What are we worried about?

I mean this not in the sense of “why worry? everything’s gonna be fine.” Though, of course, everything is going to be fine, from a backed-off perspective and all that. But in the meantime, for our children and our grandchildren and those future generations to whom our concerns should be directed if we wish to consider ourselves decent human beings and legitimate passers-on of the torch of dwellers on the Earth, things are pretty much going to shit in a hurry.

And, of course, yes. I’ve been saying this for a while and I probably will keep saying it… but truly, things do seem to be accelerating that downward spiral. And not only that. Yes. Not only that. The things we really should be concerned about are changing so fast that most of us are spending a lot of time worrying about and perhaps even working on things that don’t really matter any more.

Not that I’m abandoning progressive causes, but really, much of the progressive movement, and ALL of the liberal movement, is just pretty much irrelevant to the real issues in the world today.

We are so focused on the insanity and absurdity in the White House and the whirlwind of stupidity it generates that we probably are missing what we really should be concerned about. I’m not suggesting conspiracy here, but in effect, the Trumpification of amerika is 99% distraction. For example, whether or not he collaborated with the Russians is irrelevant, really. A lot of progressives are so captivated by the media storm on this issue that they seem not to see that EVERYONE tried to manipulate that election, and sorting out who did what is probably impossible.

The real problem now is that liberals and progressive alike are being manipulated into anti-Russian stances that further destabilize the world and play into the hands of the military and intelligence people who want a good excuse to vilify the Russians. I mean, I despise Putin but he’s not so much worse than say Bill Clinton that I would start World War III over his shenanigans. They — the war-monger element, whoever they are — are trying to push U.S. public indignation over it all into the same mind-set that Bush and Company generated to justify invading Iraq and later Afghanistan and whoever else we can fuck with in the interests of the oil-igarky.

This latest article from Caitlin Johnstone, the Aussie I read on Medium, is just another example of how things are going deeply wrong and it’s pretty much gonna be totally irrelevant what party is in power or even what ideology the ruling class professes.

We are controlled worldwide by this Empire that transcends parties, states, ideologies — and becomes just pure power.

Caitlin points out some of the specifics of this, and though I think she may be a little over the top on some of it, certainly calls into question the current paradigm of progressive resistance. If we intend to preserve some space in the world for open-minded, skeptical thought and a radical approach to living on the planet, we have to stay current. That means spending a lot of time slicing up false pinàtas is probably a waste of energy.

The most important thing we can do right now is step back from all the old ideas of what the world is like and look really closely at everything without a preconceived notion of what and who is right or deserves attention and support.

It’s not an easy time. It may be critical. This could be our last window for making positive change.