear the burdens of these decisions.
“Whistleblowing allows people to align their actions with their moral compass by exposing wrongdoing”, says Nick Oberheiden from Federal-Lawyer.com. “It fosters transparency and accountability, potentially leading to organizational reforms and societal protection against corrupt practices. Whistleblowers can take solace in knowing there are laws designed to shield them from retaliation and, in some cases, they may even be rewarded for their courage.”
They polled a thousand individuals and found that slightly more than half would become whistleblowers if the circumstances merited it. I am delighted with those numbers. It is good to see so many Americans with an ethical backbone in this time of political turmoil.
Stiglitz explains why we should be using a broader definition of freedom rather than the commonly stated simplistic ideas around individual freedom.
From the article:
Freedom is about what you can do. It’s freedom to do and freedom from harm by others including government, but also corporations or anybody. It’s about freedom from fear—the very idea that children in kindergarten have to be prepared for gunmen coming in and shooting them, they totally lost their freedom from fear. We need a broader conceptual framework for freedom. When we think about taxes a lot of people at the top say, “you’re taking away my freedom.” But they wouldn’t have that income without the government having made the investments in basic R&D, technology, infrastructure, an educated labor force, and the rule of law. If they were born in some poor, disorganized country with a civil war, they wouldn’t have that money. In the U.S., 20% of our children grow up in poverty. We’re taking away those kids’ freedom to live up to their potential and it’s hurting us as a society.
I think that this is a better, deeper and more compelling definition of freedom. I intend to return to it in later writing.
I think these recommendations are probably wise but whether they can be enacted or enforced is another matter. I know that many parents believe that having ready contact with their children at all times is very important. And the individual harm to the psychology of young people may be that evident to their guardians but still we should probably as a society try to give our children an opportunity to have an actual “childhood” rather than a debased form of adult conflict.
From the article referenced above:
The report, “Children and Screens: In Search of Lost Time,” said that children should not be allowed to have cellphones before the age of 11, should be barred from social media before they turn 13, and that between 15 and 18, social media access should be “limited” to those with “ethical thinking.” As for toddlers, it recommended against exposing those under 3 and advised to move toward moderate, controlled exposure only after age 6.
It is odd that in this very same week there were two online news pieces about what is meant by freedom. I have quoted Alfred Stiglitz above and here we have another discussion about freedom and capitalism.
From the article above:
Capitalism is a system under which the means of production can be bought and sold by private individuals, and anyone who can’t afford to start a business of their own has to submit themselves to the domination of those who can if they want to make a living. Workers spend eight out of every sixteen waking hours most days of the week in workplaces that are run like totalitarian dictatorships — and it’s only eight hours, and only most days of the week, because of victories won over generations of workers’ struggles. If the comparison to totalitarian dictatorships seems hyperbolic, it shouldn’t. In fact, capitalists often regulate far more intimate aspects of workers’ behavior — especially for relatively “unskilled” workers without much bargaining power — than do the laws of a typical totalitarian dictatorship. Employers frequently tell workers, for example, when they have to smile, when they’re allowed to talk to each other, and when they’re allowed to go to the bathroom.
We need to start having a real discussion about our right to dignity and autonomy. We discovered that working from home was efficient and successful yet businesses are truly desperate to end the practice. Why? I think they fear the loss of social control. What is the point of being the big boss if you can’t strut around at work as a sort of martinet demi-god? I have had some wonderful bosses and some of them were little more than well paid crooks. One the great tragedies of American life is how minimum wage workers are treated. Long ago before law school and college, I worked in a factory. They treated the cockroaches on the floor better than we workers.
As a writer who takes as his main topics, morality and ethics, it would be wrong and cowardly of me to dodge the great moral issue of the coming election. Fascism in on the march in American and the polling numbers referenced in the article show that the great mass is gradually awakening to the danger. With this election we could very well seen the end of the last vestiges of American democracy.
From the article:
An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National poll released Wednesday found that 31 percent of surveyed Americans, when asked about their greatest fears for the country’s future, mention a rise of fascism and extremism. There is also a notable partisan split in the findings, with almost half of surveyed Democrats, 47 percent, reporting that a rise of fascism and extremism was their biggest concern. Republicans in the survey, comparatively, were far less concerned. Only 15 percent of Republicans said they were worried about growing fascism. For surveyed GOP voters, the No. 1 concern was a lack of values at 36 percent and the U.S. becoming a “weak” country at 30 percent.
This is from Australia. In that country, religious groups are given time to teach their views in school. Get a good read. This is what schools in the United States could look like if religion is allowed entry.
James Pilant
The antics of Access Ministries alternate between comedic and genuinely disturbing – and the degree to which they appear to have permeated all levels of government and public service, both state and federal, is something that requires some serious scrutiny. The relentlessness of the disinformation and misguided, railroaded policy not representative of community requirements does not happen by itself. There are serious resources at work amongst pr … Read More
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