What Are We Fighting For?

          Yesterday's diary caused a minor ruckus amongst fans and friends. I believe we all know that to constantly bombard our hearts and minds with negative input and information is not helpful. As an Avatar Wizard I am clearly aware that what goes in is often times what comes out, and vice versa; what comes out is usually a strong indicator of what is going in. We are in a tough place right now as a global society. For news junkies there is certainly no lack of news to report. Unfortunately most of it is bad. Both on the world stage and domestically there seems to be a constant onslaught of bad if not horrifying news to report.
        For years I lived in a bubble, decades more like it; didn't pay attention to news. Didn't pay attention to anything except what I and the little group I associated with was working on. Some still claim that to be the best method of operation if you want to make the world a better place. I know plenty of people who live in that world. They have their thing, whether it be in tech or the arts or in the enlightenment arena and they simply keep worldly news and events of the day completely tuned out. They make their mark by doing their share, to try to make the world a better place and besides perhaps the name of the president of the United States, they don't have a clue what's happening around the world we live in.
        I lived that way for a long time. I don't fault those who still do. But something changed in me along the road. These Diaries would do a far better job of detailing what exactly it was than I could by trying to remember it here; besides the fact that it would waste time for me to attempt to do so. All I know is that one day I found myself woken up. Once awakened, to world events, national events -- events that shape our very lives one realizes, it is difficult not to occasionally cave into the general negativity that we are bombarded with on a daily basis. Things have for all intents and purposes made a turn for the worse on a seemingly global scale. Yesterday's diary was a reflection of that.
        Though we must remember that this isn't the case all over the world. Iceland for example is doing remarkably well after a full-on peoples' revolution where they basically sacked all the banks and major financial institutions and anyone else they thought was up to no good. Australia comes in first out of 212 nations around the world in "general happiness and well being". Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, even Canada. There are places where real live people live who are doing better than well, no riots in the streets, no mass exodus of refugees, no GMO foods being forced down their throats, no fracking and no widespread government corruption.
        It just so happens that those of us who live in the United States and the West in general don't hear much about these places. They are generally kept out of the news entirely. For better or worse (I'd say worse..?) what we hear about instead is mostly the bad. Not only here at home, but related to any other areas of the world where things are going to shit. This is a reality for those of us who live in today's world. And there are valid reasons for it.
        Not only have things taken a turn for the worse in the United States -- when exactly did this happen? The alleged 9/11 attacks in 2001? The stolen election of 2000? Later during the Bush/Cheney regime's "war on terror"? Or more recently, perhaps coinciding with the Great Recession in '08? It certainly seems as though things have gotten worse over the last four years. Regardless, turn on the news or open a paper, and one will be hard pressed to not feel overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of negative events simultaneously transpiring around the world. It just IS.
        Today we learned that the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act -- the provision of the landmark civil rights law that designates which parts of the country must have changes to their voting laws cleared by the federal government or in federal court.-- by a decision of 5 to 4 (Republicans 5, Democrats 4. It still strikes me as ironic how much a Supreme Court Justice's political party affiliation plays so vital in the decisions they make.
        One would think that by the time a truly enlightened person gets to the point where they can be nominated for such a role that the idea of allegiance to or affiliation with political parties would seem childish and irrelevant to them. That shift in viewpoint happened to me personally many years ago. I couldn't possibly see labeling myself one or the other, both seem rather arbitrary, archaic, immature and limiting. And yet the Supreme Court Justices often make their decisions in such a predictable fashion based on their respective party affiliations that the country usually can guess what their decisions will be long before they announce them based solely on who's who in the Supreme Court that year. Criticism has poured in from voting rights activists: 

“Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision erases fundamental protections against racial discrimination in voting that have been effective for more than 40 years,” Elisabeth MacNamara, president of the League of Women Voters of the United States, said in a statement. “Congress must act quickly to restore the Voting Rights Act.”
“Today will be remembered as a step backwards in the march towards equal rights,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “We must ensure that this day is just a page in our nation’s history, rather than the return to a dark chapter."

