In the good old US of A, we are at a crossroads. There are those among us who have voted in every election since we reached the age that it is allowed and about half who never have. I have been a poll worker for over twenty years and have found that the number of people eligible to vote runs about double the number of those that are registered to vote and that the other half vote at astonishingly low levels. It may astonish the average person to know that this state of affairs used to upset me. The electoral joke is to say that only those who vote have the right to complain, but if that were true, I would only have to hear half the whining and complaining. This crossroads has been on the map since the last time that monopolies were broken up, federal regulators were put in place to oversee corporations, and many of our "safety nets" were put in place.
The FDA, (Food and Drug Administration) for instance, that got started because snake oil salesmen could still sell adulterated products, poison or just about anything for any remedy and no law existed to prevent the sellers from just not telling folks what they were buying. There was quackery beyond belief that people felt as a tax on their health and indeed their lives. People were dying from tainted food and drugs. Now, after years of trying to keep up with rapidly changing food and drug production and distribution systems, there are so many ways around their regulations, and such a massive amount of commerce that they are supposed to be overseeing, that hazardous products and conditions frequently make it past the first line of defense and we have people dying again at an even more alarming rate. Just this week, the FDA released a study that tells people that the label "organic" on produce has no effect on the nutrient content or flavor of agricultural products, in their report they also failed to take stock of the most important fact behind the organic label, it means that fewer toxic compounds are spewed into the environment to produce it.
This is one aspect of the intersecting paths that we must choose from. Sadly, as we have seen from movies, the crossroads are a dangerous place, a desolate place and one that many would want to avoid at all costs. The reason that this is where you go to "make a deal with the Devil" is because choice always requires cleaving off those things that you decide to leave behind, to essentially kill them off. As I often mention, creation and destruction go hand in hand. We could go back, but since so much wealth has flowed into so few hands, we would all be far worse off to try to revert to our old ways of thinking, the old way of doing things, or the old ways of thinking about them. The world has changed and we need to understand that there is no going back. when we look more closely at our past, we soon realize that the good old days are just as fictional as the worst science fiction. Nearly any time we look at throughout time, there were rich and powerful overlords exploiting others for their enrichment and heartbreaking consequences for the less wealthy and less powerful individuals whose lives were worn away in service to the flow of commerce. This should give pause to those who think that "Happy Days" was anything but a diversion. It would be nice to turn back the clock to a time when we were irresponsible young adults who didn't have rent to pay or dinner to cook, or our own clothes to wash but this is not in the cards.
The path to the left is paved with good intentions and about half of those who seek light at the end of our tunnel of worldwide economic collapse seem to think that moving to the political left will somehow spare us being hit by the train of doom that has entered the other end of the tunnel. Same can be said about those who seek a path to the right. It is becoming harder and harder to ignore the grim situation that we find ourselves in. The only problem is that to the right lie fascism and even more of a free hand for those who exploit out people and rape Mother Earth. Many on the right may have good intentions as well, but their understanding of "free market" economics and the "efficiency" of capitalism to reward good wherever it may be are completely based on five-hundred year old myths. The wealthy, who have been told for generations that they are wealthy and powerful because they are better than the rest of us are beginning to realize that the fact is that they are truly exactly the same. No genetic marker or superior intellect will ever assure your place in the global games of power and control that have resulted in millions of deaths, destroyed lives and the pathetic excuses that pass for humanitarian efforts sponsored by first world loan sharks exploiting poor young populations across the developing world. Evil people do these things for their own purposes and fall back on the centuries old lies that mimic the divine right of kings.
So, our fourth choice is to plow forward, move ahead into the gaping black, hope the train jumps the tracks before running us down and to put the pedal to the metal just a little harder. We will need to choose one of four paths soon, November, sixth will be the end point in the most recent campaign. Perhaps we will make a good choice, perhaps not. What is assured, no matter which direction we choose to go, we will never get back the value of our homes five years ago, we cannot produce our way out of expensive oil, our children will not educate themselves and if we let the spin doctors and lying power brokers get their way, we will be left with more of what we have gotten from them already. I have been called a lot of things by a lot of people, but the one thing I do not want to be called is unimportant. I'm sure it is the same for the gun-toting religious whack-jobs who think that if we just got rid of government entirely, our lives would be better off. The tea party activists who urge businesses to implement a hiring freeze as long as Obama is in office need to be brought up on charges of treason. We need to hold the lying liars' feet tot the fire on so many issues. Human rights, health care, security, the environment, women's issues, education, finance, our food system, energy, all of these areas need to be addressed. We need to look at each one and the whole bunch at once and see that the litany of ills that we are facing today have taken decades to get as far out of hand as they have become. The powerful people who have taught us to stay home on election day in droves need a wake up call. Democracy may be on the ropes, but it refuses to go down easy.
