Random thoughts on a disheartening election
I don’t know who will be worse for the country, only that the citizens of USA will lose the election and unfortunately many world citizens too. Climate change is necessarily the most pressing concern for all of humanity and neither of the two leading candidates have addressed this concern in anything but a cursory fashion if at all. Both are likely to exacerbate the immediate and long term problems and consequences of climate change. Both major candidates are likely to lead us into a deeper state of perpetual war. War and militarism are the number one degrader of the environment without exception. Water wars are clearly on the horizon if not already engaged in and food shortages will soon follow. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power are also extraordinary problems which neither candidate is likely address with a comprehensive nuclear disarmament plan. In fact all the needs to be done is for each country one to unilaterally disarm.
We no longer have a coherent cultural narrative nor a viable sense of reality. More simply put, I don’t have a sense of reality, cannot discern fact from fiction and find the world I live in fractured, fantastical and threatening. The triplets, racism, militarism and excessive materialism named by Dr. King in Beyond Vietnam, reign supreme and the continuous assault on our civil liberties make needed and thoughtful dialogue more difficult. The media has been bought and sold and is more likely to confuse than educate, misinform than tell the truth. Fear as a mechanism of control has been come a cherished mainstay of governmental control with all of us are under surveillance.
I am frightened. Our government is wildly out of control, dangerous and without the capacity of self examination, reflection or self consciousness. What little remains of our democracy can only be restored from the bottom up with the ordinary citizen refusing to follow the folly and horror served to us daily. All of us must resist this downward spiral into the abyss where Death waits indifferently.
I will vote Jill Stein on election day. I have met her and know her to be a remarkably intelligent and compassionate individual who has worked for the common good and continues to preserve in spite of all of the obstacles. As a thinking and caring person I could not possibly vote for either of the major candidates.
Love provides our only chance for survival along with the profound understanding that we are, despite the imagined divisions and numerous distractions, one people. While recognizing I have offered little hope in these random and quickly assemble thoughts, I affirm to you, I will not give up and continue to commit acts of love, kindness and truth. I will be a serial peacemaker, respect others and refrain from violent behavior. I encourage you do the same.
We must and will carry on for our children, the world and its creatures and for the sake of Love.
John Amidon is president of the Veterans for Peace chapter 10. You can see him in action here and here.
Eerder verscheen: Poised by James Séamus Knight
