Monday, July 18, 2016

Our Worldwide Carpetbaggers - Saudi Arabia, ISIS and Trump

Loyalty. Something that has become archaic now a days. It suffers because of profit, because of corporate thinking...profit of die. It suffers because of confusion for what direction, what level, that it should be aimed toward. Confusion from a lack of education, information, an ability to ascertain reality.

I'm going a bit off the deep end here, but hang in here with me. In fact, now that the RNC is on this week, and considering the hate speech of the speakers like Chris Christie, Dan Savage pointed out Wednesday night (Dan Savage Compares RNC Hillary Hate To Rhetoric Before Yitzhak Rabin Assassination) on a special edition of Real Time with Bill Maher that this kind of thing was done to Yitzhak Rabin years ago in Israel too, just before someone shot and killed him.

OK. Here we go.

Trump says we're losing to ISIS. I say we're losing with Trump.

But then Trump isn't very bright, except where it comes to promoting himself. One person said his father had dealings with him years ago and after the meeting said it was obvious Trump hadn't at that time, read a book in twenties years.

Now he's just an old, bloated twit who would have been one of the first carpetbaggers and scalawags to have entered the South after the Civil War had he lived back then. Those confidence men from the north who back then had been hated by most of those whom now are his supporters.

Carpetbaggers are defined as such:
- a political candidate who seeks election in an area where they have no local connections.
- (in the US) a person from the northern states who went to the South after the Civil War to profit from the Reconstruction.
- a person perceived as an unscrupulous opportunist.

Some may have had good intentions but so many didn't, it set a new standard for what is an individual of low integrity. Kind of like people like Trump, or Cruz, Newt Gingrich or, well...there's a lot of them anymore in the zombie Republican party that no longer as anything whatsoever to do with the party of Abraham Lincoln.

"During and immediately after the Civil War, many northerners headed to the southern states, driven by hopes of economic gain, a desire to work on behalf of the newly emancipated slaves or a combination of both. These “carpetbaggers”–whom many in the South viewed as opportunists looking to exploit and profit from the region’s misfortunes–supported the Republican Party, and would play a central role in shaping new southern governments during Reconstruction.

"In addition to carpetbaggers and freed African Americans, the majority of Republican support in the South came from white southerners who for various reasons saw more of an advantage in backing the policies of Reconstruction than in opposing them. Critics referred derisively to these southerners as “scalawags.”

Carpetbaggers were men who arrived in the south after the Civil War with their bags, luggage made from carpets, who proceeded to rip people off for their own benefit. Taking advantage of others with no concern for them whatsoever and therein earned the only honest thing they did, a reputation for being some of the vilest people in the world.

And yet, Trump supporters cannot see that in him. That is as stunning as things he has said, things that are blatantly said only for the purpose of getting him into office, of winning, at potentially any, and all costs. As long as he doesn't get caught. But maybe he will. Some of the court proceeding against him are very unsettling.

Like those scalawags of old, Trump lies. He says what you want to hear like a true confidence man. Then he will take what he wants and be damned how it leaves you, leaves us all, in the end. Trump is in this to win, regardless. With no concern or respect for his actions, other than to win. A very archaic, outdated way of doing politics and one that needs to die a quick and painful death. One that it seems to be doing in the zombie Republican Party as they continually eat their own.

What was once a highly despicable type of person has somehow to our conservative brothers and sisters, become a revered and supported one. One spiraling out of control toward the office of president of the United States, the most powerful position in the world. These new (Republican) carpetbaggers aren't just after money as were those in the old days. They're not just after power. They're after ideological power.

From the outside Islam seems in many countries to be afraid of their own religion, their own people. They do not seem to believe in fighting other Muslim countries even when they are bad people (ISIS, Boko Haram, etc.), or they would have policed their own Middle East by now. They fear enforcing laws doing what they claim they are trying to do, what they say they want to do, in order to stop these kinds of practices. And yet it all continues.

But the women are fighting back. Someone there has finally had it. They are risking their lives and but affecting changes themselves. And they may succeed.

You would think people would have more sense, would feel more responsibility, would want for more than just their own selfish, petty beliefs and desires. But no. That is not who they seem to be. That is our new World Conservative.

Extremists and proud of it. They are a disease and we need to irradiate it and inoculate against their arising ever again. They have used religion as the agar in a Petri dish to grow their suffocating, flesh eating bacteria within, but then have moved out into pure terrorism.

Like the stock traders of the 80s these people all still think, "Greed is good", a mantra we should all take to heart and concern. Yet that has proven to be the definition of insanity. Not for the individual but for the whole of humanity. And for our nation. Seeking greed (of money, power, control over women, etc.), destroys and yet, they think they can build a nation, or a religion on it. But you can't. If you do, you are building it on a house of cards. Cards made of an unstable material.

Trump has convinced his people and then as he knew they would, they have convinced themselves (and truth be told, Trump, oddly enough too). He has shown that displays of idiocy such as his are more valued than that of common decency, real knowledge, and the wisdom to use it appropriately. Not just for their group's "benefit" but for all.

If you don't believe any of this, then I would suggest taking in several things right here right now.

A Frontline special titled, Saudi Arabia Uncovered (S34E5 - 2016).
Washington Post, Inside ISIS: Quietly preparing for the loss of the ‘caliphate’.

An NBC News report, Donald Trump Lays Out Foreign Policy Plan, Including How to Fight Terrorism (March 26, 2016):
"If elected, Trump told the Times he might also halt the purchase of oil from Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies because they've been unwilling to send their troops in on the ground to fight against ISIS despite efforts by President Barack Obama to have them join a U.S.-led coalition.

