As impressed as I am with the massive marches women have made against Trump and his agenda, I fear that you are not yet ready for, and will not accept, genuine change.
For nowhere have I heard anyone address the two root causes of how we got where we are.
We currently have a sociopathic billionaire President who is filling his cabinet with fellow billionaire sociopaths.
We all clearly see the dangers inherent in Trump and his cabinet choices: a common disregard for the opinions of anyone but themselves, a disregard of science, a disregard of the long-term consequences of the decisions they make on the basis of how they enhance their personal wealth and power rather than how well they serve the interests on the nation.
Sociopaths are incapable of being empathetic or truthful.
So why do we allow them to hold political office?
Especially the highest political office in the land?
The answer...the other half of the problem...is because they are wealthy.
Because Americans worship wealth, and blindly accept the concept that to limit wealth accumulation somehow deprives everyone of freedom, that unlimited wealth accumulation is somehow a human right.
To create genuine, profound, and long-lasting change for the better we must accept and act on the roots of the problems.
Millions of American must daily submit to routine testing to see if they will be safe employees who won't wreck the employer's equipment or reputation through drug use. People accept this as a necessary precaution to ensure safe work environments, and that an employer has a right to set standards for employment.
We, the people of this nation, are the employers of the President and Congress, as well as the governors and statehouses, yet we have no say in setting their qualifications. As smart and well-intentioned as the Founding Fathers were, they lacked the knowledge we possess today of the workings and nature of the brain. Today, we understand that sociopathy is a mental disorder that limits the range of emotions that the sociopath can physically feel and comprehend. We can look at the active functioning of a sociopath's brain and see that emotions fail to register within it.
We, the people who employ and pay politicians, have the duty to ourselves, our children, our fellow citizens, to set standards of employment that ensure the safety of all, and that our employees won't wreck our lives, environments and reputations.
We have to call for and pass legislation that requires all politicians to undergo mental screening to ensure that they are not emotionally disabled to the point where they feel no shame, no guilt, no empathy with fellow human beings. Persons who lack the ability to feel those emotions are particularly unsuited to meeting the demands of wise governance.
Some might call such an exclusionary law discriminatory, that sociopaths have as much a right to run the country as anyone else.
To that I ask, is it discriminatory to say that a blind person is ineligible for employment as a bus driver?
A colorblind person ineligible to be a colorist?
A deaf person to be an orchestra conductor?
A mute person to be a talk-show host?
A Parkinson's sufferer a surgeon?
There are a host of conditions that justifiably preclude employment in certain fields.
I submit that being a sociopath, no matter how intelligent or charming they are, should preclude employment as a politician, as they are mentally incapable of thinking in terms of what is best for anyone but themselves.
The other half of the problem is massive wealth inequality driven by a lack of boundaries.
This should be a fundamental axiom of human rights, without which no other rights exist:
No one individual has the right to extract so much wealth from any economy that it endangers the lives of others through lack.
Many, if not most, of the super-wealthy are sociopaths. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to become a billionaire without having a callous disregard for how you've obtained it. Labor exploitation, shifting responsibility for the environmental consequences of resource exploitation onto the public, corrupting governments, tax avoidance, marketing inferior products as top-line, ignoring public safety, and failing to accept responsibility for their actions are all in an hour's work for them. The Kochs are obvious poster boys for sociopathic billionaires, but make no mistake...most billionaires share those characteristics.
The billionaire class is made up of very competitive people who all wish to be #1, the wealthiest, most powerful person in the world, not because of any physical need, but rather purely for ego's sake. They lack the capacity to say ”Well, I've got enough, I should let others have some”. When it comes to accumulating wealth, they are all addicts incapable of self-control.
In all other areas of human behavior, when an addict's behaviors endanger the safety and lives of others, we collectively place controls on them.
Clearly the behavior of the billionaires is endangering not merely our lives, but the viability of the entire planet.
Since they refuse to self-regulate, we must take steps to moderate their behavior.
We need to pass a law globally that limits wealth accumulation to safe levels.
We must set a point past which we allow no one.
Before you howl how unfair any limit would be, pause to consider what drives that thought in you and what the world might be like with it as compared to what we have now.
A limit set at $5 billion would release over a trillion dollars to circulate in the economy in the US alone, and effect a mere103 people, and none of them would suffer anything but a blow to their egos.
So there you have it, the two primary reasons we find ourselves in this very dangerous and uncertain situation: a blind acceptance of the billionaires' claims to have a right to unlimited wealth, and a failure to set proper employment standards for would-be politicians.
Are you ready to accept this and make the two simple changes necessary to preserve freedom, democracy, dignity, and a safe future for all?
For the sake's of our children, humanity and the planet, let's screen out the emotionally disabled from politics, and set reasonable limits on wealth accumulation.