Never Underestimate the Value of Cash–Election 2012

“But, shucks, we got the best politicians in this country that money can buy.”

Will Rogers

It is election day and after a long fight both sides should be exhausted after working feverishly around the clock, mostly in swing states, trying to reach those undecided voters. Meanwhile, the same politicos with the toothy white grins and the perfect spins are haunting the TV and Internets with images of big glossy maps of the United States decked out in blue and red with a touch of gray.  Always coming to the same conclusion, we are a nation divided. This is of no surprise and how this can be news is beyond me.

We in Oregon are often overlooked. We are quiet and quaint. Most people are distracted by the bright lights of California or Seattle. Politicians usually ignore us. At most we are a photo-op stop as Obama showed in 2008, we are a blue state and I live in a very blue county inside this blue state.

Romney hasn’t a chance here and he should know it but his constant barrage of commercials suggest otherwise. I’m relived that this whole mess is finally almost over.

(See the opinion of a future voter in the following You Tube video that’s making the rounds.)

Tired of Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney

I think I may speak for all Americans when I say that I am sick to death of all these commercials and ads from both sides. To me it’s a waste. It shows how absolutely money crazy we are. If we have any national religion it is the worship of that–Money.  It’s holier than thou and it’s burning a hole in your pocket right now…

In our mixed up national psyche we are convinced that the candidate who raises the most money is the automatic winner.  Nothing else matters and it’s not as if anyone is holding bake sales to raise this money–they are getting it from the rich who have their own agenda and ideas which may not jive with most of us.

And why do they need the money…what do they spend it on? A great deal on those damn ads and flyers…

My mail has been inundated for weeks with thick glossy and expensive flyers proclaiming this and that. I have been bombarded with countess TV commercials–all with smiling politicians proclaiming this and that–supporting this message and that message.  Each proclaiming the other guy is wrong, very wrong even scary wrong.

Since my city of Portland is right on the border with Washington State we get their commercials too–this can get confusing and annoying.

 

The whole system is like that. It’s not just the presidential candidates or the Democrats or Republicans, it’s all of them.  Honestly, I am happy the people in the flyer factory have jobs and the media people do too and really kudos to the postal service.  I know all this money must be stimulating someone somewhere….Right?

I can’t help but wonder in my simplistic way that perhaps all this money spent on this mania could be spent on something more worthy… 

For instance: feeding hungry children or repairing crumbling bridges. How about training programs for the unemployed? How about jobs…not just lip-service trickle down jobs that live solely in campaign speeches but real jobs…perhaps via public works programs? How about it?

How about money for schools? or for disaster relief? I can think of a million worthy causes…

If I saw a politician spending “hard-earned” PAC money to feed the hungry and damn the consequences, I would have respect for that person–I’d be downright impressed and I’d listen to what that person had to say–regardless of party. I think a lot of people would as well. I also think that people are more independently minded than others may give them credit for.

This kind of do-gooding could create a buzz that would bring in the media with free advertising; a win-win situation for almost everyone…except for the ones with the deep pockets…the donors..the movers and the shakers…the ones attached to all that cold hard cash.  I ran across a list of them, it is HERE

I’ve read that between the two major candidates six billion dollars will be spent on this election, a new record. I can’t help but wonder what good that kind of money could do.

I did a little research…and six billion dollars goes a long way…

In The United States:  All that money could buy 200,000 average-priced cars…22,059 average-priced houses or…with six billion dollars 69,940 students could attend college for four years.

6 billion could buy one month’s worth of food for over 9 million families of four.

2 billion children could buy a warm coat with that amount of money and 6 billion dollars could definitely buy the world a coke…I could go on and on but you get the picture.

As I write this we don’t know who the winner is yet, it’s too close to call…perhaps by the time you read this we’ll all know the outcome…

Either it will be this guy or that guy but no matter who it will be, we’ll face the same problems as a nation and as part of a bigger global community.

We need to work together to get it together and there is much work to be done.

HAPPY ELECTION DAY!

Strawberryindigo.

Related articles

• What’s Your Vote Worth? (beyondanomie.wordpress.com)
• 9 Incredible Campaign Money Stats (motherjones.com)
• US election: Toxic U.S. adverts show cash is poll poison (mirror.co.uk)
• 9 Wild Campaign Money Stats (alternet.org)

References:

2012  Presidential Campaign Finance Explorer (Washingtonpost.com)

Does big money spell big trouble in campaigns? ( CNN.com)

Cost of Average Home (www.census.gov)

What’s the price tag for a college education? (Collegedata.com)

Average cost of a 4 year University (USATODAY.com)

USDA cost of food Sept. 2012 ( USDA.gov)

Cost of food at home (USDA.gov)

∞

The Writer’s Lament

Hey you writers out there, are you like me? Do you long for days of uninterrupted silence? Do you fantasize about having hours upon hours of free time devoted to your only real love: Writing?

