“Meeting in a field beyond right and wrong.” This is where humans need to find themselves again, but the forces that pit us against each other are so pervasive, thriving on our divisiveness. So much complexity in your decision and it’s painful to hear how it was met, even by your most trusted progressive circles. Fear drives this need to divide, to run away from uncertainty, to refuse to stand in the gray.
I have no answers, but I stand in a field of glorious gray flowers with you. 😉
We really didn't know, post-2016 election, how bad it was going to get, but we did have a nervous eye on the MAGA movement when we visited Barcelona in 2017 to see if we could see ourselves living here. By 2019 when we moved, we were looking forward to starting a new adventure and chapter in our lives, and als o very happy to take a giant step back from the madness that soon unfolded in 2020, and culminated on January 6th. You are right: he is the symptom of a much larger sickness. I wish you happiness and peace in your new life! 💜
Beautiful essay; well said as I've come to expect. You and Erin are among the most decent people I've encountered in * x * many decades on the planet. I'm sad that you found it necessary to leave a place you loved. I trust you'll find happiness and community wherever you are. And that you'll consider me part of that community through our mutual interest in literature and art.
As I see it, today's toxic environment, where people lose friends and family due to differing views on how to move forward, is the result of deliberately stoked rage and blatant othering coordinated over years by media pundits, think tank assholes, and elected (selected?) officials -- both sides ---who hold no real beliefs. They're in it for the grift. The loud voices get off on telling the rest of us what to do, and what to think as Mika Brzezinski famously said. BTW, the SCOTUS immunity applies to all presidents for things they've done in office on an official basis. Including Biden, Obama, Clinton, Baby Bush, Carter.
The well-paid corporate mouthpieces have nothing real at risk. They don't fight our endless wars, their livelihoods haven't been shipped overseas, and they live in gated communities both mental and physical. The deck is stacked in their favor, yet we don't hear gratitude or recognition for their many blessings, or for the people who do their tile work and deliver their groceries. Only -- at best -- a contemptuous dismissal. Word salad ("I grew up middle class") but no understanding of bread and butter issues, how important it is to stay energy independent and transition properly (hello, Tesla the man not the company). How fragile the supply chain is (though her bosses understood when they turned a blind eye to derailed freight trains and burned out chicken farmers and land holders in Lahaina and sold off the strategic reserve for peanuts to China). We're living on borrowed time with the dollar about to be dethroned as reserve currency and who knows what kind of Mad Max world lies ahead once it falls. I like stories about the best in humanity, but Lord of the Flies holds a lesson, too.
It's those everyday people to whom Trump speaks, and no, he and they aren't promoting race hatred --- as far as this former Detroiter can tell he's about economic regeneration, reversing the crooked deals that shipped entire industries offshore starting with Reagan, accelerating under both Bushes, Clinton/NAFTA, Obama (whom I voted for twice and turned out to be Bush on steroids) and then the final insulting absurdity of Biden, a grifter and poseur par excellence, i.e., a career politician, haughtily advising coal miners to "learn to code." Of course, those coding jobs, now performed by slave labor on distant shores, are themselves soon to be displaced by AI. At least, that's the globalist plan.
Truth is, we're ruled by corporate interests beholden not to citizens or community, but to shareholders (which comes down to Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street who are invested in 90% of publicly traded corporations). Corporations have no morality. No sense of human rights. Their only goal is profit.
And profit buys politicians from the local level on up to transnational/globalist mother-WEFers. It buys the war machine and the slave labor that makes our iPhones. The child labor in the mica mines of India and Madagascar whose product makes our paint shine and insulates our wires, cables, and circuit boards. Profit margins make sacrificing kids the "prudent course for shareholder value" dontcha know. I could go on. Point is, we don't hear our so-called leaders biting the hand that feeds them, speaking up against the dehumanization of corporate rule (aka Obama's public/private partnership, aka fascism). They're all on the take and it's at the expense of the rest of humanity. That message is what populism is all about. That's why they hate and fear populists, why they demonize the message.
Okay, I've said it. That's the message from the "other side." There’s only one side in my mind. Humanity's. Versus globalist corporate assholes, versus distant bureaucrats in some politburo and eventually, AI.
I'm a writer. I love a good conspiracy theory. I also believe in the human spirit, in people living and working together. I believe this will happen at the grassroots level. I believe it's inevitable. I believe there's an awakening afoot, and that your essay reflects that, and that you've been awake all along.
