Monday, August 03, 2009

So we finally have a partially black president (others may have been, just not obviously- I still think Taft was black- kind of a white Fat Albert).

We got a black man who can finally complain (due to being a Harvard professor) of racial profiling, and be taken seriously. We got a white cop who teaches racial sensitivity, and fell into the biggest political trap of a generation.

We got a Hispanic woman (Puerto Ricans are incredibly culturally diverse) having to be polite to a lot of idiot racist white men who are accusing HER of being racist.
That was an act of brilliant equanimity on her part, walking over that nuclear (there's only one U, in our post Bush society, thank Webster!) bed of hot coals.
I would have wacked out and put a couple gavels and some copies of the Constitution wrapped around various implements of destruction, in some very interesting places.
Sotomayor exemplified the Klingon ethic, that revenge is a dish best served very, very cold.

Don't get me wrong, I feel for all of them. My own father didn't know he was white, until he was 10 or so.

Class war has walked out into the open, in the health care debate.
What the many need, is single payer.
What the powerful few want, and they pay to get what they want, and our representatives are too weak and whorish to look at statistics instead of the almighty $D, what the powerful few want, they get.

My friend the medical examiner had something very interesting to say about socialized health care:
"I really don't want to have to do another autopsy on a middle-aged guy who died because he couldn't afford his heart/blood pressure/diabetes/cholesterol medication, and chose to feed his family instead".
I really have to steady myself, every time I think of that.

Let me give you a picture of socialism, something I have seen personally. I lived in Germany for six years, under the shelter of my husband's work with the US Army.
Every day, you see old people.
They are on bicycles, walking, chatting, gardening.
White-haired folks are everywhere. They are vital, they are participating, they are active.
They are respected, and kids behave themselves, where old folks are.
Because they know their elders have been through some Serious Shit, and don't tolerate any kind of tomfoolery.

The pyramid of failure in our culture makes a vortex of social failure, from structure to behavior.

We don't support education, or we support it spottily. We don't VALUE education, as a society.
We value Luck.
Unfortunately, Luck is not a reliable investment.
We construct our society on a rickety structure of luck & hope.

Now, we have the opportunity to back it up with the most valuable commodity of all.
Hard Work.

The people who've been working hard all the time, are ready to back this sucker up.. if only..

The people who've been on top, and their elected/hired minions, are terrified they might have to either actually get their hands dirty, or "get a haircut". Meanwhile, they are the ones with the resources to brainwash some squeaky wheels to get the attention of people unskilled in critical thinking. A nice side effect of undermining socialized education.

At this point, we are so far in the hole in terms of social "leverage" that the bottom third of society is uneducated, malnourished, and can't even walk around the mall. They are all so overfed by the stock dividend providers, that they can't, in so many ways, put one foot in front of the other.

Not in terms of health, finances, or education. They've been taught a constantly changing stream of nonsense, controlled by whatever party has power or money in their district.

So at this point, the shovel has to go in deep, to dig a new intellectual, physical and, yes, spiritual foundation. (I am a non-theist, I do better without any imaginary friends)

People have to be able to get educated, to get a job.
They get a better job, to get more educated, to get a still better job.
Along the way, they need to be able to stay healthy, free of partisan interference in their political, personal, social and professional life. I saw far better success of this in Europe, than I see in the US. People interpret freedom here, as the freedom to annoy and endanger others.
Sorry, it's not a frontier any more. Move to Antarctica (look out for penguins).

The more paths are open for people to improve themselves, the more they will do so. The immigrant populations of Europe prove this. Many of the newest, best and brightest in medicine, technology and communications, are children of immigrants.

We are a world of migrants now. We might as well give up the idea of US & Them.
We ARE them. They are us.

Now, can we get on with the evolution?
I'm so ready, I'm so not interested in the Status Quo.
We've had enough rectocranial inversion for the next ten generations.

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