An article from The New Statesman, a British publication, has a different slant on the US obsessive gun dependency:

“US gun violence is not just a domestic political issue. The failure to take action is a gift to Chinese and Russian propagandists. Shortly after Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he delivered a major foreign policy speech setting out his vision for the United States’ place in the world. He vowed to rebuild the country’s alliances and restore its moral leadership after the tumult of Donald Trump’s presidency.

“America is back,” he declared, and he promised that the United States would “again lead not just by the example of our power but the power of our example”.

“Yet the power of that example has been repeatedly undermined by the failure of US political leaders to tackle the country’s domestic problems, including racial injustice and worsening gun violence. This plays into the hands of American adversaries like China, whose propaganda highlights the deaths of young children in American school shootings and the police killings of Black Americans to advance the Communist Party’s agenda and what it claims are the comparative advantages of its own political system.”

Mariner surmises that guns are to this disheveled nation as opiates are to a drug addict. How does one detoxify a gun addiction? As with all other virtuous ideals that have disappeared, it seems having a gun is more important than continuing to be the world’s moral leader and key advocate of democracy.

It isn’t just guns that tarnish our national image. A dysfunctional Congress and the attacks by red states on open elections also have been noted – especially by European sources.

If the United States loses its moral leadership advantage, it will lose the economic battle for economic supremacy in an emerging global economic system.

Mariner’s solution: When it comes time to vote and the candidate is running for reelection, give serious thought whether the candidate deserves another term; if the candidate is over 55, do not vote for that candidate; further, give precedence to women, nonwhites, and candidates not supported by a national PAC.

Detox is not a pleasant experience.

Ancient Mariner

Not only can one make ghost guns, one can make ghost kidneys.

Denver, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, El Paso, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego may not be sustainable by the end of the 21st century because of water shortages.

Independent local election campaigns no longer exist. The concept of local campaign-local-citizen-related funding no longer exists. Local citizen funding as an indicator of local citizen interest is a victim to giant PACs who can fund regional broadcasters, who can saturate local markets even if a local election committee wanted to spend money; PACs can dominate social media. The republican reelection campaign PAC alone is spending $141 million on district races. Three cheers for totalitarianism!

Elon Musk tweets are the new Trump tweets: Have you noticed cable news shows increased programming around Musk tweets?

Oklahoma’s four abortion clinics have been overrun with demand from out-of-state patients. When a team of academic researchers posed as pregnant people and called the Oklahoma clinics at the beginning of March, all four told the callers they couldn’t schedule them for an appointment.

Used car prices are a staggering 35% higher than last March. Many consumer products will never retreat back to pre-Covid days.

Syria is gearing up its military to join Russia against Ukraine.

Guru speculates that as many as three different regional wars may erupt similar to the Ukraine-Russian war because of regional, longstanding issues:

The Middle East War. See the map for possible players. Some players like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran are seeking more power through unification but common human struggle exists throughout the region. The West counterparts may involve Europe, Greece, Israel, India and the United States.

The Southeast Asia War. See the map for possible players. This is a China-centric war that includes a current sore spot, Tibet, where a current conflict is China’s genocidal policy against Uyghur Buddhists. Beyond Tibet are a number of nations that depend on independent trade that China would like to own – Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Malaysia. The West counterparts may include India, the United States, the Philippines, Taiwan and perhaps if China acts out in a certain manner, the third regional war for economic control of the Pacific Rim will join in. Other nations would join in like Australia, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Canada and perhaps Columbia and Mexico. In the expanded regional war for the Pacific, Russia and North Korea would step in as China’s allies.

Ancient Mariner

The disarray, some may say discontent, that the United States suffers today has been around for a while. Mariner has said that the damage to the American Dream began with the Reagan administration when regulations and legislation were loosened to allow corporations to invest in foreign markets and at the same time diminished obligations to employees.

Over forty years of discontent in the labor classes yields social discrimination and the splintering of national unity. Labor class unrest led to the militaristic behavior found in the role of police today. The police brutality evidenced in the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota became the new emoji for an old problem.

Flash back to 1991 – 30 years ago:

In 1991, after a drunk-driving automobile chase, four officers struck Rodney King with batons fifty-three times. The LAPD initially charged King with “felony evading,” but later dropped the charge. On his release, he spoke to reporters from his wheelchair, with his injuries evident: a broken right leg in a cast, his face badly cut and swollen, bruises on his body, and a burn area to his chest where he had been jolted with a 50,000-volt stun gun. Three of the four officers were acquitted.

The incident invoked the LA riots which eventually killed 63 people.

In 1992 Rodney became famous for saying, “Why can’t we all just get along?”

Before the Nation’s cultural breakdown can begin healing, Congress must repair the Reagan policy that split the American Dream. Until then the xenophobic organizations will not subside; racial injustice will not be cured; economic fairness among the Nation’s citizens will not occur.

֎ Restore the unions.

֎ Raise minimum wage to be commensurate with inflation since 1980.

֎ Provide universal health care.

֎ Significantly raise taxes on the wealthy and large corporations to release privately stored, useless cash to the government so it can restore the middle and lower classes who live desperate lives today.

֎ Significantly increase the job market by utilizing opportunities offered by inadequate infrastructure, growing damage from climate change and by firm enforcement of antitrust laws.

֎ Repair a dysfunctional housing policy that locks out first time buyers and lower income families.

֎ Promote international economic participation with agreements similar to the recent Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Some critics may claim these suggestions are a promotion of new-age socialism. In fact, it is a restoration to a time in history that ceased existing forty years ago.

Ancient Mariner

Similar to its addiction to Donald, the press has been consumed with Covid-19. Not that this is unwarranted but the world continues to live and breathe, to live day-to-day and to place each day into a continuing history of nations, nature, and the experience of individual lives.

The pandemic is a fog that prevents clear observation of human activity at every level. But reality still exists beyond the virus and certain policies and philosophies lay waiting as the fog clears.

֎ Most newsworthy has been the interest of the Congress in Big Data – not necessarily for the right reasons but still, Big Data is on the agenda for sweeping changes in antitrust, net neutrality, privacy, accountability, taxation and social responsibility. The Biden doctrine seeks to make high speed Internet available to every American – a source of new jobs.

֎ Every nation around the world is confronted with an old concept of economy that dates back to Adam Smith (1700s). The politics of world commerce is sensitive to how resources are leveraged. The fact that the stock markets of the world still seem to create earned income in the midst of worldwide economic suffering grows ever more fragile. At some point, corporate manipulation will no longer be able to support a profit that doesn’t exist at street level.

The leading thought is for nations to share the confrontation of dwindling resources by joining a common market where several nations agree to share an economic plan together. China is well on its way to creating a number of these international contracts. Economic philosophers use the term hegemonic economy.

֎ Climate change continues to be poo-pooed by the fossil fuel industry and others who would be resistant to enforced behavior by their governments. Nevertheless, like Covid, nature is not political. The sea level, the storm intensity and the rapidly shifting weather patterns forebode hardship on economies, regional disasters and personal tragedy. Forecasters have noted the years of 2030 and 2070 as times of irrevocable confrontation.

֎ Social institutions are forced to be at a crossroad as much as economy and social culture. Whether it is schools, shopping, health, labor policy, employment benefits or housing, there is inadequacy at every turn. The fact is that the very core of family behavior is at risk. How do families sustain themselves? How do families engage in normal behavior similar to education, childcare and achievable lifestyles? How do families prepare for elderly care?

Donald may be out of office but the tsunami of reality in his wake leaves a lot of work for each human being seeking to survive in these historic times of change.

Ancient Mariner