“Meeting in a field beyond right and wrong.” This is where humans need to find themselves again, but the forces that pit us against each other are so pervasive, thriving on our divisiveness. So much complexity in your decision and it’s painful to hear how it was met, even by your most trusted progressive circles. Fear drives this need to divide, to run away from uncertainty, to refuse to stand in the gray.
I have no answers, but I stand in a field of glorious gray flowers with you. 😉
We really didn't know, post-2016 election, how bad it was going to get, but we did have a nervous eye on the MAGA movement when we visited Barcelona in 2017 to see if we could see ourselves living here. By 2019 when we moved, we were looking forward to starting a new adventure and chapter in our lives, and als o very happy to take a giant step back from the madness that soon unfolded in 2020, and culminated on January 6th. You are right: he is the symptom of a much larger sickness. I wish you happiness and peace in your new life! 💜
Beautiful essay; well said as I've come to expect. You and Erin are among the most decent people I've encountered in * x * many decades on the planet. I'm sad that you found it necessary to leave a place you loved. I trust you'll find happiness and community wherever you are. And that you'll consider me part of that community through our mutual interest in literature and art.
As I see it, today's toxic environment, where people lose friends and family due to differing views on how to move forward, is the result of deliberately stoked rage and blatant othering coordinated over years by media pundits, think tank assholes, and elected (selected?) officials -- both sides ---who hold no real beliefs. They're in it for the grift. The loud voices get off on telling the rest of us what to do, and what to think as Mika Brzezinski famously said. BTW, the SCOTUS immunity applies to all presidents for things they've done in office on an official basis. Including Biden, Obama, Clinton, Baby Bush, Carter.
The well-paid corporate mouthpieces have nothing real at risk. They don't fight our endless wars, their livelihoods haven't been shipped overseas, and they live in gated communities both mental and physical. The deck is stacked in their favor, yet we don't hear gratitude or recognition for their many blessings, or for the people who do their tile work and deliver their groceries. Only -- at best -- a contemptuous dismissal. Word salad ("I grew up middle class") but no understanding of bread and butter issues, how important it is to stay energy independent and transition properly (hello, Tesla the man not the company). How fragile the supply chain is (though her bosses understood when they turned a blind eye to derailed freight trains and burned out chicken farmers and land holders in Lahaina and sold off the strategic reserve for peanuts to China). We're living on borrowed time with the dollar about to be dethroned as reserve currency and who knows what kind of Mad Max world lies ahead once it falls. I like stories about the best in humanity, but Lord of the Flies holds a lesson, too.
It's those everyday people to whom Trump speaks, and no, he and they aren't promoting race hatred --- as far as this former Detroiter can tell he's about economic regeneration, reversing the crooked deals that shipped entire industries offshore starting with Reagan, accelerating under both Bushes, Clinton/NAFTA, Obama (whom I voted for twice and turned out to be Bush on steroids) and then the final insulting absurdity of Biden, a grifter and poseur par excellence, i.e., a career politician, haughtily advising coal miners to "learn to code." Of course, those coding jobs, now performed by slave labor on distant shores, are themselves soon to be displaced by AI. At least, that's the globalist plan.
Truth is, we're ruled by corporate interests beholden not to citizens or community, but to shareholders (which comes down to Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street who are invested in 90% of publicly traded corporations). Corporations have no morality. No sense of human rights. Their only goal is profit.
And profit buys politicians from the local level on up to transnational/globalist mother-WEFers. It buys the war machine and the slave labor that makes our iPhones. The child labor in the mica mines of India and Madagascar whose product makes our paint shine and insulates our wires, cables, and circuit boards. Profit margins make sacrificing kids the "prudent course for shareholder value" dontcha know. I could go on. Point is, we don't hear our so-called leaders biting the hand that feeds them, speaking up against the dehumanization of corporate rule (aka Obama's public/private partnership, aka fascism). They're all on the take and it's at the expense of the rest of humanity. That message is what populism is all about. That's why they hate and fear populists, why they demonize the message.
Okay, I've said it. That's the message from the "other side." There’s only one side in my mind. Humanity's. Versus globalist corporate assholes, versus distant bureaucrats in some politburo and eventually, AI.
I'm a writer. I love a good conspiracy theory. I also believe in the human spirit, in people living and working together. I believe this will happen at the grassroots level. I believe it's inevitable. I believe there's an awakening afoot, and that your essay reflects that, and that you've been awake all along.