I may be the only one who’s so obsessed…and I am obsessed. I can think of nothing better than to tap tap tap my life away if only I had the time and the silence.  Oh blessed silence…can I be the only one who craves this silence?

I don’t have to tell anyone how noisy our modern world is already and the distractions…there are so many distractions. I get started with my tapping and before you know it, life rears its inevitable head and drags me back to reality for in which there is limited room for anything remotely resembling tapping.

Here I am in a rare moment, I have all afternoon and I’m set to write about one of my favorite subjects; Being Different in -The Daily Post’s Weekly Writing Challenge and then a million things happen and there is no time.

I am a mom and I have all the responsibilities just like everyone else. I probably don’t have to tell you this; we are all busy with our lives.  Most of us don’t have much free time and there is always some minor crisis to keep me more than occupied.

I admit that at times I can be hard to live with.  I tend to be lost in thought about something or another and there tends to be a lot of something or another’s swimming around in my half-crazed brain.  l admit I get pent-up and rather testy when I can’t get the opportunity to write…and like a junkie who needs a fix, once I get what I crave, I’m happy again. I do admit it’s an affordable addiction and who knows, perhaps all this craziness will pay off in the end?

I’m sure most writers and artists in general are a little on the obsessive side.  I mean I could name names but why bother. We all know this is true…and really when I get to think about it….even you; if you are any kind of writer at all, I bet you are a bit crazy too just like the rest of us…and that you know that I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I guess I should be grateful. If I had it my way, I’d probably tap tap tap my way to oblivion…..I would be going a mile a minute..faster and faster and then suddenly I would just explode: KA-BOOM!

I could see the scene now…my spent carcass slumped over a burned-out laptop, dirty coffee cups and piles and piles of printed word surrounding me….What a mess…

OOPS….

I guess I exploded before I could write my entry for the Weekly Writing Challenge:

…and now for something completely different….  Hey! That’s DIFFERENT–I wrote about not writing what I was supposed to write about and then I exploded!That’s DIFFERENT!

Perhaps that will do…

MUCH HAPPINESS,

Strawberryindigo.

NOTE:

I have been off “adventuring”and have been limited on time, that is why I haven’t been posting much. I am not AWOL.  This is only temporary and I will be up and running at full speed in a couple of weeks.

I look forward to catching up with our visits after all this is over. I will be back full of wonderous tales about my “exotic” adventures.

Success

THE SKY’S THE LIMIT

Mention the word success and certain images come to mind. Images of good-looking people with high paying jobs in powerful positions with big houses, big bank accounts and big lives.

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We are taught by our Western culture that one’s whole self-worth is dependent on what we have, not on what we are. You are special and you are better than most others. One can tell this by the stuff you own, the things that you do and the places you go.

We are constantly bombarded with messages, especially by the media such as this from day one and it isn’t surprising when we develop impossibly high expectations that most of us cannot live up to. When this happens people lose confidence. They feel that they don’t measure up. Even people whom society deems as successful surprisingly also have this problem; this fear of not measuring up; of not being all that you can be.

This can cause depression. It can cause people to try to escape reality via denial and self-destructive behavior. Sometimes this dissatisfaction turns outward in anger toward the very society that sets the bar so very high.

The American dream is yours for the taking and all that. What happens if this dream doesn’t pan out or even becomes a nightmare; not all of us can win this rat race we have set up. This sort of set up requires losers and an awful lot of losers to support the winners.  No one wants to be on the bottom and will avoid even the appearance of THAT at all costs. We are taught that it means we are defective. We are worthless. Worth less than someone else.  We seek approval from each other and from ourselves on a constant basis. It’s human nature. Our society views those on the bottom of the economic ladder in a bad light.

Poverty is seen as some sort of disease that one catches by the act of laziness. It is such an anathema that people have this urge to keep assuring themselves, their peers and society that they themselves are not infected by this awful disease.  Many will go into debt to prove this point.  It takes a wad of cash to keep up with the Joneses. Little do we realise that in our quest to keep up with the Joneses, the Joneses are struggling to keep up with us.

We are a shopping culture and in all honesty if we all decided to stop buying if only for a day it would send our global economy into a tailspin.  It’s quite a sticky situation we have gotten ourselves into.  All this wanton greed and fervid consumerism. It’s taking its toll on the environment.  It has a mind of its own…it’s a monster of our own creation and it could spell our undoing.

We in the West are starting to see the errors of the past creep back up and bite us. We still continue on with our ways like there is no tomorrow and we criticise other countries, especially third world countries who are just trying to catch up to us…who doesn’t want a big middle class, who doesn’t want prosperity for all?  In the past other countries have looked to The United States as an example of what to strive for. It is we who have set the bar so damn high and it is we who complain when somebody can play our game better than us…and they are….and as time goes by more and more of us will be on the bottom.

