The mariner recently has written about the battle with hegemony as the hardest task in moving the Country forward to success. The Agriculture Appropriations Bill passed by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is an excellent example that the battle is at hand.

The Republicans added government paid insurance to farmers to cover 90 percent of crop losses. This assures billions of dollars will be paid out for every ear of corn that did not grow right or any soybeans with an Asian beetle in the field or any damage to any crop a farmer grows – even the giant corporate farms that do not need the money any more than Bill Gates needs a loan. A clause was slipped into the bill at the last moment to remove sunset language to make the increases permanent.

Meanwhile, the Bill gutted the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that feeds 47 million citizens of the United States – most of whom work for inadequate salaries.

This is a clear example of war from those who would preserve hegemony. It is blatant legislation that moves more money to those who already have money – the exact opposite of what is required to have a successful future for the United States. At the same time, it is another blow to the middle and working class citizens, stripping even more of the quality of life from the population that must be restored to strengthen the future of the United States.

Pull up a chair; your future is playing out in front of you.

Ancient Mariner

Overturning hegemony need not be a matter of violent war as in the past. It can be a continuous conversion of society, taking one bridge at a time. In the American democratic culture, we are lucky that many before us have given their lives and livelihoods to change the power structure. We have in place a seasoned democratic system by which financial and cultural imbalance can be restored without bloodshed on a grand scale.

Still, there are warriors today. The battle for cultural reform is active in many areas.

Consider women’s rights, both on the job and Planned Parenthood. Consider the battle between corporate profit and unions. Consider the attack on retirement funds. Consider deliberate underfunding of discretionary programs for support of education, health, financial safety nets. Consider the battle to make each vote count in an election without the corruption of outside money. Consider the battle on tax reform and reigning in the abuses written into law by corporations and opportunists. Consider the battle to rebuild infrastructure for a new age, a new energy program, and a distribution of tax income to local empowerment.

The American citizen is indeed in the midst of an ideological war that has waxed and waned through the centuries in many countries. There is a tendency for the lucky among us to accumulate wealth. While that in itself is not an issue, eventually wealth begets wealth and money begins to accumulate unfairly, debilitating the happiness and wellbeing of large numbers of the society. In terms of today’s society, battles for shared participation in the country’s wealth began with the New Deal and the government controlled modernization and equality until the late 1960’s. Since then, the hegemonic forces have been whittling away at the reforms that had been made. From the time of Reagan’s Presidency, the slide backward has accelerated.

If the United States is to remain a world power, the entire population must be armed with education, financial security, and a controlled distribution both of taxes and corporate reform. To remain the world power that we remember from the middle of the last century, every citizen must be a capably armed warrior.

War can be avoided by using the ballot box. Revisit the post, “How to Restore a Balanced and Fair Economy.” That post is a primer for turning around the direction of the war on hegemony.

Your vote is critical. Give your decision a long thought. Will you help pave the way to a successful future, or sustain the hegemony that grows stronger and stronger with each election?

Ancient Mariner.

The mariner received some interest in process. How does the Country move from failing point A to successful point B?

It is neither easy nor lacking in intense emotion and includes a large majority of active citizen interference to transition to a successful future. Most of the suggestions in the post, “How to Restore a Balanced and fair Economy” are tactics that will initiate change. There is much more beyond that list.

Hegemony will be the hardest task. Think about the following brief list of disassembled hegemony in history:

•Forcing the Magna Carta to be signed by King John in 1215. It curtailed the arbitrary declarations of the monarchy with principles bound by rule of law. Not as well known is that the premise of this document was not settled until 1651. The following, copied for its brevity, is from the Wikipedia:

“The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of armed conflicts and political problems between Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and Royalists (Cavaliers). The first (1642–46) and second (1648–49) civil wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third war (1649–51) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The Civil War ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.

The English Civil War led to the trial and execution of Charles I, the exile of his son, Charles II, and replacement of English monarchy with, first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–53), and then with a Protectorate (1653–59), under Oliver Cromwell‘s personal rule. The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England ended with the victors consolidating the established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament’s consent, although this concept was legally established only with the Glorious Revolution later in the century.” (1688)

•The American Civil War, which ended slavery and demolished an intensely racist hegemony in the South. The war killed 620,000 American Citizens and a President. The resultant social segregation, still a closed hegemonic class of whites, was not outlawed until 1954 when the Warren Court ended segregation. The final settlement, at least legally, was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – 100 years after the Civil War.

•The New Deal (1933-1936) was a series of Presidential Executive orders backed by a Democratic Congress. The New Deal was caused as a response to the Great Depression where as many as 25 percent of working men were jobless (women were not a significant part of the workforce until the Second World War; given today’s heterosexual workforce, that statistic may be equivalent to 50 percent today). Republicans fought against the New Deal then and still do to this very day. The battle over the New Deal is not over even as we prepare to move into a new economy.

One of the major arguments for the Great Depression and the New Deal response is the observations that the population was under-spending while the financially better off were over-investing. Does this sound familiar today? (See the post, “Where does the money Go” with its analogy of nonexistent horses) Finally, the 1929 stock market collapse brought the economy down. That, too, sounds familiar. Remember the bank collapse of 2008?

There are many overthrows of hegemony throughout history: The French revolution, Glasnost in Poland and many more. Is it inevitable that the American citizen today must endure violence and debilitating living standards to reach future success?

Perhaps we can avoid a lot of agony if we elect a government that understands what it must do to overthrow the current hegemony.

Ancient Mariner

Greetings Post readers – The mariner has had
feedback that not everyone receives a notice of new posts, which
are issued when the post is added to the web site. If you do not
receive post notices, please advise the mariner at everett20@aol.com.

Thank you.

The mariner can avoid it no longer. The issue has gone beyond rationality. On the one hand, the conservatives are passing truly unscientific and, if you are a woman, abusive law that invades privacy beyond all measure. On the liberal side, a human life in any phase of gestation is disposable.

The genuine believers in the sanctity of life also include the sanctity of womanhood. To unnecessarily destroy a human being is a violation of ethics related to the sanctity of life – a creation of God some would say, regardless of an abuse of a child unwanted and uncared for and likely to live an unfavorable life.

The definition of when a fetus becomes human is an arguable point and the mariner understands that. The mariner does not understand surreptitious legislation that is never debated on the floor of the legislature and, at the heart of it, does not demonstrate a concern for the humanity of a woman, a child, or anything ethical but rather something more akin to the Spanish Inquisition. It makes no sense that a woman must have a sonogram before she can pursue birth control of any kind – even a condom, which is considered guilt by intent.

It makes no sense that there are magical ways to avoid pregnancy because a rape has occurred. A rape is a crime and women should not be co-conspirators of a rape crime. Is one sin piled upon another valid? Some think that hospitals can perform a D&C (dilation and curettage) that will make things right. Yet the laws passed recently deny the hospital the authority to perform a D&C.

Clearly, there is a political war ongoing that has left ethics, religion, and sanctity of life behind. This is not good. It is mean. The mariner believes that the abortion issue truly is a personal situation protected by privacy, expediency and one’s ethical responsibility. One’s personal opinion cannot measure another person’s opinion.

Using such a sacred, sensitive and personal issue to wage war in the political environment is a sin all unto itself.

Ancient Mariner