Bicycling may be pure evil; quiet repetition affords a chance to ponder what’s gone wrong and summon balance. Talk show callers and hosts unleash their hideous idiocy on unthinking listeners. They promote conservative candidates, especially that spoiled hotel tycoon, who’s nothing more than an ill tempered buffoon who panders to the witless who’d lash out against the guiltless. Being cleverly rich among the ignorantly poor must be maddening, something majority will never know. What the gullible don’t get is that the issues that fuel their frustrations were instigated intentionally for that very purpose. In the unfounded opinions spun by media mugs you don't see how they merely transfer public funds to a few thugs. Congress is already so dysfunctional and constituents so divided that impeachment proceedings and movements to recall are not only counterproductive but impossible. If not, you’d personally be to blame for letting the powerful manipulate and suppress you. Banking regulation, financial security, immigration reform, job creation, national defense, social justice, and whatever you believe would make life better you can achieve, not through divisive politics, but through sensible cooperation, serious discussion, and thoughtful examination of issues.
“The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into... two camps.” Pope Francis, Holy See, 24 September 2015, Address to Joint US Congress
Methods exist in recently coined terms: crowdsource (individuals soliciting community for funds to accomplish mutually desirable goals) and collabortrain (individuals cooperating temporarily on projects, then regrouping or repeating subsequently for a string of accomplishments). Neither are new, rather more insightful names for what humans historically do over lifespans. Both may equally fail or succeed depending upon how and who pursued, and what success means to you. Stock market IPOs are formal crowd-sourcing, as likely as not to pay dividends. Churches and nonprofits accept a donation to provide open source information, but still serve own agendas. Musical groups dissolve and their members reform into other collaborations leaving a train of dismal misses or soulful hits. Cycling teams help leader excel on tour stages by water carriers sacrificing selves to chase down breakaway rivals, how Team Sky delivered latest Tour de France win for Chris Froome. A team collaborotrain creates a voluntary slipstream to preserve star’s energy for a final victorious sprint.
Crime, prostitution, slavery, and suffering derive from fear, personal greed and power lust. A caring community can eclipse even the worst natural disaster, how species survived for countless millennia. Globally about 100 trillion USD are turned over each year, that is, gross world product (GWP) in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP); this equals ~$14,300 per capita, every adult and child on earth, just enough to live upon no matter what nation you happen to live in. Few get a fair share; many fall from middle to lower class, or poverty into slavery, with wealth inequality beyond widespread familiarity. Where does it go? Take one vice, tobacco: Smoking’s annual net loss in USA alone after profits amounts to $200 billion. Compound this with CEOs making 380 times the lowest paid employee, corruption in office, exorbitant taxes, lack of exercise, motorists violating code, opiate abuse, organized crime, and whatnot. Bad behaviors and wasteful choices absorb most of your piece. Each responsible citizen pays and pays, but to whom? Billionaires? Drug cartels? Foreign monarchs? Freemason Illuminati? Imagine if governments prevented such wickedness and treated mental illness, how much more would flow your way in reduced insurance premiums, tax cuts, and warfare reductions? Who wants that!? The few who are gainfully employed or well paid work for some business that takes advantage of animosity, sickness or weakness.
DoD, nation's #1 employer with an annual half-trillion budget and two million military on payroll, largely defends oil companies as a perverse form of corporate welfare. If Big Oil had to pay for its own security, pumping oil overseas wouldn’t be worth it. Therefore, petroleum profits ultimately depend on American tax collection. Is convenience of motoring on gasoline worth this cost? If you send out thousands of resumes for jobs for which you are well qualified, despite EEOC companies don't interview those they discriminate against for age, gender, impairment, orientation and race. Should those thus ignored be forced onto treadmills in workhouses or thrown to wolves? Either would only beget criminality and ensure mutiny. Mental hospitals and prisons are already so full there's no place to lock up Wall Street crooks who bankrupted thousands and stole millions, so they routinely turn out felons and psychopaths with only bus fare elsewhere and prescriptions that don’t get filled. DoE hasn't done enough to teach basic skills, like recognizing complex issues and using logic to solve, or life skills, like avoiding drugs, counting money, exercising good judgment, and staying safe. When so many ills go unattended, you have to identify root causes and perform pareto analyses to set priorities.
Called too liberal, current administration at least had a domestic policy to halt the slide into joblessness. Government can’t operate without income tax revenue. Counting those who gave up searching, it reached 25%, Great Depression level, under previous conservative administration, whose legacy was to alienate allies, disastrously cut taxes to the wealthy, force millions onto government assistance programs, and transfer $4 trillion into hands of cronies. Nation can’t take another such hit. Since then, job losses have been reversed. A health care bill finally passed that both freed employees from HMO servitude and repaid insurance companies for campaign contributions. But medical system is so broken everyone still needs protection against this racket. Doctors are paid per visit, not outcome. Wherever more money is spent on Medicare, outcomes are worse. USA ranks 56 among nations in terms of wellness, though undeniably you're better off stateside if you really need a heart transplant or other expensive procedure, as that's what nation’s hospitals prepare to handle. After cardiovascular diseases and cancers, deaths from hospitalization ranks as nation’s 3rd biggest killer, 100,000 per year, though public just bundles this loss into other causes. Next come 40,000 automotive fatalities. Threats begin with mistreatment of citizens and foreigners for the benefit of a few billionaires. Otherwise, you wouldn't need to spend trillions on defense. Thwarting blind ambition would transform society. Maybe one ought to address these things before attacking social security and welfare recipients, who legislators need because they consolidate power over independent middle class. To combat, all an individual has to do is want less. You cannot be controlled unless you crave or need something. Fasting for a few days hardly matters, might train your body to burn rather than store fat.
Philosopher Timothy Morton endorses ecological interdependence. Nothing known exists outside universe; everything within interacts. Beneath lunar pull, meteorite impacts, and solar radiation, humans exert some of the most profound effects on both global processes (climate change, resource depletion, species extinction, toxic concentration) and other humans (carnage, ethnic cleansing, slavery, warfare). Lawyers line up to argue and prosecute on behalf of those who just can’t get along. Many who try to make contact through Internet say they feel less connected. Both isolation and interaction can be fatal. Yet the more separation one believes he/she achieves, the more one misperceives, succumbs to disease, and ultimately grieves.
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