Tag Archives: CORONAVIRUS

OUR HOLLOW PRESIDENT

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By limiting Donald’s access to his feelings and rendering many of them unacceptable, Fred perverted his son’s perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it. 

Mary Trump in Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.

After four months, America remains in the first wave of the spread of the Coronavirus. We have more cases and more deaths than any other country. Most of the rest of the world quarantined and opened cautiously. They are doing well.

Not us: Trump proclaimed himself in charge. He failed in wishing the virus away and then suddenly abdicated his leadership responsibility after making a fool of himself in his daily press conferences. Every step of the way, his decisions and actions killed more citizens he vowed to protect. He continues his monumental failure of leadership. Probably the worst failure of leadership in American history.

Trump turned responsibility for the virus over to governors so he could blame them if things didn’t go well. Then he tried to control what decisions they made. Hadn’t they long ago learned Trump’s games to protect himself from responsibility and accountability?

Trump pressured red state governors, and the idiots opened their states for business too soon, and the pandemic spread like wildfire. He and his minions didn’t grasp the reality that we won’t restore the economy until the virus is manageable. And, now Trump wants states and communities to open schools too fast to make himself look good. His ego battles the pandemic. He will lose.

Republicans are more a morally nihilistic cult than a political party. They seem willing to destroy the nation to cling to power. Everything is about Trump, the cult leader. Trump controls Senators, Governors, and Representatives with threats and bribes. Others are just bad people freed by Trump to be themselves.

Republicans are afraid of him: they don’t want to be demonized by him and cast out of the cult by his base. They seek not to be outstanding in real ways but to fit in.  They lie, cheat, and steal for him, remain silent when they should speak up, and some begin to act like him in his worst ways. They sold their souls to the devil. Meanwhile, Trump goes golfing.

No one has to go against their values to fit in. We each have a choice to live value-driven and purposeful lives or not.

Today, the South and West (mostly the Red States who followed Trump’s direction) are in crisis, and the rest of the country may follow soon. Testing, which Trump doesn’t want because more cases make him look bad, is a mess. Essential supplies for caregivers run short again. He attacks science and our leading scientist Anthony Fauci because Fauci is more popular than he is. The economy, which has marginally improved, is at risk as the virus spreads faster than ever.  Worst of all: Trump aided by Republicans in government are killing Americans and don’t seem to care. The hollow president is incapable of empathy and compassion.

Trump openly reveals his racism and his support of white nationalists. He re-fights the Civil War, memorializes those who committed treason against America, and divided Americans over wearing masks, which leads to more suffering and death.

He took control of virus data from the CDC. He won’t be able to resist corrupting the data. He sends unidentified and untrained federal troops to Portland, OR, and they pick people up off the streets and violate their civil and constitutional rights. Trump wants violence so he can “dominate the streets” and show us how tough he is. He cuts postal budgets to slow mail delivery so that mail-in ballots can be late. We can see these decisions and behaviors as they happen. Imagine what is going on below the surface in the Trump White House. But then, he told the nation he “takes no responsibility.” At times, he is incoherent and can’t string two sentences together.

By the way, Russia allegedly paid the Taliban bonuses for killing Americans. Not a word from Trump. What’s the deal with him & Putin? Our intelligence services say Russia and China are trying to meddle in our election. Not a word from Trump who appreciates their help.

We’ve watched the cult make horrible decisions, say stupid things, say nothing when they should stand up and speak up, and take the wrong actions. They became part of Trump’s extended dysfunctional clan. After years of seeing who he is, the citizens who will still vote for Trump are now part of the problem.

Character is the first criteria for leadership. The Republican Party marginalized character, and the results are disastrous. I won’t follow them.

Much of our “disconnect in life” is caused by men because we raise little boys to grow up to be disconnected adults. Our mechanistic worldview teaches us people are separate and distinct from nature and others. This philosophy of life teaches us we can disconnect from our spirit and emotions and use our rational minds only. This worldview entitles us to control and dominate nature and others. We believe we are responsible for ourselves (unless, like Trump, you blame your actions on others), and others must fend for themselves. The fittest survive, and the rest must be deficient in some way.

Success and advancement often go to the manipulators and, those most ruthless, not the most caring, creative, or competent. Interactions with others are often dishonest, conforming, competitive, paternalistic, and politically correct. Often we create enemies who we demonize and scapegoat to justify our bad behavior. Such beliefs alienate us from others and ourselves and allow us to harm people with no sense of personal responsibility. We need a new worldview.

