If It Doesn't Touch My Skin ..

In a nutshell, if the reader does not intend to read the entire musing, the title will suggest a few reasons about what had gone wrong with a world when and where every conceivable means had been tried to manage it. This would seem like a very ambitious undertaking if it were not coming from a common sense way of looking at things as all of you have perhaps already done so. Why indeed did every form of governing that seemed to have started so well at first, always fail in the end.  Rulers and rulership have come and gone in all kinds of personas and methods over eons of time, yet, here we are, still searching for the perfect way to manage our society.  It just seems inconceivable that centuries of experience, with handed down and written histories aplenty, humanity still does not have an answer; always searching but apparently not learning even when histories keep repeating.

Indeed, why is this the nature of our world? This world - confined only to this planet, of course - is a world that by itself, without us, will do well on its own as it had so before we were here. What has gone wrong is purely because we are here to ponder, contemplate, tinker with it, complain and worry about it. And yes, over many centuries we tried every which way to make it the world we prefer. What we know so far is not only far from encouraging because it seems that the quest is a fool's errand  when in so many instances it had been shown to work  only briefly and often within the single lifetime of whoever it was who came up with what at first was a brilliant idea. There were many examples of that and we will try to illustrate a few to bring that point home.

First, let's examine stories we've written  about the universal dream because these fables and tales represent our longing for that so-called "preferred world". We had King Arthur and his Camelot. He envisioned the Round Table where gallant knights sat to deliberate on the noble ideals of chivalry and righteousness among all. But like all the tales told, remembered but soon inevitably forgotten, Camelot did not last much beyond the life of King Arthur.  The "Man from La Mancha" exemplified the now common phrase of man's "quixotic" aspirations that begin with the "impossible dream", the aim "to right the unrightable wrong". What only remains true of the inspirational song is that nations have always had to worry and forever be concerned about the "unbeatable foe" and continue to "bear the unbearable sorrow".  Biblically and scripturally from our most revered source of faith, we found inspirations that we heeded only for so long with little enduring effect. Even King Solomon could not and did not keep the  kingdom David worked so hard to establish. After "forty years in the wilderness" the generation that Moses led from bondage died off, only for the next generation to no longer remember the hardships of their ancestors.

Real life history is not too far off from the above stories. Kingdoms and empires used to change hands after existing ones became oppressive and repressive toward the people they governed.  New empires were created by those motivated with high ideals to right the wrongs but soon themselves became, in no time, the oppressors. Nobility and royalty controlled the seats of power in so many places at different times but they lasted in finite periods until the next one.  These turnovers were repeated over and over for millennia until it was no longer about one kingdom destroying another - be it just across the border or a wide swath of lands near and far - for things to change.

I would like to name three pivotal points in history that led to the modern era of power shifts when those changes originated from within and not directly from without.

First, there was the earth shaking upheaval brought on by the French Revolution in 1789. That was significant because that event was the beginning of the end of the grip of nobility or inherited powers of royalty over the people of western Europe.  But what was truly notable, though not often discussed, let alone given credit, was that the French Revolution was likely influenced by what happened in 1776 in the new world that ushered the birth of one of the greatest shifts of power that occurred at a place called America, thirteen years earlier with thirteen original states.  The American Revolution was just the motivation that the French needed to free themselves from the shackles of royalty.

Just twenty years later, the last remaining major seat of royalty that was tsarist Russia was toppled by a new ideology that was actually proposed by a German thinker who later lived in exile in London, and who died years before the 1917 Russian Revolution. Russia was rid of the grip of power from a long line of royalty, represented at that time by the Tsar.

Interestingly, Karl Marx did not preach so much against royalty as he did with great fervor against capitalism. Capitalism that Karl Marx saw developing quickly in Europe but was largely a main byproduct of the new ideology that started in America was in his mind the new seat of power that did not benefit the common man and the general community of people. He actually believed that capitalism was the new oppressor, run by the new elite - the rich.

Marxism took hold and took on a new identity that was to be communism - a better and more preferred ideological name for its solid reference to the commune of people.  Of course, Karl Marx did not really see how his ideology worked, and clearly we can't know if he would have approved it then as it was later practiced in Russia, later surrogated in China, Cuba, in satellite countries like Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and all the other eastern European countries.  

