CODEX

by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ October 18, 2020

We have so many problems, but we’ve always had problems big and small. As much as we try to figure things out using our hard-earned problem-solving skills, nothing seems to work. Part of our population has become dangerously irrational, and what they are saying makes no sense. Because they have lost touch with reality and repeat only lies and nonsensical conspiracy fantasies, it is impossible to understand why they do these things. We cannot seem to get a handle on what is happening, let alone why.

That leaves us exhausted, anxious, and fearful as a small band of these people have taken over the government in the US, several states, and a few other nations. The pending US election, already badly corrupted by lies and manipulation, is seen as the last hope for saving the country from fascist-style authoritarianism or outright insanity. …

By Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ January 20, 2021

We have not been in control for a long time. The growing disruption in human society and most severely in the lead developed states, is a symptom of that loss of control. There has always been the pretense that we know what we were doing, but that pretense is now impossible to maintain.

While the fundamental problems, climate crisis, economic distortions, resource destruction, exploitation, and oppression are growing, not every state has lost control as completely as the capitalist lead states. …

By Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ January 18, 2021

The worst thing that can happen on inauguration day is nothing. The second worse thing would be a crazed attack by Trump zombies against Biden’s security troops and police. Those are the only two options, and both are terrible.

We are exhausted by decades of national decline that resembles the loss of options and hope with human aging. It is slow and inevitable enough that you must live with it, and so you do.

The last nineteen years added a national case of paranoia and depression courtesy of another in the long history of Republican administrations resulting in economic disaster. This was combined with two major wars against small middle easter countries driven by a counter-attack against US policies in the Middle East. …

By Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ January 17, 2021

Success can create as many problems as a failure. Such is the case with planetary-scale complexity, as we have been learning for the last forty years. Our failure in learning to respond to these problems is now as frightening as the problems themselves.

It seems we are unable to ‘grow into’ the job that we have given ourselves. That is not encouraging as America is desperately entangled in one instance of such a problem that is emblematic of the whole complex mess. …

By Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ January 13, 2021

We need to brace ourselves for the descent into racist insurrection. The stories that Americans read for years of political disintegration in other nations have become our story. Our casualness in reading those stories was based on the knowledge that it could not happen here.

As more details come out on the insurrection Trump triggered with lies and wild conspiracies; the theatrical buffoonery is rapidly being replaced with horror at clear sedition, treason, planned kidnapping, and murder. …

By Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ January 12, 2021

We must understand what is happening in America or at least work at that understanding. I use the geographical name rather than the national name as the latter is in fragments. That fragmentation has already destroyed the national sense of community and common identity. The national name produces very different identities for people in different groups, dependent on growing social pathologies.

There is no neutral position in this for anyone in America. This is not just politics. We are in a crisis that must be managed. It cannot be ignored.

The crisis is not the product of one person or one group or the product of specific events and decisions nationally or culturally. It is an ecology that has a long cultural history and planetary links. That this crisis is happening within a far larger planetary crisis with equal or greater complexity cannot be helped. …

By Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ January 11, 2021

It is suddenly being discovered that America is not just polarized but exploding into fragments. This has seemed inevitable to me from early in Trump’s regime, but polarization was the official problem. With a two-part divide, the answer was simply to reach out to the other group. Pundits and commentators stated this as the answer while normalizing Trump’s fascist nature and avoiding recognizing the disintegration of the Republican Party.

The language of polarization used the old capitalist versus socialist markers simplified as red and blue making reconciliation seem reachable. Of course, this was natural as there can be only two political parties in the US,, both built on the European liberal economic tradition. The only real difference was social issues tied to archaic racist reaction or educational diversity, with the only options greater or lesser authoritarianism producing greater or lesser human suffering. …

By Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ January 9, 2021

Our realities are completely intermingled mashups of the virtual and the physical. Failing to recognize this increases the confusion and chaos that is steadily overwhelming us.

Did the US have a failed coup or successful media promotion for neofascist groups? Was it a paramilitary attack on Congress or an Instagram video shoot that got out of hand?

Americans have just had a brutal lesson in this convergence, and most have not been able to understand what happened. Most of the people involved in the riot in the capital also don’t seem to understand it. …