"GARBAGE-IN/GARBAGE-OUT"

"Facing REALITY" ??

 

We pretend to be shocked and alarmed in this country when  we contemplate the dangerous and sad condition of our military forces; the gun violence of inner-city youth; the gun violence of white male middle class youth  ... the list grows.  This is "garbage" thinking that produces more garbage.

 

Rape is as "American" as the history of this part of the planet over the past 500 years.  It's all about striving for power and personal advancement over everyone else (including family members)!  This facet of the history of the United States is its most enduring one.  The ready-made, designed-in victims were the natives and the African slaves dragged to these shores.  The victim population has, over the past half-millennium, been expanded to include anyone any rapist thinks is weak in some way.  Technology has enhanced the reach and power of the rapist.  Rape has escaped confinement to the human body; and has expanded to include financial and employment practices of "business".  HR (Human Relations organizations within corporations) may have become the current instrument of choice, for "rape", in more serious manifestations?  Think in terms of age discrimination (ever-lowering age), single-parent workers, racial and other social discriminators,  gender discrimination, and sexual-orientation.  As their power grows, corporations will expand farther the list of the "weak"!  The Rapist may hail from any place on the planet.

 

We saw an earlier version of this movie during the 1920's when corporate and organized crime (redundant?) interests gained full reign over the weak around the globe.  We got the Depression of the 1930's as a result.  What's different today is that the "weak" are individuals; before, they were groups.

 

My summer reading includes Ira Katznelson's Fear Itself (Liveright Publishing, 2013).  My generation knew that white historians could not be trusted to tell us the truth.  That's why we sought out our "own" historians.  Katznelson quotes Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who admitted, shortly before his death, that we were right.  Trust was squandered in the lead-up to the Great Depression.  We see it happening again; by corporations and other "sacred elites" in Western governments.

 

Stay Vigilant!  Never stop "learning"!

 

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