Please, try to learn as much as you can before the election and vote. It may well be the last chance we have to make a difference in the lives of the next seven generations. After the election, the real work starts. The rich and powerful have provided us with a giant sow's ear. They will always leave it to us to try to make it look like a silk purse.
The FDA, (Food and Drug Administration) for instance, that got started because snake oil salesmen could still sell adulterated products, poison or just about anything for any remedy and no law existed to prevent the sellers from just not telling folks what they were buying. There was quackery beyond belief that people felt as a tax on their health and indeed their lives. People were dying from tainted food and drugs. Now, after years of trying to keep up with rapidly changing food and drug production and distribution systems, there are so many ways around their regulations, and such a massive amount of commerce that they are supposed to be overseeing, that hazardous products and conditions frequently make it past the first line of defense and we have people dying again at an even more alarming rate. Just this week, the FDA released a study that tells people that the label "organic" on produce has no effect on the nutrient content or flavor of agricultural products, in their report they also failed to take stock of the most important fact behind the organic label, it means that fewer toxic compounds are spewed into the environment to produce it.
This is one aspect of the intersecting paths that we must choose from. Sadly, as we have seen from movies, the crossroads are a dangerous place, a desolate place and one that many would want to avoid at all costs. The reason that this is where you go to "make a deal with the Devil" is because choice always requires cleaving off those things that you decide to leave behind, to essentially kill them off. As I often mention, creation and destruction go hand in hand. We could go back, but since so much wealth has flowed into so few hands, we would all be far worse off to try to revert to our old ways of thinking, the old way of doing things, or the old ways of thinking about them. The world has changed and we need to understand that there is no going back. when we look more closely at our past, we soon realize that the good old days are just as fictional as the worst science fiction. Nearly any time we look at throughout time, there were rich and powerful overlords exploiting others for their enrichment and heartbreaking consequences for the less wealthy and less powerful individuals whose lives were worn away in service to the flow of commerce. This should give pause to those who think that "Happy Days" was anything but a diversion. It would be nice to turn back the clock to a time when we were irresponsible young adults who didn't have rent to pay or dinner to cook, or our own clothes to wash but this is not in the cards.
The path to the left is paved with good intentions and about half of those who seek light at the end of our tunnel of worldwide economic collapse seem to think that moving to the political left will somehow spare us being hit by the train of doom that has entered the other end of the tunnel. Same can be said about those who seek a path to the right. It is becoming harder and harder to ignore the grim situation that we find ourselves in. The only problem is that to the right lie fascism and even more of a free hand for those who exploit out people and rape Mother Earth. Many on the right may have good intentions as well, but their understanding of "free market" economics and the "efficiency" of capitalism to reward good wherever it may be are completely based on five-hundred year old myths. The wealthy, who have been told for generations that they are wealthy and powerful because they are better than the rest of us are beginning to realize that the fact is that they are truly exactly the same. No genetic marker or superior intellect will ever assure your place in the global games of power and control that have resulted in millions of deaths, destroyed lives and the pathetic excuses that pass for humanitarian efforts sponsored by first world loan sharks exploiting poor young populations across the developing world. Evil people do these things for their own purposes and fall back on the centuries old lies that mimic the divine right of kings.
So, our fourth choice is to plow forward, move ahead into the gaping black, hope the train jumps the tracks before running us down and to put the pedal to the metal just a little harder. We will need to choose one of four paths soon, November, sixth will be the end point in the most recent campaign. Perhaps we will make a good choice, perhaps not. What is assured, no matter which direction we choose to go, we will never get back the value of our homes five years ago, we cannot produce our way out of expensive oil, our children will not educate themselves and if we let the spin doctors and lying power brokers get their way, we will be left with more of what we have gotten from them already. I have been called a lot of things by a lot of people, but the one thing I do not want to be called is unimportant. I'm sure it is the same for the gun-toting religious whack-jobs who think that if we just got rid of government entirely, our lives would be better off. The tea party activists who urge businesses to implement a hiring freeze as long as Obama is in office need to be brought up on charges of treason. We need to hold the lying liars' feet tot the fire on so many issues. Human rights, health care, security, the environment, women's issues, education, finance, our food system, energy, all of these areas need to be addressed. We need to look at each one and the whole bunch at once and see that the litany of ills that we are facing today have taken decades to get as far out of hand as they have become. The powerful people who have taught us to stay home on election day in droves need a wake up call. Democracy may be on the ropes, but it refuses to go down easy.
Please, try to learn as much as you can before the election and vote. It may well be the last chance we have to make a difference in the lives of the next seven generations. After the election, the real work starts. The rich and powerful have provided us with a giant sow's ear. They will always leave it to us to try to make it look like a silk purse.
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