we all know who to blame... 9/1/2017 0 Comments   at the very least, some thinking is involved... by E.L. Christianson Jr. Essentially, 545 people run this country.  Of this group of people, 536 are elected by the voters of this country - the 9 on the supreme court are placed on the court by the actions of the 536 elected federal officials. And, we like to believe that we, in this country, the United States of America, run the world.  Perhaps that explains our predicament. Things are going poorly in virtually every aspect of living on this planet, in that 'world' we run.  Currently, there are threats to each component of life.  The food supply, to mention one example, is in serious decline.  In spite of tremendous knowledge about 'farming', there are estimates of a "low" figure of ten thousand daily deaths occurring due to starvation! That catastrophic fact is not something that may happen in the future, quite to the contrary, it is happening now and will only get worse.  In the 'developing world', Asia, Africa, and Latin America the threat of mass starvation faces two and a half billion people!    The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that one person in every two in the world is badly nourished, and that one in three is chronically hungry. Currently there is food available but as climate change takes a stronger hold on the planet, that will no longer be the case... food will be unavailable and those wanting to eat will be forced to participate in 'food riots'. And then there's water scarcity.  Water scarcity is the lack of sufficient available water resources to meet water needs.  It affects each continent and around 2.8 billion people around the world at least during parts of every year. More than 1.2 billion people lack access to clean drinking water. Water issues are exacerbated by global warming and climate change. Even though our political leaders deny the truth, we are facing altered weather-patterns including droughts and floods, plus increased demand and overuse of water.   There are concerns about nuclear war.  There are concerns about artificial intelligence... healthcare... employment.  The list of concerns is long and each concern has a history unique to itself.  We humans have been dealing with (fixing, solving, repairing, over-coming) these issues for our entire history on this planet. While we claim to see improvements in human circumstances from prehistory until now, the truth is that, for the first time, we are reasonably well looking at the end of the line... many credible scientific thinkers do not believe humans will finish out this century. Our leadership is now and has been leading us downhill.  We have known this as a fact for a long time.  History demonstrates clearly that we have been lied to and deceived at every crossroad as the leadership secures greater and greater profits for themselves.   What idiocy repeatedly votes for these people?  There is nobody to blame other than our own stupidity.   Approval ratings for our political leaders are in the toilet and yet they will all be re-elected... in what we mistakenly pretend is a 'democracy'. We've gone through a phase of changing our light bulbs to save ourselves.  We can turn our attention to changing our diets as we increase our efforts at self-salvation.  Becoming vegan is the best thing an individual can do to save the planet.  At the very least, giving up beef is a huge step in the right direction, individually and collectively. Mostly, it is out of our hands.  We have created systems wherein our political leadership has all of the power.  Unfortunately, that leadership has demonstrated repeatedly that they cannot be trusted to do the job, any job.  Virtually everything that is wrong is 'their fault' and that's the truth !!! unfortunately, our thinking and our emotional energy is usually diverted toward silliness by our inept political leadership... if there is any hope, we have got to start paying attention...