Doing the 'right thing' in life is super important. Miss a few car payments at eighteen, and those rates will jump. Overdraft by two dollars, a barely-working monthly budget becomes screwed by bank fees. Drive your car without affording proper maintenance, and your life (or for some, "home") hangs in the balance- to be purchased back through Parts and Labor. This is the balance sheet, the price we pay, for living in a Civilized Society. Our modern conveniences and privileged freedom comes at a cost; Do The Right Thing.
Boiling down the tabloidesque details, civil unrest occurs when some percentage of the population can no longer thrive while doing the Right Thing. The basic principle behind democratic government is providing some proportional voice to any percentage. Feedback allows for making the unavoidable course corrections as circumstances, technology, and understanding evolves. Various governing ideologies aside, revolutions occur when the state-decreed Right Thing is enforced despite being incompatible to a growing percentage.
Thanks to the internet and its fast-forward effect on global consciousness, this pattern becomes so much clearer as we watch it repeating endlessly. Oppression. Repression. Aggression. Retaliation. Escalation. Destruction. Lives, land, and humanity lost through prideful posturing with weaponized science. Enlisted order-followers normalizing atrocities against other order-followers in indoctrinated war games for rich old men. The players change, details differ, but it is all the same refrain: Do The Right Thing- Or Suffer.
The most radically diverse of us here on earth still have more in common than we do differences. Without these various national-identity control systems misrepresenting us to each other, misunderstandings would be generated only by our cultural heritages (and biases). The sick truth is, war is a business. But even more importantly, it's a profitable one- both economically and politically. When millionaires rule those in worsening poverty while recruiting for domestic enforcement and constant overseas war... is it Right?
Of course it is, because Authority dictates it is. But where does Authority get that right?
A government that serves the people really has two fundamental choices. It can either act as Facilitator for the citizens, or it can act as a Parent who knows better than its children. Often it's some of both, pretending to be a more pleasant ratio than it really is. That's what power and money buys- not one more week of heat, or the privilege of getting to work and back, or keeping the creditors temporarily at bay- but protection via publicity, sponsorships, or fame. Thus America markets its viral form of "Democracy."
The American Dream, as socialist as it may sound today, was once for Everyone to have a good standard of living. Not just yourself, but your neighbor as well. The idea was, let modern technology help everyone, and the prices would be driven down by improvements in production and market competition. Throughout our history, however, the wealthy have continually attempted to hijack government to overcome regulations or regulate their competition. Eventually the American Dream morphed into simply being at the powerful top.
Really think about that for a moment, because it explains so much in our culture. We are sold our dreams through television and school, shaped by corporate marketing and edited histories. Our existence becomes just another staggeringly self-unaware struggling cog without perspective in our Great Death Machine run by the same profitable circle of families and friends for generations, either in person or via sponsors. All while the checks and balances of accountability become increasingly optional relative to ones means.
Today our democracy is dead. Globally speaking, both parties represent center-right policies. Neither is representative of the citizenry, despite fishing desperately for identity-issue followers and attempting in tone-deaf ways to hijack populace movements. Scandals normalize corruption while distracting from the frankly obvious march toward an oligarchic Orwellian police state. While still claiming their democratic right to rule, those in power have completely transitioned from Facilitators to We Know What's Best Now.
If you're uncomfortable or skeptical, I apologize for my ability to demonstrably prove it to you.
Political success is tightly controlled and orchestrated by their respective committees. The "Democratic National Committee" (DNC) recently contested a court filing against it by stating they weren't under any obligation to hold fair elections- "we could pick them in a back room." The case itself is based on good evidence that they effectively blocked the populace candidate from beating their own internally selected one. Superdelegates counteract state votes specifically to prevent "grass root candidates from winning."
But it gets worse. Conveniently, third parties are only allowed to participate in the national debate if the results of the last election reflect above a certain percentage. So our version of equality and real Democracy is based on the metaphorical equivalent of Coke or Pepsi, with any other options being allowed only if the diabetes-causing vendor admits he heard enough people shout the same thing. Oh, and for most places, only registered Democrats or Republicans can vote at all- despite being the minority *combined*.
What masquerades as our representation has become a good cop, bad cop routine bullying us through forced lack of options to accept their increasingly unacceptable agendas. Public trust has been undermined till it is no longer even really expected; we're becoming terrifyingly comfortable with not having any actual say in who makes what rules over us. The sponsored incremental erosion of public safeguards has resulted in legal bribery, unlimited foreign campaign donation, and an ongoing war on responsible whistleblowers.
Now, I know we're right in the eye of the storm here where it can seem calm enough if you plug your ears to the world's screams. And it's so easy. It's what's expected of us, what maintains the status quo. How can we be Responsible, anyway? It's the government, not us, right? Unfortunately, our perspective became shifted with the sponsored political shift. Even if you "hate politics" as an excuse to avoid taking any personal responsibility, you remain a cog in an American Death Machine. Facilitating fatal Right Things.
I don't know about you, but I can't be a cog any more. How long can we list off past accomplishments for justification of nationalist pride? Do we get a pass on this year, last year, the last decade, how long? When does trickle-down imperialnomics start staining our hands with blood too? I've heard the promotions and angry rhetoric defending the "brave men and women who sacrifice all", but how's it honorable serving proven liars or criminals on offensive political missions by drone, where gaming meets daily sociopathy?
We can't keep saying, "Well, this is the best we can come up with. I mean, do YOU have anything better?" Our justified skepticism has trapped us in a logical fallacy- that we need a foolproof, complete plan to alter the current course. We've been trained to only do the Right Thing, as the Wrong Choice can quickly become catastrophic. It is within this apathetic nucleus us cogs must find the bravery to start looking at things differently. When the solution becomes impossible, sometimes you have to change the variables.
The very first variable we've got to address is legislated morality. The laws only reflect our collective conscience when that feedback loop of democracy is functional. Currently broken, our legislation becomes essentially the collective will of the Highest Bidder. The "top" thrived dis-proportionally- while mostly poor proud patriot soldiers acquired their next resource acquisition. Doing the right thing is no longer something those holding power are qualified to decipher or decree. Their Right Thing is being complicit.
Our greatest commonality we share across the world is a selfish subservience to tyrants and murderers as part of our cultural indoctrinations. I consider myself a citizen of planet earth, and can't help see it being slaughtered and poisoned in the name of various flags. Small men with big egos are empowered using con artistry, inheritances, and duplicity in this system. Regardless of their position or country, every single one of us little cogs has a duty to hold our own political terrorist representatives accountable.
Wherever you are, whoever you are, the majority of us remain unmet friends and allies. I understand that whatever actions our non-representative governments have done or are doing do not speak for either of us. We're both victims in different kennels. Whatever luxuries either of us can enjoy where we are, it never justifies allowing and facilitating injustice or cruelty upon others. Morality must be expanded with our consciousness, or it's sociopathic hypocrisy, even lost in self-unaware routine and empty entertainment.
Accountability starts with us admitting that the right thing is refusing to play their game any more.