We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Thursday, November 12, 2020

That we live in a time where the plans of the elite are more openly and more brazenly spelled out, in fiction, in public mythology, in culture, and are manufactured in a way entirely out of the hands of the vast majority of people whose lives will be forever changed, likely for the worse, is hands-down the real catastrophe of our time.
It’s odd, you know. US political leaders are so revered by the media and so normalized on our screens that it’s easy to forget how many children they’ve killed. You see the doddering old man eating ice cream enough times and it becomes difficult to marry him in your mind with the butcher who played a crucial leading role in advancing the Iraq invasion which killed a million people and ushered in an unprecedented new age of military expansionism. 
But the important thing is that he won’t be making rude tweets and bungling coup attempts in the Global South. He will be a Competent Grown-Up, like the daddy we always wanted. He will pilot the insatiable death machine with grace and decency, right into the homes of the world’s most vulnerable.