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Leesy's avatar

I think everyone knows by now that the system isn't broken. It works as it was intended to work. We send money to Ukraine, but we cannot take care of the homeless or the veterans in our own country. Soon humans won't be needed in the work force, being replaced by AI and Robotics. Hollyweird is already getting that message loud and clear. Eugenicists are fast at work culling the human herd (and the bovine herd while they're at it) to reduce "climate change", which is looking like a crock each day that passes. Our borders are wide open. Make sense if you think about child trafficking, drug trafficking and thousands of frustrated illegals here in America when the SHTF and the planned Agenda comes to fruition. More bodies to join the chaos, illegal, undocumented and unleashed to fight back with weapons that kill when war emerges because the it's not right and it's not fair scale tips. Not to mention, more mouths to feed, cloth, shelter and find jobs for (not happening and I don't think letting illegals into the country was intended to nurture them or to be kind to them). I liked what George Carlin said before he passed. He said, "America is finished". I think that just about sums it up. Next up CBDC, social credit scores, digital id's and 15 minute cities all run by computation data collecting computers. Welcome to the Metaverse, The Great Reset, The New World Order or whatever the hell those powers that shouldn't be are calling it. I call it hell on earth cometh. "The world is a business Mr. Beale". So the ? is: how do we, the people who don't want what is being cooked up by the idiocracy and insane, do to stop all this madness?

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Gary Weglarz's avatar

Wow! Thank you Celia. What a powerful set of reflections. At age 71 now, I've found I have had to literally "rethink" just about every thought and opinion I've had about our world and our system. Although I would characterize myself as "far left" of the Democratic Party - what that means in my value system and definition of what is actually "left" - is simply that I believe everyone deserves a roof over their heads, everyone deserves enough food to eat, everyone deserves access to education and safe employment no matter where they reside on the planet. A society that cannot provide this is not a functional society.

This basic "value orientation" sometimes gets me labelled a "socialist" or "communist" - but I really hold no allegiance to any of the "isms" - "capitalism" included. During the covid madness I found that I had much more in common with my libertarian sisters and brothers regarding civil liberties, than with the "woke" masked mobs mindlessly supporting the unscientific mandates and vaccines. However, I continue to part ways with those same libertarians on issues of economics - because I don't think we need anymore evidence that unfettered unregulated neoliberal capitalism is simply destroying what is left of a livable life here in the U.S. for working class people (where I come from as a retired social worker - my dad a steelworker for 30 years). It sometimes feels to me that my libertarian sisters and brothers often defend this unfettered capitalism with the same evidence-free zeal that the woke ideologues defend all the current Critical Social Justice madness - rather than being able to engage in reasoned examination and discussion of where we are and where we are going as a society. We are all susceptible to our own ideological blinders, I like everyone else struggles to see my own blinders much of the time.

My wife an I plan to leave Southern California the end of August to return to live in a small village in rural France after spending 6 years here helping care for two of our young grandsons. We are leaving because on a retirement income of Social Security and a small pension we cannot afford to live here anymore (truth be told we NEVER could afford to live here) but we raided retirement savings year after year to make it work so we could help care for our grandsons. We can by contrast live a very decent humane life in rural France on our monthly income - something we simply can't do here in Southern California - where we watch the homeless population and homeless encampments seemingly grow daily. Where the sense that the term "social fabric" is completely meaningless - as shopping and consumption - by those who can afford to do so - seems the only commonality in Southern California communities.

I won't pretend to know the answer or the solution, to our collective dilemma. However, it is clear that allowing more and more wealth to accumulate in the hands of fewer people, and in the hands of corporate finance entities - has rotted the very fabric of our society - perhaps beyond repair. The political class is literally "owned" by monied interests, as is the MSM, as are the social media companies, as are the regulatory agencies like the FDA, CDC & EPA. When such concentrations of money control the narratives and set the agenda of the nation - it is farcical to speak of "freedom" or "democracy" as anything but "advertising slogans" for those wealthy interests.

I guess I just keep coming back to that question of "values." I don't care if one claims to adhere to a belief in capitalism, socialism or communism - I care about whether you are ok with your fellow human beings living in cardboard boxes under freeway overpasses, and dumpster diving for food. Whether you can sleep at night knowing children are sharing this life - in the richest country the world has ever known. Perhaps its time we all find a way to step beyond all our past loyalty to the various "isms" and stand instead for the basic set of human values that we all need simply to survive - with our "freedom of thought and expression" - remaining central to whatever might evolve from our clearly disintegrating systems and society. Thank you Celia for such an honest and thought provoking article. You've given me much to ponder and reflect on today.

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