Solutions Rooted In The Past

(This clip from 1933's Duck Soup pretty much sums up what happened to Boris Yeltsen when he came here holding out his own hand to America in peace and friendship in the 1990’s.)

 ***

Every month I receive dozens of emails from politicians wanting attention, support, and money from me. I greatly resent their intrusion into my email accounts without having been solicited. How I got on their lists I cannot fathom but they never stop coming in even when it is not an election year. I never open the emails. They are always promptly deleted. These people are wealthy. If they cannot finance their campaigns and ideals themselves, they should get the hell out of politics. Loyalty and support are two-way streets. If I saw a candidate that I really could believe in to work for the betterment of all Americans there would be no question as to them receiving my unwavering support.

I wonder how these politicians would feel if they had to deal with hundreds of emails every day from American citizens who cannot afford basic living essentials, hounding them constantly for food, shelter, healthcare, employment, a means of transportation, child care, clothing, medicines, cellphones, job training, higher education, and…you know...just the things that one must have to get a keep a decent standard of living in this country? Would they resent being asked for these things every freaking day? I resent them asking me for support when they already have their needs met. Paying to promote their affluent careers strikes me as a very low priority when probably ⅔ of Americans have a standard of living that would horrify them to have to endure. We are horrified about it too but since no one is funding our campaigns for basic human necessities, which politicians are looked to for making this country a place where we can have basic human needs met, I cannot understand why they believe that the people should fund their desire for a prestigious job that they never stop failing to do. So much that is happening in our world now is the result of egotistical and vain pursuits that have backfired and plunged us in to a tragedy that we never imagined would be our fate. No one listens to us and no one cares how we feel about the decisions that they make. There is a long history of this and it isn’t just the American people who are suffering from it.

I recently watched a speech by economist Jeffrey Sachs where he spoke about working with the Polish government in the 1980’s to bring the country out of a dire financial crisis that they were experiencing. (Sachs was born on November 5th, 1954, Guy Fawkes Day - “Remember remember the 5th of November.” Fawkes and 12 others attempted to blow up the House of Lords in the British Parliament in 1605 in protest of the treatment of Catholic citizens by a Protestant government. Although Fawkes was not the leader in the attempt, he was the person charged with lighting the explosives and was caught in the attempt.  Too bad that they didn’t have a Jeffrey Sachs type among them to work out a more reasonable plan of action for making their point.). Sachs advised the Polish leaders to enlist the help of other countries and drew up a detailed plan for them to accomplish this, and it worked. Not long after that, he was asked by Mikhail Gorbachev to help the Russian government using the same strategies that had worked so well for Poland. As it turned out, no one was willing to help Russia at all. I have always thought very highly of Mr. Gorbachev. He above all others that I have ever seen seemed to want peace and a good relationship with other countries. That other countries did not want to reciprocate says a great deal about politics that so many everyday people find very difficult to understand. It reminds one of elementary school children who haven’t yet outgrown fear and jealousy.  Some people never outgrow it. When they don’t, there can be no such thing as peace.

Americans have been told all of their lives in the mainstream media how terrible Russia and its people are. One exception to that was TV talk show host, Phil Donahue, who used to have a frequent guest on his show, journalist Vladimir Pozner, who spoke about Russian and American issues. He was intelligent and reasonable and spoke about many things that I never heard anyone else talking about in balanced terms. It was always an amazing surprise to hear people speak in learned and positive ways about the US and Russian relationship with hope that change was possible.

Vladimir Pozner was born in France on April 1, 1934. He shares an Aries birthday with two other people that I have written about on this blog, actor Lon Chaney and economist Richard Wolff, who were and are great spokespeople for the cause of educating people and finding ways to break from past mistakes in judgement toward people and correcting massive errors in the thought processes that have brought us to the point of possible destruction.  Fire Sign Aries will always get things told when others won’t. They are masters at showing us the absurdity of holding on to our illusions of supremacy.

Mr. Pozner’s name is decidedly Russian sounding but he actually lived in France and the US before moving to the Soviet Union when he was 19. There was a show on CNBC after Donahue retired his talk show called Pozner and Donahue which was a valiant attempt to dispel the myths and misunderstandings about current events and Russian/American issues and policies.  As recently as 2018 Mr. Pozner gave a speech at Yale University about how the United States created Vladimir Putin. You can watch his speech here:

He very carefully and without bias explains how and why there is such monumental tension between the US and Russia, and why the situation did not and does not have to be this way.

There is a channel on YouTube called The Sheekoz Family that I watch frequently. It is made by a Russian man named Dan Sheekoz who, with his wife Suzie, has been posting videos for several years. You only have to watch their videos a few times to see that they are good and honest people who just want to live as well as they can in circumstances that are profoundly challenging now. They have thousands of viewers and subscribers from many other countries with a large proportion of them being Americans. Whatever our two countries believe or want to believe about each other, it is clear that the average people around the globe have found a way to see past the profound biases and hatred that governments press upon us to try to insure our support for their continued fear and resentment toward others. The propaganda has never stopped throughout my lifetime and one really does have to look beyond those political opinions to realize the reality that is out there. We absolutely must look outside of the box in order to get past the rhetoric and false narratives of what we are being told.

Below, you'll find a video of Bertrand Russell from 1959. He is asked what he would like to tell people in the future if he could. If we only had listened to these words and applied them in the world long ago, we might have avoided the tragedy that we now live with. We still might evolve away from it if we earnestly try to heed them now. Most of us are just people who want to spend the time that we have left on this earth in peace and with dignity and wellbeing. Practicing tolerance is a major element that must be implemented. Even at this late date it is possible.

When peace was possible in the 1990’s it was thrown away with both hands. Countless wars could have been avoided and countless lives could have been saved. The savagery of the human race has never evolved out of the culture because we refuse to make it so. While it is tolerated and allowed in the name of elitism and financial gain we cannot hope to have a future without war. A World War Three scenario awaits us before long as there are none in power who are willing to stop it. Not as long as Peter Pan and the Lost Boys are in charge and beyond reasoning with.