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

Monday, May 24, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, May 24, 2021

  • Imagining Year 2020 Without Fauci, Redfield, USIAID, and the CDC by John Tamny from American Institute for Economic Research. My reaction: From my personal experience, I find "cancel culture" highly effective in limiting the views of ordinary Americans, particularly in relation to Americans believing whatever CDC and Dr. Fauci say despite abundant evidence to the contrary. "Cancel culture" is a ruling class sub-ideology that justifies censorship of those who have dissenting views, a characteristic of historical fascist-style capitalism. Worse yet, "cancel culture" is encouraging, and largely succeeding, in getting ordinary Americans to ignore dissident views related to the pandemic no matter how qualified they are on the subject.
  • The Disintegrated States of America by Pepe Escobar from "The Saker Blog". (Note: This post is essentially a book review of Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse, a recent book authored by Andrei Martyanov that has had a marked influence on Escobar's thinking.)
  • We’re wired to care for others featuring an interview conducted by Sophie Shevardnadze of Tbilisi, Georgia (Sophie&Co.) with Patricia Churchland, a retired neuroscientist from San Diego, California, from Shevardnadze's RT channel on YouTube. My reaction: Although Churchland's theory of human nature as social animals makes sense, she admits that her field of neuroscience are unable to fully explain the phenomenon of sociopaths ("psychopaths"). Could it be that the man-made system of capitalism rewards "psychopaths" with wealth and power?