The Wilderness

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Abraham Lincoln

Soapbox LogoI find myself sitting, sometimes for hours, with nothing in my heart but despair for a nation and a people that seems to have lost all semblances of good, all impression of humanity and all appearance of what was at one time something to polish and throw across our shoulders like a mantle of hallelujah and can’t touch this. We are too frequently a sorry lot these days, pathetic because if you are old enough to know better, old enough to remember real heroes, you know today we fall far short too often we are not anywhere near what we once were. This is not wishful thinking or a desire for a past that was not all that grand for many of us; it is a desire for what was good about our people and our nation a wish for our better angels to rescue us.

Led by fools wrapped in false patriotism and draping themselves in more and more elaborate regalia of power, hanging their sense of victimization on the cross of rotting hypocrisy with the Prosperity Gospel as their guiding principal of pretentious faith, we lap up the Reality Soap Opera our government has become. We hang on the Tweets, flip channels seeking the most salacious version of the latest utterings and engage in on-going debates of what, why and who which grow increasingly heated even breaking families and decades old friendships against the debacle of the current political maelstrom. In the process we play into the hand of those who spent years and worked hard to dumb down a nation, distracting us from the real issues to focus on a clueless, classless buffoon with a big button, three baby mama’s and a lifetime in the tabloids. Trailing behind him tails dragging and equally indefensible are his mind-numbing minions digging in to do his will as we watch in dismay the nation brought low by their treacherous acts.

There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people’s safety and greatness.

Eldridge Cleaver

I am stunned. Where once stood heroes now the stage is filled with an assembly of

45 and others

GOP with 45 celebrate Tax Bill

Fiends and Brutes, all jockeying for the front row wanting to take credit, be the first to claim the honor of destroying what is good and sane about us, replacing it with cruelty, banality and sometimes even evil. Where once stood heroes we are left with these slavish servants of duplicity and ignorance spewing their toxic venom on friend and foe alike.

Yet here we find ourselves today, in this once great nation led by cowards and calling those who are tasked with keeping us safe, who place themselves at risk to do so, those who swear oaths to uphold the laws of this land “Nazi’s”, “Jackbooted Gestapo”, “Stormtroopers”; was there anything else? I am certain I missed something, nevermind that should suffice. Looking out on the nation turned upside down and on its head, smiling as the real new generation Nazis march down our city streets waving swastikas and shouting slogans snatched directly from a history seeped in the blood of our grandparents and the horror of mass graves and genocide. These modern day radical nationalist can do nothing but nod their empty heads as they proclaim there are fine people in those mobs.

This President with every act makes us less than what we once were. I am stunned at the level of corruption we are sunk to. This nation cheers as this president tears up every treaty, destroys every alliance, gleefully pisses on every norms. What once saw a nation torn apart to its roots is now the forth column on the fifth page of the weekly paper as a cartoon.

What will ultimately demand our attention? Finally force us to take stock at what we have done to ourselves with this self-inflicted act of ignorance. What will finally break s836329897140350377_p90_i2_w288the cloak of silence around our better angels, cause them to unfurl their wings and unsheathe their swords to fight for what remains of the good in us and this nation.  Will we truly simply allow this side show to play out, praying the Democrats find their missing backbone and at a minimum perform their duties and stop this administration and their fellows in Congress from the worst of their actions? Or will we instead continue to submit to what is the very worst in what this nation and its people and have been.

I personally pray this is not the only solution we have. At this rate we are in for another six years of this Horror Show, by then it will truly be too late to save us.

Race to the Bottom

OpEdWe are truly a nation to be reckoned with, if you are worried about your position at the bottom of the pile, the bottom of the world ranking in nearly all relevant areas; the United States is working hard to grab the title. We are international bullies, we stand up and are counted policing the world to do what we say not what we do. Our leaders condone torture; in fact, they are proud of their participation or at least their tactic approval of the torture of other human beings. Our nation enters wars, costing tens of thousands of lives, killing heads of state and civilians alike for no good reason but we want the natural resources of that nation, we want to destabilize that region, we want to break the world.

We spend billions, sometimes trillions of dollars in nations other than our own. Nations that do not need our money, that do not appreciate our interference, nations that do not align with our stated values. Meanwhile, here in our own country we have children going without food, shelter, education. We make some of the top lists, such as:

Homelessness, top fifteen cities the USA has the grace to steal six spots on the list, with an estimated total 212,579 homeless living on the streets of these cities alone.

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Once you let that lovely sink in, the idea we have so many on the streets consider this one, we haven’t had such a large income gap since 1928. In fact, the United States made another list; yes indeed, we made the list of nations with the largest income disparity, number 4 on the hit parade of 10. We should be wondering what the hell is wrong, only Chile, Turkey and Mexico are ahead of us on this list, the GOP isn’t doing their job if we haven’t made number 1.

Now while you are absorbing the thought of all your fellow citizens living rough; men, women and children living without shelter consider the findings of Transparency International, we aren’t doing so well on the issue of corruption. In fact, we are suck. Our perception of ourselves, as a nation isn’t great so how do we justify sending our military out to police others? Just asking mind you.

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Now let’s discuss the idiocy on the Hill, yes that hill Capital hill. While the nation falls down around our ears, the ijits on the Hill are busy writing twenty-four new anti-choice bills, well to be fair one of them is a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act. You know they do this because they are afraid of women, they are afraid of our power if we should ever figure out we actually have a majority in this nation and we band together, breaking down all the false lines they have drawn to keep us apart. If the vast majority of us reach across the walls of race, religion, classism and poverty we will find we have far more in common than not. When we do this, we might find most of these Bills are intended only to infantilize all of us, stripping of us of our rights to both body integrity and economic freedom.

We could talk about so many other things, the education system in this nation and our lack of commitment to excellence. Our race to the bottom of the heap, our fear of intellectualism, our on-IgnoranceMapgoing outsourcing of innovation. Despite our great wealth we don’t even come in at the top ten of the Pearson ranking. In our race to the bottom though, we have achieved one top score, we are the second most ignorant country in the world, on the Ipsos Mori social survey only Italy is more ignorant that the US.

We could discuss the bulging prisons, the one thing we are number one in the world. With over two million of our fellow citizens within the Industrial Prison Complex, this is not something to be proud of. The problem of course is, the prison system is another capitalist scam, with well over one billion a year in profits to be made, no one is going to start dismantling it in favor of better justice, not when the favored few can line their pockets on the backs of the disadvantaged.

We could discuss the horror of joblessness and ask the question, why in the world this administration the GOP, along with several Democrats wants so badly to continue to destroy our future opportunity to grow through trade agreements. Trade agreements the citizens of this country are kept in the dark about. Trade agreements that do not favor us, but instead favor multi-national business. The Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement is not about free trade, believe me.

As we continue our race to the bottom, I ask myself where does it end? I wish we would all ask the same question. I continue to love this clip from the Newsroom, it says it all; we sure use to be.

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