Guess, my point is the catastrophe trump administration has been to American people, the nation, the world and the future.
Like crashing an oil tanker into a burning building.
What rhetoric Lausten? My visceral disgust with all this normalizing of self-destructive thinking going on? Guess it’s venting.
I know nothing is new, when it comes to power and society and despots and greed trampling people. But things got serious mid 20th century, we learned that humanity was actually on borrowed time in many ways. Trajectories were pointing at too much, too fast, no matter what category.
Only through slowing down, doing some serious nurturing, along with our exploitation and consumption. Learning to not just understand, but appreciate Earth’s biosphere and the deep-time evolutionary history that created this moment. Watching a emergent property emerge among humanity - a nurturing attitude towards nature/biosphere/life-support-system
That was the direction for a story people would believed in, down to a gut level. One that could have justified tempering our natural blindsided greed - those giving our children vital futures, But no, Reaganomics and all that, dirty politics on steroids. Winning was all that mattered and that’s how we created this monstrosity of a future we are living today. The legacy we are leaving our children.
Thing is I turned off the turnpike and onto the road less traveled back about '70 - I can even remember a particular outing to San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, looking through the posters and T-shirts with their logos. The Too Much Is Never Enough, and that oh so cute: He Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins were especially popular.
Snot-nosed kid that I was, I still recognized that as wrong and the road to self-destruction. Might even be the moment I determined to leave the Bay Area after High School and to get up into Yosemite. I bemoaned the Assault Rifle Ban being removed. I bemoaned the fact that we allowed mega mergers and growing conglomerates becoming more powerful than governments driven by profits over peoples, no steroids also. Then the unnecessary wars that made more problem inevitable.
Other will point out that it’s, same as it ever was. It’s all about conquered and to conquerers go the spoils, and damn the long term consequences. Guess that’s true. I was just one of those hoping we as a society had learned something. So on the one hand I feel proud to have had the sense to get away from California (gorgeous place though it was.) and into the wilds of SW Colorado.
We as a people got way too big, way too crafty, way too drunk on our own knowledge, and stupid in our power lust, no rhetoric about it, that is a descriptive. Mid 20th century we had nailed good living on a grand scale like never before, but we also realized we were in trouble. No f’n rhetoric about it. And chose to ignore the lessons that cracked the national consciousness for a moment, and now I look around and the future isn’t so bright, and collectively we’ve done it to ourselves.
Still, doesn’t mean I need to like this, and can’t apologize too much for pissed off about it. This virtual corner pub is where I’ll let myself say what I really think, let off a little steam cause I’ll never get used to our willful self-destruction and the unnecessary horrors the few, with the acquiescence of the many, inflict on each other.
(Out running our headlights at warp speed.)
