Namaste and welcome to another posting for the Quiet Mouse Strikes back. I'm happy to have you here with me today to read my thoughts and would be happy to see my readers go back and read my library of other blogs as well. For now, however, let's jump down the rabbit hole and see where this thought process takes us.
Many Americans never believed another Civil War could besiege this nation since the first one fought between the North Union and the South Confederacy over states rights vs civil unity; slavery and banking being the foremost issues.
Neither those living in the South nor those living in the North or any of the other respective states really was able to get over the late 1800's as the laws changed from Chattel slavery to a more broad approach that affected more than just blacks in physical bondage, favoring monetary debt over physical slavery, i.e. Jim Crow laws, many of which are still in existence today into our modern culture.
Jim Crow laws are national, state, and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the U.S. were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation, despite many bans against discrimination in public accommodations and voting. These laws were voted out in 1965, officially, but the effects of nearly 4 centuries of inequality have left the black communities still filled with anger: less opportunities for secondary education, less job opportunities in low-income areas, less housing opportunities outside of low-income areas, etc.
We saw first hand the results of the inequality during the pandemic as black communities and those who stood up to support them protesting out in public over high profile deaths in the black community due to racially motivated police violence that lead to murder. The BLM movement had bad marketing, I'm gonna be 100% honest about that. The grievances were real, but the message got muddled from violent actions taken by others, SEPARATE from the BLM movement that took advantage of a highly charged situation and used it for their own advantage, such as ANTIFA, the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers, among other extremist groups that have their own anti-government and anti-citizen agendas.
I live and work in the Portland Oregon metroplex and I have heard countless accounts of friends and co-workers that joined the BLM movement in solidarity to end the persecution of the black community. Jews, Caucasians, Hispanics, immigrants, and other groups all joined together to end police on citizen violence, because it is NOT JUST blacks and Hispanics being murdered by over-zealous police officers.
On a side note, this is not a post to bash on police, they are over-worked and often under-paid to deal with day in and day out the shit-show horrors of the modern American society. This is a point of reference that will be concluded later in this discourse.
As far as the BLM riots, nearly EVERY time there was an actual riot, which was NOT every time the group began a protest, FAR-RIGHT political actors and activists would show up to COUNTER-PROTEST and nearly always instigate what would later become a riot due to the back and forth fighting as racist zealots attacked peaceful protesters and their families. One clear example of this to me is one of my Jewish co-worker woman got attacked during a protest because she was white and married to a black man, standing along his side to protest the blatant inequality in prosecution of unarmed blacks by police. Thankfully she was able to escape before any great harm came to her or her husband who I will not disclose their identities due to fears of further violence from the right-wing mob. From her account, at a multi-racial peaceful protest, unmarked black vans and off-duty school buses began to unload members of the predominantly white right-wing counter-protesters that had been later reported to have came into the Portland, OR area from outlying areas like Idaho, eastern Washington, and Northern California. These individuals streamed out of their conveyances dressed in all black, wearing tactical military style gear, riot shields, and many carrying weapons. A member of the local media later did an expose to reveal that there were several members of the black-clad counter-protest mob that were later identified as off-duty Portland police officers, caught on video vandalizing local businesses so they could make case to use violent force against the BLM and ANTIFA left-leaning crowds they would later use bean bag bullets, tear gas, and use of Federal agents to arrest people off the streets, secretly into unmarked vans, all caught on tape for this expose I previously referred to.
In the years since these events, both major political ideologies have pushed further and further away from a centrist view of the United States of America. The break and ideological differences cannot be summed up so easily as the build up to the first Civil War because it is no longer about simple geographical differences being the North and South. Many of the ideological issues are still the same now as they were then, being a fundamental argument about individual rights and liberties vs. state rights to control the narrative of the populace within its' jurisdiction vs. national Constitutional rights and the greater good of the populace at large.
The REALITY is that both the Republicans AND the Democrats have for too long been courting the far extremists of their parties, respectively, PLUS decade after decade of our scam of a voting system forcing Americans to choose the "lesser of two evils" that are preselected for us, while always voting for self-serving con artists belonging to the two parties that BOTH support the ostentatiously wealthy oligarchy at the top of the pyramid scam. This is the real reason that no matter what party is in charge the rich always get richer and every generation, the wealth gap of inequity and inequality increases dramatically.
