Unrecognizable United States flag - Old Glory. Digital collage by Rick Arthur.
"'We The People' used to mean the entire group of us, collectively..."
F%$#& Around Find Out.
What we are living through is the strategic, decades-long dismantling of the justice system and the obliteration of the legislative branch of government. What is so impressive is that this campaign to crush justice/legal fairness is always advanced by lawyers who get paid to do the bidding of their clients, wealthy clients who use them as attack dogs set loose to rip and tear at the flesh of the law.
What is government for?
Hammer. What kind of tool is government and how is it supposed to work? Note: I once used a hammer to smash scorpions sunbathing in my living room. Image from internet for teaching purposes. Rights by creator.
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This is the fifth draft of this blog post. I have wiped the previous ones. Too dark. Too cynical. Too depressing. AND not really what I want to focus on with the overall theme of my blog space. I want to talk about creativity and process. After this post, I am going to try to leave overtly political stuff to my other accounts. I am not giving up on America but if I feel so passionately, I will just write more CAPTAIN AMERICA posts to explore my ideologic interests. Here, in this space - the Billion Hero Blog - I will refocus on the truly important stuff in life: ART, which gives everything else meaning.
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Scribble. Cross outs. Arrows. Rewrites. Full digital trash cans of writing efforts, wasted. Image from internet for teaching purposes. Rights by creator.
Now, without ado, the sixth draft - a day after a sitting U.S. president and vice president foisted a photo-op ambush on a man who needs our help killing a deranged Bear who broke into his house.
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HEY! Look at MEEEEEEEE! I eat CHEEEEEESEburgers in the White House and TEXT non-sense in the middle of the night! Yes, we all know. As a matter of fact, the whole vulgar act is rather dull and boring except that the bully who weaseled his way into being in charge of other bullies, now has real power at his disposal.
We got into this predicament because a ton of people WANTED to tear down government for a long time. By people, I don't mean the mislead, deliberately disinformed voters. I mean people with money. They funded think tanks, lobbying groups, and political action committees. They built radio and TV empires. Bought up newspapers. Marched legions of lobbyists to Washington. Wrote OP/EDS and white papers. Peer reviewed their own "science". Took over boardrooms. Bought and sold shares and bet on things to fail and break. Secretly penned legislation. Created smear campaigns against opponents. Engaged in soft and hard "leverage" to influence outcomes. Among other things, perfected the art of, gasp, deception in the political and business arena by creating something called The Wedge Issue. Divide, conquer, and distract seemed to work pretty well in other facets of business life so it has been applied vigorously to politics for at least fifty years, and we are seeing the fruits of all that relentless labor.
What is really kind of insane, is that during this multi-decades-long run up (I see you Mitch McEvil), the world has changed and changed rapidly. As a matter of blunt fact, change has accelerated so quickly that society as a whole has shown very little wisdom in terms of how to manage this change. We can't even keep track of all the innovations that are popping up. There is no time to think and absorb. The "innovation" that the current office holders wield is something that takes The Wedge Issue and puts it on steroids. The strategy that has found its purest disciple is - Flood The Zone. Basically, stir up so much controversy that people's heads spin. Aided by new tech and algorithms, The Wedge Issue AND Flood The Zone have simply obliterated what passes for reasoned or even impassioned debate. Those who care about civility have been left stammering and flat footed.
As always, we are presented with the question of what to do now. How do we move forward?
If WWIII broke out, which side would the United States be on? Things don't begin and end on certain dates like they do in textbooks. Out in the ever-changing, messy world, The Cold War never ended; Vietnam never ended; WWII never ended; WWI never ended; the goddamn Civil War never ended; the stupid Crusades never ended... They just took a break and then morphed into something else.
See a trend? The problem with "WWIII" is that an enabled, entitled, elitist man who has the attention span of a nine-year-old is not mouthing off to classmates at a military prep school. He is willing to hold the world hostage with his finger on the nuke-you-ler button just to get people to say that they love him. The more pain he inflicts and still gets people to say they love him is where he gets his rocks off. AND this powerful combination may kill us all.
What kind of danger are we in?
Grave danger.
Is there any other kind?
