WARNING. If you are somebody who occupies your time with fantasy football this will very likely bore you into a coma, also if you believe everything you read, don’t believe this. They are only my opinions and they are probably wrong. I offer no solutions, it’s not supposed to be a manifesto, and most likely will resemble the oddball rantings of someone with too much time on his hands. Also, If you support people like Donald Trump or Sarah Palin don’t read it, it´ll likely piss you off.
My more intelligent North American friends and I were positive, until a few nights ago that a Trump presidency would never happen. The land of the free, home of the brave would never vote for an egocentric, self-admitted sexual predator, a misogynistic racist, that believes the problems of America can be solved by insulting his trade partners, women, Mexicans, Muslims, the Pope, the disabled, I know I’m missing many more, but come on. How much ink and paper? Until election night, polls and news networks agreed with me, but we were all wrong. Some from denial, some from wishful thinking, and some as in my case, who refused to believe, that so many people would vote for such a racist and uncouth clown.
Even though my cynical self remembers that propaganda and misinformation have previously put another clown in power, and not just that… they did it twice! Divisive politicians, using the ebbs in the economy, as well as recent world events, spew divisive and hateful rhetoric to pander to an already fearful public. The fear caused by misinformation will make good people vote against their conscience. Look back at history, you’ll find many cases, where the lower instincts of a few twisted psychopaths, using misinformation and fear mongering, managed to justify horrible atrocities. We must not ignore them, if only to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. “The Rise and Fall Of The Third Reich”, it’s an old documentary, made in 1968. It’s relevance in the context of today, will scare you. A lot of people know about the fall, for it was dramatic, but the beginning was gradual and over the course of a few years, insidious like humidity, until it was too hard to stop, only a few paid attention to how it started, but therein lie the clues of prevention. Hitler, an embittered veteran, from the one they called “the great war”. He ascended the ranks using some betrayal and conniving, became Germany’s Chancellor, in a wave of misinformation and fear mongering, together with a strong nationalist message, and having found a scapegoat to sacrifice exalted the racist agenda. Soon after, as well you know, he became Führer and proceeded to shit on the entire world. Look If you dare, it’s right there in history’s stinky drawers.
RACISTS ARE RED, US VIOLETS ARE BLUE.
Let me make clear, that I know that Hillary grossly exaggerated the amount of “deplorables” in Trump’s basket, but there is a whole bouquet of deplorable racists in that basket, and when they realized it was cool and acceptable to be racist they all came out of the wood work. This segment of the population knows that Trump is a racist prick, and they love him for it. Short of the white sheet and the swastika tattoo, they feel he’s one of them. But, there are also, on the other hand, a bunch of people that voted for him because they feel legitimately left behind by their government, they’ve seen the fleecing of America by a bunch morons that pay a hundred dollars for a screw, they will never use, and if that wasn’t enough, they’re pretty sure Hillary is texting with Satan. A lot of these people voted for the Teflon clown in spite, of his racism, I truly believe some even hated voting for the dumbass, but they were too pissed off not to.
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE STUPID.
Unfortunately, the good decent people who have the right intentions are too busy actually helping people to enter politics. This leaves a vacuum that is quickly filled by power hungry assholes, who are really mostly in it to help themselves. We must face the fact that most of the people that usually are attracted to that line of work are not usually your Gandhi types. But we must not forget that uninformed voters are just as guilty for the ills of democracy. We find ourselves in bad places because of stupid uninformed voters. The most Goggled phrase the day after the Brexit referendum was, “what is the EU?”.
THE GOOD
When it comes to leaders, there are some notable exceptions, and if we go around the world, I’m sure we can find some exemplary politicians, who dedicate their lives to help others. Jose Mujica, ex-president of Uruguay, a humble man and a true inspiration to the rest of the politicians in the world who want to become good civil servants. He used his old car during his tenure, used no security detail. By the time he left office Uruguay was ranked first in Latin America in democracy, peace, quality of living, e-Government, equality and the lowest index of corruption. Also first in South America when it comes to freedom of press, size of the middle class and prosperity.
