November, 1, 2024: America has the Look of Needing a Good Shit

Hate doesn’t beat hate; it just makes more hate. The only thing that beats hate is love.  Now, love doesn’t always beat hate, but it does do something.  If you love someone who hates you, they will probably still hate you.  But one thing will happen.  Eventually, everyone will see them as the asshole.  Don’t be the asshole, America.  Don’t be the asshole.  Excerpted from Jim Jefferies 2016 Freedumb Netflix special.

The bottom line in the political industry is this: Financial capital—the wherewithal for mass marketing—has steadily replaced social capital—that is, grassroots citizen networks—as the coin of the realm.”  Robert D. Putnam

Bragging often precedes begging.  B. C. Forbes

You know the look on a toddler’s face when poop-time is upon them?  That’s a look of the body now informing the mind—for a moment it stills all else.  It is stillness that is missing in too many individuals and in America in general—and a lot of other individuals and countries.   It’s like we generally do not know we are full of shit, but have gotten old enough to pinch our asshole shut while we stay busy being angry and hateful.  That’s the constipation of the time—a blockage preventing the stillness from informing us we need a good crap.  The fiber that may help our constipation is social capital.  However, only fiber is not the solution as it would be like building a bridge of fresh plants.  Civil and individual capital are not about either the individual or the society—it’s about each and the interaction between them.  What we need are leaders and followers who have the look and feeling of having had a good dump.

Do we choose a leader who leads with dark and foreboding and says they know how to find the light by vanquishing the unworthy?  That leader is like the no trespassing sign that reads “Prayer is a good way to meet God, but a gun is faster.”  Devils, guns, God, and a savior?  A worthy leader is about finding civility, not enemies.

Do we choose a leader who assumes what we need, we need now (or yesterday)?  Trying to go far by going too fast is part of the reason our nervous system is not keeping up with our technical advancements and our ever-growing proximity to each other.  Overwhelming stimuli is a good way to fuel uncertainty and anger.

In either case of a good or bad leader, an always narrow focus is a tough way to see what’s going on around us.

We do not do well when there is too much light or too much dark. We have to dial down the light and light-up the dark to see God and the devil in ourselves.  We need to be careful of those who brag or those who beg.  But we have to be most careful of those who do both.

It can be a dangerous world as there are some very bad players.  Being naïve is to turn a blind eye.  But the point of democracy is about civility and human agency and fighting incivility with more incivility is to blind more eyes.  Obviously, there is a lot at stake, but being an asshole does not help.  So do not be an asshole.  And if one is an asshole, apologize and get back onboard.  It may not be easy, as well I know, but it is necessary if we really want a better chance of thriving instead of just another way of dying.

In Stillness we begin to discover, what in Life we can recover.