Every once in a while I step out of my academic constructed intellectual shell and just look at the world naively. Yes that is possible if you have trained yourself to do it. Lately when I do that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Here I am living in a country that calls itself a democracy yet is so completely controlled by a selfish oligarchy that people who work for a living are in dire straights while a few accumulate more wealth than they know what to do with.
On top of that, the word “Christian” is thrown about as if somehow the ideals of the Christian religion were even remotely visible in anything that happens here.
Then we have the military-industrial-academic-religious complex that has pulled the wool over most people’s eyes.
For some time now this country has ignored its best scientists and constructed a profit driven complex of agriculture, for profit medicine, education under strict control to keep all of the rest as invisible as possible, and a mass communications scam controlled by big brother. It thereby has allowed the massive inaction on global warming along with all the other environmental and ecological crimes the oligarchy pulls off as they sweep in the money.
Meanwhile there is a minority of the population that tears itself away from the other distractions on television to go through a series of theatrical charades they believe are democratic elections. The theater these elections provide is bad theater but it is able to get this minority very worked up. This is good for the oligarchy for among the participants are many of those who would really work to fix things were they not so easily seduced by this very effective system.
So here I am watching and ranting in my usual ineffective way and needing to escape back into my academic pursuits or at least on line chess before I lose it.
Today I saw reports that still another front running candidate refuses to debate unless the opponent is shackled in some way. There must be something I am missing here because this latest affront to the very appearance of democratic elections is overwhelming. Who will shackle the leaders of Russia, China, North Korea? If you can’t face someone so close to your own ideology how could you ever face them?
But maybe I missed something. Maybe there are good reasons for all this insane looking stuff and I am the one who is insane? Certainly reading what appears on this site has not helped me to understand. I still think our failing two party system has propped up the oligarchy quite well. I still think both parties have helped in different ways. Our president has made a strong move to verify this in supporting the head of the DNC in her bid to continue poisoning the waters.
So I’ll continue to observe and to write about what I see. Yet do we really need a weatherman to tell us which way the wind is blowing?