Where Do We Go From Here
After nearly two years of Trump, decades of war, corporations more powerful and insulated than ever, and our federal government a travesty. Where do we go from here? Recognize too that we have been beaten down and misled for hundreds, if not a thousand years. Elite use of the legal entity called ‘The Corporation’ has decimated our lives and planet.
We must create a culture of truth, and of first principles. Truth in recognizing that we all share Life right now, and no other time exists. Contrary to our conditioning, we are All Here Together forever. First principles are what we already know. We begin with integrity, because without integrity we do not have trust, and without trust we devolve into a culture like the one we live in Now. And this broke down shit must change.
The chief weapon used against us in our quest for truth and understanding is fear. It is fear that drove the bomb maker and the Jew killer last week. It is fear (and Trump’s delusional offer to relieve your fear), that presents him with his ‘supporters’. As Chris Hedges notes, these are cult followers.
We can’t fix them. At least not yet. Fighting them but infuriates them further. We’ll get to healing their trauma and teaching them a better way. But we must first do this for ourselves.
We may have little control over the world we find ourselves in, but we have control over our thoughts and feelings. We elect how we play this moment with our thoughts and feelings and belief systems. The belief codes that drive our behaviors. We can look more deeply inside ourselves to rid ourselves of the ugly monster of fear. The remedy is the peace and love inherent Here in Life.
You’ll have to understand our new operating system, World 5.0, if these words do not make sense. Because ‘we go from here’ is exactly this new construct. An idea whose time has clearly come. And again, check out World 5.0 if all this seems unclear.
We are in an unprecedented time in our history. The thousand years of elite rule through the legal entity of ‘the corporation’ is coming to an end. Our eyes are finally opening to the truth of our old civilization, and it will not stand much longer. It’s utterly unfair, ecologically devastating, violent and utterly corrupt. The profit motive is not a good foundation for culture. Life is.
In World 5.0 we find peace and love, based on Life itself. We demand integrity in our systems and encourage it in our people. We even now are coagulating into a New Age.
In World 5.0 we restore natural systems, ecologies, like never before. We enliven the already evident movement toward localism and organic food. Renewable energy, rooftop wind and solar, so much we can transform.
We can put an end to war, and the fucking permanent war paradigm. This sick perversion of inventing and antagonizing different tribes, ‘enemies’, and then blowing the shit out of them out of pure greed, must end. It’s our top priority here in World5.
So ‘where do we go from here’ is together. This together we share in time has to translate to together in remaking our culture. From one of war to peace. From one of scarcity to abundance. From greed to consideration. From fear to love.
The pace of this transformation is not our concern. Life handles such things. Our concern is awakening to our sisters and brothers, to our intent and to Life itself. To find ourselves in integrity, peace and love.
No More Bombs
An ugly week, with the pipe bomber targeting Donald Trump critics with 13 bombs, a Louisville shooter who gunned down two black forks at a supermarket and the ugliness in Pittsburgh against Jews with 11 dead. Donald Trump only takes credit, never blame, though his influence is hardly deniable at this point.
Each of the three instigators of this week’s violence were angry white nationalists, killing people who are not from the same ‘tribe’ as they were. In truth there is only one viable ‘tribe’ these days. It’s called the human race.
We live in a culture of violence. From our wars in the Middle East and beyond, our police and family violence here in the states, movies, TV and video games. We live in a culture of violence. I could go on and on but we already know.
What troubles me the most about this fact is a secondary fact, that we feel powerless to do anything about it. We feel the world is what it is, and from our individual little perches, there’s nothing we can do. Not true.
Most importantly, we can train ourselves to ensure we don’t purvey violence in any form, unlike our current president. We can make sure we do not speak or act or even think with violence as a factor. Initiating violence is always an act of fear, or it’s more hardened condition, hate.
Indeed, we can learn to meditate and master our intent, making if difficult to move us from a place of peace and love. This allows us to navigate the chaos of these times with the greatest equanimity possible. More and more of us are recognizing the power of our intent and the value of integrity, peace and love.
Okay, here in World 5.0 we’re all peace and love but this shit is still all screwed up. Like, seriously screwed up. What steps can we take?
For starters we can support the right stuff. Groups like World Beyond War and dozens of others are working on peace initiatives right now. Black Lives Matter, #metoo, March for Our Lives – these are just a few recent entries adding to the vision and energy of No More Bombs.
We can engage in local efforts to stop violence. Rape support, police brutality watchdog groups, kids groups that support peace and education. There is a satisfaction to helping build our communities that you won’t hear about on the tv.
We can get political – pretty good time to consider such a thing when the dynamics are so ugly and brittle. From our local elected officials to groups like Indivisible and Our Revolution, we can work for change in this arena where corruption and undue corporate influence reign.
Finally, we can enable a new culture, a new Earth, where the World 5.0 mindset holds. Principles like peace, love, integrity, justice and balance can be keys to enabling a new way forward. Through the World5 Platform areas like renewable energy, organic food and learning can become priorities and areas of engagement.
And most of all we understand that we are all here together, and that we need a massive systemic overhaul to stop the madness so ingrained in our political system.
We will find no unity from President Trump and a corrupt congress. But we can find unity, and strength, among ourselves with the transformative power of creating a world with No More Bombs.
Oh yea, next Tuesday is a big deal. Be sure to vote.
Why We Need to Awaken
Why the Blue Wave Will Hold
As we wind our way to Election, 2018, there is a wide variety of possibilities to unfold. From Trump’s ‘there may be a red wave’ to the possibility of a blue tsunami where Democrats take the Senate as well as the House.
