The above picture is of my neglected compost heap. In the past, I turned it, was careful with the brown and green, added humus and water and, in return, I was rewarded with a rich soil that I added to my potted plants and raised garden beds. This year, though, there were volunteer tomato and pepper plants in the weeds, which by the way, are thriving. So, something of a win.
This Post will touch on a number of different subjects. Lately, there have been a number of articles that have made me think and I will share some with you. But as the title suggests, there is no coherent theme.
In a previous Post, I wrote about the parallels between the United States and Rome. The cited article is a good starting point for anyone who wants to know more about the fall of Rome. It’s sad that we, the people, trivialize history. If we don’t learn from our mistakes, then we will repeat the mistakes and blame everyone but ourselves for the same results as before.
Corporations should never have have been deemed “persons” with the same rights and privileges of “we, the people.” Corporations are greed machines with no moral principles to guide their actions and corporations vigorously resist any attempt to corral their actions for the good of “the people”. Which kind of leads me to the Heather Cox blog cited below. This country, in the minds of the privileged, has never been for or by the people. This country was meant to be a wealth making machine for a favored few. And the favored few intended to make that wealth off the labor of Slaves and workers who would be paid pennies for their labor. And the workers would be content because they would be uneducated, wedded to a religion which preached suffer now for eternal peace/wealth after death, deflected to hate others as the cause of their woes, and crabbing to be the one favored by the few.
I read a story written by James Baldwin in 1960. He wrote about the same issues that we speak of today. And that was sixty plus years ago. Hearts haven’t changed. Hearts seems to have hardened. These hardened hearts are responding the same as the hearts of hate did. Laws changed for a blink of an eye and those laws did not scratch the surface of the underlying mindset that permeates this country.
The Postal Service’s mission is to provide the nation with reliable, affordable, universal mail service. The basic functions of the Postal Service were established in 39 U.S.C. § 101(a): “. . . to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It [the Postal Service] shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities.” Mission statement set forth on USPS’s home page:
I don’t know about you, but, here in the city where I live, the blue boxes are disappearing. First, the slots were narrowed to accept only letters. More and more, one heard about the mail being stolen from mailboxes…I mean more so than before. Now, mail personnel are being held up at gunpoint. I sent a Christmas card to an address and, in March, I sent a letter to the same address. It was returned as “undeliverable” about a month later. Seems like the designation of the road as a rural route had changed. Why wasn’t it delivered? In the past, I think it would have been since the Post Office would have notice of the change (change that it initiated?) and the person who sorted the mail would have written the change on the envelope.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/05/robert-jones-interview-book/ I’ve long known that evangelical christians are hypocrites. I think of the persons who switch political parties. Those people are the most rabid followers and excusers of the party to which they now profess loyalty. The more christian evangelicals profess their belief, the less they practice biblical christianity. Look at the sex scandals, the money scandals…these people lack integrity and any hint of christian values. However, in their minds, the Bible wasn’t meant for them. The Bible was meant as a tool to temper the rage of an exploited people. The exploited are meant to believe in and to follow the Bible’s tenets, while the exploiters have no constraints on their behavior.
You know the current Tennessee legislature reminds me of a group of toxic entitled white males trying to reinvent a toxic time that exists in a fevered imagination that has little basis in reality. This legislature refuses to listen to the concerns of the people, even those who elected them, because some god has anointed them as saviors of a society that exists solely in their imagination. They exhibit the rage of toddlers who didn’t get all the ice cream at a birthday party to which they weren’t invited. No one has a voice but white males. They’re racists but they don’t want to appear to be racist. I’m sure you’ve heard the legislator who said the failure to expel the white woman when they expelled the two black males made them look like racists. So, there’s the performative aspect to their racism. Democracy to them means white power.
One definition of democracy is “a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives”. So, the answer, in my opinion, to the article cited below is no…Tennessee is not a democracy as it is not governed by the whole population through their elected representatives. Shutting off a duly elected legislator’s microphone so that they cannot speak has silenced part of the population. Ejecting duly elected legislators from the legislature for speaking on behalf of a segment of the population is antithetical to democracy.
Tennessee and Oregon…you’d think there would be a difference in attitude, but the two states are more alike than different, even though the two states are over two thousand miles apart. White supremacists are moving here and making their presence known at all levels of government. I saw where the Proud Boys were at a morning prayer before the special legislative session began. One can only wonder what god they were praying to. The white supremacists have alway been here, but now they are loud and proud of their evil intent and in their evil actions. The below cited article is about Portland, Oregon, but it could also be about Tennessee.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Labels Have you heard of No Labels? I had not. My sister was approached in a parking lot by a member. Seems like its a political party that might run a candidate for the presidency in 2024. From what I read on its web site and Wikipedia, I don’t see any difference between it and the two main political parties. It is another political party that is not for or by the people. It appears to be another party wedded to corporate interests. (Political parties talk the warm fuzzy talk, but where their money comes from is what is important.) Do we really need another party whose goal is to transfer the people’s wealth to corporate interests?
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