DEMOCRACY'S UNEXPECTED (TO US) BASIS

 

Democracy is not based on any such modern claptrap as 'the natural goodness of humankind'. No. Indeed, it's based on exactly the opposite viewpoint: that each and every human heart is equally wicked and deceitful and that, hence, NO human being is to be trusted with too large a share of power, political, economic or religious.

That's right, boys and girls: modern democracy has its roots in (of all things) Calvinism! Franklin's letter to Robert Morris dated December 25, 1783 has the same roots, where he speaks of enough wealth to maintain oneself in modest comfort and bring up a family (nowadays, this would include education and health care) is a natural right, but wealth superfluous to that is 'by right the property of the public'. Anyone want to tell me what Peter Thiel 'needs' all that money for? Or the Koch brothers? DeVos and Prince families?The Gateses? Or, for that matter, George Soros, to 'even the score' for all those reactionaries who've swallowed that crapfolah?

And part of this needs to be to assert, vigorously, that fair hair, blue eyes, pasty skin and male genitalia aren't supposed to put anyone above the law. Nor are riches. Nor, even, are past injuries: Proverbs advises against 'favoring a poor man in his quarrels'--but that's in the presumed context of justice for the poor otherwise. If anyone wants to argue that the poor have justice today anywhere on the globe, I may need Depends to make sure I don't wet myself from laughing so hard!

We are all equally corruptible and Lord Acton was only too correct when he observed, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Is this any less true in a family or a community of faith or a business than it is in any nation? I very much doubt that.

Finally, democracy requires at least some of us to grow as individuals and it is the only way of organizing ourselves which actually makes room for that growth. Democracy also encourages the spread of such growth, while undemocratic systems do the exact opposite: they compel us to stay 'children' to varying extents. The process of growth humbles us even as it shows us what we can do, together, what we couldn't do separately and thereby exalts us to that extent. Remarkable, but (at least to my watching eyes) none the less true. Save and share this post. Together, let's breathe new life into democracy at home and all over this globe!!

A LIE UNEXPECTEDLY BECOMING TRUTH

 Unless we start radical change of our outlook on nature and indeed our whole economy, we are now headed straight for that very place where the fossil-fuel billionaires with their Stetsons and their handcrafted cowboy boots warned us for a half-century we'd be going if we 'greened' our way of life: back to a few pitiful clans having to walk two miles for water and having to cut wood for fires to cook and stay warm. Cooling off? Apart from the nearest body of water, fuggedaboudit!
We're headed that way because of our own inaction, true, but those same fossil-fuel billionaires and their boughten political slaves are the ones mostly responsible for that inaction. And a too-large number of us have been adamantly unwilling to tolerate a bare minimum of inconvenience, like the spoiled brats they are!
And together with those already obscenely rich individuals who put nothing above more and higher  profits for themselves (pretty much alone) they are the people who have kept the rest of us on this road to real perdition.
'Radical change' is now what is urgently necessary to keep our discomfort with the necessary changes to a minimum and to keep living standards for most of us from plunging abruptly. And an unlooked-for benefit of such change will probably be the narrowing of inequality and the democratizing of our economies. (Maybe that's another reason why the obscenely rich fight this. They want worldwide neo-feudalism buttressed by propped-up theocracy)
For one thing, the regeneration, aka the 'greening' (re-greening?) of our planet will produce tens of millions of jobs, which, if decently paid, will be really good jobs! They'd be good jobs anyway, but if the people are decently paid, they'll be really good jobs!
And yes, there will have to be training and/or re-training of many people to do these jobs and they'll need to be paid something in order to live while they're being (re)trained. I refuse to believe we can't do this; it's only that too many of us won't because they, or we, are so vain and stupid we think we'll weather the crisis all right and screw all those other sloths (especially ones with darker skins) who are not as virtuously hardworking as us!
Never mind the absolutely wicked and, yes, immoral selfishness and vanity in such an outlook. Never mind even that none of us know where climate catastrophe or the latest strain of Covid will strike.
For argument's sake, let's pretend that, no, in our wealthy and mostly white lands, catastrophe will be sufficiently cushioned. Two things we cannot govern on this planet are the movements of air and water, that is, winds and tides.
Now let's imagine that much of western Africa and the Indian subcontinent become uninhabitable. Let's imagine that there are large stretches of land where the living are not enough to bury or cremate the dead. So those heaps of corpses just rot in piles, or, having jumped into the ocean, drown and some, uneaten by satiated sharks, float as far as our shores. Australia, I include you in this.
What will you do when the wind carries, every single day, the scent of death with it? What will we do when pieces of corpses and bones wash up on our shores? Have any of you thought about that? Stay inside all day, our ventilation systems will still draw air from outside which may compound rather than alleviate that horrible odor! What will you do when the scent of death is unavoidable and omnipresent?
Guess none of y'all's thought of that, am I right?
If we get planetary regeneration under serious steam beginning NOW, this is still something we can avoid--but only just. We need to elect real public servants with the courage to do what's necessary and the intellectual heft to explain to we the people why these measures are necessary. We need to vote out every single boughten political slave of the obscenely rich and those phony 'religious' shills who pretend to 'anoint' such bogus characters! Begin now! Now! NOW!!
Only by breaking the power of the fossil fuel industry and seriously regenerating our planet can we now avoid what the fossil-fuel shills have been warning us about!!

