The New Honesty
We need to find our footing and stand
by Mike Meyer
The pieces of the crime story are piling up faster than ever. There’s a new tweet everyday. It also seems that there is a new witness to be interviewed every other day. Absurdities follow closely upon other absurdities. We’re running out of bandwidth and storage space for all the horrific data. This is not going to stop.
Polls say that Trump, as an icon for incompetence, bigotry, ignorance and fumbling international manipulation is fading but still can somehow claim a 40% approval. How can that be? The working assumption tends to be that 30% of the population are the people that you would rather not know. That can include known criminals, the seriously mentally challenged, generally disgusting assholes, and registered Republicans. Part of this is, of course, the folks that are prone to drinking the Kool-Aid when someone tells them to, those that are regularly talked to by extraterrestrials, and the ones that think the world rides on the back of a giant turtle.
We all know these people and may have examples in our families. Some of these people are in this group through no fault of their own. Some are just folks with a very tentative grasp of reality. But there are a bunch that represent evil in a very real form. But I refuse to accept that this includes a full 40% of the population. Who the hell are the others?
I have an idea, as do many others, that they are the depressed and angry people who have seen no return on their years of investment in work and community. They’ve seen no real increase in wages in years, perhaps their whole lives so far, and have seen prices on essentials steadily increasing or fluctuating widely. Those fluctuations always end up being higher in the end. They’ve know they are at the mercy of fate for major medical problems that, even with insurance, can easily bankrupt them.
They have had to pay for children’s college at rates that are not possible without laying on tens of thousands of dollars in debt on their children and on themselves.
The desired pickup truck is easily a $50,000 purchase and gasoline for it has trouble staying under $4 per gallon. Clothes have been cheaper for the last few years but that is the result of world trade agreements that are being destroyed now for America. Prices will soon reflect that. They don’t remember their parents telling them that living in the US was like this.
And they have been shouted at for years by people on the channels they are told they have to watch that it is all a plot of someone and all these other people are stealing their living. Someone is sure as hell getting it because the luxury goods in the nicer malls that they can’t even look at are always being bought.
As most people know this is all bullshit and the middle and working level people all around the planet have found themselves in the same situation. The crude neoliberal economics ignored all but the top 1–2%. That was a mistake that should have been corrected immediately. That it wasn’t is, at least partially, the fault of the US. The propaganda has built a chasm of disbelief and understanding that will probably never be closed for many of these people.
In that sense they have been driven insane and, as a result, periodically lash out however they can in nearly inarticulate rage. For these folks who are effectively out of control shouting racist epithets demanding vengeance is the best they can hope for. Shouting “Lock her up!” is a release although they don’t really know who or for what. We need to understand this. That is simply another magical incantation.
So maybe that 40% is an artificially expanded under class of the dysfunctional only some of which will be curable. That is a terrible reality but closer to what is really happening, I think, than anyone wants to admit.
Those responsible for this are responsible for biological warfare of the mental kind. That now needs to be a crime and one requiring hard and swift punishment. We need a new Geneva Convention for the digital age. Lies, misdirection, and counter accusations are no defense. We need to bring the people responsible for this down.
On the plane of practical and realpolitik we have a partially disabled population and electorate. That will need to be fixed as much as possible but the first responsibility is to stop the damage. The second is the ancient medical dictate to ‘do no harm’. Perhaps this should be simply ‘do no more harm’.
There is no magic bullet or magical incantation that will do this. The dysfunctional people are either evil instigators or victims. The evil instigators have spent years chanting and teaching magical curses and magical incantations and that needs to end. People not committed to the basic rights and basic truths need to be removed from positions of authority.
Basic human rights apply to all beings in our geographic space and around the planet. Their identity is their right. What government at any level must provide is protection for that as a basic freedom. All beings require food, shelter, medical care, education, and the right to move and improve. That’s the base. Anyone saying that some people don’t deserve that here or there are shouting magical curses that are not allowed. Stop.
The real change is simply to say that these things are rights and must be given to all people no matter what. Kill the magical incantations and these things are very simply and what the great majority of the people in this country and others have been saying and demanding. Why has this not been done?
Let me put this even more plainly. Socialism, Communism, Capitalism, Democracy, Fascism, Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative are all magical incantations and curses. They have no meaning whatever they may once have meant. They are no longer valid terms except as magical curses and those don’t matter.
Rights and human services are guaranteed and usually delivered by government in the name of the people they serve. No one can be denied unless they are convicted of a crime even then the rights that can be removed must be administered and monitored very carefully.
Legitimate governments must be managed by people who understand and swear to provide this. That’s all. Everything else should be discussed and agreed to by the majority with concessions made to the minority positions.
We need to make this the basis of the new honesty. These things are true and will always be true. What the details are of the government and it’s procedures are up to the people in each area and its respective administrative unit.
We need to finding our footing before we are all washed away by stupidity or storm or mass migrations that leave us struggling to survive.
