The End Of The World As We Know It

Remember that feeling? It was November 3, 2016. Some of us "Progressives" went to bed early because it was in the bag. Me, I'm a news junkie and I stayed up. I was missing Walter Cronkite, because the lineup of respected "Pundits" was blathering on and on.
I can't remember exactly but I was probably writing ( I often do that). With my jaw hanging open I turned my attention back to the Pundits; did I just hear that? I changed the channel several times, yes I just heard that, "With 92% of the votes reported CNN is now calling Donald J. Trump the winner and next President of the United States"
"ummm..." I thought; also "WTF" and several other things. There may have been some scatology involved and possibly tears I was, after all, in shock.
Think back to that day. Remember how it felt when you found out that this self-promoting, sociopathic, ass-clown was President Elect.
I grew up in Hackensack NJ. It is a stone's throw from New York City. I read the Bergen Record every day, sometimes twice while I was growing up. I read the NY Times as often as I could. Trump, the rich, rapacious, spoiled failure (ass-clown) figured prominently most days. He was a dirty joke, a symbol of everything that was wrong with America.
He called in to radio shows pretending to be someone else promoting "The Donald", even the interviewer knew who it really was but they played along. He mugged for the camera in any way he could and shamelessly lied about his successes, when everyone knew his successes were basically due to Daddy throwing money at his massive failures. I think he was up to 3 bankruptcies by then, but I didn't check my facts.
He was an ignorant, arrogant, self promoting rich kid who would have been selling mobile homes if not for Daddy's money. Oh yeah, he was always that ugly and stupid but he did know how to promote himself. That is what he craved; the Limelight. He used Daddy's money to take out a full page ad in the NY Times to call for the death penalty on 5 kids of color who turned out to be innocent. He did not retract it or apologize when they arrested the real criminals.
I realized my mouth was still open.
I don't know how many people cried, cursed or contemplated suicide that night. I'm not sure how many self-satisfied "Progressives" woke up the next morning and sat over their coffee in shocked dis-belief, but I'll bet there were many.
"How could this happen in the USA?" I may have said that aloud, possibly to Rachel Maddow who was on the TV at the moment.
I realized my mouth was still open.
If you want another moment like that, just don't vote. If you want to get rid of President Donald J. Ass-Clown vote. That's all it takes. The concerned and intelligent outnumber the Trumpsters 2-1. So vote. Better yet, get behind the local Democrats in you area and volunteer; make 10 phone calls.

The Hard Work

Many years ago, bands of wandering hunter gatherers made a difficult transition. They started farming and husbanding animals and changed the world. It was hard, such transitions always are but they did it. The result was civilization; Our world.
All those years ago people took advantage of the climate, the water, the Sun and the earth they walked upon and changed the world forever.
It is now our turn. It's our turn to do the hard work and change the world for the better.  We let it get out of hand, because we trusted the corporations to not be evil. We were wrong about that.
Corporations are intrinsically evil as their first concern is profits over people. They have proved that there is no such thing as "too low" when it comes to profits.

Let's put the oil companies to sleep, their time is over. It is only through their relentless campaigns of misinformation that we are still dependent on petroleum products. BP should have been euthanized when they destroyed the Gulf Coat and said "Who, us?"

Let's get a hold on corporations like Nestle and others who have been buying up all the water on the planet for the last 50 years. They are being very quiet about it, I would call it sneaky. They don't want you to realize that in the next 20 years you will be dependent on them for clean water. Could it be they who are lobbying against clean water legislation around the world?

Let's end industrial farming for good. The life of the American farmer has gone from nobility to despair; because of companies like Conagra. Like Walmart they are actively forcing the competition out of business.
Farming has always been hard work, but it used to be worth it. Food use to be good for you. Now just look around at the amount of laxatives and stomach remedies. We shouldn't need to take vitamins but the processors take all the good out of food so it will fit in the box properly.

For most of us the combined knowledge of the human race is at our finger tips. That should be the first thing we fix. Finally get the billions of dollars worth of funding that Qwest and AT&T (et al) got for extending connectivity to rural and under-served communities. They have as yet to do that, as far as I know they kept the money. Now they are conglomerating to RULE the Internet, streaming and phones. Let's put them in their place.

It's time to take Healthcare back from giant for-profit corporations. Unfortunately the government is the only one who can take over; but the infrastructure is already there. Thousands of workers can be transitioned to a new system, one that will allow every citizen to have the kind of health care that only politicians enjoy now. No copays, no $100.00 aspirins. Just imagine all the good the workers could do who are now paid to deny your claims as the HMO's first line of gouging.

It seems like it comes down to 2 choices:
We can let the Industrialists and Fascists take control, and they are mostly there now.
We can change the world for the better.

It has to be up to you and I, because we see what happens when politicians are believed. These last 3 years are a perfect example.
It isn't that hard, for you and I. We will have to put up with some transitions.
*Gas sucking, pollution spewing cars will give way to electrics.
*Connectivity that costs about a 1/4 of what you are paying now includes your phone, "cable" and does not include whatever ridiculous add on fees they can get away with.
*Health systems that welcome everyone and will not bankrupt you if you get sick; we'll only have to give up the massive fees and "Co-pays" for that one.
*Clean water that will only require us to give up plastics and stop flushing garbage and chemicals into the aquifers. It will require municipalities and states to do the hard work and clean up their act; remember Flint. We have to hold their feet to the fire.

My dream is to put them all out of business. The employees can be transitioned to the new paradigm and the only ones to lose out will be a few billionaires, who likely already have a plan for that.
I want politicians to be as afraid of losing their cushy positions as we are of losing our lousy jobs.

So what do you want to do?