         A large part of me believes that it was time to stop all these laws based on racial profiling. For many reasons. Save for another day. But suffice it to say that now that we have achieved the supposed impossible, a black man in the White House, isn't it time we started truly treating all people as equals? Again, save for another day.
         Late last night Infinito texted me that he now believes that the possibility of a "zombie apocalypse" may one day be possible based on what is happening around the world with natural gas fracking. Surely he was exaggerating, but the real point to his messages was that he was shocked and horrified, especially for children and future generations.
        Last night I stayed up ridiculously late studying. Learned that most of the laws and regulations that Congress enacted post-Great Recession '08 have been rolled back or are in the process. The Stock Market is raging once again, as if nothing happened and no one remembers it's sinking below 7,000 just a few years ago. I do. Scared the crap out of me. Never saw anything like that in my lifetime. Trillions of dollars vanished overnight unless people got completely out in time. For most people, whose investments are tied up in Mutual Funds or retirement plans of some kind, that simply wasn't possible. Many people I knew personally lost a small fortune and had to start saving for their retirement all over again.
        But the real clincher, the aspect of all this that should have everyone up in arms is how nearly every law and regulation that the Federal government put into place to stop the economic catastrophe of 2008 from happening again has either never really been put into place or is slyly being rolled back. The idea of "too big to fail" was shoved down the throats of every American for months as the government and the banks tried to explain how U.S. taxpayer money in an already sinking economy was going to be used to bail out these banks and financial institutions instead of regular working class people. It was one of the most egregious acts the United States government ever perpetrated. And that say's a lot. Experts are now saying that these same institutions have become even larger and more "too big to fail".
        And so it goes. All of it led me to ponder just how involved we want to be in all of this? Do we want to keep paying attention to what's happening around the world and trying to stop it? Or do we want to go back in our cocoon and pretend that there's nothing we can do about it? Yesterday's post certainly didn't cheer anyone up or inspire any hearts and minds. I myself felt more than depressed after writing it. Not that any of it isn't true. But must we focus on it? Can we responsibly live our own lives and pay no attention to the atrocities happening around us? In good conscience? If we decide the answer to that question is "no", is there anything we can really do about any of these things? Certainly at this point the only solution to what ails us seems to be a full on revolution.
        Most people scoff or laugh when they hear that in regards to the United States. But five years ago when I was dictating the "We Are the Revolution: Welcome to the Age of Personal Expression" book to Weather Girl, she scoffed, acted as if I was speaking treason. Just a few short years later we saw peoples' revolutions just I had predicted in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya just to name a few. And it will continue as the Personal Expression Age continues to ramp up. So what's to stop it from happening in the United States? That's the real question. What once seemed impossible now reads like history.

        But WHAT are we fighting for?

        I saw an interview with Peaceful Uprising co-founder Tim DeChristpher this morning with Bill Moyer's. It made me feel hopeful for the first time in years. The whole idea of The Personal Expression Age, at least in terms of it's major take-away from my viewpoint, is that the age will enable full on peoples' revolutions for the first time in human history on a scale we have never seen before; where corporate and government backed tyranny will be defeated by regular people. The governed will finally start governing the people they elect to govern them so to speak. Right now it appears that we are far away from that as we've ever been in American history. Especially compared to the fervent activism of the 1960s. But what if at the same time that the U.S. government is seemingly making it's most wicked and criminal turns, the people of the nation are simultaneously working to improve things and stop them? What if we were gearing up for a revolution and we just didn't know it?
        Ah... That's the question isn't it? Many people already believe we are in the midst of a revolution but it just hasn't been formally announced. There are certainly many events one could point to in order to prove that we are, despite the apparent backwards movement we seem to be traveling in as a nation.
        But what are we aiming to do? Well, lots. Protecting the environment that we live in and depend on for life is one thing. But more than anything I would say that our primary goal is to enact a series of changes that herald in a new era where freedom, equality, truth and justice truly reign supreme as the law of the land.