The two political extremes are the SAME ideologies that have been fighting since forever in human society, both willing to use violence and violent rhetoric to incite the public masses into fighting one another while they finance BOTH parties and their respective candidates, because no matter who wins an election, they win the game of acquisition, power, and control.
The Pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 strain of virus widened the gap between the haves and the have-nots, many Americans losing their jobs, their businesses, and their livelihoods. Some have lost their will to participate in this society and have left the job markets. Some have lost their retirement funds in the volatile markets and the bounce- back of the economy under Joe Biden has yet to be felt by struggling families that are still paying more for things like food and fuel, unfortunately, mostly due to greedflation. Many lost their benefits such as health insurance. Most are STILL trying to recover, many of whom are still working multiple jobs to make ends meet.
Meanwhile there is a narrative being put out by the media that Americans don't want to work or are just lazy or that we should just be happy because things COULD BE A LOT WORSE, always being compared to a third-world nation, with now president Donald Trump calling our nation "pathetic" while dismantling our government with the help of Elon Musk and other sycophants and "yes-men/women" in order justify the privatization of government agencies and public services.
According to the SEC or Securities Exchange Commission, corporate profits are up by over 25% across the board the calendar year of 2023. I have not yet seen the statistics for 2024, my apologies.
Meanwhile while taking in billions in profits and government subsidies paid for with our tax dollars, corporations called the workforce lazy and unmotivated, advocating for the removal of social safety nets like Social Security and Medicare. The truth is that they are only partially right. Americans don't want to work- that is, for sub-standard wages in shitty conditions only to be forced to take exploitative ill-treatment from abusive customer bases, i.e. the restaurant, service, and hospitality industries, many of whom are still required to work for substandard wages and benefits. But we should be grateful, so we are told as a society because the stock market is booming. Never mind the fact that over half of American citizens do not have the money to participate in the stock market...
The irony is palpable as the upper 1% of earners that reap over 90% of societal wealth through no hard work of their own, having a representative class of Congressional lackeys, made up Senators and Representatives, lobbyists, and lawyer, bought and paid for, to enact their own perpetuating money scheme against the true Americans, the working class and the working poo, as the laws are written to benefit their group, their class, not the masses. That makes the struggle more real for the rest of us who weren't born with a silver spoon in our mouths.
This is NOT to say that all of those with money are evil, nor all poor and working class good. There is an undercurrent in our society from top to bottom, including members of all ethnicities and social backgrounds. This undercurrent seeks to control information in order to control the narrative of society in order to keep you living IN FEAR. The billionaires want the rest of us to be fat, diseased, lazy, stupid, living in fear, and obsessed with consumerism.
Don't get me wrong, the second Civil War has already begun. We averaged nearly 52 violent homicides PER DAY last year!!! We don't perceive it as a Civil War because we have been conditioned to the historical textbook idea of men wearing different colored matching clothing fighting across a battlefield. The battlefield of this age is not just physical, but digital as well. There is a war going on EVERY SINGLE DAY on social media where the members of political affiliation and citizen representation are glorifying their biased agenda to damage the Constitution and large portions of its citizenry including the most vulnerable groups: children and senior citizens.
There have been open calls for Civil War by members of Congress (like Marjorie Taylor Greene: with rhetoric of 'national divorce') and an openly fueled insurrection on January 6th 2021 because the lies of the deep state and FOX News DEMANDED that the followers of their cult leader Donald Trump do so. Since then they have cancelled books, movies, entertainers, women's bodily autonomy and rights to medical care...
Next, in their Project 2025 manifesto, the Republicans are openly stating their intention to go after LGBTQIA+ individuals and their liberties. They want to shut down schools to force them to teach a singular religion (rather than freedom of all religions), rather than science, history, math, and language, to focus on sports rather than learning. They want to get rid of contraception and abortion, but don't want to add a single cent into the budget that would help out pregnant mothers or the child they are forced to carry, like mandatory maternal leave pay, low-cost birth (it costs over $10,000 to give birth at an American hospital), WIC, SNAP/food stamps, head start, low-cost child care while the mother has to go back to work, pre-K, free school lunches for children (which should include a salad bar in every school), etc...
