2022-2024 With Not Much In-between

 

Everyone is looking ahead to the mid-term elections to save us from the Monster who gave us the apprentice. It should be debatable that if anybody who voted for Trump because he was a celebrity should have their citizenship discontinued for a period of time, maybe a special place devoid of tv and digital news.

Democracy will not be the squeeky clean savior of us all, especially the type of unrepresentative democracy which is currently in the State of America. It is merely a word secured by the luxuriant gift trappings (ribbons and bows) of political philosophers who give us the impression that the people, whoever they are, the belief that we have a say in what their government does. It belies two truths. One, that the majority is those who care to vote (voice their opinion) and not those who neither choose not to voice their opinions nor simply do not care enough to vote (understanding possibly that it doesn’t matter, the choice fix is in). Secondly, maybe the most important of the two (pick your poison), that the majority vote is made up of a population making reasonable, rational decisions about candidates and issues and thus, would naturally represent the “best” possible “worldview”. Of course, once people get over the above mentioned hurdles they accept the outcomes as c’est la vie mainly because unless you’ve recently hit a pothole that engulfed your entire front wheel or had an encounter with a black man that left them uneasy or been recently laid off without good reason, or had a cop shoot down in the street one of their unarmed sons, there is little that will shake their world in the next four or two or one years, convincing them that there must be change.

The fact is that the people who are closest to the potholes, strange black men, laid off, bad cops will be the ones who will want change and look toward the democratic process as a means to their end. But the eye of the hurricane is a big one. The calm prevails while wave after wave of violence spews outward but never coming to rest permanently anywhere.

The ironic thing is that democracy as we know it is the best we have to show for the centuries of other cultures having developed something similar but to a much smaller degree. In Western Civ, bigger is always better. Our civilization is literally built on the size of things. Those societies that based their social order on some sort of democracy-respect- because respect given is certainly equal to respect voted on-were more orderly, smaller, and there were some “agreements” with natural environment which were universal- such as not going and torching your neighbors farm, livelihood- and not expecting repercussions. What was wrong with these smaller, more democratic societies is they couldn’t withstand the onslaught of the New World Order, societies that rather than build the future, built armies and differences to go fight about.

The truth of the matter is we are a petty animal, intelligent enough to recognize certain inconsistencies, contradictions, give allegiances to certain authorities but if intelligence is only me, me, me then we are all certainly doomed because we are also intelligent enough to recognize reconciliation, forgiveness, love, and recognition of whether or not being wrong has anything to do with the law.

That’s the gist of our problem. We know what’s right and wrong through our own sense of wellbeing (what we want to happen) yet we allow, either through mental weakness or lazyness, others to provide enough distraction so we either can’t or won’t make a decision. Certainly, a characteristic of a confused state of mind. Either running from or standing stock still, hoping that blending in is the only natural defense against such an abstract enemy. The herd syndrome. After all, we are a herd animal, a domesticated herd animal, an overly intelligent herd animal. It doesn’t really matter how many skyscrapers or cities we get to roam around in, we’re all as anonymous as a cow out at Harris Ranch.

That’s where the news media and the government come in, the creation of celebrities. The celebrities are whitewashed yet enough of a moral distraction is maintained to keep the curiously mundane interested. The same goes for the politicians who really represent no one except a small circle of friends.