The T-party fanatics continue to toss long-time Republicans aside. It is any one's guess when the time will come to admit that the GOP has been completely converted into the party of religious - corporate lunacy; but it must be close (if it isn't here already). The doctrines of the T-party, religious extremism and exclusivity, not-so-subtle racism and xenophobia, class warfare and exploitation of labor and resources, unrelenting fear mongering, war and the unrestrained hatred of nearly everyone for nearly any reason, are the very politics that have lead to the decline and fall of civil society and democracy. The idea that more of the same will somehow salvage the future of the USA as a political entity in the world is like thinking that a 5-pack a day smoking habit will cure a case of 3-pack a day, stage 4 lung cancer. It probably can't make the prognosis any worse - imminent death is imminent death - but it certainly won't make it any better.
If there was some hope that the USA could be cured the T-party would never have moved to a place of prominence in either party. Rather it would have remained like the KKK or the American Nazi party; loud, ugly, an embarrassment to any thinking human being, but basically inconsequential in the large scheme of things. That the T-party has moved to a place of prominence and influence is a symptom of the disease, like the fluid filling the lungs of our cancer patient. It suggests that the illness has about run its course and final arrangements should be made.
T-party types love to howl that they are trying to save America, and if America somehow fails to elect them to power it will be the end-of-the-world. They also like to hint that, should Americans not be smart enough to realize that T-party lunacy is the only hope, taking the reins of power by force would be truly patriotic on their part. They are wrong on all counts.
Their definition of a "saved" America is a Christian / Corporate / Military machine that rules the world, and American citizens, with blunt forced trauma. It will never come to pass. Doctrine pure religion, including Christianity, is an illusion that is failing all of its own. Corporations are very good at some things, but ruling isn't one of them. No group of people, no matter how affluent, can afford a military machine that can conquer the world. The world is not so easily ruled, and not all American Citizens are so easily cowered. The America the T-parts dreams of creating would be a nightmare. The effort to build such a place is guaranteed to fail.
The failure, however, will not be the end of the world. After all, the land isn't going anywhere. Many, maybe even most, of the people are going to survive. From the ashes of the failed experiment that was the United States of America something different, maybe even something new, will rise. What ever happens will be chaotic of course, rebirth always is. But that is the way evolution works. There has never been an Internet before, never been near universal translations that will soon allow pretty much any person on the planet to chat with any other person. Though there are still a lot of secrets around, there are not as many as there once where. Any thing that any person learns or knows can soon be known by nearly everyone else. Never in the course of human history have we built a civilization with that kind of capability. Put bluntly, we don't know how to do it and are mostly along for the ride as it evolves.
Clearly the forms of civilization that evolved before will not fit in this new environment. Top-down power structures, (which is the definition of most religions, corporations, governments and tyrants) simply can't survive. There will be no air for them to breathe, no land which will support their weight, no food to keep them alive. Conservatism, as back-lit by the T-party, is terrified and angered by this encroaching doom. The anger, hatred, and endless allusions to violence give evidence to their fear. And to some degree it is completely understandable. Surly the Doe-doe bird, if it could, would have rebelled against the changes that lead to its extinction. Top-down power structures are the Doe-doe birds of society's evolution; current America (as well as much of the world) is built of top-down power structures.
See it unfold. The power structure goes ape-shit crazy over gay people. They decry the end of civilization, pass idiot laws defining "marriage" (a miniature top-down power structure of its own that is in rapid decline), and think that somehow that will turn back the tide of civilization's evolving knowledge that gay is not evil, it isn't a choice, and that it isn't the gay people who are doing harm, it is those who hate gay people and insist on the right to tell other people how to live and who to love. If the polls are to be believed, 50% of the people in America have figured this out, which points to the coming extinction of the T-party types and religious dinosaurs. Another clue? Just a few dozen years ago no one even talked much about gay rights and homosexuality; it was a completely hidden issue. Now? All over the world civil societies (Which even includes parts of the USA - how amazing is that?) are granting full civil rights to the gay community.
Civil rights for, and the empowerment's of, women, follow a similar path. Though the sad reality is that women are still routinely abused over much of the planet, that abuse gives way as societies encounter education and...well, truth. Catholic and Islamic ideology are particularly guilty of mistreating and oppressing women; and I suppose they will continue to do so as long as women continue to cling to those religions. (That women remain Catholics or Muslims is one of the real mysteries in the world.) Overall though, I think it is safe to say that the fairer sex has made up a lot of ground over the last few hundred years, and this in the face of the violence and abuse visited upon them by virtually every religious tradition.
According to the people who run the organizations, organized, doctrinally driven religions, are shedding followers at an alarming rate. At least it is alarming for those making a living from such organizations. But what they see as humanity loosing its way I see as humanity shaking off illusions. And that can't be anything but a good start.
What I, (and I hope there are others like me) hope is happening is the beginning of the end of any social structure whose purpose is to allow the few to impose their will on the many. And that, brothers and sisters, is a whole new world.
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