Facing the Dark of Heartlessness
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Has Heartlessness become standard operating procedure in our political process and nation?
Facing the Dark of Heartlessness – The Golden Rule, the Rule of Gold, and the ONE REPUBLICAN I Would Vote for in a Minute
By Steve Bhaerman
“The USA has become a banana republic ‘thanks’ to the Banana Republicans and their Democrat enablers.” — Swami Beyondananda
When I reflect on the recent and ongoing health care debacle, where Republicans are seeking to replace the barely-caring Obamacare with their own even more ruthless and heartless version, We-Don’t-Care, I am reminded of a cartoon from my childhood.
The cartoon shows a mother handing her two boys boxing gloves, saying, “Now, don’t fight.”
The point is, no matter what is said, you can predict the outcome of the game by the rules and tools offered. This applies as much to governing our republic as it does to managing our children. The right rules and the right tools, we thrive. Otherwise?
Well, that brings us to our current shituation.
To understand current events, we have to go back a couple of hundred years, when a small band of American Revolutionaries successfully fended off the world’s first multinational corporation (the British East India Company) and its military arm, the Queen’s navy and the redcoat army.
Unfortunately, since that time the predators and exploiters have retaken the field.
There are many reasons why this has happened, but I will cite three separate incidents. The first happened in 1886 … the second in 1913 … and the third in 1976.
Corporate Personhood = Corporate Poisonhood
For the first hundred years of our country’s existence, the power of corporations was kept in check. Corporate charters were granted for a limited time and could be revoked for violating laws. They were prohibited from owning other corporations and from financial involvement in the electoral process.
All this changed in 1886 when a former railroad company president working as a court reporter for the U.S. Supreme Court wrote a “headnote” declaring that corporations had the same 14th Amendment rights as a legal “person”. And though the actual court decision said nothing of the kind, “corporate personhood” became legal precedent, and has been affirmed in subsequent cases, most recently the Orwellian-named “Citizens United.”
Is the Fed Merely a Tool to Feed the Underfed to the Overfed?
Strike two against the economic autonomy. While the stated intent of the Federal Reserve Act was economic stability, it is curious indeed that the worst economic depression in our history happened just sixteen years after this legislation was passed. While the Fed was created through an Act of Congress to operate in the public interest, it is also a private entity owned by the banking industry.
And while the Constitution gives the Federal government authority to issue currency, the Federal Reserve now issues the vast majority of our currency — $1.52 trillion out of the $1.56 trillion in circulation are Federal Reserve Notes. So what? When we consider that the Federal Reserve notes are issued as DEBT, this creates a permanently indebted economy. Imagine if the currency were simply issued through the Federal Government as grants to build infrastructure, and did not need to be repaid. In contrast, we have a permanent and “metastatic” indebtedness that has become a key factor in economic exploitation … in addition to sustaining an enterprise, a business somehow has to find “extra” money to repay the debt and the interest.
How Economics Empowered and Enabled Sociopathogens
The final blow to the rule of the people, and the Golden Rule, came when Milton Friedman received the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976, and his famous statement became the unquestioned credo for post-industrial capitalism: “There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”
The problem is that the credo has been interpreted to make profits at any cost the ONLY mission for corporations, as the last part of the quote — the qualifier — is barely remembered. Consequently, corporations are given carte blanche to exploit without consequence. Why else would the predatory criminal enterprise Enron be cited as one of Fortune 500’s top five companies as it was being prosecuted for fraud?
And so it has come about that the Republican Party — with or without Donald Trump — has become the champion of “profit, profit über alles,” and the Democrats, this credo’s also-ran hand-maiden. While at one time the Democrats were seen as a force that could and would mitigate the excesses of corporate capitalism, they too — thanks to that boost from Citizens United — must serve the same corporate masters if they wish to be re-elected (or even chosen to run in the first place).