TAKE BACK THE FOURTH!

 Tomorrow is the 'Glorious' Fourth.
And this year, it feels like anything but. And I know I'm not alone in feeling that way by any means.
I'm also tired of the gleeful meanness of what I call, and invite my readers to call, the 'rule-AND-ruin gang'. No, that's not a misprint. I mean 'rule-and-ruin'. The gang claiming that only they should be the rulers, and if they must share with others, they threaten to ruin the country for all of us. One problem with that is, they ruin the country even worse if and when they are the sole rulers--for all of us except themselves! So them as the only rulers is a lose-lose proposition for the rest of us!
I draw a heavy sigh and imagine what life might be like if we lived somewhere else where people actually treat each other (individually and collectively) more like human beings rather than as enemies. And this is no less true in 'blue' states than in 'red' ones. For me, the Herblock cartoon dated March 12, 1963, still has too dam' much to say in that respect!
Then I think of our down-the-road neighbor (95 miles or so, actually) who has written that she won't let this crowd steal the Fourth, the flag and other patriotic displays from her. She will display the flag tomorrow, and I for one say, more power to you, our own Maggie!
And along with that, I remember a guest column written by a law professor who makes the very cogent point that our side now needs patriotism more than ever. I ponder how spot-on he is. Especially since he points out something I also noticed and mentioned in a post I wrote on July 5 of last year about how actual victims of our system often seem more optimistic about change than do those who seek to make change but have not been victims of the system. Like me.
And then, perhaps aided by my morning shower, I ask myself: why, literally, in God's Name should we let a gang of mean and greedy liars steal our country's very story from us? Why should we concede to them the sole star billing they don't deserve?! If they won't share top billing, that's their problem, not ours. We tell the truth; throw out their evil lies!
And that's the truth. Is Edith-Ann's raspberry necessary here? Maybe.
But here is where we need God as well as country. Our enemies and those of our country exhaust us with their meanness and they know it! That is their intent! To restore and renew ourselves for the l-o-n-g fight ahead of us, and to be able to help revive and renew each other's spirits, we need God's own Spirit. We need to 'tap into' God's Spirit however we can, in whatever way that works for each of us and does no harm to any other sentient life.
Part of this needs to be to discard any worries about not being a Nice Person. We need to tell the whole, unvarnished truth about how our enemies lie and who funds those lies as well! Gloves off; it's bare-knuckle time if ever there was one!
Another part needs to be patient organizing across racial, ethnic and religious lines. Wherever possible, make it so people can discover their own errors and lack of good information for themselves. 'Slapping' people with their misconceptions needs to be a last resort if used at all. This, too, will take time and effort and for this, too, we need the kind of regeneration that can come only from God's Spirit.
But no; let's not give up when the real story of our country involves all of us and many different groups and individuals of different groups all sharing star billing! Our history was made and is still being made by something much more like the Group Theatre rather than the 'star system' of old Hollywood. Let's shout it from the rooftops and challenge those who want to shout us down with questions that will stop them in their tracks! Let's take back the Fourth and all the other days too!