Global
When naive people are in trouble and go looking for someone to solve their problems for them, they often get bamboozled by cunning, politically-motivated con men who are quite willing to step in and take charge.
In pre-Nazi Europe, the fascist dictators Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were such politicians. In 1929, Germany had been victimized by the Wall Street Stock Market Crash which had caused economic chaos all around the economically-interconnected world – especially heavily-indebted Germany which was still reeling from the consequences of the Great War and the massively unfair Treaty of Versailles that ended the war and made Germany accept responsible for all the reparations costs.
he 2018 “Blue Wave” that dominates our national healing is, in fact, a mere ripple within the HUUUUUGE “Rainbow Tsunami” that has two years to transform the nation.
It embodies the rise of a new generation – led by women – that embraces diversity and voted that way. Its larger destiny (we hope) is to help move our bleeding nation away from a male-dominated fossil/nuclear autocracy and toward a matriarchal, green-powered social democracy.
It’s now epitomized by the first open refusal of a major Democratic candidate to concede an obviously stolen election. If Stacey Abrams helps remake our elections into an actual democracy, a whole new world is possible.
Let’s count the ways:
This Rainbow vote was powered by a ten-point jump in turnout among citizens under 30, who went more than two-thirds against Trump.
They put close to 120 women into Congress, far more than ever before.
That includes the first two Muslim and the first two Indigenous female representatives, plus (pending Arizona’s outcome) the first openly bi-sexual US senator.
What is more sick about U.S. society?
1) It’s totally 100% acceptable to make cruel stupid jokes about people’s appearance.
2) There’s an exception. You shouldn’t do it if the thing you’re making fun of relates to their participation in mass murder.
3) Violation of that exception is such a sin that you must publicly repent and grovel.
4) This is true even if the sin was committed on a steadfastly unfunny and unintelligent television program that nobody watches.
5) The repentance is incomplete without declaring the participant in mass murder to be a “war hero.”
6) You also must promote militarism in general and instruct the audience to honor participants in mass murder with meaningless phrases like “never forget.”
7) You can claim to find heart-warming unity around mass-murder operations and have not a single campaign launched to remove a single one of your advertisers.
British author and social commentator H.G. Wells may have coined the expression that originally popularized World War I as The War that Will End War, as his book, based on articles written during that vast military conflict, was titled. In any case, in one version or another, the expression was one of the most common catchphrases of the Great War of 1914-1918 and has survived as an expression, often used with a grimace of sarcasm, ever since.
Fifty years ago, in my twenties, I often hitchhiked the Pacific Coast Highway through Southern California. I slept on pristine beaches, swam in the ocean, and spent endless hours watching seals and dolphins ride the waves just a few yards offshore.
A favorite spot was in Santa Monica, where Sunset Boulevard meets the sea at Will Rogers State Park. This gorgeous stretch of white sand, framed by the Santa Monica pier to the south and the Malibu Hills to the north, seemed like paradise.
Today, fulfilling a lifelong dream, I live in the San Fernando Valley, a forty-minute drive from the Pacific, half of which is through beautiful Topanga Canyon.
This evening there was something else—an unwelcome terror.
This past Friday, I set off for my weekly bike ride along the beach. As usual, I parked at Will Rogers and rode my bike south down the concrete path about six miles to the Venice Pier. The final stretch, through Venice Beach, featured a constant cloud of the cannabis smoke that now flows free and easy in the land of legal pot.
One became the latest “mass shooter” — w
GAYMERS UNITE! Kingmakers and the Buckeye Region Anti-Violence Organization (Bravo) will be teaming up every third Wednesday of the month for Gayme Night! 18% of the proceeds from the evening will be donated directly to Bravo!
BRAVO works to eliminate violence perpetrated on the basis of sexual orientation and/or gender identification, domestic violence, and sexual assault through prevention, education, advocacy, violence documentation, and survivor services, both within and on behalf of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender communities. Everyone welcome! Learn more at http://www.bravo-ohio.org/
You’ve been radically misled to believe that the only thing, or the most important thing, or one of the super important things you can do is vote. Voting in a functioning democracy would be a fairly important thing to do, but wouldn’t somehow eliminate the thousands of important things that would also need doing. Voting in a broken democracy is a mildly important thing to do, for the reasons you know by heart, but also for this reason: Seeing so many people so eager to do something alerts everyone else to the fact that you give a damn.
for The Humanist
Do not celebrate Veterans Day. Celebrate Armistice Day instead.
Do not celebrate Veterans Day — because of what it has become, and even more so because of what it replaced and erased from U.S. culture.
Former American Humanist Association President Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: “Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not. So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.” Vonnegut meant by “sacred” wonderful, valuable, worth treasuring. He listed Romeo and Juliet and music as “sacred” things.