THE BAD
Trump said that he was going to “drain the swamp” and get rid of the crooked establishment politicians, and in their place he is going to appoint characters like; Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, Chris Christie, Sarah Palin, Roger Ailes, and many more deplorable people that will join the racist ranks of the minions, who are going to help him make America hate again. Even Trump, a misogynist, racist, unqualified moronic megalomaniac, that has won the presidency in a wave of insults and lies, is not as responsible for the current divisions in America, as the propaganda machines shamelessly disguised as news networks. Run by freaks and deviants like Roger Ailes from Fox News, Steve Bannon from Breitbart News, and that other laughable idiot, Alex Jones. These networks have delivered their vile in a very insidious but effective way. They have convinced their hypnotized audience that they are unbiased and balanced, in spite of how obvious it is that they don’t care how they have bend or break the truth to cater to special interest groups, or to further their special interest agendas. They count on the fact that if they propagate false propaganda accurately, they do not have to make the false propaganda accurate. I’m sure nobody in their audience is checking facts anyway, that’s why they’re still their audience!
I miss Jon Stewart, he was great at keeping the Fox network morons in check.
THE STUPID
Religious agendas have to stay the hell out of the classrooms. Religions have managed to keep us in the dark ages for too long, only to perpetuate their control on the masses. Religious misinformation, has filled the ranks of society with all the Sarah Palin and Mike Pence drones, who believe that the world is only 5,000 years old, and that global warming is just, “God keeping us warm”. These ignorance lobbyists spin anything that does not accommodate their flawed logic or interests. I understand that some people that can´t find spirituality on their own, feel the need to rely on organized religion for a road map. But they need to stop getting in the way of science and progress. This sense of entitlement over the truth from the part of religious hypocrites comes from the middle ages when the Holy Inquisition warned Galileo, that if he continued with his heretic malarkey they were going to tickle him hard, very hard. It’s been long enough, I worry that at some point if this continues, all the evident truths, will be relegated to a small realm, where only nerds and geeks will reside in isolation, while jock assholes and religious egocentric vidiots, will rule the world.
This is a worrisome trend to me, when I see the widespread ignorance that engulfs a large number of the population. With all the distractions of the everyday life the average person does not know much of anything, distracted by sports, and whatever else fills their lives, they have no time to filter whatever little information gets adsorbed, from online media, for some leaving Fox News mindlessly in the background 24/7, is a common occurrence. (I know people that do this). Bogged in the marsh of wide spread false information, they are willing to believe anything they read online from any uninformed jerk, like me.
One of the problems is that in our culture, people who grade well are usually viewed as standard nerds, and the ones that are “too cool for school”, were either too high, or too horny to pay attention in science class. After they graduate, and having no point of reference, later in life most of them can’t sort the wheat from the chaff. People read less, me included, and when it comes to information, like water running downhill, we choose the path of least resistance, we don’t look for the truth on anything, we assume that because we heard the same thing from two different idiots, then it must be true. The few that do research, sometimes, have tremendous difficulty sorting out the truth from all the mountains of information and misinformation out there. So they chat, and read comments from their Facebook “friends” and the “friends” of the “friends”, who are really strangers, and based on all that, they form very strong opinions on things they read from completely unqualified idiots… like me.
BUT HUTCH, HOW DO WE FIX IT?
Ok, I’ll tell you. We need to believe that education is a good thing, and we need to give it for free to the ones that want it. Discourage at all levels, the fools that distress at the notion of learning from getting in the way of the ones that want to make a difference. We need good educators that inspire their students to learn, by making learning not necessarily fun, but interesting. Right now there is a vast majority of people who are sure a quarter is bigger than a third, and even in a bible thumping culture such as this, some think Joan of Arc, was Noah’s wife! If this sounds made up, it´s not, these are results of an actual poll conducted on a wide range of high schools in the United States of America. Let’s start by making America learn again.
