REGARDING THE TRUE STATE OF THE UNION
What are we going to do?
What are we going to do?
Our country is populated by masses who
are reacting as best they can to forces they do not understand, and
largely do not wish to understand. It is far easier to hope for the
best, dismiss the most alarming cries of warning, and trust those
powerful who have proven, consistently and for at least a century,
unworthy of trust. It is far easier to get away with whatever they
can, just as the system does. The people are selectively held
accountable far more easily and far more often than the system is.
The presidency is the office of a
puppet-figurehead. The congress is a group of citizens who both
avoid and misuse knowledge to retain what power and wealth they
possess. They are consistently misinformed and misrepresented by the
other branches of government. The most powerful force, the most
powerful and influential “branch of governing power” in the
country is not a branch of government at all, for if it were, it
would be far too accountable to the people: the cartel of private
banks, domestic and foreign, including the one that controls the
entire wealth of this nation, and has now for at least one hundred
years.
There is no question that these forces,
using government, are prepared to “protect” us from all threats
by controlling us, through whatever means necessary, including force
of overwhelming soldiery and arms. There is no question that they
have lied, misinformed, covered up their machinations, withheld vital
information,, and misrepresented their “constituencies.” There
is no question that they have planned to unite with the powerful of
the world to attempt control the world and all its peoples. There is
no question that they have murdered, attacked the innocent, attacked
their own people, and manipulated the will of the people, sometimes
staging elections that no more result in the people's choice than
mass suicide would. There is no question that those who control the
most information and the greatest number of weapons and their
operators are prepared to use them against any and all who would
object to their control.
Ours is very, very far from a free
people in a free country.
We must recognize that freedom, control
of our own destinies, is worth every and any sacrifice. How is it
that we no longer believe that? How is it that we do not see how
enslaved we have become to a system that finally leaves us with
nothing but a legacy of such enslavement? The phenomenon of the
gradually-heated frog is the most reasonable answer.
REGARDING AN ORDERLY TRANSITION TO A
TRADITIONAL AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
Republicans tell the people that they
are more able to take care of themselves than they really are.
Democrats tell the people that they are less able to do so.
Republicans reason that a small group of them should therefore do as
they please with their power and let the rest of us sink or swim.
Democrats reason that a large group of them should therefore do as
they please with their power and make the rest of us sink or
swim. Other groups have been unable to gain enough collective power
to overcome these extremes in favor of a true government of, by, and
for the people.
There is no reason the people could not
regain control of their government. There is every reason they would
not want to, because of several things they tend to believe. It is a
society of self-interest from the most powerful man in the world
(whoever that is) down to the most depraved and deprived man. Yet
there are many who somehow retain a sense of social morality and
responsibility. It is these who must recognize the current need for
a truly benign (if at all possible) and benevolent (by all means)
transition to a society of relative goodness.
Cancerous beliefs within our society
have grown both naturally and with the careful cultivation of the
self-interested powerful over half or more of our short history.
Among them are that the system, as it is, is either interested in or
capable of protecting the interests of the people. Another is that
the system is so powerful that any attempts at changing it
substantially would be met with overwhelming and deadly force. The
deadly part is all too true; the overwhelming part all too false.
They are far outnumbered, and the military is populated by people who
do not want to kill themselves or their neighbors. Unfortunately, it
is led by people who are into the power trip and a vague notion of
“the national security” and “the national interest.”
So far, military personnel on the
domestic front lines seek to be proper by obeying orders about which
they are often uneasy. When they have ended up doing the
unthinkable under orders, whatever their personal motives, we seldom
hear from them in the aftermath. Our collective beliefs as a people,
military and others, must change to be more commensurate with those
upon which our nation was founded.
I am reminded of a quote from a movie,
given among other comments by a blogger named “Pudge” in this
April, 2009 entry:
“There's
a great line by Mel Gibson in The Patriot, during the Revolution:
"why would I trade one tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants
one mile away?" (Unfortunately, today, a better comparison would
be "3,000 tyrants 3,000 miles away.") Gibson's character --
based on Francis Marion, from whom my father's middle name came --
continued, "An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as
easily as a king can."
Even
if you have representation, that doesn't make you free. You can have
all the representation in the world and it doesn't matter if you
aren't free. Freedom is actually being able to do as you please, and
a legislature -- be it Parliament or Congress -- that is destructive
to that end should be altered or abolished by the People.
