LOOK UP

listening to american public discourse one would imagine there are no other countries on this planet. they never seem to look up, look out and see what other nations are doing when there is a problem america is handling badly. 

health care comes to mind. gun ownership comes to mind. there are many places on this planet where people have better health outcomes for much less expenditure, there are places very like america, in terms of history of democracy and modern technology, capitalist nations like great britain, who not only have a more efficient system of healthcare but also have very little gun violence, in schools or anywhere, including one of the saddest results of the availability of guns in the US, gun suicide.

A LEAST HARM VIEW

beneath the superficial left-right political dynamic resides a fundamental personality difference (in varying degrees) in most people. it is reflected in one's ability to embrace change. citizen/voters are basically born with a left/right divide, and the tendency to lean left or right depending on how insecure one feels in the light of the great searchlight of change approaching has a genetic component. if you are fearful, nervous, reluctant to change your ideas and your behavior — insecure, maybe sometimes verging on the paranoid — you will reject new ideas from wherever they come, left or right, and you will consider your own needs much more than the general good. if you are more confident, secure and open in your basic personality you will consider new ideas — one would hope rationally — and be willing to accept and promote change that seems to solve emerging problems for the majority of people.

the middle, if there is one, is where the pragmatist who changes his alignment depending more on issues and perceived need than ideology exists.

in the end, darwinian nature is profoundly pragmatic and the model that best suits that understanding of life in all its forms is to think of public actions and political directions from the vantage point of the 'least harm model'. there are times when to hold to the existing way of living against threats of change is the safest path. there are times when to hold to the existing way of living is suicidal. it is up to us to think about it, to think about what is truly needed, not for ourselves alone, but for the majority and the planet.

[though debate is healthy, natural and necessary, selfishness rarely does improve society. greed is seldom good. more thoughtful and empathetic people already know this. it is time for protectionist, nationalist gun-owners, and other single-issue citizens, along with all those megalomaniacs, to stop shouting and step aside.]

MR TRUMP AND TRUTH AND UNDERSTANDING

the salient feature to remember about mr. trump is that he is not very bright and not educated and not really intellectually curious, and his ideas about what america should do are naive in the worst sense of the word. for instance, he says if a shooter knew that a school had armed teachers in it the shooter would not enter, because shooters are cowards (who presumably want to save their own skin). this is a comical assertion; potential school shooters are, if anything, patently not rational actors acting objectively in their own interest, they are sick individuals, and many of them are suicidal (incidentally, gun suicide is one of the worst features of a country awash in weapons). it's just as likely that knowing a school has many arms in it might increase its desirability as a target to someone in the particular state of mind it takes to want to mow down your peers. it certainly is no solution to the problem, which is precisely that there are so many many guns in america.

emma gonzalez, the student who, in a reasoned and passionate and effective speech, called out mr trump, a man who defends the NRA's interest in selling guns and the politicians and citizens who support him in doing so, has done what the corrupt american political system has failed utterly to do — she has simply told the truth.

THE OTHER NAOMI

naomi klein has been an important and useful individual in the war against reason in this world, especially the american corner of it, whose tentacles reach almost everywhere, and she has a great ally in the form of naomi oreskes, an academic with an uncommon ability to inject common sense and even a sense of humor into the struggle. her knowledge and deep understanding of the politics of special interests, along with an irrepressible optimism, is precisely what the public, the american public, and especially the american student public, needs most in this time of trumpism, a tired and not-at-all new set of assumptions that have never been less elegantly promoted or less appropriate or useful in addressing the very real existential threats that exist today.

WHAT DO HUMANS DESERVE?

i can't imagine a more poorly managed or frightening government than the present iteration of the US. and the fact that this nation controls half the world's military and most of its nuclear weapons, along with much of the global economy, is truly incredible. the childish, narcissistic and profoundly unintelligent racist hate-monger who apparently has ultimate control of this military edifice and its potential for annihilation is a disgrace not only for the people who support him, and all americans, but for all the world's complicit people and governments.

this is a profoundly poor time for anyone anywhere to cling to a past order that is patently incapable of solving the problems of the present or the future. people of the world, if you are waiting for your government to save you, you are doomed.

are we a race that even deserves to survive? we have lately acquired so much knowledge of the natural world and its history in the cosmos, we have solved so many critical problems of continuing life on earth and we know now so much about who we are, what life is and what we must do, it should be easier than ever in our history to put earth and all its life on a sustainable path.

time to prove we can do it. and, unfortunately, it seems to depend on the poorly educated and often deliberately misled american public to anoint the process that is necessary to make it happen; another frightening thought.

APOLOGIES

sorry to be saying this and it may undo alot of what i have been trying to do in the way of objectivity, but i am afraid i face an inescapable conclusion: it does not serve the world well to have followers lead.

NEW RULES, NEW RULERS

as gore vidal famously said a long time ago, america is ruled by the wealthy for the wealthy. any person who votes for the status quo who is not truly wealthy is voting against his own interest. 

a lot of conservative votes seem to be based on a kind of faith-based thinking, ideologically driven rather than employing a pragmatic understanding of both the global situation and the personal. this is maddening. one cannot reason with a voter who is not voting based on reason.

this was not the situation (quite) when i was young. in the US nixon proposed a negative income tax in the early seventies; in canada stanfield proposed it in the sixties. both these men were old-fashioned conservatives who just believed in going forward with changes to governance cautiously. they did not resist all change. sadly, they have little in common with what passes for conservatism in the present political climate.

looking for solutions to the present malaise, in north america at least, suggests ridding ourselves of the influence of money in elections especially and in governance more generally. whether the fault lies with individuals or corporations (who are also made of individuals) is not important to discern — the solution is the same in any case; elected representatives of the people need to represent all the people and political parties need to renounce absolute control of both the system of governance and its elections in favor of temporary coalitions based around shared beliefs in solutions to specific problems as they arise.

that we can identify these problems and so easily conceive solutions is the best, maybe the only, sign of hope for a viable and sustainable future on this declining little orb. that we seem, so far, unable to implement these changes is the worst.