I live next to what I call a swamp. It’s not. It’s a man made gully where water stagnates and mosquitoes breed. The mosquitoes are large and voracious. The City will not treat the area because of the depth of the gully and the steepness of its banks. The city’s equipment was not made for such terrain or so I was told. That’s the non-service one gets accustomed to. A plus…the terrapins that frequent my yard probably live in that gully.
So, outside there are not only mosquitoes, but also no see ums. No see ums are the worse. I can slap at a mosquito. With no see ums, I can only itch and itch and itch.
Picked the one ripe fig and it was sweet and juicy. I didn’t think my two fig trees would bear fruit this year. There are more figs that haven’t ripened, so maybe I’ll get a few more.
There is approximately 350 million people living in the United States. Of that number, approximately 174 million are eligible to vote. Of the 174 million, approximately 154 million voted. Those numbers don’t seem to say that citizens are disengaged. Unfortunately, many of those voters were ill-informed and/or mis-informed of the issues or just too stupid to understand what issues actually affected them.
Do the majority of the people living in this country or voting in this country…do they really want a dictator? Do they want to live in a country where children turn on parents, parents turn on children, neighbor turns on neighbor for money or a pass to the head of the line for goods and/or services? Do they want to live in country where there is a one percent that lives like royalty while everyone else struggles to put bread on the table? We’ve seen that countries like that don’t last…look at the Iron Curtain countries. The people in those countries lived in daily fear and near starvation. In those countries, one could be killed for no reason, one could be jailed and tortured for no reason (Someone didn’t like you and lied to get your paltry apartment, belongings?) In a dictatorship, one has no rights and privileges are reserved for the few. One exists at the whim of a dictator who is often mentally unstable. Is that what the citizens of the United States want?
I hadn’t really thought of this before, but I saw a video of George Carlin and he said that we in the United States do not have rights. We only have privileges. And, he was correct. A right is something that cannot be taken away at the whim of the governing elite. What we have seen is the erosion of the privileges afforded to us by law and the Constitution. Therefore, with any administration, our privileges may be changed or taken away. Nothing is sacred. With that understanding, there is nothing to bind the people to the experiment that is the United States. There is no bedrock.
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority. Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited. Lord Acton (1834-1902) These observations have been available for over one hundred years. Are the people in power so ignorant as to think that there will be a different result…just because they are in power? Especially as they have proven themselves by their words and actions that they are bad men, immoral men, greedy men, incompetent men. Governance by bad men leads to laws, policies, and procedures that only benefit the bad men.
Good moral character for immigrants, but not for the hypocrites who require it. Oh, and if you’re white, I suppose character doesn’t matter. White South Africans get a free pass on character, criminality, morals…right?
Lately, I have been thinking. What was so wrong with analog. Back in the day, there was a switch, on and off. Now, everything is pressure sensitive and it takes longer to turn appliances on and off than if there were a switch. I have an oven and there are no visual cues that it is on and it takes forever to heat to the set temperature. I had a washer and turning it on was the turn of a dial. Now, pressure sensitive on and off and sometimes it takes way too long to turn on. I am not a die-hard Luddite, but are these, I suppose, computerized appliances better? Or are they made to pad the manufacturer’s bottom line, i.e., planned obsolescence?
There is a difference between dislike and prejudice. Prejudice is based in a fiction that makes the person engaging in prejudice feel superior to/better than the object of their prejudice. Dislike is based in the reality of the person’s character, behavior, deeds, and words. Dislike of a person has nothing to do with any particular immutable characteristic of a person. Doesn’t matter the group the person belongs to, dislike is all about the person’s character, behavior, deeds words. So, people need to stop confusing the two. White people seem to think that dislike of them is based in prejudice. They cannot conceive that people just don’t like them and wouldn’t like anyone with their history, their actions, their words. In other words, their choices.
I read Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau. I read somewhere that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi were influenced by this short essay. Thoreau would agree with the below excerpt from the Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Thoreau says that–All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. … But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. Thoreau wrote Civil Disobedience in 1849. He is speaking to the incursion into Mexico by the United States and Slavery. That is in keeping with the above excerpt from the Declaration of Independence. However, he realized that most citizens didn’t care. As long as their lives were not affected by the unjust acts of the government, then it was not their concern. Sound familiar?
How do you make the citizens who are living in an unjust society care? That was, I believe, Thoreau’s frustration. However, he appeared to dream of a state where the citizenry were what I would say were–philosopher individuals. The philosopher individual would recognize the nebulous moral concept of the “greater good” and act to further that “greater good”. The philosopher individual would be self-reflective and realize that what happens to the powerless citizen could also happen to them and would ensure that the lot of the least was dignified. I think this basic dignity would be grounded in the first two levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, i.e., food, shelter, water, and safety. This philosopher individual would recognize that they are flawed and, in working on their flaws, the state would become less flawed. Thoreau said that no such state had ever existed.
Thoreau would agree that a state should not be destroyed for the benefit of the greedy few. Or that a flawed state should be destroyed to be replaced by a worse state. Thoreau spoke of a progression where the endpoint was a good state that governed for the benefit of all its citizens. However, in 2025, we see a flawed state being destroyed so that a worse state can take its place. A worse state that the past has shown to be ultimately a failed state. But this is the era of greed and ignorance. Moral beings are an endangered species. As are future thinkers.
The United States 1960s’ attempt at a more just society has failed as the white majority has used the 1960’s legislation to prop up white supremacy or the legislation has been de-fanged and is impotent. As I said before, white supremacy is zero-sum. No one can have but them and, even then, they are not happy or satisfied. The lizard brain that is dominant denies them happiness as it reacts only to fear, perceived or real.
I know that some tomato experts say it is not necessary to vine ripen tomatoes. However, yesterday, I ate vine ripened tomatoes and the flavor was full tomato. Not like the ones I ripen in the window which, to me, are somewhat flavorless. The only problem I have with the tomatoes ripening on the vine is the squirrels. I don’t know if it is scent or color that attracts the squirrels. Usually, at the first hint of red, the squirrels start to feast. So far, netting the plants has deterred the squirrels. But squirrels are tenacious. We shall see!
A river does not flow backward. Alkebulan Proverb
Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved
