For those of you who would read the words that follow, or any that have come before, and call me a socialist/communist, chances are good you wouldn’t know a real socialist/communist if it fed you and healed you from illness. Though some are passionately angry about the communist militarism used in the cases of Russia, China, Venezuela, and other dictatorships wagging the flag of socialism/communism, they often ignore the relatively successful, and less violent, attempts at socialism, such as Sweden, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and our neighbors Canada. While these still aren’t perfect systems, which many humans believe are impossible anyway, I am quite certain that our current system of capitalism/republicanism doesn’t seem to be fairing much better.
While we may have the biggest military in the world and more choices of everything and anything than we know what to do with, our system is also turning us into the most unhealthy, overweight, overworked, entitled, embattled willfully ignorant, fearfully motivated, selfish, nativist, ridiculous, ridonculous, consumerist, pollutionist collection of blowhards on the planet. Just look at the man travelling around the world representing who we are. Though we also have our good side, as I’m sure even our current commander in chief does, continuing to ignore the gaping abyss of apathy, ignorance, inequality, and intolerance that our present system perpetuates is rather difficult.
The system rich white men have been developing over the last 240 years has culminated in a military program bigger than the next seven countries combined, which has culminated in a society somewhat obsessed with violence and conflict. Many of us are convinced that any kind of sharing and trust in your fellow man is counterintuitive as people are all selfish and will essentially screw you over to improve their own lot, and so we somehow feel it’s better to double down on a system that is entirely based on that presupposition. I think humankind can actually be better than this system allows.
While many are quick to cling to national pride and merely exclaim “America is the greatest nation in the world!” and “Make America Great Again” in the same illbegotten philosophy, I’m a bit more of a pragmatist and have to consider the actual reality of the situation beyond nativist pride. For one thing, I learned early on that pride comes before a fall and is not a virtue to be too highly cherished. Secondly, from the essence of wisdom I have gleaned from my history in Christianity, as well as my circuitious excursions into Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Islam, Paganism, and a number of other spiritual practices, it seems that the current practices of the Unites States government under the influence of the capitalist/republican idiology are the antithesis of everything I have gleaned from every teacher that has ever actually garnered my respect.
If I were a religious man, I could say that supporting the United States government was against my religion. Unfortunately, I don’t adhere to doctrine or dogma and am left to merely stand out here on my own to say that while I am American in heritage, I cannot be supportive of its governing body. It is merely too violent, too indulgent, and too apathetic toward the actual will of and care for its people.
Now that our president has been convinced by the Republican Party to abandon the Paris Treaty and ignore any discussion of climate change science in order to continue in the burning of fossil fuels into power instead of investing in the less expensive and more sustainable solutions available, this organization has become an enemy to life on the planet. They have forsaken the responsibility of citizenry in order to increase their profits. In their dizzying myopia, they have turned their backs on common sense to continue embracing money as the most important aspect of life.
This is not to say that the Democratic Party is not complicit as well. For as much as they pay lip service to social justice and environmental protection, the Democratic Party is little more than the other hand of the oligarchy, ensuring that those who actually seek a true democracy are guided back to the fold of capitalist/republicanism. It may very well be that the only thing worse for human freedom and life on Earth than the Republican Party is the Democratic Party.
Ultimately, the two party system is a mockery of democracy, with the last election offering us only the choice between a warhawk that enables the misguided direction of the billionaire class or an actual misguided billionaire. This system of incessent competition has also affected, or perhaps has been created through, the extreme dual classifications of liberal and conservative, right and left, and winners and losers. To continue to enable this system seems to me to be the most treasonous act one could make against this country. Not only does this system seek to extract as many natural resources as it can in order to turn them into impermanent electronic dollars, but they also seek to extract every ounce of energy from their citizens without even providing them with the basics of life. Considering the current character of all three branches of the US government, it it stands against of any of my remaining religious beliefs and my personal philosophy to enable it.
I recognize the worth of freedom of choice, but this system does not offer me the ability to choose things that I actually care about. It only really offers me the choice regarding the degree to which we will incite violence and the expediency of economic catastrophe and environmental degradation. I simply cannot support this capitalist/republican regime.
I understand that it may make me a bad American, yet I choose to focus my energies on merely being a better man without having to beat my chest and declare pride in a faltering and foolish system. Besides, although I do appreciate many of the benefits that have been developed throughout these steps of our evolution under the name of Amerigo Vespucci, in my research of the man, he never did a lot that truly inspired me anyway. To be honest, while I recognize the role these ideas of “country” and “state” have played in the development of our society, I don’t really believe they are actual things, but merely perpetuated concepts that have outlived their necessity.
I would rather stand as my own country and be the leader of my own state as the Goodwill Ambassador of the Autonomous Nation of Stevetopia. As a true free market capitalist that realizes the value of developing a society that appreciates the role of true community, it would be unwise to enable the capitalist/republican organization with full knowledge that they are going to foolishly squander whatever money I may give them on pursuits I don’t want them to engage in while ignoring the issues that actually mean something to me. I believe one day we will all realize a better way, and that day for me is now.
