The United States of Reality

“'Prior to the [Berlin] Wall’s removal, President Reagan assured Secretary General Gorbachev that if he would support bringing down the Wall separating East and West Berlin, NATO would not move ‘a finger’s width’ closer to Russia than East Germany’s border. With this assurance Gorbachev gladly signed on." Kathy Kelly

Gun restrictions, gun banning, what "AR" stands for, who gets to poop where, and many questions of a truly serious nature such as nuclear brinkmanship and environmental-climate policy are actually peripheral to a more fundamental problem facing humanity.

I believe the central problem of our day is the lack of accountability and democracy in the world's most fearsome superpower.


The reasons for this are basically twofold (although they are mutually enmeshed and reinforcing).

1. The obscene concentration of wealth in the hands of an idiot elite (.1%) baby men. (A preemptory review of the history of civilization shows this has always been true. But digging just a bit deeper also reveals this has fluctuated erratically everywhere throughout history, and that it has been institutionally mitigated and managed successfully enough to give serious people hope and courage. See US History: "New Deal"; "Post War Consensus")
2. The still embryonic and uncertain 'knowledge and experience base' we have developed regarding mass education. (Mass education is an incredibly recent notion. And taking it beyond the most rudimentary forms of literacy and numeracy is not yet even something for which there is a meaningful consensus, never mind a coherent conception.)

It bears repetition that these two factors are inextricably linked on multiple levels of cause and effect.