Dear Internet,

I don’t know what’s going on. I can’t make sense what I know, and I know very little. No one can know enough to truly know what’s happening. And if you don’t know, you cannot make choices which depend upon you knowing. In which case, you are forced to fall back on one or both of two strategies: a) principles, or b) greed. Greed may be a principle, if you skew it right. Instead of “principles”, we could say “rules” or “logic”. Doesn’t matter which rules, necessarily, just pick some. Instead of “greed” would could say “instinct” or “intuition”. Most of us follow a combination, heavily biased towards some kind of gut feeling or other, made up of habits, feelings, wishes, and knee-jerk reactions. We’re not machines, after all.

Read the rest of this entry »

The United States has a new president, and lots of people are excited about it. I’m glad to see the end of the second Bush era in the U.S. I’m dreading the spectre raised by Bush Sr. of another Bush White House—this time with Jed. I am diametrically opposed to everything that has been spawned by that monster, George H. W. Bush. He may be the epitome of everything I despise in the world.

Obama is probably going to be a somewhat rerun of the Clinton years, hopped up on the Internet. I can foresee a lot energy and activity going into running websites and issuing updates and general communications frenzies, but I’m skeptical that all that information flying around between citizens and their government will have a significant impact on how the U.S. government actually operates.

The predicament in which the United States finds itself has a lot more to do with the attitudes of its people than with the actions of its government. Obama won by 4% of the popular vote. This is not “overwhelming”, except in the most cynical interpretation. I fully expect that in the mid-terms in two years, the American people will flip the balance back towards the Republicans, ensuring once again a paralysis in government and a stagnancy in political ideas.

What the United States needs is another revolution. I’d prefer a bloodless one, but even a civil war might be better for them, and the rest of the world, in the long run. But they certainly need less television, less fast food, less plastic, and fewer cars. They need an economy that runs on something other than conspicuous consumption (as does Canada and the rest of the world). Sadly, consumerism, capitalism and democracy are a kind of locked-in trinity of short-term thinking driven mostly by fear, uncertainty and doubt. It panders always and inevitably to one human quality: insecurity.

Change may come to the Insecure States of America, but I suspect it will be shallow, superficial, and cosmetic. Because that’s all the American consumer will tolerate. Don’t think that lipstick-smeared pigs are gone for anything but a short recess.

I just watched Michael Moore’s SICKO. I have mixed feelings about his methods, but I applaud his message.

The world is at war. And it is being fought over a single driving disagreement: who gets to have a better life. And there are only two points of view.

The first point of view is that a minority of people get to have a better life. There is endless disagreement over which minority, but taken together, it is the majority view that a minority deserve to have a better life.

The other point of view is that everyone deserves to have a better life.
Read the rest of this entry »