I live in Opposite World. Whether you admit it or not, -whether you gain or lose by the shifts and alignments- You do too. While I haven't fully come to grips with this all-encompassing positional challenge, I've adapted my lifestyle within the not-so-friendly confines this reality imposes. By most measures, I'm doing okay. My immediate surroundings are hostility free, but lurking, pretty much all around, events are unfolding that could make further adaptations difficult.
I find myself wondering how many times, across the arc of history, people have experienced the challenge of accommodation to power elites? How many times they lessened their own lives due to powerlessness? How many times they sought kindred to fight back? How often they won? How many more times they lost? How potentials have always expanded and contracted based upon seemingly small and arbitrary changes that weren't fully explained and/or comprehended. OR HUGE and BLATANT changes that rock worlds for decades.
Isn't it, when being brutally honest, all just the same repackaged, reformulated, re-framed, bush-league bullshit foisted upon people too busy or powerless to fight back? Then, when the impacts are experienced by a critical mass, what should have been a vigilance and maintenance program from the last go-round becomes a much deeper, wider conflict? Hey, how `bout that. It is! It was and has mostly always been these ways.
No matter the clever disguise, trumped up diminishment of freedoms and prospects; "for our own good", because somebody else knows better, or more clearly sees the boogeymen they conjure and create for consumption; people suffer until heads roll. In the aftermath of rolling heads comes chaos and a tiny window of opportunity for things to get somewhat better. or a much larger portal for things, acutely, to get exponentially worse. One's lot in such lives is to grin, bear it, pray safe passage and find one's joys wherever possible.
Have we been grinnin' and bearin' and prayin' for long enough now? Isn't it finally time to damn the consequences and admit that Reaganomics was, indeed, Voodoo Economics, that punished the many for the reward of too few? Would admitting and taking the first steps at correcting a terrible mistake really be the end of us all?
What's a body to do?
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Transitions, Transformations and Other Ts -OR- Long Time Gone
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2 comments:
"Across the arc of history" it has ever been the same: relatively good times followed by harsher, more repressive eras. It is incumbent on each of us to survive, to try to mitigate the damage to the greater good.
I'm guessing the emphasis on Reagan is twofold: right-wing nuthatches like to cite him into godlike status, and detractors like to cite him as the father of all the conservative ills in the modern era.
I'll remind everyone that it was CLINTON(D) and GRAMM(R) who caused the Great Recession of 2008 and Beyond. They killed Glass-Steagall and other vital regs in 1999 which ushered in the banking industry's abuses,the related housing bubble, et al. Reagan did none of that; if any Wall Streeters claim it, he would deny it. He DID champion a flat tax, which never passed.
I'm also guessing the right wing quotes Reagan as he was (at least for the first five years) a fairly popular president. I voted for Carter and Mondale, but that doesn't mean Reagan's every act was harmful.
The U.S. is a mixed economy, a republic, not a democracy. Our genius has been that our society is a mix of individuals and groups, that both have rights, minorities and majorities. We lose sight of that at our peril.
What can we do?
Get organized!
And run this rotten crowd (all of them) out on poles!
With tar and feathers as a side dish.
Love ya,
S
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