H.L. Mencken wrote,

“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.”

I know how he feels. I guess that makes me a radical, too.

I recently lost my dear cousin Bill, and it got me thinking. When you lose a close family member, it’s only natural to reflect on your own life – and hopefully you learn to appreciate it a little bit more. I’m glad to be alive, and I feel lucky to have met some very good people in my life – many of them right here in New Mexico.

But I also got to thinking about how sad and disappointed I am with the state of our world, and how truly hopeless our situation is unless we change our ways, and fast. I have serious concerns about humanity’s future, and I’m especially troubled by the rising tide of anti-intellectualism, racism and religious fanaticism in this country: a new form of political and religious extremism has taken hold of our once progressive nation.

It bothers me that so many of us are becoming less tolerant of our fellow citizens at a time when more tolerance, compassion and forgiveness are urgently needed. The country is more polarized than ever. The extremists don’t simply choose to disagree with progressive thinkers: they want to eliminate us from society altogether. They’d be perfectly happy to send all the liberals, gays, immigrants and non-Christians to an island somewhere for reprogramming.

Or worse.

I have never seen such a toxic environment in my lifetime. Political differences are a necessary fact of life in America – but since Trump’s election, the tone and intensity of what passes for political discourse has grown more vicious and sinister than ever before.

Racism is clearly a major factor in all of this. Nobody really wants to talk about it, though. I get that.

Americans appear to be getting dumber and crazier every day. I just don’t see real political change happening any time soon. Not through the political process, anyway. The next generation of Americans will have things worse off than their parents for the first time since the great depression. They will inherit a debauched, morally corrupt political culture, and a sick and dying planet. That is certainly not the fault of the Democrats. It’s the fault of the trans-national corporations who control global economic policies.

American society is going backwards while the rest of the world continues to evolve intellectually, socially, and economically. Case in point: the bizarre and troubling war on women’s rights.

Hypocritical moral crusaders have hijacked the political agenda and essentially shut down the democratic process for the sake of advancing their extremist ideology. Our government is now totally dysfunctional thanks to the passing of laws like Citizen’s United – allowing for unlimited amounts of money to influence the electoral process. How did progressives allow our democratic principles to become so compromised?  We’ve allowed a tiny minority to dictate the terms of our existence.

In a world ruled by corporate greed, the Bottom Line is all that matters, and nothing else. Naturally, costs will need to be cut; profits maximized. When the people’s assets are taken from them and privatized for the sake of someone else’s profit, only the shareholders win.

[Repost from 2015]