Struggling to Find the Words
To put it bluntly, when will more adults in the United States grow up and face reality?
I’ve written many articles over the past few weeks, only to hit “delete” rather than “publish”. I’m struggling to find the right tone. Caitlin Johnstone is an excellent writer, who so often seems to capture my own thoughts, but much more eloquently, as she does here:
While she rues the current state of humanity in one paragraph:
We’ll turn our backs on horrific acts of human butchery and then go watch fictional acts of human butchery, getting ourselves through any discomfort we might experience by reminding ourselves that what we are watching isn’t happening in real life.
She also acknowledges mankind’s potential:
But over the years I have also become acquainted with dynamics inside the human organism which could make this world into a paradise, if we can only get out from underneath our delusion-based conditioning enough to realize them. Within every human being sleeps the potential for selfless action and vast compassion. We all have within us the ability to heal. We all have within us the ability to shed egoic consciousness like a reptile sheds old scales.
I thank you, Caitlin, for your heartfelt writing. Your words have made a difference in my life.
My childhood was populated by authoritarian figures, who were quick to lecture, but who rarely listened. That’s why I work so hard to find the right “tone” when I write. I understand that there is not just one correct way of thinking, and that all of us are ignorant in one way or another.
So, while I approach life with a humility for all that I don’t know, there are certainly things that I am knowledgable about, and I would love to discuss these things with other adults. But in real life, I find few adults who are willing to question the status quo opinions fed to them by the “experts.”
Most folks like to stay in the perceived comfort zone of “listening to the (so-called) experts” rather than spend time researching and thinking for themselves. They dismiss narratives that don’t fit into the neat protective box that has been constructed for them by the propaganda machine that they don’t even believe exists.
I’m not trying to imply that I’m right, I’m just asking others to open their minds to alternative points of view to those expressed on CNN, Fox, or MSNBC; to try to see the bias in the NYT stories written to frame civilians in some war zones as victims and in other war zones as harborers of terrorists. To discover what’s being said in the news services of foreign countries, which of course have their own biases, but serve to provide a way of looking at the world through a non-Western lens.
I would like to hear their thoughts after they listen to interviews with people like Norman Finkelstein and Chris Hedges, two men who deeply research topics, and offer the insight that is lacking in standard mainstream media interviews, that last all of 5 to 15 minutes, tops.
Because, things are really bad in the United States right now, and thinking that electing Democrats in the midterms is some sort of solution to our problems is just a fairy tale that far too many adults are still reluctant to stop believing in.
As Richard Wolff so clearly explains in his talk to The Community Church of Boston after Donald Trump’s win last November, it’s time for adults in the United States to stop living in denial (transcript here, video below):
In this talk, after the election but before Trump took office, Richard Wolff knew what was coming, because our current problems didn’t start with Trump’s policies but are the result of decades of actions on the part of both Republicans and the Democrats, and the electorate that was happy to pretend that somehow things would all be okay in the end, because, after all, we’re the United States:
We are living. . . at a time of enormously profound change and our job as Americans is to stop behaving childishly in this game of thinking that the problems I’ve barely sketched don’t have to be worried about because we can continue to act as if we were in charge in the way we were in the 1960s and 70s. We aren’t nothing like that. (see transcript and video)
The United States is a dying empire — something that Chris Hedges has been correctly predicting for decades. For those of us who follow writers such as Hedges, this is not breaking news. But, most adults that I talk to in real life, have never read his books or articles. The corporate media ensures that his work is hard to find on mainstream platforms.
Most adults that I know are uncomfortable with what is happening in the US right now, but are unaware of just how close we are to the end of our American way of life.
The near-collapse of our constitutional system of checks and balances took place long before the arrival of Trump. Trump’s return to power represents the death rattle of the Pax Americana. The day is not far off when, like the Roman Senate in 27 BC, Congress will take its last significant vote and surrender power to a dictator. The Democratic Party, whose strategy seems to be to do nothing and hope Trump implodes, have already acquiesced to the inevitable. (link)
While it’s true that no one can predict the future accurately, we can predict with good probability that one can only stand in the middle of a busy highway for so long before one gets hit by a car. Covering one’s eyes and ears and hoping that the cars will keep swerving by us is not the solution; we need to get off the damn highway. We’re on the highway to hell, and we are stupidly playing chicken.
Until more people become aware of just how dire our current situation is, changing course is not possible. Some people will say that all is already lost, so why not live hedonistically. I can’t worry about changing such people. But, I can still work to try to make others aware of the background that explains why events are unfolding as they are, so that we understand what we are facing and can form an effective resistance to the dictatorship that will soon be upon us.
Once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, something the dismantling of the empire guarantees, the U.S. will be unable to pay for its huge deficits by selling Treasury bonds. The American economy will fall into a devastating depression. This will trigger a breakdown of civil society, soaring prices, especially for imported products, stagnant wages and high unemployment rates. The funding of at least 750 overseas military bases and our bloated military will become impossible to sustain. The empire will instantly contract. It will become a shadow of itself. Hypernationalism, fueled by an inchoate rage and widespread despair, will morph into a hate-filled American fascism. (link)
Find your courage. Face what is. Denial will make you forever a victim. Denial won’t make you safe.
I relate with both you and Caitlain, Aunty Jean. I also admire Caitlain's prolific writing and not giving up. We all have our own unique ways in the Word and the World.
I posted this article in honour of Victory Day Today with pictures and videos;
It's a different perspective of our Common Cause.
https://rayjc.com/2025/05/09/victory-day-us-russia-or-the-world/
I love Caitlin too and have quoted her and Richard Wolff in my journal. But I don't think that it is so much that we are unaware. I think that we are overwhelmed by our systems of injustice everywhere in our schooling in our corporatism. In our sickly hierarchies that manufacture scarcity that make our society toxic with those scraping clawing to get by, those trying to get ahead and those with more than enough wanting more. People see and feel this advantaged taking advantage of the less advantaged everywhere. They are overwhelmed by it. Thousands of substackers are writing it-reading it-commenting on it. We are reaching our potentials behind the screens of our computers so to speak. What we lack is a means. Means have become our ends and perhaps our end. We are all on our decks...balconies screaming "I am mad as hell and I can't take it any more" we just can't hear behind our screens. But nobody is sure what in the first place makes them mad-where to direct it or how to direct it. So, we go back to screens and scream some more. We scream at Trump, Musk, Zionism corporate wealth... We can scream at capitalism-nope that's not it but a mere manifestation of it. I get to it but not here but in my book. But I will say this here and now. We don't know what we think we know- that we are certain that we do know and we certainly don't know how this is all going to play out. Means have become ends and likely will not be the end of ALL us. But the end of a civilization where means became ends. Humans will likely survive and start again hopefully without systems that are based on fairer sharing and not on advantage taking. Even my most optimistic friends don't see us becoming less materialistic, ending our consumerism - ending our endless growth model which is consuming a finite planet with finite resources. But this too will end just nothing like the way we imagine or can imagine. To date the most insightful thinker that has published a book on our malady is Iain McGilchrist's The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the world.