Day after day I post so many links to the systematic brutality of American policy and the ongoing rape of our environment- any one of which in my opinion should be enough to cause people to call a stop to it. Sadly, I can’t post enough of them- it’s an onslaught on outrage, to the point where it appears this ignorance/complacency/acceptance has become ‘normal.’

Well, it’s not. It’s a shame on all of us, a condemnation of all of us.

I know it’s hard to see, but what motivates me is the firm belief that we can make the world better, safer, saner and more loving. This mindless nonsense of celebrating the victory of one sociopath over another is sickening. There are no parents of murdered children celebrating that a Democrat will continue to threaten the lives of their remaining loved ones. No American should be celebrating while the NDAA looms over all of us- nullifying the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It’s the moment when our republic became an Empire, and our president the Emperor.

And that scares me to death. The simple fact is that Empire and tyranny is not a maybe, but a codified, legal reality. If not the current president, then the next will take full authority, and it will be the end of all of us.

What the War On Terror teaches those of us willing to learn, is that it is impossible to wage war against an idea. Terrorism is just that, an idea, made manifest in actions and polices. Rather than try to address the reasons such an idea has gained credibility, we attempt to stamp out the idea. Can’t work. Never has, never will.

But what can we do? What are my solutions?

I’m asked that question at least ten times a day. What’s the solution? What are the alternatives?

I can understand the need so many have to want a workable solution, right here, right now.

The simple truth is that there is not a blueprint. There’s no workable real life alternative warming up in the wings, ready to be wheeled on stage.

What I do know is that the political system is unsustainable, as is the economic system, and the environment itself. It’s just a race to see which one fails first.

What I do know is that putting down a toll that is broken is the right choice. Nature hates a vacuum,anything we discard creates a kind of vacuum, and there will be alternatives available as soon as we turn our backs on what is obviously no longer working.

The struggle will be to make certain that these new alternatives are fair, just and sane.

We could elect to make choices now, before change is thrust upon us, but we seem to be incapable of doing it.

It is not, and has never been my intention, to alienate anyone. More and more it seems that speaking what I believe to be true, what appears to be obvious to me, is doing just that. I’m coming to an understanding that it is not so much what we reject that defines us, but what we accept. The people who are offended, or alienated are, in my mind, not only rejecting what I have to say, but defining just what their boundaries are.

They can accept murder, and systematic brutality, and greed driven ecocide as a pragmatic trade for minimal and arguable advances in ever more narrowly defined single issue policies. What they reject is their own responsibility for doing so.

In my own lifetime, as a child, I remember driving through Garfield, Arkansas, and seeing KKK billboards on both ends of town, warning Blacks not to let the sun set on them in Garfield. This is racism, not right wingism or conservatism. Racism only flourishes in totalitarian systems of government, and we have one right now.

The fact is that if the civil rights movement were to be undertaken today (and please know that I do understand that the struggle for equality is still ongoing ) it wouldn’t have a chance of succeeding. Yes, we have lost that much: the media generally used to alert us to dangerous actions and policies of our government. Sure there was lots of corruption, lot of good ol’ boy mutual handwashing going on, but at least we pretended to have a higher moral calling, at least we were a nation of law, and a lot of times that law worked to protect the weakest among us.

Those days are gone. We’ve been engineered and manipulated into not only abandoning morality and law, but in cheering that we have done so.

It’s not the left, or the right, or conservatives or liberals who created the current government. It is a mistake to believe that your enemy is so easily defined.

The real enemy to all of us is the simple fact that last year 400 people earned more than the bottom 50% of all American wage earners combined. These people own the media, they ‘own’ the debt they use to manipulate all of us, and they own the government, lock, stock and barrel. They create their own legislation, even actually have lobbyists who write entire bills that are put before Congress.

They have enormous wealth- 1.7 trillion dollars a year to spend just to assure their agendas are met, and that all of us spend our time arguing about candidates or parties, fearing terrorists, or each other.