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WOW - Brexit fucking wins -- the results of decades of neoliberal economics, income inequality, negative effects of Climate Change and the blow back from this fucking endless stupid War on Terrorism and the resulting anti--immigrant/refugee calamity.
This beginning of provincialism/balkanizing of maybe first Great Britain and then maybe mainland Europe is not good @ all for trying to solve global issues -- and it might spell bad things for the US election in the fall -- xenophobia, isolationism is never good.
So to my American friends -- if you don't know about this UK election -- get your head out of your ass and read up on it.
And what's amazing, though, is regardless of the result, the voting process there was how democracy is supposed to look like -- high voter turnout, no major pre-election and exit polling to skew the results.
Also what is amazing is that the polls didn't close until 10 PM, and the votes were all hand counted through the night, with the news media and policy wonks up all night to report on the results.
It makes the US voting process look like a big pile of stinking Koch monied and influenced piece of shit.
Our history is violence -- we are a nation founded on the principles of oppression and genocide. We should not be surprised that mass killing continues to happen in this country. It's just the latest manifestation of gun violence in the country -- someone always hates someone - African Americans, Latinos, Muslims, women, LGBTQ people, people who believe religiously other than themselves, doctors who perform abortions, themselves, etc.
But with laissez faire gun laws, automatic weapons and this country's pop culture obsession with mayhem and murder, unless we can change the paradigm of our collective soul, this story will just be repeated ad nauseam until we are inured into oblivion.
And remember we are the empire -- how we think and behave trickles down to the rest of the world.
(UPDATE: I was corrected -- only 30 or so people died @ Rosewood "where most of these deaths weren't by shooting" but "most from mutilation, torture and hanging (typical lynchings of the time)." (To quote my correcting friend
But the above list also doesn't include the 150 dead @ Wounded Knee or the 120 dead by the Mormons @ the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Mass murder is always an act of terrorism regardless of who is the perpetrator -- be a lone gunman, a vigilante mob or the US government.
Nowadays who needs lynching, torture and mutilation when owning AR-15's and extended magazines are legal?)
One of my mentors I most revere (Edgar Klugman) lectured once that if you are looking to change an organization, you must first look @ who were the founders as well as what were their founding principles. With that in mind, when you look @ who founded this nation and what were the guiding tenets motivating them, you'll begin to understand how difficult it is to change progressively much what drives this country.
Remember for all those lofty words ensconced in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, the US was founded by rich white guys protecting racism and slavery and property-driven income inequality; and within a couple of decades after the founding solidifying the notion that our nation was driven by a "Manifest Destiny" -- i.e. a divine right to exploit, conquer and commit genocide.
And that it took almost 100 years before African Americans were considered people and not chattel, and 150 years before women were even recognized as part of the voting citizenry.
And apart for the short epoch where the ruling class was frightened enough that a populist uprising might take place that they allowed FDR to institute the New Deal, and which carried through up until Johnson's, The Great Society, this county is still be driven by the same founding principles of racism, income inequality and trying to control the world.
So all this bullshit about Hillary being some kind of transformational change agent is just that, bullshit -- she's as much part of the continuing ruling oligarchy as any other corporately funded neo-liberal rich white person -- she just happens to be female.
But be that as it may, I still believe Hillary is far more flexible to change than Trump would be, IF Bernie and the movement associated with his candidacy can maintain the momentum to actively affect social policy. For that reason only, I plan to vote for her.
