Essentially that's the jist of an article my friend Zarina posted to her Facebook page to which she further remarked: "If this trend continues the US will be in deep doo-doo."
My response: "The US already is in deep doo-doo. We have an impotent congress latched tightly onto the teat of corporate greed and corruption. We have two loathed POTUS candidates, one the lesser of two evils. We have deep-rooted racism and classism. We have a wide and rapidly more widening gap between the haves and the have nots. We have a culture whereas the populous is nearly evenly divided between those who care about the needs of their fellow man and those concerned only with their own needs (the majority of the latter often ignorantly voting against their own self interests). Divided we fall ...
I recently met a lovely young woman from Nigeria who has traveled the globe and lived in countries on several continents. She said she's never seen poverty like she has here in the US. I know too well what she's taking about. Just take an Amtrak ride through the NE corridor. Between the gleaming downtowns of our major cities it looks like the war-torn ruins of some third world country.
In her native country, people commonly ask one another if they've eaten, and they feed one another if they have not. That kind of communal culture is rare to find in the US.
She's working with one of our local county council members on a project around our state prison system. In liberal Seattle, Washington, where about three percent of our population is black, at least 70 percent of our prison population also is. And the majority of crimes that demographic are convicted of are minor, non-violent offenses. Something is very wrong with that picture."
I think on the horrible acts of police violence we've been seeing in recent weeks and days against black men. Then of recent horrible violence against police. I take comfort in a quote I saw circulating social media this past week:
“We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives. When we take the big calls, we will think not of the powerful, but you. When we pass new laws, we will listen not to the mighty, but to you. When it comes to taxes, we will prioritise not the wealthy, but you.”
Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive here. Was Theresa May actually insinuating the common people are NOT powerful? NOT mighty? NOT wealthy? Her remarks really and truly gives a sense the common people ought to have reason to be grateful to their lawmakers. What a back-asswards concept. Public servants ought to be humbly grateful for the esteemed honor of representing their constituents. When is that ever the case in this day and age? OK, Bernie Sanders is the exception, far from the rule.
What a peculiar place, this modern world ...
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