This is the second time in modern times, that a presidential race was lost by the majority, because of the Electoral College. An archaic rule put in place, back when beavers and buffalo, still outnumbered people in America. Why do I think this is important to review? The other time this happened, was when Bush lost the popular vote to Al gore, but won the Electoral College, this off course changed everything. In case you were too young when this happened, or wander if it mattered at all, right after this happened, George W. Bush broke Persia.
In the context of democracy, logic dictates that majorities should rule, but as we know, there are a lot of majorities in the world being dictated and controlled by strong powerful minorities, as in the Shia/Sunni disparity that exists in some of the countries in the middle east, or most notably in South Africa, where large numbers of blacks, for years were brutally controlled by a small number of powerful whites.
THE REAL MINORITY
The powers that be, benefit greatly from dividing us into “minority groups”, this is a distraction from the fact that in America, there are a 99 % majority of people with little or no money, being controlled by a 1% of truly wealthy people, who have secured the mechanisms to keep things, just the way they like it. In view of such disparity, we wonder how come the vast majority is controlled by a mere but immensely powerful one percent. This is because money is, and always will be the greatest equalizer. It buys information and how it’s disseminated, it buys power and the protection of it. But, they should remember that there have been instances, where in spite of the tremendous power and security that money can buy, it could not stop the tide of an hungry and angry mob, La Bastille, and the Arab Spring are only two examples of desperate, pissed off people who have in the grip of their callous hands crumbled empires and governments, like dried marzipan.
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS?
Numbers matter, not only from the aspect of the strength therein, but the wisdom accumulated as well, the more we’re in a group, the better we think, this is the concept of collective consciousness. There was a study conducted by Francis Goulton titled “The Wisdom of Crowds”, in which he conducts a series of experiments, where he places, for instance a jar that contains an indiscriminate number of marbles and a determined number of people guess how many marbles are in it. Not surprisingly, all the individual guesses are in various degrees of wrong, some ridiculously high, others way too low, but the surprising part came when they were all added, and divided by the number of participants, to get the average, every time the resulting number was surprisingly accurate. This tells me that the collective knowledge of a group has to be better than the individuals. You would think that knowing this, would boost my confidence on the democratic process, but the difference here is, that when we’re counting marbles, there are no special interest groups, no super packs, no Citizens United, or sleazy lobbyists trying to sway my opinion to their side.
Democracy fails when its controlled by a few powerful individuals with unbridled greed, that have learned to use laws and loopholes that benefit only them, ask Trump, he says he knows how cheat the system better than anybody.
People like this even thought they represent a small portion of the public, the “one percent ” will use their money to gain more power and retain it, the cause and effect of this, is the inevitable loss to the other “ninety percent” . This become obvious, when we know that since this last crisis started, millions of people went from being middle class to poor, while some even became homeless, during this period, the amount of money counted by the people that count their money in the millions, increased. This my friends, is the infected toe, that if cured, can prevent us from having to cut our foot off.
Although democracy is in my opinion the best form of government, some of the mechanisms it utilizes are outdated and downright unfair. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren presented us a more socially conscious, although somewhat idealistic form of government, and whatever success they can get, it´s a step in the right direction, and I’m glad to see the response they got from so many people that also saw Bernie as someone that meant to shake things up. However I got the feeling that but he would have done it in a more gentle, and compassionate way, without all the pussy graving. Too bad he got cheated out of the race, by Debbie Wasserman, who could not see the Democrats represented by an old Jewish man that looks like Statler from the Muppets. I think by now, we all know, that in a general election, he would have knocked that road kill, Trump calls his hair, right off his head.
If Trump does not bankrupt America in four years, as he does. I would like to see Bernie and Warren do something in 2020. Until then, keep your fingers crossed that he doesn’t get a mean tweet from the Chinese.
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