Shouldn't We Be Appalled?

Shouldn't we? Well, um, yes, I do think we should. Just look around us lately. Watch the news. Look at just about any social media. I know I'm appalled, and in no particular order by:

• Support for authoritarianism. Especially stupid authoritarians.
• Greed in general and especially in politics.
• Big money. 
• Conservatism, especially extremists forms.
• Did I say, Extremism?
• Religion, especially dumb ones, especially in politics. 
• News as entertainment with little concern about the consequences. 
• Racism and harm as some kind of populist activity.
• Did I say, sexism? Racism? And classism, that is abuse by the rich of the poor.
• Over concern about one's sexuality. TMI already.
• A lack of more than superficial understanding of reality by far too many if not most.
• A need to feel important by randomly killing people who have nothing to do with you or your especially ridiculous faux ridiculous issues.
• Mistakenly believing some issues are more important than actual imminent issues and ideals over real human beings.
• Presidential support for white supremacists where even speaking out against it falls hollow.
• Entertainment as news replacing news as a necessity.
• "Privileged" believing they are being persecuted.
• "Privileged" believing they are being persecuted while persecuting others.
• Drone strikes where and when innocents are harmed or killed with rationalizations for their allowance as collateral damage.
• Ridiculous support for ridiculous issues such as racism, religion and conservatism or authoritarianism. I would rather be an extreme progressive than an extreme conservative because one leads to progress and one leads to stagnation.
• Lies becoming truths when spoken loudly enough or from a great enough position of power so that they are believed.
• Such a disregard for the truth that it becomes not only utterly inconsequential but an irritant.
• Constant wars.
• War too closely associated with monetary issues and mere imperialism. 
• Corporations and money controlling so much of our reality, our government, and religions.
• Religions controlling so much of our governments and our money.
• Art and the Humanities in education so frequently being considered unnecessary when they are extremely necessary to our remaining human and humane.
• Not understanding there are and should be limits to wealth.
• Thinking that freedom of speech means freedom to speak anything, no matter how destructive or meanly intended.
• Seeing the poor, the uneducated and the homeless (for whatever reasons) as a burden and an irritant.
• Seeing immigrants especially refugees as an irritant and as criminals merely for existing.
• Finally a president who is crude, ignorant, arrogant, an utter bore and just pretty much pathetic as presidential offerings do tend to be from the Republican party. 

And of late simply too many other things....

I'm feeling like it's utterly useless. There's just too many ignorant people about, too many twisting reality and knowing it merely to serve their own superficial and selfish purposes. There's too many lies and liars, too many bullies, and far too much abuse.

Here's what I think is happening.

We (Americans) set up a country with good intent. But once we really started to think about it, things went immediately awry, plummeting downhill. It brought on the Civil War for one.

A rational description of what's going on from Christy Coleman, the black CEO of The American Civil War Museum in Richmond, VA went like this:

"I realized that an important flashpoint had been reached. We go through these cycles whenever there's forward progression on social movement and social expansion of civil rights. There's always a very violent, quick and very hot pushback. This, is how the cycle works. This is what happens when we turn history into nostalgia."

That's refreshing to hear. Rather than feeling as we have that we've suddenly gone two steps back in our social progress, it's just a temporary pause for those backward types to catch up and just let us know, it hurts them to become more mature more than it hurts most of us. Still, they do have to catch up.

Whenever we try to implement a functional version of our American ideal we get push back, we get anger, hatred and at the bottom of it all, fear, if not outright terror from those whose lives would change, who might have to give up some of their privilege which they should never have had, or shouldn't have gained on the blood and backs of others they had control over.

This seems to come from the right, from conservatives, from extremists in religion, in Christianity mostly. Odd that. Not all, just for the most part the easily frightened, greedy or ultimately ignorant ones.

In modern times here, this nearly always seems to come from Republicans.

All we have to do to stop this is to stop trying to implement America as a real and living concept and go back to simply giving lip service to what we have professed is our ideals, what has drawn so many millions to our shores. Back when we wanted them. If ever we did. Kind of like how we treat religion. And yes, even the religious.

Sometimes, I wonder though.

I guess what we have to ask ourselves is, who do we want to be and do we want to do what it takes to implement it? Because if we do, well, it's gonna hurt. It's hurting already. Just in the right claiming we're hurting them and that being so very abusive and selfish, it hurts.

In the end we could have what we have always been labeled as being:

The greatest country in the history of the world.

The question is...is that really who we want to be?

Because according to Donald J Trump and supporters, they simply don't. But then, simple minds and all....