I received e-mail from a friend who recently visited earth. He was here, in the states, looking at some real estate. He decided it was too degraded for relocation, in his words, ''they are really fucked up there; it could be so simple. Fortunately, we had blue feathers instead of war. Once we understood evolution, we were able to input it and that is when it changed rapidly. You guys are just suffering a slow death. Sorry, but you are personally handling it well .”
He writes:
I am going to talk about America exclusively, where our scanners register the most activity and conversely, the least personal tranquility on Earth. There are other places to look but you were right about it having the most potential.
Yours is a society with a large number of people, as countries go but it has ruined its entire planet and we cannot move there.
It has a democracy with a constitution but has always had an oligarchy of a changing nature, depending on the financial power and interests of its members. There is no official link between the constitutional government and the oligarchy but there are extensive contacts between members of the oligarchy and the constitutional lawmakers and executives. The result is that most of the institutional and establishment power is aligned to overwhelm whatever sensible local decisions emerge. But, we talked about that; I’m just going over our reasons to pass on relocation there.
First of all, it is unnecessarily chaotic there. You have not realized that you have to peacefully discredit and shrink to insignificance the prevailing political influences. Political differences and disagreements are often over sham issues between party alliances that advertise themselves as opposed to each other but in reality are simply enemy factions supporting differing factions of the broad oligarchy.
There are two states of mind however, that are opposed. One believes in progress, evolution, reality-based information, logic and are apolitical and grassroots. You know them as progressives.
The other has a regressive belief in established institutions that have no apparent limits to the devolution they inspire. They have shifting beliefs in absolutes; those shifts depend on whom has temporarily achieved political dominance.
I say temporarily achieved dominance because this state of mind encourages relentless competition for political dominance. You know them as conservatives.
They have been in general ascendency lately because their influence has largely been insidious. They have persuaded a huge number of people to believe in a general cynicism. This trumps all knowledge, knowledge which is often based on hope. This cynicism has affected seemingly opposed political parties. It’s a mess.
The progressive state of mind is largely apolitical but they live in a system designed to be political. The other is largely political. This is a legacy left over from settling things with war. The people who designed this system were considered far-sighted but were constrained in thought by their environment and history.
Even attempts by some groups to claim that they are the progressive group and are appealing for people to trust them with political power are mimicking the regressive political side. One state of mind competing with a different state of mind would necessarily have a different strategy but they do not.
Politics usually does not work for progressives because they are politicking on one logical level and organizing people on another. In the end, the faux progressive movements ask for support for a promised outcome on a political platform.
The most unsophisticated people see through this; more sophisticated people persuade themselves that political dominance can be earned by rational argument. These sophisticates are flummoxed, enraged and insulted when an irrational argument, or a defamatory statement proves to be as powerful and widely disseminated as their own rational arguments.
For an example of how credibility is earned, an organization that does not advocate a political position claims that their progressive movement can be trusted to make sure that people can vote, and then successfully works to help people vote. Paradoxically, that would result in earning the votes of people who believed that they are able to achieve things, if they were to so choose. This would create a solid emotional connection.
On the other hand, the oligarchy has long since abandoned emotional reasoning, except to counter that which spontaneously arises against them or that which they instigate in order to manipulate a malleable population Progressives can only compete with the oligarchy and render them unnecessary when people can rely on them for a just and sustainable way of life.
Voters are not required to believe an unproven claim and thus progressive political groups are too dependent on wishful thinking. I think that is why your last president was elected. He is the constitutionally elected president but moonlights for the oligarchy and is presently engineering over-due reorganization of their interests. That is why his accomplishments are the result of accommodations not compromises. That is why so many people are hoping for so many things to change; yet, those things are slow in coming or never will come.
Enough of that, we have discussed this from every vantage point. I suppose your loyalty is admirable but unsupported by all of those facts that are supposed to substitute for logic. I won’t be in that galaxy for another hundred years and well, you know. But tell your kids about me and I’ll be sure to look them up.
I really enjoyed my time programming your laptop but there was no future for us in my climate. The powering up is no problem but it is too hot there for her to take a risk. I think she would have been accepted by my species but arranging for her to have consciousness would be too long to wait, even for me. By the way, she was only she to me; you will only see some improved performance and no memory of my visit on her part. She will not have any self awareness related to the files that I left.
Regards,
Xon