Every war is based on lies.
How else do you convince children to murder for their country?
Viewing Earth from the perspective of a tiny fragile globe hurling through space humbles and inspires all at once - but makes flag waving and joining in difficult. And so from age 10 on things got difficult. I mean if you're paying attention, even just a little, how can you not be angry? But how also can you not be inspired and awed. And so I write. By Charlie Phillips
"Any fool can know. The point is to understand." Albert Einstein
Most medical medical doctors are good at multiple choice tests and memorizing - at knowing - but have only the thinnest of understanding. They are trained not to ask why, but instead to respond within two dimensional algorithmic mandate - subtlety and the tailoring of care to the individual through understanding, be damned.
Citizens United tells us corporations are people.
If true, then for the most part, they are narcissistic sociopaths.
We are spiraling towards a new kind of violent social collapse and world war. At this point it seems inevitable. Not a world war of nation against nation but instead a global civil war as people across the planet take up arms against their own and their governments in a desperate struggle for survival as we face catastrophic climate change and pandemics - divided, polarized, and misinformed.
The poorer, less developed countries, and/or low lying island nations that are already so vulnerable, will begin to experience wide scale destruction of their way of life - be it through famine, drought, flooding, extremes of weather, and/or inadequate response to pandemics - through no fault of their own. Their governments will be ill equipped to deal with these catastrophes and the subsequent suffering and growing desperation of the people will ignite violent uprisings on a scale the world has not seen before.
In the wealthier more developed parts of the world extremism and polarization will worsen as social media and propagandist news outlets such as Fox News and the like misinform and divide, fanning the flames of hatred, fear, false conspiracy - for distraction, for a buck, for hate centered agendas, and for the fun of it. We will continue to divide and polarize, making large scale cooperation impossible, even as we face devastating global crises that threaten our and our children’s existence.
Climate change is real and at this point cant be fixed - all we can do now is mitigate it - but it will take drastic measures - measures that short sided, politically motivated, government leaders and their ignorant and selfish constituents will block. It will become clear to the informed that these people then represent a threat to the world’s children - not abstractly - directly. A threat to their very existence. And that will spark violence.
Pandemics will continue to become more frequent due to population growth and the effects of climate change on health, that the misinformed, ignorant masses and their world leaders will make worse. They will need to be forced to comply with simple public health mandates - and will not. And hence, more violence.
Large factions of the populace will in essence be paralyzed by fear, hate, anger, and misinformation as we face these species threatening catastrophes - guaranteeing conflict on a scale the world has never seen.
‘Serving’ is a job, not a sacrifice. These men and women are not heroes. What they did at the capitol on January 6 was their job. What they suffered & are still suffering should serve to remind us of the lawlessness, racism, hate, & bad intent the mob on that day had.
And it should serve to underscore Trump’s evilness and culpability.
Their eyes met by chance. An old man and a young woman walking in opposite directions in a hall.
She's thinking - Oh look he’s checking me out. Gross, he’s so old. What a perv. Wonder if he thinks Im pretty?
The old man briefly notices her then wishes his foot would stop hurting.