The level of abuse and violence perpetrated by men on nature, women, children, and upon each other is so apparent, and so staggers the soul. How we raise little boys is a topic to discuss. Little boys do not get to choose the system they grow up within. But as grown men, we are responsible for ourselves and our behavior, and we can decide to change our beliefs and assumptions about how to live on our threatened planet.

Our most immediate national problem is Donald Trump. He must go before we can save and transform America. Part of the transformation will be to deal with the deeper issues in American from which Trump emerged.

Joe Biden had it right when he said we are in a fight for the nation’s soul.

The Coronavirus, climate change, racial strife, and economic failure call us to wake up. The murder of George Floyd by police officers on the street in Minneapolis pained and opened the eyes of millions of Americans. We feel new energy.

Seize the moment America, shed light on the darkness and create a new America.

ARE WE READY TO CHANGE OR NOT?

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Man was born to turn the world into paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidity, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.

Daniel Quinn in Ishmael

 

Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute, Washington D.C., wrote, “A sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of future generations.”

Our most fundamental problem is that almost eight billion people (10 billion by 2050) are addicted to the consumption of our alive planet. We are consuming our biomass. We cannot sustain this growth.

Two immediate existential threats to life as we know it overshadows population growth.

Climate change has battered our denial for a long time. America’s president denies its existence. The loss of lives and the destruction of property from climate change continues and grows.

Today, we are consumed and quarantined by the COVID 19 pandemic, which spread over the planet in about eight short weeks. Our president denied that too, while the virus spread freely. People got sick and died while the president dawdled.

But this time is different: Coronavirus is in real-time, and we watch it unfold in front of us. The president cannot hide behind lies, distractions, and scapegoating. As COVID 19 silently spreads into the nooks and crannies of the planet, our president undoes environmental regulations that help us fight climate change. What goes on in his mind?

A “Call” is a summons to higher consciousness. America has come to a stop: a significant pause. What we see on our nightly news is our new America. The future is unknown.

Rollo May wrote in Freedom and Destiny,  “In the pause we wonder, reflect, sense awe, and conceive eternity. The pause is when we open ourselves for the moment to the concepts of both freedom and destiny.” I hope we use this pause to think, reflect, and ask ourselves what matters in our lives. John Stuart Mill wrote that no significant improvements could take place in the lives of people until a dramatic change takes place in how they think.

We need to think of our planet as an alive, interconnected, intertwined, and interdependent whole. We need to gain the humility to see that we are but one species more powerful but no better than any other species. We need to live in harmony with nature, not be at war with her. We need to mature. We need to learn how to live.

If we change, we will defend against the virus that threatens us today and those on the horizon, reinvent our economy, value diversity, restore American global leadership, and help save the planet from climate change. We will feel alive. We may experience a new renaissance of ideas and an indefinite future. If we don’t change how we live on our planet, the momentum that carries us to possible extinction may become too great to overcome.

Without change, nature will continue to try to get our attention. Each call will be more destructive than the previous one. Within 200 years, after unimaginable suffering and destruction, we may perish as a species or a few islands of prosperity and privilege may survive surrounded by a sea of misery and violence.

Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” It is past time to fundamentally change our relationship with nature, not by changing her, but by changing ourselves.

We need to listen to the calls of nature. We need a spiritual awakening, a moment of metanoia, a shift of mind. Scientist Rupert Sheldrake said, “It is like waking up from a dream. It brings with it a spirit of repentance, seeing in a new way. This conversion is intensified by the sense that the end of an age is at hand.”

We are responsible for our collective fate. The significant threats of climate change, deadly pandemics, population growth, species extinction, resource depletion, inequality, and global poverty have called for change for a long time. Are we ready to listen and to change how we live together on this planet?

The change will be difficult, but ease or difficulty is not the issue. The question is: are we ready to change or not? If we are ready, we will create a new vision for how we live on our planet. Let’s not go forward led by crazy people, those stuck in the past, those who profit from America’s decline, or those invested in failed ideas. That would be disastrous.

Whatever we do, something dramatic is going to happen. We will experience an evolutionary bounce or an evolutionary crash. We can choose to act or to be acted upon, and our choices will determine our destiny.