        DeChristopher stated, and I am paraphrasing, "We aren't trying to turn Walmart or BP into greener companies. Our aim is to eradicate them completely". At fist it sounds like an outlandish claim. But upon further inspection it seems more than reasonable. And possible. We must remember that the only reason that giant corporations have run the show for so long is because we have allowed our elected officials to allow them to do so. The fault may seem to fall in the hands of these giant multi-national companies or the government, but ultimately it is our party and we are the ones responsible for allowing things to get so out of control. Rather than attempt to change giant traditionally unjust and criminal corporations into simply nicer greener safer companies we instead may consider making them disappear entirely so that the bond between giant plutocratic corporatocracies and the people and laws they control is severed once and for all -- and a new world where people-run democratic organizations provide us with the goods and services we deem necessary. Much like NGOs or nonprofits or credit unions operate now. 
        Because of the system the United States government has allowed to be set up now with the largest corporations wielding all the power and nearly total control over the laws we live by and the justice system as well, we've entered a new era in American justice where there are now two justice systems operating simultaneously; one disguised as a a justice system whereby the most powerful individuals in both business and government control and manipulate it at will based on their needs regardless of what is moral just or lawful and the more traditional one that average everyday ordinary citizens are forced to live by. It's a system that the founding fathers of our nation fought for years to break us free from in their revolution -- but truth be told one could dare say its more corrupt and tyrannical than they 200 years ago could ever have imagined from where they were sitting. Little did they know how far off base we would get from the original ideal and how quickly we would do it.
        It's not just a changing of the old guards in Washington that is needed. But a complete rethinking and restructuring of our economic model as well. When our largest corporations such as Apple sit comfortably in their cozy offices in California and earn billions of dollars of revenue a year by selling their products to hundreds of millions of American citizens and other peoples of the world, but refuse to pay even a dollar in income taxes, we know that something terribly wrong has gone on. When the state they live in cannot afford to fix the roads and bridges these same Apple employees use to get to and from work everyday nor provide adequate schooling and education or medical care to their children and has to borrow the money for said projects from the federal government, which itself is also broke, who is it then who pays for these things? Their Fellow American tax payers.

        Most ordinary citizens don't know how to rig the system in order to not pay any income tax. So the average person gives up anywhere from ten to thirty-nine percent of their income to the federal government through paying taxes each year. Why should American tax payers give a dime to help the state of California when the problem could be easily solved if companies like Apple and others housed in that state would just pay their fair share of taxes like everyone else does? People argue that Apple may not have overtly broken any laws with their complex and twisted web of corporate technicalities and loopholes. But that's symptomatic of the root of the problem of this new corporate-run dual justice system we've unwittingly permitted to grow in America.
        The solution to this reprehensible problem is simpler than we think. A nationwide mass boycott of all Apple products would be a damn good start. Unless someone is generously willing to let their hard earned money in the form of income tax pay Apple's bills then there should be no reason why even one American citizen would not immediately want to join in a boycott of all Apple products until CEO Tim Cook and company promise to stop these games and bring that money back to the States where it belongs; to help the country that has been so good to them. Or we kick them out and never hear from them again.
        Part of the problem is that Apple, like so many big American corporations, has it's hands in so many pockets of government officials that the U.S. government is never going to promote such a move. In fact, one wouldn't be surprised if they didn't try to find some little known law that it violates. But the American people can easily do it. And just like Apple we can all safely claim that there is nothing illegal about doing so. It is our choice after all. At the very least, paying their fair share in corporate income taxes should be a requirement for any company that wants the business of right thinking intelligent American consumers. Taken further, the movement could extend to "not destroying the environment", "paying fair wages", "not supporting or participating in slave labor"... there are many but not an infinite amount of mandates that responsible American citizens can start to demand today from the companies that most want their business. Will the American people ever reach a point in their evolution as a country where they realize that these decisions are ultimately up to them? This I wonder. But I have hope. The movement is growing. One could easily say we have reached critical mass in many arenas. But rather than wait and see I believe the best action would be to start doing something today.