caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

As I've suggested in a post on Facebook:

Ever have those strange moments when surrealism temporarily supplants reality? Like a certain moment in time isn't real and you question it really happening? You feel outside of yourself like you're in another dimension? Here's an example.

That's happened to me several times in the past, but I've been feeling that way many times during the last four or five years, like all this really isn't happening. How can it be that life has changed so quickly? It seems like the change hasn't been organic, that some surreal hand has directed it all. Like it hasn't happened naturally, like it's all been orchestrated.

I wonder, have all great societal changes happen this way?

Things are weird and keep getting weirder. Like an infinite regression of weirdness. Like turtles stacked one upon another, holding up a flat earth.

Attribution: Wikimedia Commons

The FBI recently reported that losses from cryptocurrency scams were up 45% from last year, over $5.6 billion dollars. It's become so widespread that the FBI actually created their own cryptocurrency to ensnare the fraudsters. You might be thinking what's that got to do with me?

What Works?

Like I mentioned last week while writing about Frank Church, I've been reading a book called Battlefield America: The War on the American People, by John W. Whitehead, published in 2015. It's well worth a read, although it's very, very depressing. I can't say it takes a right or a left wing slant; it gets angry at both sides. Towards the end of the book, Whitehead lists 10 basic principles that 'We, the People' can, understand, agree with, insist upon and support in our attempt to stop our country's almost finished progression to a police state, an empire. I found the principles interesting, so I thought I'd list them here.

1. 'We must come to grips with the reality that the present system does not foster freedom.'
2. 'Voting is practically worthless.'
3. 'Question everything.'
4. 'Materialism is a death knell to freedom.'
5. 'There is little hope for true resistance if you are mindlessly connected to the electronic concentration camp.'
6. 'An armed revolt will not work.'
7. 'Be wise and realize there is power in numbers.'
8. 'Act locally but think nationally'.
9. 'Local towns, cities and states can nullify or say 'No' to federal laws that violate the rights and freedoms of the citizenry'.
10. 'Understand what freedom is all about.'

I think we agree that we already know all these things; maybe most Americans do, whether they acknowledge it or not. So, where do we go from here?

1932: Bonus Army shacks on fire after the attack on their 'Hooverville' in the Anacostia flats (the Capitol is in the background) by the regular army under MacArthur, from Wikipedia. Bye, Bye, Hoover!

While we send countless billions of dollars to Ukraine and Israel, a tiny nation in the Caribbean is dying in silence.

Back in the 50s, when I was a kid, there was a popular series called "The Millionaire".
IIRC.
It involved a very rich philanthropist that I assumed to be a multimillionaire (not sure there were any billionaires back then) who picked random people to gift a million dollars to anonymously.