There is only so much land, water, natural resources and there are more and more people everyday. This strikes me as dangerously unsustainable. Something’s got to give and it is starting to.

A Successful person

I think many of us may need to rethink some of these notions that have been sold to us…maybe reconsider just what being successful really means. Does a measure of a man or woman depend on the content of one’s pocketbook or the content of one’s character?

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I also believe we should reconsider our idea of happiness…Is happiness mean having stuff? Or is happiness a certain satisfaction with life and oneself. Knowing that life has its ups and downs and riding those with grace, compassion and hopefully a bit of humor. Happiness does not have to be exclusive.  True happiness is inclusive. It is something to be shared. Happiness is an attitude. We decide to be happy and having more stuff than everyone else around you doesn’t do it in the end.

In the end it is those intangibles as love, friendship and respect that really matter. It is fulfilling a dream. It is striving to be better, not better than anyone else but better than your previous self. It is the satisfaction of doing the right thing and the giving of yourself to others. That is success.

I am reminded of a quote:

“Having given all he has to others, he is richer still.”

- Lao Tzu

Wishing you all the success in the world,

Strawberryindigo.

Angry

For the past week or so I have been blocked. An idea has run rampant in my writing mind but it is more than an idea. It’s a feeling, an emotion. It’s basic, it’s primal and it’s powerful.

Every time as of late when I sit down to write, it has been extremely difficult for me. 
 I start with a certain tone that feels right at the time; I’m tap, tap, tapping along and then…Wham, it all turns oh so negative and very angry.

I try to put a positive spin on what I write for the most part. Sure, my indigo bleeds through once in a while but it seems my moody indigo has turned a dark angry red.

I am not the angry type.  I don’t typically hang on to emotional “baggage” or hold grudges. I am a mild-mannered even-tempered peaceful person. Anger hurts. I am  sensitive, probably more than I should be but I do have a conscious and a strong streak of justice runs deep in me. This is how my inward leaning and quiet nature can sometimes flip on a dime on a perceived injustice and suddenly this little kitten can rage with the roar of a thousand lions.

Right now that roar is in an uproar. I don’t want to feel this way and it probably would be wiser to just keep silent on my feelings and thoughts on the subject of my ire. But there is something in me that won’t or can’t keep silent. I guess this is why I write.

I must speak, or write the truth as I see it and the truth is; I’m angry, damned angry.  I feel cheated and duped…and afraid.

Afraid of how my country is evolving or devolving, afraid of what the world is becoming. Afraid for the planet and the people and what’s to become of us all.  I ask myself what kind of world we are going to leave our children and future generations?

How will this all be explained? What could be possibly said? That greed controlled the world and money meant more than people. That our government was weak and the economy went south as we all sat back like good little citizens; distracted by the puppet show. Spending and getting into an endless cycle of debt to feed the banks, paying our taxes to fund wars and the killing of innocent people, falling for sound bites, clever ad schemes and catch phrases.

I fell for it all: the American Dream bullshit just as many others.  Being a child of immigrants I perhaps took this a bit more seriously, this American thing.  This once true story of people working hard, learning and growing, making a life for themselves and their children. Saving money, buying a house, sending their kids off to college;  the next generation having a better life than the one before it.

It seems this dream is dying, some would say it’s already half dead. It’s hard not to be discouraged sometimes, angry sometimes. I admit I’ve been lucky in life and have lived a bit isolated from reality, sheltered from true hardship. It’s easy to pontificate and elaborate and say I’m with you, you 99%!  And watch from the comfort of my nice mortgaged home and see all these people lose their homes and life savings.

I think it becomes easier to be angry when it hits close to your home.

It is easy to become bewildered and lost a bit. This I know.  I know a little more now and I understand how the 99% feels, especially the vocal minority of which I guess, I’ve just joined the ranks of.

My point in all this? I don’t really know. Maybe there’s an upside to all this I have yet to find. Maybe It’s an explanation of why this blog has become so dark as of late. Maybe it’s my way of saying this is temporary and it’s a phase that I must go through so please bear with me.

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”

Rabindranath Tagore

Still a bit angry but hopeful…thanks for listening.

Strawberryindigo.

The future of humans

I worry about our future.  I wonder if our machines will become more natural to us than our own humanness. I see it time and time again and more and more all the time.  People ignoring one another in public. Turning the other way. Looking right past a person, almost denying someone’s existence.

I see people on their phones. Talking away to some distant person, ignoring the one in front of them. Be it the checker who’s bagging your groceries, the person at the counter of the post office, your dinner companions.