This year’s election is surely crucial, the stakes never higher in my lifetime. If we get more of the same, we will hopefully survive, but we do not improve our fare or our Earth.
Still, there is reason for hope. There’s been and will continue to be plenty of attention. Not just the sick ads that bombard the airwaves, but throughout the US culture. Social media and political websites are abuzz, along with podcasts and youtube. Things are in flux.
We’ve never seen high schoolers who watched their friends get gunned down jump into the election fight. Folks of color, women, millennials – all seem to be more engaged or at least paying more attention. And the rampant corruption from tax cuts to elevating Kavanaugh to ignoring Saudi government murder – to just point out some new stuff – we are on the threshold of something unlike anything we’ve seen before.
Mr. Trump has suggested we could see a ‘Red Wave’ this year, especially with the enthusiasm garnered from getting Brett Kavanaugh confirmed as a supreme court justice. It’s true that some hard core Trumpians applauded the confirmation and will certainly be voting, but their numbers are never over 40% of the general public. And in this case, the way Kavanaugh was pushed through and the way his accusers were disrespected, antagonized as many folks as became enthused.
In spite of the tepid weakness of the Democratic Party, this year is much different. The high schoolers mentioned above are well-engaged, even if as individuals they’re not old enough to vote. “Vote them out” and “We call BS” are two recent terms from the younglings.
Millennials are also far more engaged than in elections past. Along with watching the idiocy and corruption that is Trump, there’s a sense of urgency that didn’t exist before. Maybe they do hope to move out of the basement at some point.
Minorities as well. The swell of support and energy that came from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez victory in the New York primary over summer is a marker that is not lost on Hispanics, Blacks, Native Americans or Puerto Ricans. The number of minority voters who cast votes for Republicans is not large.
But the real motherload of voters that will make this election different are the women. Dean Obeidalla writing for the Daily Beast claims it’s more accurate to speak of a Pink Wave this election cycle. In 2016, Trump actually won the women’s vote, 51% to 49% for Hillary Clinton. Ouch. Did I mention tepid weakness among Democrats?
This year the signs are different. Not only have we had great success in enabling progressive candidates, but as a centrist position becomes less and less viable, folks will embrace one side or the other, and the Republicans aren’t very appealing right now.
But back to the women. The generic ballot now has women favoring Democrats over Republicans by a whopping 30% – 63% to 33%. That’s off the charts, and the highest differential ever recorded. There’s data that suggests especially among higher educated and suburban women, there’s a level of engagement that is unprecedented as well.
With less that three weeks to the election, and with Trump’s daily outrages, it’s hard to imagine an ‘October Surprise’ that could seriously dampen the energy on the left. Not that Trump and those of his ilk won’t try. They have no integrity. But they are no doubt a bit wary now as well.
They thought citizens would just love big tax breaks for the richest Americans. They thought the Kavanough placement would be a great motivator – but he’s only a motivator for haters. And of course they have all the built in stuff working for them as usual – gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, money – oh wait – Democrats, mostly through small donations, are actually ahead of Republicans in fundraising this cycle. Holy crap, batman!
So, at this point we take nothing for granted. We’ve been burned before. We will keep fighting for every last vote until the polls close on November 6th, and we’ll certainly be checking the election results. Onward…
Transition Towns in Japan
Kavanaugh Doesn’t Matter
While corporate media spent endless hours on the pending vote to make Brett Kavanaugh a Supreme Court judge, Mitch McConnell and the Republicans had this thing rigged from the start. No way his accusers of sexual misconduct were going to be truly heard at his ‘hearing’.
This circus is what we get from corporate media and corporate-owned politicians. It will not get any better until we, the people wrestle power from them starting this November.
Still, those of us who resist this obvious corruption recognize it is not the win Republicans imagine.
They see a thirty year hyper conservative Supreme Court that will bestow their 1% owners all they could ever want. We see a corrupt and broken system that won’t make it five years.
And while the corrupt politics of the past seem to have led us into apathy, that is surely no longer the case. The protests during his ‘hearing’ indicate we’re not going to take this crap lying down. Such abuse of power needs to be thwarted, and we do that by voting the bastards out.
Kavanaugh is surprisingly unfit to be a Supreme Court Justice. His sordid youth can be ignored, but not forgotten. It was clearly the life of an elitist, spoiled young man. Equally important, his decisions since then have been highly suspect, as demonstrated by thousand of pages of his work that were redacted, even from congress.
On top of all that we add his outbursts and displays from his testimony last week, and we get a clear picture of who the man is – which is why the Republicans were so desperate to seat him.
Do not mistake my title. Brett Kavanaugh will do damage as a Supreme Court Justice. But this court has already proven itself compromised. These folks have allowed voting irregularities, allowed unlimited corporate donations via Citizens United, removed the 1,000 year standing of Habeas Corpus with the Military Commissions Law of 2006 (even though Habeas Corpus is enshrined in our constitution). The court didn’t challenge Bush’s law. Maybe because they installed him as president in 2000, in spite of Gore having more votes. Victories for corporations instead of citizens has been a steady pattern in recent decades.
Oh yea. And the Supreme Court was suspiciously quiet for those 10 months when the Republicans held up President Obama’s nominee of Mr. Derrick Garland. Our court and our democracy was compromised long before Kavanaugh.
So they lied and cheated, as is their way, and won this farce of a battle. They hold all the levers of power. But do not think there will be no consequences. We are rising up. Among women the Democrats have a 30 point advantage, the largest disparity in history. Men favor Republicans by a mere 8 points.
Trump and the Republicans pretend they see a red wave coming, the Kavanaugh placement kick-starting their misguided base. We see differently and this year, we start taking our country back.