“Night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That’s pride fucking with you. Fuck pride! Pride only hurts, it never helps.” — Marsellus Wallace
It feels like we are at a Crossroads, where Money is the One True God, and the Transaction ‘trumps’ all.
In such a place, the HOW matters not, giving rise to a Systemic Amorality that metastasizes in infinite ways.
We see this occurring right now, where the calculus has become sell your soul to a wanna-be dictator through unquestioning fealty, and willingness to stick a shiv in your countryman, the poor, the disenfranchised and the suffering.
Democracy, Openness and Unity over Division, gives way to Winners and Losers, and a reflexive attack on “The Other.”
A general ethos of this thinking is to diminish our commitment to the broken, the sick and the failing in our society.
The sad truth is that if tightening of immigration laws, conservative judges, gerrymandering, gun rights, anti abortion, white power, financial markets, oligarchical privatization & unfettered corporatism is at the top of your policy hierarchy, you are willing to put your head in the ground for EVERYTHING ELSE. Humanity and optimism is for suckers.
Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, once said that until the tide comes in, you don’t actually know who has been swimming naked. This is true about racism and hate, too.
But, we have to ask ourselves. If failing and losing in society exists in such large numbers — 90,000 unsheltered homeless in California alone — doesn’t it actually make the need to feel the pain of others even more essential?
I say yes it does, and that this is the true "Exceptionalism" that made America the greatest country when compared to all others.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is written on the Statue of Liberty for a reason. That’s the America I know
But, we need Connective Tissue. We need to build a new Social Fabric that binds us.
It begins with having a Genuine Purpose. When we figure out what that is, we’ll be on the road to getting healthy again.