Some
people don't care about being free. Some people just want to be taken
care of. They can be bought off with cheap tea. We can't.”
Surely
a transition, even an orderly transition, to a new system that is
more attuned to both the local and national will of the people is
possible. Surely such a transition is desirable. There can be no
more sacrifice, loss, pain, suffering, threat from outside,
bloodshed, or chaos in it than what we have already paid as a nation,
and usually for far less precious a payoff. Surely these sacrifices
were worthy only in the name of freedom. And surely one requirement
of such a transition is the ability and will of the common people of
the nation to defend themselves, and whatever constitution they
adopt, “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Will
those who are, and who seek to be in control, allow an orderly
transition? Perhaps, but only (1) if they have no other choice, and
(2) if sufficient generations remain dedicated to the goal. More
likely, when one considers history, true change can only come about
through violence. Since military technology makes it possible for a
handful of soldiers to eradicate hundreds of thousands or more, the
American people must be realistic and courageous enough to risk and
accept tremendous loss of life in a fight for their freedom.
that first exposed me to a 20th/21st century 
are never simple. Indeed, with all the understanding there may be in academic, scientific, and practice circles, the complete nature of human emotion remains mostly a mystery. Anything at all can trigger one. They are the joy, spice, and passion of life, and the source of its greatest suffering. They are wholly contained within the person and his boundaries, they are no one else's responsibility but that of the one bearing them, and they account for both the source and much of the fallout for what we call "
.
, we often attempt to help people simplify how they think and speak of emotion in order to provide "handles" that can be grasped for conceptualization and conversation. It has been said that there are only five feelings: mad, sad, glad, scared, and hurt. All the words that we use to describe emotions can be conceptually squeezed into one or more of these five words. It is not an academic concept, but merely a therapeutic tool to attempt such a thing. At least, this simplification process can help us be as precise and descriptive as possible when thinking or speaking of our emotional experiences.
in history that I know of, I have my doubts. So far, in our brief, newborn-cry as a culture, what have we done about the arts? Perhaps more importantly, what have we done about the arts enriching the lives of our own human race? Perhaps more telling, what resources have we committed to more base pursuits as opposed to the more valuable? The broad subject of 
in this country comes to mind easily, in light of recent events.
kicking in, but this has me thinking. People often do not understand one of the basics of healthy relationships: 
. In mental health circles, this has been discussed and hashed over and taught for decades. But such things as developing healthy boundaries are learned from parent to child, in relatively 
" has to do with boundaries. Perfect assertiveness would be behavior that always protects one's own interests while completely allowing all others to protect theirs, and never being the source or the chooser of conflict. The result of his model-assertive behavior was frequent conflict with others, usually coming from their side of his healthy boundary. Generally speaking, people in our culture expect us to maintain an unhealthy, too-loose boundary of our own so that they can "get in" to us to whatever extent they want at the moment. The same people often have a rigid, un-crossable boundary over which none may pass.
, and was regarded in a large metropolitan area as the local expert. This patient had learned well, and had come a long way. After his treatment, the man's wife became very angry, in part because she could no longer cross his healthier boundary when she wanted to. She became so enraged that she was out in the yard, violently destroying some of his favorite and most irreplaceable possessions. She was making a lot of noise, and several neighbors had gathered to watch her. For his own reasons, some of which should be obvious, he chose not to retaliate in kind. Instead, he stood with the neighbors and watched, talking calmly with them about what she was doing. He had no appropriate way to 
-- indeed, none of us ever does, since each person is responsible for his own behavior -- so he had to accept what she was doing, for the moment, and maintain his own healthy boundary, assertively protecting his own interests -- to the extent that he could. Funny thing (?) is, the less he did to respond to her inappropriately, the more enraged she became. Perhaps she wound up behind bars that evening.
. He was writing about healthy boundaries, but he was far more honest and wise about them than the publishers of the poster. They left out the last line:
is really a grief experience, natural to people when they experience a loss of any kind.
, still required reading for anyone studying the human experience. During my education and career in human services (including 
, or at least listen to somehow, both to get the impact -- and to have such a fine song in your collection. It's called 
That means, "Well it might be the Devil, or it might be the Lord."