For every racist, inbred, obese, Bible-thumping nitwit, there is an educated, rational, enlightened, well-meaning citizen to balance them out. The most important thing to know and understand is that the ideologies of the far right "conservatives" are dying out and going the way of the dinosaurs. They come up with clever catch phrases like "woke" to marginalize people that are sick of the lopsided system that benefits the few rather than the many. They try to ban education because it is a reminder of their own falsehoods and inadequacies, their irrational uneducated opinions that contradict facts and rational reality.
There is hope for the future because the younger generations are coming up to be more tolerant and more intelligent, finding solutions to problems created by prior generations. Sometimes that means they step away from toxic people and situations that haven't benefited them on a soul level.
Two things can be real at the same time. We can have a prosperous economy and still help those in need. The younger generations are getting it... why can't the older ones?
It took a long time for me to understand it. It will take even longer for the new mindset of coexistence and conscious living to become the norm, but that is the direction things are headed, like the currents that push the waves in the ocean. So is this shift in the current of energy on this planet.
Those that choose to hold onto the past will be left behind. Yes, unfortunately there will be people that violently try to cling onto the antiquated beliefs that comforted them in the past, but soon they will be faced with the acknowledgment that there are intelligent beings among us already. Soon the need for war will be nonexistent. It is a manufactured construct of the human mind, after all. The Earth is plentiful. We just have inadequate distribution systems that favor the rich and impoverish the poor. Poverty is a man made creation. Things like poverty and homelessness are not easy to overcome. There will always be some people who choose to live outside societal boundaries and norms. For those who wish to see the real American dream, it doesn't have to be a current nightmare. It doesn't have to be negative. There is a dying grasp on power and control. That generation built on warmongering and hoarding wealth is dying out.
I see a future where the United States returns to a land of not just opportunities, but innovation. Yes, I think we will have some rough times ahead caused by the people who are afraid of the change that has already begun. It started around 2012 and hasn't stopped. People across all walks of life are sick of the corporate greedflation. People are deciding they have had enough. Some have turned to violence. But many many more, that don't make the nightly "news", are individuals and communities coming together to improve things on a more micro level.
Despite what the dick heads in Washington DC want to believe, the true American spirit was fashioned in hard working folks coming together for a unified belief that anyone can make it with enough hard work, but it takes a village to create good people. We all have the desire to take care of the ones we love and seek that same love in return. We don't need government, the government needs us, taxpayers. Want to stick it to the man? Grow a garden, co op on a farm or plot of land. Recycle, reuse, or repair anything you can. Sew your own clothing. Fix your own car.
The point is that it doesn't have to be something major to make a major change. If everyone does a few kind things, with no expectations of reward and payment, just out of caring. Many people say that they love this country then bash on it and don't help. Change is easy to talk about, but it's difficult to break out of negative thought patterns, negative living situations. My personal experience is that I want us to succeed as a nation. Because if we have all this wealth countered by all this poverty, then are we really all that successful as a nation? And do you really think that trying to take us back to a more repressive era is somehow going to make life better? That mindset has caused major divides in our culture.
Yes, the Civil War 2.0 is already here being fought in our schools, our government, and our daily lives at home and at work, in some instances. We are forced to live, breathe, and work around others that we don't always agree with, even on basic civil issues like work environments, grocery and shopping store etiquette, driving, and taxes, for example. Yet, somehow despite all those differences, if no one starts any discord, then there won't be any discord. Communication is paramount in dealing with life. There will always be people who rub us the wrong way, ones that we can't or won't agree to disagree. Like myself for example, I think we can agree to disagree on things like fashion, sports, and food preferences. I refuse to agree to disagree on things like human rights which include things like gender rights, and other Constitution afforded rights in equality with any other group. In a perfect society I wouldn't even have to make that affirmation for those that are being excluded from living their American dream. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are our rights. The cornerstone of those rights is bodily autonomy. Without that, all other rights are meaningless. In order to restore our nation, we must become the greatness that we preach about. In order to do so, we must stop the petty fighting. We are one people, not the enemy of one another. The people trying to come here to make a better life... they are our people too. We are ALL part of the same family: homo sapiens. When we realize that when we hurt one, we hurt all, the world will understand peace. No war or violence against your fellow human is justified. We must protect ourselves, yes, but for far too long we've allowed ourselves to be the instigators and we've suffered greatly for it. Do no harm, but take no shit. Words to live by.