Cheeseburger. Ah, charred meat, melted cheese, onions, and maybe some bacon... Some say gluttony, others lunch. Who is to say? Image from internet for teaching purposes. Rights by creator.
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Saw a post which tried to gaslight what happened during the Zelensky meeting and somehow spin it as "high-level chess," which coincidentally is the SAME talking point FOX News was trying to inject into media discussions in weeks previous to this event in an effort to spin ANYTHING that happened as a bold move. My reaction was as follows - and I chose not to hit the send button and just copy it here. Re: "Alleged High Chess Moves"
Stop. Stop now. Stop if you can. Stop sharing these excuses. There is NO MASTER CHESSING PLAYING going on. Period. Full stop. If you feel he, JD, and Elon are ten moves ahead, you could not be more wrong. The action he took squarely and unequivocally weakened the United States and the World last night. I take no glee in this. Having even a rudimentary understanding of how evil and dangerous Putin is makes playing with the lives of people in such a cavalier manner totally unacceptable. Please block me. I do not want to ever hear these kinds of excuses for this kind of behavior again. This is not a game. Quit pretending that it is. Lives are at stake. I am flat out ashamed and embarrassed for anyone that keeps falling for these things.
In the back of your head, I want you to tuck away the idea that TAX CUTS are coming, and they are NOT going to be for you, but you will be paying for them with cuts to programs you never saw coming and consequences that are going to make your head spin. Face reality, there is no "master stroke" of genius behind what he does. He saw an opportunity to try to humiliate Zelensky on live TV and he took it. That was the extent of the plan. He is not sitting around hashing out pros and cons, he is tweeting 45 times a day. He is winging it. Has always been winging it. Because that is what a con man does. He tells you what you want to hear.
I stand with sovereign nations.
I stand with Ukraine.
I stand against hostile aggression.
I stand against Russia.
Not a hoax. My feet are firmly on the ground.
High-Level Chess. Nope. Nadda. Not in a million years if a million monkeys were moving the pieces on a million chess boards. No way. Image from internet for teaching purposes. Rights by creator.
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Doomsday prep in the modern era.
Snippet from a post discussing buying guns and stacking up MREs in order to feel safe. My response as follows:
Best of times. Worst of times.
The current round of fear will be nothing compared to what happens in the NEXT 50 years as society at large is transformed beyond recognition by technology. This wave is coming whether we want it to or not, whether we wear red caps or not, whether we complain or not. There is no "going" back to a better time. No "Great Again." No safe places. No comfort zones. AND, people convinced that we are headed in a "good direction" right now are fooling themselves. They WANT to be lied to because it makes them feel comfortable.
Society will be wrestling with a steep influx of technological advances we cannot now comprehend. People have a limited ability to absorb changes, but change is going to come at an accelerated rate from now on. We are at the very, very starting point of massive upheaval on grand scale. Slogans won't stop the future. More guns and some MREs won't make you safe.
Side note, the rule of law has been chipped away for decades by THE RICH who have always ignored it except to protect themselves from lower classes. The RICH have their own clubs and organizations devoted to reinforcing their wealth and dominance. This is not new at all. This is old and well known. Old boys' networks. Money. Self-interest. Law "makers" and law breakers are predominantly lawyers. Lobbyists are lawyers. The fifty-plus year plan to transform government was hatched by lawyers and used the law to gerrymander, disenfranchise and block voters, craft legislation, push agendas that were/are unpopular, and divide people that otherwise agree.
Eggs for Breakfast. Technological change will/has outstripped our ability to control or understand what we have created. And the pace will do nothing but accelerate. Rights by creator.
Meanwhile, the march of technology continues.
Our ability as a whole, as a group, to understand what is coming next is limited at best. Our imagination has been deliberately dimmed. We fear each other and fight amongst ourselves. COVID should have taught us something important. We are all connected in deeper, more complex ways than we believed. We need other people in ways that are more profound than we can express. There are problems in front of us that need to be solved AND we cannot solve them in isolation. We need to cooperate, collaborate, and build consensus. We don't make good decisions when we are afraid, or angry, or exhausted but here we are, right now, and there is a tsunami of problems and opportunities growing we are not ready for. Meanwhile... shower, shave, walk the dog, eat breakfast, breath, think, dream...
Just my opinion.
RICK
Billion Hero Studios
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