WESTMINSTER — I woke up on the morning after the Women's March and rallies with genuine gratitude toward Donald Trump and his supporters, who have shown us - in Technicolor, on a jumbotron screen - something that has been operating in this country and around the globe for several centuries.
For eight years we liberals have been lulled and cooed into a false sense that the direction of this country either “is not too bad.” Or that it “will get better' or “at least some things are going in a good direction, we hope.”
But now, the mask is off the villains, and the ugliness of our policies is blatant, in our faces.
This is good.
It is good because people of conscience, people who care about humans and the Earth, are now awake to the scale of the problem and to the direction that our country and our world must take.
We must move toward a nation and a world where we take care of people and planet.
We now live in a country and a world where the same silent mantra is repeated in every hall of government, finance, and power - a silent mantra that is killing us.
What is that mantra?
It is: “Profit over people and planet.”
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Profit over people and planet has been made into law in our country, a country founded on liberty and justice for all,a country where the pursuit of happiness has turned into the pursuit of corporate profits.
The U.S. legislature, in particular, is no longer concerned about the “general welfare,” as it is directed in the U.S. Constitution, but it busies itself instead with carrying out the bidding of wealthy campaign contributors in order to funnel all the goodness and happiness and beauty and money to the very top of the food chain, where clearly it does not trickle down to the citizens.
We have locked ourselves into a system of corporate law that requires corporations to prioritize profit to shareholders, no matter the cost to the Earth or to humans.
This is so wrong. It is wrong, it is suicidal for the whole planet, and it must be changed at the root.
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To have the strength and clarity to pull out this evil at the roots, we must first understand that the weeds are killing the whole garden where we all live.
We must understand the cause of the suicidal direction of our culture.
And we must transform into a culture that takes care of all people and the planet.
It is not enough to worry and wring our hands about homelessness and the astronomical cost of health care and empty towns with rampant drug and alcohol addiction.
Worrying about it is not enough. We must take care of our people and our environment, in all senses of that active verb.
We need to organize ourselves, our government, and our communities around taking care of one another and the environment. This radical shift will affect everything.
If we are in a mindset of taking care of people and planet, the concept of endangering our underground fresh water supply by intentionally pumping millions of gallons of toxins into our underground aquifers - in a process known as fracking - is unthinkable. Suicidal.
If we are in a mindset of taking care of people and planet, then of course we stop building oil pipelines because they endanger the health of people and planet in a multitude of ways. Again, it is suicidal.
If we are in a mindset of taking care of people and planet, we do not allow our government to make money from student-loan debt. We don't allow anyone else to make money from it, either.
How shortsighted it that? Do we not, as a country, wish to have well-educated young people? Our current system wants to make big profits from every debt - even student debt.
This is crazy.
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If we are taking care of people and planet, perhaps we provide free higher education for all of our young people who want it. Perhaps we also put a stop to usury in the form of exploitative credit-card practices.
If we are in a mindset of taking care of people and planet, we take care of our veterans, we provide homes and health care for homeless people, food for the hungry, and maternal and paternal leave when a baby is born.
We take care of our infants and their parents. We care about the health of families and children, not merely about fetuses.
What is going on here?
Is it not clear to people that the anti-abortion movement is funded by right-wing billionaires who simply want votes for right-wing candidates whom they own so that those candidates can make laws favoring the financial interests of their owners? Is this not transparent?
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So I implore you: do not seek to tinker with Obamacare to make it a little bit easier for people to send their money to insurance companies. No. Scrap it.
Do not tinker with the Farm Bill to make laws a little bit better for organic farmers while funneling vast sums to chemical agri-biz that kills our soil. No. Pull out the root of the cancer, but know that it must be replaced with a system of thinking that is not suicidal - a system that actually prioritizes caring for people and planet over corporate profits.
With every year breaking the previous year's temperature records, we are clearly on an accelerating suicidal course, brought about by the misconception that humans are separate from nature, separate from one another, separate from the divine.
We are not. We are One Living Being, and it is time to really get that. We cannot afford the time to depose the despot and replace him with another leader who is also beholden to the Old Thinking - the thinking of alienation, domination, profit over people and planet.
That way is suicidal. Is that what we want? Do we wish to continue on our suicidal course?
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When we change our thinking from “let's rape and pillage the environment, hoodwink the voters, and gather all the spoils at the top” over to “let's see the beauty of the whole, take care of our living planet and all of its precious inhabitants,” solutions to our environmental and social problems will become obvious and myriad. They are out there, but we are not paying attention because we are blinded by the Old Way of thinking.
There's a lot of power in the inertia behind the Old Way, the Old Suicidal Way. Inertia will kill us in the same way it kills with lung disease the two-pack-a-day smoker who just keeps puffing away, or the heavy drinker with cirrhosis who really likes his cocktails. They can't change because in their way of thinking, they have always done it that way.
Habits.
Our addictive habits of thought are literally killing our planet, as well as our citizens, our precious humans, our precious animals, and our precious Living Earth.
She is in trouble.
We are in trouble.
It is widely known that the Chinese character for “crisis“ is “danger plus opportunity.” The “danger” part we already know about. The opportunity is to transform our selves and our world into a harmonious, happy place.
This transformation can only happen if we change our belief from “the right to exploit” to “taking care of the whole.”
Can we do this?
I say we try.