Originally posted in 2015
For some time now, I’ve struggled with the notion that commentary on specific and singular events of the day is futile and pointless. The outrages carried out by agents in the various levels of the American government have been coming so rapidly that days in which no scandal is revealed seem boring. Or we are jumpy with anticipation for the new scandal, sure to be revealed the next day or the following one.
Over and over, I’ve tried to dispel this one-off event thinking and try to point to the pattern(s) displayed by these events. (There is always a pattern. Even chaos has a pattern.)
I once said that many people are unable to discern patterns. While that’s true, I think, however, that many who are actually able to do so are unwilling. It’s too scary to take the long view forward, especially when one senses that the future is bleaker than most imaginations can conjure. It’s a lot easier to deal with immediacy; with putting food on the table, paying the bills, nurturing the family and to keep one’s mind centered on those things alone.
There an epithet that has sprung up in the last few years: Low Information Voter, usually in reference to those who voted for Barack Obama in both elections. But such people are not the only ones who are failing to pay attention.
Really, it’s a lot easier to be the place of low information when you are still able to live in the manner you’ve always lived or close to it. But when something catastrophic happens, then what? How are you to know why and how you landed in the new place? And if someone is to blame how are you going to know the identity of that person/those persons? How are you going to know if that person is you? This is the minimum information needed to resolve a problem.
It never pays to ignore a problem even if you think that the problem is too big for you to unravel or if you are powerless to fix it.
Where we are in this nation is a result of ignoring severe problems over decades—well before any of us had heard of the present occupant of the White House. He is merely the result of our collective failure to pay attention to a pattern.
So I guess I’m saying that it’s time to wake up.
I’ve had my wake-up call. Don’t let yours be harder than mine.
"The dynastic cycle" describes the overarching pattern of political evolution, seems to me. This current
cycle may differ, since for the first time in history, all nations of Earth communicate and trade and many have synchronized their policies. Governments across this planet have made more promises than they can keep. Collapse impends.
Perhaps the formation of a planet-wide political monopoly explains the Fermi paradox. once transportation and communication technology allow the formation of planet-wide governments and governments have eliminated political competitors, they turn their gaze from the stars and content themselves with domestic repression