I see these space cadets walking down the street, in the street, eyes cast down on their little box of insanity. Ignoring the real world of real people, real streets with real cars on them. Engrossed in some distraction on the screen, some vitally important game or text that cannot wait. People endlessly texting or tapping or something or another. Thumbs flipping away, eyes glazed over, mind placid and unchallenged.

star trek borg race Star Trek Exhibit at Queen Mary Spruce Goose Dome, Long Beach Ca, Feb 2008 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are an instant generation. Our ancestors were forced to have patience. Life generally works that way. But we humans have perverted the system. What used to take time and hard work, now takes an instant.  The minute itself stretches and contracts depending on the situation. We are a race that can spend hours upon hours, slack-jawed staring at a screen and still have a hard time waiting 60 seconds for a convenience store burrito.

A sprawling clearcut of old-growth forest. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How much have we lost already?   We of the quick and convenient.  That human knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Homespun talents. Hardscrabble necessities.  How to grow your own food, how to darn a sock, make a quilt, pluck a chicken.

And knowledge of a more ancient wisdom: The healing power of plants, the power of belief and living at one with the earth instead of against it; as if it were some sort of adversary. The power to walk in the woods without making a sound or leaving a trace.The wild arts. How to make a fire, how to live off the land.

I know its easy for me to say; to judge. Do I have any of these practical talents? Not really. Beyond my urbanized knowledge of plants and animals through books and gardening in my backyard, I am pretty much useless in the real woods. If I were stranded alone in the true wilderness, the odds would be against me.

A young boy living on an East Cipinang garbage dump, Jakarta Indonesia. Picture taken by Jonathan McIntosh, 2004. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Our human civilization, our very existence is dependant on  “progress”. Always upward and onward. Always a new hill or people to conquer. A mountain to climb, a resource to be exploited. We have colonised, revolutionised and lost our sights and priorities, maybe even our collective minds as we rape and pillage and steal from the future generations, who will have no choice but to try to live in the mess we’ll leave behind.

We have lost our way. We are losing our humanity. We are losing our collective soul, we are losing ourselves.  And it is ourselves who we need to conquer not nature.

This reckless attitude we humans have taken toward nature. This need to be dominant over nature, this very human need to conquer no longer serves us as it once had. Nature is fighting back.  All the lies and ad campaigns can no longer hide this from us.  We are “progressing” ourselves right down the road to extinction. Is this our future? Many believe it is.

The Earth seen from Apollo 17. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It seems the one’s in charge on this planet are in race to use up what is left and get it all before everyone else can.  Our beautiful Planet Earth has become a commodity, for sale to the highest bidder.  But our planet, our mother, belongs to us all.

We are being sold out and generations upon generations will hate us for it. They will ask why.  Why did we just sit back and let this all happen? What will our answer be?

  Strawberryindigo.

“America was once a paradise of timberland and stream but it is dying because of the greed and money lust of a thousand little kings who slashed the timber all to hell and would not be controlled and changed the climate and stole the rainfall from posterity.”       **Don Marquis (1935)**

Nightly News: An Indigo Rant

Image via Wikipedia

A Runaway Train On Meth or how I didn’t stop worrying and love insanity…

It takes an extreme amount of energy to try to keep hopeful on this insane wreck of a planet.  I am a reformed news addict; I simply cannot take it anymore!  The nightly news is so sensationalist and bizarre and oh so depressing. 

I do not need this, I can look outside my window and find bizarre and depressing.  I feel the urge sometimes, to head for hills, or somewhere.  It reminds me of a car wreck, a horrific, bloody mess of a car wreck, a truly sickening sight, I have to look away but then I’m compelled to take a little peek…and I’m frightened at what I see…

We are a great society in decline, a massive and swift decline.  We are in such decline that we are likely to screw it up for all life on this planet, not just ourselves.  We as a species are so egocentric, we believe that the Earth and all its treasures are for us to control and manipulate to our own greedy selfish ends.

We condemn  others who do not share this philosophy of dominance and instead promote unity and coexistence.  Society writes them off as best as well-meaning ignorants or at worst, militant nuts.

I am guilty as the next person, I will admit.  I consume  like a good citizen. I stay out of trouble, I recycle and pay my mortgage on time.  I pay my taxes and I never see the man behind the curtain, I have a good idea that he’s there, pulling all the strings.  I know enough to just pay up and keep my mouth shut….

Or do I?  Maybe I’ve decided not to keep my mouth shut or my eyes.  It’s like a bad dream and  human society is a runaway train on meth and no one is at the controls.  In fact, the crazy passengers on the train of fools are busily arguing as to whether they need an engineer at all.  We are about to jump he tracks. everybody sees it, they all talk about it but do nothing.  It’s like they cannot stop the insanity long enough to see this and I am the only one who does and I’m no damned train engineer,  I want to scream…..”Stop this selfish bickering before it’s too late and we fall into an abyss never to return”…and  no one can hear me but I still shout…….

GOOD night,  Strawberryindigo.