We Can All Go Back to Kansas Now
By: John Brodix Merryman Jr.
Tags: Society, Culture, Politics, Philosophy, Future

We Can All Go Back to Kansas Now

People have the memory of a gnat. We don’t have to cancel history, because 99 percent of it is already forgotten. How much do you remember yesterday? Last week? Last month? How different is your point of view, relative to those around you? Multiply that by billions.

That’s the nature of time. We have this grandiose sense of it as the present marching firmly from past to future, but the reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present. Cause becomes effect.

Consequently time is this very blunt funnel, where the nearly infinite future sorts into this very finite present, then becomes the crumbling residue of the past.

While we exist in this moment, we dream of all the future possibilities and how to make them happen. Yet so is every other living being reaching for the future.

One primary way to leverage our efforts is to work together. Which requires some collective sense of destiny. Religious, national, economic, tribal, familial. Then we have to layer and sort which are more important, long term, short term, etc.

The more complicated the arrangements, the better we can calibrate them to the specific details, yet the more fragile and delicate they become.

So we often have to deal with very crude and simplistic relationships. Which wield enormous power and minimal nuance. Such as our current political duopoly and the forces pushing it to open conflict.

The same laws of nature apply on all scales though, so the lack of responsiveness is also shortsighted. Thus the extremes come to resemble chest thumping apes.

The bull is power, the matador is art.

To step back a little, social organisms form governments for the same reason individuals have central nervous systems; To guide and regulate the appetite and survival driven impulses of the body. This process entails cycles of expansion and consolidation, consumption and digestion. We grow, but we also have to regulate that growth. Our cultural dichotomy reflects this, as liberalism is the side of growing and expanding, while conservatism is the organization and structure of civics and culture, giving form to society.

There was a time when government was a private function, but as monarchies proved insufficiently adaptable, government shifted, with enormous conflict, to becoming a public function.

There is another system serving the entire body and that is blood and the circulation system. Its communal analogy is money and banking. Which is still very much in private hands, but appears to be having its own, “Let them eat cake.” moment.

So the government we have has become increasingly subservient to this banking establishment, which can starve anyone questioning, or reward anyone serving its interests.

As the expression of conservatism, the Republican Party has always been on the side of those forces running society, while the Democratic Party has been traditionally on the side of those on the bottom, the ones really providing the raw energy propelling the community. Even if this energy is guided by those on top.

Yet when the economy slowed in the 70’s and Jimmy Carter had the audacity to tell people to put on a sweater and suck it up, Ronald Reagan came along and said we should put it on the credit card and keep partying.

After Reagan’s greed is good, trickle down economics became the law of the land, Clinton beat Bush by playing the same game, with a faster beat and we had neoliberalism and the Third Way. As Deep Throat told Woodward, “If you want to know what’s happening, follow the money.”

The many and varied problems this has created have been pretty effectively swept under the rug, such as burgeoning public debt to back surplus private sector investment capital and a financial sector turned into a casino, as metastatic gobs of money are held in suspension, by being wagered in enormous feedback loops. The medium of the markets has become the message of capitalism. The tool has become the god.

So the last couple generations have come of age on the surface of history’s largest financial bubble, which is turning large sectors of the actual economy into bloat and calling it growth, while predating on other important, but financially vulnerable areas.

What their lack of historical perspective misses is that when we suddenly have a bankruptcy skating con artist wiggling his way to the top, after such refined and educated, but evidently sociopathic leadership as the last several presidents, there are deeper reasons than that half the country are racist homophobes.

If you were one of those shipped off to the endless wars, or had your home taken through blatant white collar crime, you might view such a clown as a breath of fresh air. A monkey wrench in the machine.

For the sorts of people who have been through this, the current media white washing and crowning of Biden is a disappointment, but not a surprise. It’s like one of those arguments where the other guy totally ignores your points, beats up on some strawman of his own, then runs around pumping his fist in the air, assuming he won.

Yes, there are all sorts of races, ethnicities, cultures, sexual orientations, etc, but that’s multiculturalism! The question is what causes tension between groups. Which is either bottom up economic competition, exploitation, etc. Or a top down absolutist ideology, that insists on its own monoculture.

When the powers that be are suddenly on the side of the most downtrodden, against much of the middle class, it does look like divide and conquer, which is another form of exploitation.

Now that the Orange Clown is being pushed off stage, so the same old creeps, kleptomaniacs, war criminals, charlatans, moochers and other slithery creatures can get back to business as usual, all is good again.

If you were one of those promised a rainbow colored sparkle pony, for throwing stones at the Bad Man, well, the check is in the mail, but don’t hold your breath, or you really will turn blue.

If you are one of those currently cashing a big fat check, be careful of whom you’ve sold your soul. The lesser evil is still evil. It will be much more expensive to buy it back, should you change your mind and will be well used and abused in the meantime.

Though maybe the bling is worth more than a clear conscience. I don’t know though. Ask Hunter Biden.

As it is, these elections are like the wildebeest having to chose between the lions and the hyenas. Who would you prefer running the government? The Mafia and the Hell’s Angels, or the Crips and the Bloods?

Personally I wrote in, Assange/Manning. They had the guts to look the Beast in the eyes and not blink. Just because the mob has nailed you up on a cross, doesn’t mean you’ve lost. The war for the integrity of this country has only just begun.

Respect and responsibility hold society together. Fear and greed tear it apart.