Was it 1963?

Was it 1968?

Was it 1980?

Was it 1991?

Was it 2000?

Or was it 1886? (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad)

Was it always an empire?

Not at my loved ones, or even other people.

But I find myself ANGRIER and ANGRIER at the corporations who enslave us, the government who is their lapdog, and the absolute loss of hope we as Americans find ourselves in.

We were promised hope in 2008. Like a good drunk drone, I believed it. Hell, even sober people beleived it so I don't think it was just the alcohol that gave it to me.

Now I look around, with sober and clearer eyes, and see we were given a President who, yes, may embody hope, but he's President of a rotten system by which no change can occur.

It is not clear when he realized this, nor does it really matter. He has given up, and is just counting down the days for him to leave and then join the Carlyle Group like those before him.

The system IS rotten.

I can see this now.

My drinking, drugs and other psychoactive agents obscured this reality from me, or at least made it seem less dire.

But now that I can see - it's like waking up while the Titanic is sinking, and the lifeboats are all taken.

What is to be done?

Certainly not more avoidance and denial.

Fuck that.

I'm here to fight.

Yes, we are all products of our generation. The Boomers witnessed some of the most horrific events in our history. GenX had to pretty much raise ourselves (not the Boomer's fault, but rather the decline in real wages forcing both parents to work,) and the millennials came of age with 9/11 as a starting point.

But we are all Democrats, all Americans (mostly) and all have empathy.

How do I know we have empathy? Because this is Democratic Underground, not the Free Republic. DU is empathy, FR is antipathy.

But I see jabs at generations from others, or perceived jabs by generations.

We're all on this dying planet together.

We're all on this sinking ship.

At this point, does it really matter if we're sitting on the North or South end of the doomed vessel?

Does it really matter who boarded first?

And we are at war.

Not with one group, or a cabal, or even a party.

Our enemies are in both parties, and they have been since we can remember.

I invite all of you to read up on a little history. It's called "The Business Plot."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

The plan was to overthrow FDR in 1933. You will recognize a lot of the family names: there are Morgans, Bushes and many others.

They failed because their chosen leader, Maj Gen Smedley Butler (who later wrote "War is a Racket" turned them in instead of going along with the coup.

No one went to jail, no one was even reprimanded. The story was buried. But they didn't go away.

When you hear Grover Norquist talk about "drowning government in a bathtub" or other such nonsense - this is what the business plotters had in mind. They hated FDR and especially VP Henry Wallace. They wanted corporate fascism, where the corporations told the government what to do.

Sound familiar?

This is our war.

This is our enemy.

Peace.

We're mostly a hodge-podge between Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon and and the elusive but very real Denisovans.

These are all descendants of Homo Heidelbergensis, a pack hunter and a body evolved to wreak havoc, either on animals or each other.

Thus, the "angry ape" we all come from.

Thing is all three parts of our genetic makeup incorporate two major things: aggression and empathy.

We know for sure the Neanderthals took care of their old and sick, and even set up a very crude kind of "hospital."

No idea on the Denisovans, but if they are like their brothers, they too cared for the old and sick.

We do as well - and all three of these used tools - as did daddy Heidelbergensis.



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Moving on from our origins, as societies we are capable of terrible aggression that no other species alive today is capable.

Just name any war, name any act of violence, any act of unprovoked aggression, or reaction to perceived aggression.

That lizard brain takes over and pushes us out of our ethics and reason.

And yet it is a third component - empathy - the ability to see through another individuals perspective compassionately - that can stop these things.

It is no surprise those champions of empathy such as Martin Luther King Jr. worked so hard towards peace. After the civil rights act he dedicated himself to unions, urban poverty and stopping the Vietnam War. LBJ hated him for this.

And there you see the dichotomy of man - Empathy vs depersonalization, ethics vs impulse, and reason vs superstition.



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We need to stop reacting towards our base, lizard brain that made the "Angry Ape." Chimps and Bonobos, which are extremely similar genetically, have radically different societies.

Chimps are war like, and kill, Bonobos are peaceful. Chimps have a concept of private property, Bonobos share resources.

It is a choice which society we want - will it be empathy or will it be aggression?