Most important lesson of Election 2016

My column in the December Four Corners Free Press

Dec 19th is rapidly approaching and too few are questioning Trump's many foreign entanglements among other serious National Security questions. Matters that need public outcry, because no politician has the backbone to confront these real concerns without strong public support.  Where are you?

During Thanksgiving I had a fascinating discussion with a career Navy man who introduced me to an entirely new perspective I hadn't thought of before.  My take away understanding is that,  once we had a United States of America and a government that required a president, now we have a multinational corporation with a CEO in charge of marketing and PR and we (armed forces) are there to serve him.  If true, it seems to me a disastrous turn of events.

It's going to take many individual citizens proactively engaging in a rational thoughtful constructive and vocal resistance to the coming Oligarch onslaught.  If these memes resonate with your own thinking, please figure out how to make them yours and pass them along.  Help jump start the dialogue.  One way or another we've got to get out of old comfort zones and engage in the reality of today's political landscape.   

Well, ... actually, that's not true, is it?  We can allow the dogs of war to have their way with us yet again.  America, it's your move!

_________________________________________________________________

Seems to me the single most important lesson of this election is that “The Lie” has become acceptable mainstream political currency. Though the Left is guilty of this, Trump and his Alt-Right champions and Republican tea-partiers have taken it to an entirely new level.

Sure politicians have always added their creative spin to the truth, but this is something different. Namely, a complete strategic rejection of ethics and honestly appraising the evidence at hand.

It manifested itself in Trump and the Alt-Right’s disregard for, plus their hideous incivility and hostility towards bona fide experts across the entire spectrum of our society. 

Well, that is, if those experts happen to bring unwelcome news about the reality of the physical world we depend on. On the other hand, any two-bit dilettante gets treated as a singularly authoritative “expert” if they spin a pleasing yarn. That is, plastering over serious down to earth facts with cynically crafted bull-poop whose sole intent is to hide from a true assessment.

Why would any forward thinking adult embrace such childish misdirection and just-so fairytales? By what manner of twisted logic do we rationalize ignoring evidence based constructive learning and the increasing understanding that has come through generations worth of dedicated capable individuals the world over?

What happened to humanity’s Intellectual Enlightenment? It suddenly seems farther away than ever and getting dimmer fast.

Why are Republicans so hostile towards making the effort to maintain a healthy environment? How can one not appreciate that we depend on a healthy Earth along with its myriad of natural subsystems humming together to produce this fantastical whole that we were born into, but that our corporations are destroying at breakneck speed.

And now we have Trump the Russian Obligate President a man whose winning campaign was based on contempt for others and a card house of lies cemented with anger and fear mongering.

How did the American people allow this con job to go down? It’s simple, divide and conquer! Fabricate and lather up tensions between America’s various social classes. We were all, left and right, made to be scared as hell of the other. Finding hostility and fault in everyone else, but never turning the mirror on ourselves.

Too few have the basic curiosity or courage to recognize that none of our problems are new, except that we have saturated the landscape with hungry greedy masses of consumers who give nothing back. In today’s public discourse we deny mistakes rather than learn from them. Everyone finds fault in others while ignoring their own. What is it, does God forbid accepting responsibility for the messes we’ve been creating for ourselves, I don’t get it. Is that how it works?

When traveling, I’m consistently shocked at how many people take our functioning cities and travel networks for granted. Never thinking about what it takes to keep the grocery and department store shelves stocked. Not the slightest appreciation, nor interest, in the complexities and wonders that make their world function.

It’s even worse with our political system, way too many citizens take it for granted, assuming the stability we’ve always known will always be there. They are satisfied letting others do the tedious chores that make a democracy function. 

Guess We The People learned a big lesson there. No one has our backs, not our political leaders, not our favorite pundits, nor the once proud news media, nor that favorite group we give money to, nor anyone else. 

No worries America, our newly empowered Oligarchs are more than happy taking care of business while we continue our slumber. America, where are you?

The internet is full of bubbles, but out here in the fields and on the streets of America we deal with each other on a day to day basis and up until recently, for the most part doing okay with it. I’m friends with some frightfully far right people. Yet, we share the same work and living ethics, we cooperate and trust each other, friendships and blood crosses surprising bounds in the real world.

The Oligarch’s media machine doesn’t want us realizing that basic truth. They thrive on a public that is too busy distrusting and hating each other to focus on the real enemies of the American Way: greed, willful ignorance, apathy and lack of ethics.

Like never before, now is the time when not thousands but millions of previous political sideliners owe it to their country to get engaged, get informed, start the dialogue across those left and right fences of our own backyards with family, co-workers and friends. A real national grassroots effort to start a genuine national dialogue with renewed involvement and fresh in touch leaders working to make our admittedly flawed political system function more sanely. Democracy live it or lose it. America, it’s your move.

_________________________________________________________

Here's a video worth listening to.  It's from way back in April when a Trump Presidency was still a vague fantasy, but they nailed it.

Why lying is positively correlated to success (aka Donald Trump lies)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umk7q3YiX7c

ScIQ

Published on Apr 8, 2016

According to some recently released PolitiFact stats, the top liars for the Republican nomination were: Donald Trump (lies 75% of the time) and Ted Cruz (lies 66% of the time). In this episode, Jayde Lovell sits down with Sam Seder of The Majority Report. The two chew the fat on lying, and how in the Republican party, telling fibs is positively correlated to success.