We know better today that communism, or politely labeled by its present-day proponents as socialism,  does not really work, despite the many ways it was tried. Yes, it did spread but we all know was that it was really not through peaceful means.  To soften the edges, its proponents would prefer it to be called democratic socialism.  Russia, where it begun and grew to become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), became a superpower after WWII, and lasted for just short of three generations (1922-91). It failed ultimately because it never really attained economic power. There was only so much the sword can do if not sufficiently supported by bread. Where it is still practiced today from its original textbook, Cuba - the only true last remaining communist country - is living evidence of how oppressive and repressive the ideology really is and that it is an abject failure relative to the economies of its Caribbean neighbors. But what about China?

What is an interesting footnote is that the Chinese revolution actually preceded Russia's by six years when it begun in 1911. We need to go back just a little farther back in time to see that it was in a way started as a revolution against royalty, as it was in Europe, when the last remaining Ming Dynasty was put to an end by the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), although the uprising was also anti-colonialism, anti-Christian, as it was putting an end to Chinese royalty.

China has now become both a military and economic power because it found a way to tweak the communist ideology into a hybrid of sorts. It operates its government under a communist doctrine of organization, control and enforcement but runs its economy with its own tweaked version of capitalism. Mao Zedong, if he were alive today, would have seen that the power of the sword alone was not enough until there was sufficiency in rice. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) today is a victory of the long struggle between the PRC (Mao's original People's Republic of China) and the Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai Shek.  They were the two competing factions after the revolution.  Taiwan today, an island of 24 million people, represents what the PRC, now CCP, did not fully integrate with the mainland.

So, this brings us to the other major method of governance - democracy. Although 1776 was when the new experiment began, democracy actually started as an idea many centuries earlier when Greek philosophers came up with it. In Greek,  "demokratia" comes from two words, "demos" for people and "kratia" for rule. The Greek's version did not really take hold until it was sort of revived in the new republic centuries later in another continent. "Res publica" was Latin for public interest.

The new country, more popularly called America, would like to call itself the seat of people power - the new Republic. Its leaders are elected through a means of a fair process of letting its people decide on who should lead them. More significantly, it allows for an automatic renewal of the people's choices through regularly scheduled elections.  That way the people choose to keep the leaders they like and remove those they deem to have failed in their duties. Along with that and its tight embrace of capitalism, the country prospered both economically and militarily. More significantly, it brought those two attributes to bear against oppressive regimes that brought anguish to the world in WWI and WWII. It succeeded in helping free Europe and for decades after that it led in proxy defiance against the new ideology that began in 1917 in Russia, and it is still going on today, except that a new regime from the East has become a formidable military and economic power, with its own worldly ambitions.

Today, America is vulnerable externally and internally. It must confront a widening upheaval that seems to show cracks in its union while its ability to confront global issues turned tentatively iffy at best.  What went wrong? It is a long story. And we can only focus on a handful of reasons. Causes and effects became less apparent when politics overshadowed policies,  selective grievances became louder than the  sentiments of the majority that became inexplicably silent, relatively speaking, that is.

Inherent in a democracy is unity in purpose and identity. It stems from the simple reason that it calls for a majority to choose from among the select few who will be charged with running the government.  Now, why is it that America today is apparently split in the middle?  The cracks may be identified along these fault lines: Political, Sociological, Ideological and Educational.

The Covid pandemic revealed to the parents who until then were oblivious to the slow devolution of the educational system, according to some of the analysis by those who became concerned. Coupled with what became  a very powerful teacher's union, education in public schools has become a point of contention where it should not have been otherwise.

The sociological shift in mores or the erosion of what was generally considered "socially approved norms or standards of moral and ethical behavior" as recently as just a decade or two ago had been hijacked by the so called alternative redefinition and assignment of gender identities alongside  newly invented  "woke movement" and "cancel culture" phrases  to intimidate a population into quiet submission.

Pronouns that used to be nothing more than literary tools to clarify and enhance language are now instead sowing confusion, especially those among the youth but disastrously more so among the older generation.  Example: Alice elected to use "they" and "their" as their personally preferred neutral pronouns.  So, Alice chose ice cream at a pool party. To avoid "misgendering" later as a matter of conversation, "They" started to eat "their" ice cream while sitting by the pool". Naturally, one may ask: "Who are they and whose ice cream were they eating?" Now, you see how confusing that made a simple narrative description? Neutral gendering has become fodder for critics but nevertheless now accepted in academia (mostly) and in some notable publications.

"Neopronouns are a category of new (neo) pronouns that are increasingly used in place of “she,” “he,” or “they” when referring to a person. Some examples include: xe/xem/xyr, ze/hir/hirs, and ey/em/eir. Neopronouns can be used by anyone, though most often they are used by transgender, non-binary, and/or gender nonconforming people".