"Hours after the interview was published, the former head of Obama's Auto Task Force, Steven Rattner, tweeted that Trump "has no idea how oil market works. We take only about 10% of what Saudi Arabia produces."

Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producer in the world. While Trump is after money and power the royal Saudi family and friends are after power and ideological control. All while a quarter of the Saudi people are in poverty. Poverty they said they'd get a handle on in a few years, which has now long passed.

Still, with the change in oil commodities worldwide and new sources of energy, it's projected Saudi Arabia could go bankrupt within five years. Then what? It won't be pretty.

They are a highly welfare state. While their oil fields are worth trillions of dollars, their monetary reserves are shrinking. With war in Syria and Yemen, their money is further dwindling and they still have far too much poverty.

Their issue is in supporting Sharia Law and the mindset of many of its people. A mindset that is exported to the world at large, and to terrorist types in particular. It is surely a complicated issue, but one we ourselves as a nation need to get under control to our satisfaction and the world's, in dealing with them, and with their continued existence.

They have religious police who shout things such as, "You can only find peace and joy in God." They do this while curbing individual freedoms, individual's choices in life. There are prejudicial teachings in their schools that say among other things, Christians should be killed.

Any religion that requires people to go around and enforce their religion is really no religion at all. If a people cannot choose on their own what their religion and intensity within that religion should be, then it goes against the concept of free will and so devalues any attempts by others, by religious police, for that religion to be viable or potentially, anything other than anti-human. Certainly it is anti-humane.

It is a mindset that has in part spawned those such as ISIS whose so called caliphate this year has shrunk so far by 12%. If we are to kill ISIS, we cannot avert our eyes from Saudi Arabia. We can no longer ignore the applications world wide of Sharia Law, of misogynistic religious laws, or ancient and foolish beliefs systems, all simply because people hold these beliefs so dearly and as such an intricate part of themselves and their identity.

Extremism needs to be killed when and wherever it shows it's ugly head. Not all forms of extremism are bad to be sure. But when it is exposed to be, it needs to be addressed and dealt with accordingly.

I welcome people to practice their delusional or disillusionment, even their silly beliefs, their ancient religious practices, as long as first and foremost they treat all people as human beings and not just those of their special class. In allowing them to continue, in not doing SOMEthing to dilute and dissemble such beliefs in our own country and worldwide, we have given a nod and a smile to the incessant proliferation of these types of beliefs.

IF you say your religion is not as we see it is in practice, then what is it about your religion that is allowing these things to happen and when will it be rectified? It requires speaking out against at least that form of your religion, to get it under control, to bring those people doing bad things up to modern times. That means picking and choosing better, for yourself, and for those bad people abusing your religion, what is truly important from your ancient religious beliefs and books whatever it is you should be doing and in what you shouldn't.

In my mind a true religion would not allow for people to misinterpret it.
I would argue then, there are no true religions. Just, religions.

We too are responsible and will continue to be as long as we support this ubiquitous stupidity, selfishness and sectism in governments. Including even our own.

Electing elitists and fascists such as Trump are the antithesis of any kind of rational answer. But that would take people voting who are compassionate for the right reasons, using actual wisdom to see beyond their own pettiness, beliefs and desires.

We ARE however getting a handle on ISIS.

Once ISIS falls, for the time being they are going to go underground like cockroaches, become harder, smaller, to deal with. Until we get a handle on not just ourselves, but also on how our government deals with foreign governments like Saudi Arabia, people like Trump and his conservative followers and the Republican zombie party at large are going to have to be dealt with. Dissembled and dispersed. That way of thinking has to be put into the ground, irradiated, salted, fired, and sterilized.

We are America!

Let's make that mean what it should and get back on our rational and useful track. For us. For the world. If we are to continue as a world leader we need to lead. Not business as usual, but business as inspiring as we can make it. We need to be progressive, inclusive, strong, and persevere to see it all one day finally, functional for all. But that means many of that all will need to adjust their beliefs also.

Conservatives fear change. That they will have to change. Let the others change they say. We all however have to change. And that, is OK. I'm OK, you can be OK. But it's a two sided coin. Flip it, and we are both involved. Try to force which side is up, and you are a fascist and you therefore ARE, the enemy. The enemy of Humankind.

Don't be our enemy. Be our friend. Work with us. Stop working against us. Work against the system, not against the people. Work against stupid beliefs, work for beliefs that serve Humankind. And if you believe in God, then it would be working toward God, because as you are taught, he created all things.

If people are going to hate America, let it be only those the entire world wants to see dispensed with.

Then the rest of us will be able to get along with living our lives together, in safety, in prosperity, and in a way that all may pursue happiness for themselves and their loved ones.

Let's put the Scalawags and Carpetbaggers of the world, of our nation, in their place. Prison. If not a prison of the body, then a prison of their mind, their actions and their power and money.

This planet is for us, The People. Not a few wealthy, powerful, religious, or terrorists.

We are the World. Let our feet march on them, trample them into dirt so that we can grow things for everyone and not just those who are bullies enough, terrorists in action and politics enough, to frighten us into submission.

Just as happened this weekend in Greece when the people came out flooding into the streets of Istanbul, overwhelming the military junta's soldiers with masses of people supporting their elected government, we have to take control. Through our voices, our votes, our calls to freedom. To a freedom that is real freedoms and not just words. Human Rights. Civil Liberties. Women's and minority rights. People's rights.

They say a con man, a confidence man, can only work his magic to steal what you have by relying on your own innate greed, ignorance and stupidity. Don't be that guy or woman.

All is not hopeless. Hope is truly everywhere. We just have to apply it. We just have to help.

And have Loyalty. To ourselves, to our people, to our entire human race.

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