Category Archives: progress

Florida And Michigan Must Be Counted.

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If the Democratic Party leadership does not find a way to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida, either by holding a re-vote (which I think is needed in Michigan, as all the candidate’s names were not on the ballot), or finding some way to count the votes that were cast in the Primaries, McCain will win by default.

John McCain will become the next President.

Not because the nominee will be un-electable.

Not because legions of disgruntled Obama or Clinton supporters will cross party lines to vote for McCain.

Because the election will be stolen.
As it was in 2000, and in 2004.

And a party that has selected its nominee on the backs of the blatant, public disenfranchisement of millions of voters will have no moral authority to stand up to sneaky tactics like “malfunctioning” machines, misleading poll information, confusing ballots, hackers, misdirection, ID challenges, and caging lists. Much less a U.S. Supreme Court that leans even farther to the right than the one that handed George W. Bush the election he lost.

And I know, I know, there are “rules” that were broken. But here’s the thing. Those rules were broken by politicians playing games.

Not by the voters.

We didn’t all get together one day and decide we didn’t want our votes to count.

So the next time you hear someone say, or are tempted to say yourself, “They broke the rules,” I want you to try something. I want you to replace that phrase with one of these ones:

What were you doing on the street at that hour?
He ‘matched the description’ of the suspect.
If you don’t want ‘attention’ don’t dress like that.
Their parents are here illegally.
They’re ‘pushing their lifestyle’ on the public.
She was ‘leading him on’.
He’s a ‘problem child’ who can’t learn.

Because you’re basically making the same argument.

It’s the Progress Stupid

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Hello again all! There hadn’t been much activity here so I have not posted anything of late. Nice to see that the spirited (haha) conversations continue.

Many of you know I am authoring a book tentatively tittled 1648: An Astrological History of Europe from the Renaissance to the Victorian Age. I can say with 100% assurance that the period between Neptune-Pluto alignments, approximately every 495 years, offers a more precise way to divide history into manageable portions than the more arbitrary ones of five hundred years etc. I am also finding that the Neptune-Pluto divisions also coincide with the familiar terms of the Middle Ages, The Bronze Age, etal. These divisions gives us the current “wave” (my term) beginning around 1892 and ending in 2384. We are in the first phase or quarter of that wave.
For a long while I had trouble classifying what this wave means. The problem is typically postmodern, too much information instead of not enough. Many of the candidates included global warming, globalization, the new power of women, integration of minorities into the mainstream, how to define religion in a post-modern world, etc,. All of these help define the issues we know face. But the more I ponder them, the more I conclude that these represen symptoms rather than the actual condition. But, seeing them this way lead to a more universal truth: it is the progress, stupid!
Until the last wave, 1398-1892, progress was NOT a given. Indeed, a purposeful march toward progress, the assumption that humans could use their minds to improve their conditions, was shunned as counterproductive and wasteful. Religion also cast a heavy shadow as human-centered progress removes God as the main factor governing our destinies. However, since the damn broke during Age of Reason, human generated progress was assumed as a given. But as we know, progress giveth as much as it takes away.
It is my contention that we have progressed beyond our abilities. What I mean by this is best seen in the climate change scenario, but applies to other issues such as demographic imbalance, income distribution and globalization. Machines gave us abilities to produce ever faster, stronger, more productive, bigger (ands smaller) machines. Science helps us live better and longer. At the same time, we have brought ourselves to the brink of ruining the planet by overpopulation and various forms of pollution. I.e, we moved to quickly without determining the consequences. Now, we cannot return to old ways, but cannot continue with our current path. Something must be said for the old attitude of seeing progress as counterproductive and wasteful.
If my Neptune-Pluto wave model holds true, then this is the first wave than began with human-based progress as a given. The first phase of any wave deals with defining what the overall means. My opinion is that we need to define what human-based progress really is. If whatever we do brings us closer to our overall demise or global destruction to the point of making most life untenable, then is it really progress? The answer seems to be a resounding “NO”.
Then if “progress” really is not progressive, what is it? No, there are no simple answers, but not attempting to answer the question is even less progressive.