So I’ve been remiss since that scary election last November – haven’t even been able to get my thoughts strait as we seem under seige. We ARE…all our ethics challenged! Some light shed by Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning author, Presbyterian minister and prof at Yale – tells a scary true story of where we actually are in history. And the picture ain’t pretty. Check him on youtube. “I fight fascists because they are fascists,” he says among a complex reverie. Looking to the sidebar, I see Hedges’ readers also show strong interest in videos with Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Karl Marx, SOCIALISTS, Marxists, yes, that’s the frame and its particularly useful now as our thoughts are clouded daily by TWITTER, fake news, blarney intended to make us get lost and leave the economy to the Republican Right. They seem to think they are right, anyway, tho most of the policies boost big business and millionaires while taking away what simple pleasures…well, you see my prejudice for justice and equality and income equality, which never did exist and is an idea in the ether.

So how do we get to the marvelous ideas I was fed as the child of romantic artists cum teachers, architects, all those influences that formed me in the Chicago, Berkeley, San Francisco and Petaluma homesteads.

Related to all this, Joan Dillion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem comes to mind, partly because there’s a new NETFLIX series on her – a book in which she portrayed the life of Haight Ashbury hippies in the ’60’s, a phenomena she found disturbing, a result of a society gone wrong. I always identified as a Berkeley Girl, not a hippie, but most attention was laid on the druggies and admittedly, tho more political than hippee, we did indulge (and do). Not wild, mild. So what about Didion?

“Didion interprets the political text of American life according to a set of beliefs about disparities of wealth and class. She arrived at those assumptions worthily: by analyzing her own education and experience. And that’s what she sees when she reads the newspaper or follows a campaign. She is never less than amazed by the willingness of everyone in the press to pretend, in the name of keeping the show going, that American life is really not about money and power,” Louis Menand in The New Yorker in an article The Radicalization of Joan Didion.

Power and money – simple focus to break open our current connundrum. There’s huge money and power in the US – it just never trickles down! Didn’t work with Reagan or even Clinton – so very many shut away from the goods.

If my parents and their parents before them taught my anything it is that education changes things, that with hard, long work toward a goal you just may get there and the work is satisfying. I look for clear-thinking ethical people to listen to and work with when I can: Jack Kornfield at Spirit Rock, Michael Krasny on KQED FM Forum, Pema Chodron, Frances Moore Lappe and her Oakland daughter, Anna!! Marvelous humans – and there are more appearing just now.

Back to Chris Hedges: “We may feel powerless but we are not…any act of defiance…attracts wider and wider numbers…keep this possibility alive and if we do not, it will not.” Hedges is driven by empathy “the duty to act on empathy for human beings locked in cages the empathy for mothers and children…empathy for poor people of color gunned down on our streets, empathy for our great glorious earth which gives us life and is being destroyed. A life of faith, and we are all called to faith, …accept sorrow…but a balm that leads to happiness…know that as long as we resist, my faith has …I have seen that it is not man who is …the power of senseless kindness…can never be conquered. Evil is impotent before us…the prophets are impotent before us. Human history is not the battle of goodness against evil…but if what is human in human beings is not destroyed now then evil will never conquer. The days ahead will be dark, frightening, …we must fight the forces of death. We fight not only for ourselves…revolt is a political necessity…we must live in truth…the moment we defy power in any form we are victorious…the moment e…the moment we …to sit silent will attrophy our souls and leave us …it is a fight which gives life…it is the supreme expression of faith…the power of love is greater…I do not in the end fight fascists because they will win; I fight fascists because they are fascists. (Chris Hedges best 2017)Tee shirt: Capitolism is the Enemy of Mother Earth.”

OK; I agree dark days ahead – it’s FALL! But also glorious days because there is good work, excellent work, right before our noses. Make new friends who value freedom of thought and action, freedom to be loving and kind, and work to share those elements with all. We are all ONE,
CoExist, AllOne (bumper stickers from Northern Sun and Dr. Bronner).

WATCH TOGETHER.

Amy Goodman, Chris Hedges and Robert Reich…worsening the structure of our government…

We have no time left. Climate change is destroying the future for my children…Bernie should have run as an independent after NAFTA, the biggest betrayal of the working class ever…

Robert Reich thinks Bernie Sanders is a great leader…need to develop a third party so we have a candidate who holds the Democratic Party accountable…get big money out of politics…in order to do that we can’t have …thinks Hillary would be a good president but polls show Trump winning…too much of a risk…your conscious needs to be aware that …menace to the United States…may not be a progressive party…not a risk …maybe the Green Party for 2018???

(Visited 25 times, 1 visits today)