As one world leader falls seemingly out of the blue, just a reminder to you, dear reader, and to me, that we deserve a world better than we are getting and that we can have it. It is just one collective action away. Perhaps the doom and gloom that is enveloping us is a sign that we are overdue for a societal overhaul. I don't need to run through the whole list, do I? It's not just the usual suspects-- the mass shootings, the endless political debates about nothing that go nowhere, our eroding personal and civic rights, not least of all our privacy, the rising prices, the falling prospects, the rising temperatures, the falling bank accounts, the rising inequity, the falling discourse, the rising health care costs, the falling health. Well maybe it is to a large extent, the usual suspects.
But let's turn that noise off for a second and seize hold of what's really going on. We are being played. We are still being played by the tiny sliver of us who by sheer luck and swollen balls call the shots on our planet. And by their minions, the executive and managerial and administrative ministers of wealth, and their cheerleaders, the press. And the story we are being told is that things are the way they are because it's a small shrinking dying world and it's always been this way and we do not have any choice. What little there is to do about it is being done. Hold their beer. And what choice do we have but to trust them. So every now and then we have elections to try to prevent the worst of them from rising. And sometimes that seems to work. Until next time. Same time next year. Year in, year out. And we start to blame ourselves and each other for the way it is. Which is no way to live, but what is the alternative?
So as long as you are still here, I just wanted to remind you that the alternative is to say no to the bullshit. To stop pretending we don't have a choice because that pretense only serves them. Yes it's scary to take this meager life we have built for ourselves from the scraps that we have been allowed to have and roll it up into a little ball, wipe our ass with it and flush it down the toilet. But just imagine the rush you'll get watching it disappear with the whoosh of a whole new order. The order that we will all build as we go out into the streets where we will find each other and make our world new. It can be done. It is the only way forward for us. There is no way forward for them. The only way forward for us is the end of the road for them. (For the squeamish, don't worry-- the class may be going but the people aren't going anywhere. They'll just become more of us.)
We don't have to rip the band aid off all at once. We can start small, by insisting on our people at the top for a change. Not dandy con artists trying to bullshit us into believing we'll get something for enabling their rise to power. We need people like us. The more smart but reluctant the better.
Let yourself imagine a hundred thousand Boris Johnsons across the globe voluntarily stepping aside from the reins of power to make room, not just for more Borises, but for us. Because the problem isn't how much more has to come out of our hides to keep their dog and pony show going. The problem is how do you and me and all of us finally start to get ours. Because something tells me when you take care of us, you take care of the planet. You can't find the answer to how we get there by looking in the same books. We have to start writing our own books by living in the pages.
If we can put up with their shit and keep smiling, we can do anything.
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