I really do not know just where to start, with the epiphany that we are living in a Red World now, or how to adapt to it and try to survive. I said above the fold that I had came to this conclusion but I did not really elaborate how so I guess that would be as good a place to start as any. The world over is having tough times; not as bad as the turn of the last century, but damn close. We know from or wonderful public educations that those who do not study the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. I sit at the computer, on a nightly basis, reading and replying to friends posts on Facebook to help me get sleepy. This is mainly due to rotating shifts making it hard to keep your body in a decent circadian rhythm, but I digress. While I do this and anxiously await replies to my often witty banter, I peruse Reddit for world news and politics, as well as U.S. News and politics. This keeps me up to date on most of the important news and quite well informed of the latest need to know stories. One thing that is hard to miss - to people that enjoy puzzles is that conditions around the world are dark. The Muslim Brotherhood made major gains in the democratic elections in Egypt. Greece is in way over their head in debt and the rest of Europe is acting much like the Republicans in the states by telling them they have to "cut! Cut! Cut!" while people are flooding the bread lines. Spain's banks had to be bailed out and again the answer in the EU is "AUSTERITY!” These set up quite the model of unstable regimes that have millions of people depending on other countries to vote to keep them afloat and that is never a good thing when you add in the racial aspect of it. Anthropologists can explain it a lot better, but to make a long story short, being of a different country is one thing, but being of a different country AND race makes it harder for a culture to empathize and sympathize with the plight of the people on the short end of the stick. This is what leads to the calls for austerity and my belief that we are seeing a global shift towards the failed conservative policies of 100 years past. The gilded age was during the roaring twenties and produced about the same income inequality as we are currently seeing in the states now, but we all know what happened soon afterwards - THE Great Depression. Statistically we are seeing much the same path being followed now. Corporations are pretty much owning our Congress and the White House, forgive me please, is not taking a strong enough stand to push through what needs to be done to reverse the course and right the ship of state. This type of global distress and political mindset is what brought us the wars of the early 20th century as well as the great depression. We are already seeing a rise of hate groups as political parties in the Golden Dawn of Greece and the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. To ignore this crisis abroad would be tantamount to idiocy and meanwhile at home we see much of the same on a somewhat smaller scale. Really it perplexes me to no ends to try and figure out what causes this mindset and we as liberals often attribute it to racism or bigotry but really is that even fair? I know a lot of people who are in that category, but other that genuinely feels like we owe our fellow humans no reprove from their crappy circumstances of birth. I also know rational fellows making wild claims of Marxism and Communism without fully understanding just how crazy they sound. Is it us who are missing something or has the whole damn world gone bat shit crazy all of a sudden? Examining this on such a large scale is frustrating and some would say that it is nothing to worry about, but truly do we continue to let the right wing control the narrative on so many issues and continue to try and support every. single. issue we care about? I ask this not rhetorically I simply cannot see the point of pushing for labels for genetically altered food when it appears to be nothing more than a distraction from what is really important. Averting another (un)Civil War or another World War, at least to me, seems much more important and a much wiser use of our time than trying to push for little Timmy to not feel alienated in kindergarten. I guess what I am trying to say is that we liberals need to prioritize and synchronize our messages. While we rant and rave about the latest in political correctness, we have allowed the Right Wing to frame the Affordable Care Act as "Obamacare" and going back a bit further we have allowed them to label the right to enjoy the same benefits as union members the "Right to Work" or even defining the right to make your own choices as the "Right to Life". We should not have allowed this and it has made being liberal considered a dirty word here in the south. Here in the heart of Democratic Socialism in action! Yes I came out and said it. You should too. We here in the TN Valley are only enjoying a strong middle class because of Big Government. We have run away from it and tried to make it sound like it was just something that happened but when we look into it we see that without Big Government like NASA, Redstone Arsenal, and the TVA this area would still be share cropping and dirt poor. If we cannot agree that this is socialism in action and that good things can come from Big Government we need to just hang up our hats now and take whatever Rush Limbaugh decides to throw at us because here, in this one area of the United States, we have the statistics to back up this claim and we are not the only area like this. We must come out and tell people that yes we believe that Government does work and point out to the people of the Valley that we need Big Government to continue funding things like NASA and the Arsenal. We need to make sure that we put our priorities where we can "make the most hay". I am sure that Obama is triangulating this upcoming election from here to BFE, but we are pretty much on our own here and being liberal is not what it once was. We have to work twice as hard as a Republican just to get our own party’s nomination if we so much as look like a liberal. This is not how it should be but it is what it is and I hope that we can have a decent discussion about priorities without yelling at each other because we all have our pet issues, but if someone has a logical and valid point as to why it should take a back seat then we need to provide a unified front to the press and all other media outlets lest be relegated to obscurity much like Ron Paul was in his own party. We know what is best for the Democratic party here in the TN Valley and we need to get on point and provide the leadership that we know we can so that we can make a difference, even if we are living in a Red World. |