NPR (National Public Radio) published this month, "A Guide To Gender Identity Terms".

What is happening?! But is it real? Most experts claim that it is a myth. Nobody in his or her right mind is using these "neopronouns" in normal everyday conversations.  Operative word is "normal".  You see, how easily we can make this into a "Mad, Mad World"!  This is mainly because we have allowed a much too large  platform disproportionate to what is clearly a miniscule  percentage of the population (estimated at 1+%). We have recognized their plight, understand and respect their rights, and properly so, that an entire month is designated to celebrate them. We only have one Veteran's Day, and one July 4th. Thanksgiving and Memorial Days are holidays but Martin Luther King Day isn't and so is President's Day.

The traditionally gay community may reasonably take exceptions to this runaway moral ideology.  The likes of Tchaikovsky and Alan Turing whose lives are celebrated for their contributions to the arts and sciences are known for their accomplishments as human beings, not for attributions to their being gay.

The future hopes of any country - the young children - are pawns used by the new "minority" to re-educate and indoctrinate at schools and libraries and other entertainment venues for reasons that are hard to fathom, let alone sympathized with by the general population.  Some folks may have more to say on this subject but let's move on.

Climate change has become such an ideology that instead of uniting the people on how best the environment can be managed, it has become a wedge instead of the glue that used to get the people to stick together to confront what should be  a common issue. We know that extreme views and draconian mandates do not work. More so when such mandates are dictated by those who will not be affected at all, or when most of those called upon to sacrifice will see through the hypocrisy of the "holier than thou" politicians and luminaries who will go on to fly their private jets, sail in their mega yachts or live in 10,000 square foot homes, etc. The ordinary folks are urged to abandon gas stoves, told what to eat or drink, their livelihood taken away from them as pipelines, refineries, oil exploration and even agriculture, to name a few, are to be done away with. 

Clearly most folks will see through all these machinations from those whose agenda are cocooned with this attitude, "If it doesn't touch my skin, I'm okay with it for as long as I deliver the message to the multitude who collectively will do more for the environment by doing  with less fossil oil or none at all".  I do not need to feel so bad with this one little private aircraft, which I will use to spread the word in my speeches and participation on the global stage to speak against climate change.  

"Let us have those windmills and solar panels,  because if it is not in my backyard, it won't touch my skin", a NIMBY would say.

Never mind that putting the oil industry out of business is saying goodbye to earth moving equipment for road building, heavy construction, emergency and rescue vehicles, electric generators for hospitals and essential structures, rail and air transport, even garbage collection, etc. War on oil is war on the people's way of life.

This one way - activist induced only -  solution is a slap on the face of human ingenuity and ability to arrive at common ground pathways that are not destructive but rather more along the line of common sense and logic.

Democracy will work only when there is freedom of expression from all sides because that is the only guarantee  that ensures an abundance of ideas to come out in an open forum, as opposed to decisions being dictated by unelected bureaucrats in Washington.

In a democracy, the right to lead is decided by the people whose interests must first be served and not for them to serve those they elected. Today, we have a world where those elected to serve spend much of their time focused on remaining in power and controlling an agenda that is no longer sought or supported by the public.  How?  Not through the power of the sword but through material enticements. Fifty to a hundred years ago, much of what the government spends money on for entitlements did not exist.  The republic that was born for abhorring excessive taxation is now a government that imposes punishing taxes for the middle class on programs dedicated to keeping just enough of the electorate to keep voting career politicians in perpetual seats of power. 

Politicians who do not spend a single penny of their own money so easily disburse public funds because, "If it doesn't touch my skin .."

That is the world we live in today. It seems quite obvious by now that every conceivable way humanly possible of tinkering with the running of governments has been tried. Every experiment has failed. 

What only remains that hasn't been tried but not for lack of attempts by many in the past, is unfortunately the very one that is only met with so much disagreement.  Those disagreements have actually brought violent confrontations over centuries of fighting in the name of religion. Naturally, we got it all wrong because we mistook religion for the supreme benevolence of the true Super Power we all struggle to understand or appreciate.  

I do not offer a prescription except to say that perhaps we've been doing our searches the wrong way. A truly benevolent government that will stand the test of time is the one that will proclaim, 

"It is I alone and  everyone who touches My skin will see with clarity the Light that was there all along since the beginning of time".