Who Funds Right Wing Movements?

"In Britain, for example, we now know that the EU referendum was won with the help of widespread cheating. We still don’t know the origins of much of the money spent by the leave campaigns. For example, we have no idea who provided the £435,000 channelled through Scotland, into Northern Ireland, through the coffers of the Democratic Unionist Party and back into Scotland and England, to pay for pro-Brexit ads."Crisis? What crisis?. George Monbiot.

We need to remember that the ordinary voter is not to blame for the way things are. We are encouraged to see things the way multi-million dollar ads suggest and cannot see what information has been deleted. We are subjected to intentional editing all the time.

Democracy can't survive if power is abused and the elected governments seek only to win elections not save their countries. Big business, politicians and media must take responsibility for doing there part to sustain just societies.

Community and the Disposessed

“The gun culture permits a dispossessed public, sheared of economic and political power, to buy a firearm and revel in feelings of omnipotence. A gun reminds Americans that they are divine agents of purification, anointed by God and Western civilization to remake the world in their own image."  Chris Hedges, Truthdig.

Any time someone talks about the benefit of community there is a paid-for backlash that laughs at our attempts to do what is healthy for humanity and its environment.

How did this come to be?  Young children see the world through their own lives and observations, but somewhere along the way we dare not express our selves and feed back what we think is expected of us.

"Each culture tends to construct its worldview on a root metaphor of the universe, which in turn defines people’s relationship to nature and each other, ultimately leading to a set of values that directs how that culture behaves. It’s those culturally derived values that have shaped history." Jeremy Lent. Culture Shift.

But capitalist, fascist, or communist cultures are shaped to serve the prescribed ideology - a worship of kings and emperors and the power they wield, along with the court jester who represents the peasantry, the workers, the poor.

Most people do not want to gun down children in a school, nor do they want to stand up for their beliefs and risk being ridiculed as naive. Most people want to live in their private world known only by family and friends. But even this can leave them feeling lonely if they are unable to speak of who they are.

George Monbiot reports "A remarkable experiment (done in Fore, Somerset) suggests that emergency admissions to hospital can be reduced by tackling loneliness."  

There have been other studies that indicate we are healthier when we have community. The sad thing is that people who peddle the toxic machismo are drawn to a promise of omnipotence no matter how destructive that is.

How can we raise our children to deal with this? By encouraging them to honour their own talents rather than feel they must be at the top. By living as though kindness matters - because as I age I have seen that it does. That is the kind of vigilance asked of parents and citizens.

Trafficking ideas and outrage

"Self-regulation works well in a commons – a resource controlled and managed by a community. But the streets are not a commons. They are a state asset, that is treated as a free for all. When the state owns a resource but won’t control it, the community has neither the right nor the power to regulate its use. All that is left is voluntarism. The efforts of those who try to defend the common good are undermined by free riders. Without regulation, the most selfish and anti-social people dominate." George Monbiot

What will it take to bring the world back into the hands and minds of humanity and away from the obsession with wealth and power?  

I am trying to offer a space for positive life-affirming ideas, but first we need to tackle the vomit of contempt rolling down the mountain from those who hold positions of influence but who have no interest in leadership.

We need to find a way to work together for the greater good.