Times Have Changed in 2024!

by Marc Batko

[Many translated articles and links await you at http://www.freetranslations.foundation.

Happy summer and happy reading!   marc1seed@yahoo.com]

 

Times have changed in 2024!  The global South (BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization)

has passed the G7 in GDP (gross domestic product) and population.  The neoconservative counter-

revolution and unfettered capitalism decried regulation as inimical to profit-maximization.  The common interest was captured and distorted as a special interest.  Education was downplayed as if the self-healing market would automatically remedy its needs.  Financial markets made themselves independent and took vital resources from the real economy.  Can we mend the holes in our own pockets?  Will we ever admit that "man cannot live by bread alone," that a spiritless future makes life inhuman, that the Sabbath is the crown of creation, that grace supersedes the law and that the work-religion and nonstop advertising are deceits?

How do we move from consumerism to sacramental spirituality?  How can the poor become creative and be given resources and not only empty words and promises?  How can a counter-culture alliance arise where community centers are encouraged (as in the 26 centers in Vancouver B.C.) and everyone can be creative?  Everyone who has a vision can be a teacher and a healer!

Public spirit, interdependence and community could grow by expanding community centers, schools and libraries.  Education is the great transformer, said the iconoclast economist John Kenneth Galbraith.  

Why do we think tax credits and business incentives will be a cure-all for our myriad social and psychological problems?

How did compromise and tolerance become weaknesses instead of strengths.  The US hegemony is over!  Countries increasingly turn away from the overbearing, arrogant and hostile US attitude.  The law of the stronger is the law of the jungle.  The UN Charter condemns war and threats of war.  A hubris marked the US empire since the end of World War II when only the US was unscathed.  The Project for the American Century conceived by neocons like Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Pearl and Paul Wolfowitz was the pitiful justification for the aggressive and illegal US war on Iraq.  "We are an empire and make our own reality to which all other nations must adjust," they declared.

"Whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted."  The US should follow the example of the UK that became an interdependent republic after its stint as an empire and hegemonic power.  The US wars in Vietnam, Libya, Iraq, Nicaragua and Afghanistan were all aggressive wars justified as protecting self-determination.  The Afghanistan war lasted 20 years and squandered $2.2 trillion, $300 million a day!  The media and politics looked the other way.  All the Afghan families could have been given $44K!   "When you lose control, you reap the harvest you have sown." Pink Floyd sing.  Enriching war corporations and mindlessly listening to retired generals have a perverse priority in the land of unrepentant self-righteous cowboys!

Gene Scott, a cable TV evangelist for over a decade, boasted knowing how many stones were used in every pyramid!  Faith is a matter of theology, not archaeology!  The human sciences are different than the exact sciences as experience is a different method than experiment (cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 1960, 1975).  Gene Scott and the socio-pathic narcissist Donald Trump are striking examples of false teachers and false Christs in love with themselves. 

 

Now a convicted felon, Trump amassed more debt than all US presidents combined according to MSNBC!  In his two 2017 tax heists, he gave $8 trillion to corporations and households with over one million dollars.  Proclaiming himself "the Chosen One," he said he "didn't mind being the Nelson Mandela of our time"!  In the 2016 campaign, he slandered  different women at his different rallies, called Mexicans "rapists and murderers," mocked handicapped persons, said paying taxes was "stupid," castigated Obama judges, criminal Joe, crooked Hillary, the EPA, public education, migrants and the rule of law!  Trump assaulted language and democracy and divided and ruined the country!  Instead of exposing embarrassing him, the compliant corporate media only gave him more and more platform!

The age of science and technology along with the increasing concentration of wealth has marginalized

spirituality and intercultural learning.  Wealth, an insular jingoistic media, the digital revolution , and the rise of the global South have narrowed and isolated the US.  People in the northwest know less about O Canada than the moon!  Portlanders haven't even heard of Seattle's light-rail.  We are a corporate or car-oriented country where the self-healing market, the beneficent tax-avoiding corporation, the business-oriented university and atomized or commodified individuals encourage conformist and parochial worldviews.  On the quiet, we have become servile and obsequious far distant from critical thinking and international consciousness.  Has anyone heard the warnings of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley?

In my opinion, the American dystopia is characterized by a military overreach or poisoning based on the myths of xenophobia and megalomania. a fairy-tale trust in the self-healing market. a near-complete ignorance of thefinancial markets and financialization, a neoconservative counter-revolution rebuking regulation, public investment in education, community centers and intercultural learning.  Why haven't we learned about Vancouver B.C.'s three-structure "Welcoming Center for Refugees" built in 2014 that could be a model for social integration and social peace?

A hundred years ago, Henry Thoreau urged autonomy and self-resourcefulness and said the best government was no government!  O Canada is a country without Wall Street and the Pentagon.  Vancouver B.C., blessed with snow-capped mountains, a vibrant port life and UBC, has 26 community centers with libraries, computer opportunities, game rooms, gyms, theaters, laundries, and cafeterias.  Community centers could be a third way beyond the state and the market.  All we need is an activist counter-culture and a Marshall Plan for journalism funded by progressive philanthropists or trust funds!