A Republican Who Has My Vote
That brings us to the ONE REPUBLICAN I would not only vote for, I would campaign for.
OK, one qualifier. He’s been dead for 113 years. But his name should be a “dead” giveaway — Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones. Born in poverty in Wales, Jones and his family migrated to upstate New York when he was a child. He became a successful inventor and industrialist in Toledo, Ohio and earned the name “Golden Rule Jones” because the Golden Rule was the only posted credo at his workplace, and he put that principle to work: “Whereas the prevailing wage in the depressed local economy stood at $1.00 to $1.50 a day, Jones paid his employees a living wage of $1.50 to $2.00 a day. Jones implemented the 8-hour day for his workers and offered them paid vacation, revenue-sharing, and subsidized meals in a company cafeteria.”
In 1897, he ran as a Republican for Mayor of Toledo, and because of his reputation for fairness and support for workers’ wellbeing, he won. As Mayor, he:
~ opened free kindergartens
~ developed a park system
~ established playgrounds for children
~ established free public baths
~ instituted an eight-hour day for city workers
~ took away truncheons from the police
~ refused to enforce blue laws
~ reformed the city government
Thanks to these policies, when he ran for a second term, the Republican establishment refused to support him, so he ran as an independent under the slogan “Principle Before Party” and won a second term with 70 percent of the vote.
Only We the People Can Put Us Back on the “Golden Standard”
And that brings us to the elephant — and the donkey — in the living room.
Our entire system including both political parties has come to serve the rule of gold in the absence of the Golden Rule. There is a moral vacuum at the center of our secular society and Donald Trump happens to be a more congruent “head” for this body than those like Obama, who speak the right words but still must operate as CEO of the American empire.
Consequently the dark of heartlessness has been in power, and the millions and millions and millions of decent caring folks — including many “one-percenters” who see that they would ultimately benefit from a more caring society (and realize that if the natural world dies, well, there goes the GDP) — recognize that the heartlessness of this system cannot self-correct.
Fortunately, we have been given an operating system for success, as individuals and as a species. In Spontaneous Evolution, Bruce Lipton and I cite the Golden Rule as the “One Suggestion” more powerful and universal than the Ten Commandments. Science corroborates this ancient wisdom principle, indicating that all things are related, and that “thrival of the fittingest” more aptly describes evolution than survival of the fittest.
We look the dark of heartlessness in the face when we recognize that together — and with the help of technology that makes self-organized communities possible as never before — we can establish a “newer world order” that celebrates and fosters thrival for all.
We self-organize by gathering together a movement of movements to put politics, economics and all our collective transactions on the “Golden Standard” — truly treating others the way we want to be treated. We convene public conversations everywhere as to how we can do this, and we use the wisdom tools developed by people like Tom Atlee and Jim Rough to aggregate the wisdom we gather. Instead of the angry and frustrated conversations, we have currently, we have conversations for co-creation where the American people can participate and contribute to actually solving problems rather than blaming the other side.
Once a critical mass of the heretofore-uncritical masses gets the creative power we already possess, we will attain “heartland security” — which will make homeland security unnecessary. It’s time to rise above the cultural and ideological beliefs in our head and unify around the universal truth in our hearts. Our survival as a nation and perhaps as a species depends on it. Time for a new game on a new playing field.
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About the Author
Steve Bhaerman is an internationally known author, humorist, and workshop leader. For the past 23 years, he has written and performed as Swami Beyondananda, the “Cosmic Comic.” Swami’s comedy has been called “irreverently uplifting” and has been described both as “comedy disguised as wisdom” and “wisdom disguised as comedy.” His latest book, written with cellular biologist Bruce H. Lipton, PhD is Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future and a Way to Get There From Here. Steve is active in transpartisan politics and the practical application of Spontaneous Evolution. He can be found online at www.wakeuplaughing.com
Listen to the Wiki-Politi Radio Show every Tuesday at 5:00 PM on OMTimes Radio.
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