Bonhoeffer and Kierkegaard offer indispensable perspectives on history and human possibility. Bonhoeffer said the ultimate is the goal of the penultimate and that the language of proclamation enters crossway to the language of time.
We are living in late-stage capitalism where economics eclipses and dominates politics and the part is confused with the whole. Speculation is normalized, the public is overtaken by privatization, tax avoidance is a growing industry, and education, housing, and healthcare become privileges.
The US is in a “running amok” stage where language and democracy are endangered and in the intensive care unit. The wealthiest 400 in the US have more wealth than 150 million! Compromise, concessions and countermeasures are vital necessities after 40 years of corporate subsidies. Profits have exploded while investments have stagnated. Instead of learning from other countries and cultures, the elites seem drunk on exceptionality and see wealth and profit as magic elixirs.
In November, the voters will have the chance to turn from market worship and profit worship to single payer health insurance and a social contract. Elections and the rights and dignity of the poor are tests. Life is turned upside down when only the owners of capital are accorded rights. I see interdependence and humility as strengths and plutocracy as a dystopia. We were warned by Orwell, Huxley, Jesus and the Jewish prophets. We have the horrid example of Hitler who said the world was laughing at Germany and the press was the enemy of the people.
Bonhoeffer said we are inescapably fragments and can only look forward to moments of wholeness and liberation. The key is theology and not archaology, seeing ourselves as part of an infinite evolving reality of wonder, exuberance, mystery, surprise, paradox, irony, and scandal. Hope is like the immigrant, regarded as unnecessary and requiring changing our perspectives! No hay contradicion Christianismo y revolution (Camilio Torres); there is no contradiction between Christianity and revolution!
Hope like the immigrant is inconvenient and calls to new priorities and policies.
Faith is more interruption than custom. One act of obedience, said the German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, can be more important than a thousand sermons.
The dark clouds are starting to howl.
I’m going back to my plough (Elton John).
Elections and the dignity of the poor are tests.
Life and government may run amok when only the owners of capital have enforceable rights and the food stamp necessity is mocked instead of respected and strengthened.
Reducing working hours is key for assuring everyone the right to meaningful work, for increasing time sovereignty and better long-term health! God waits to be gracious to us!
When the state trusts citizens, citizens trust the state, said Justin Trudeau, Canadian Prime Minister
The security state is a distortion of the constitutional state and is marked by the generalization of fear, the depolitization of citizens, and demogogic claims of supreme leaders.
Trump created his own reality when he spoke of Iran as a threat to the world and described the 100 missiles as “beautiful missiles.”
The Horror clown could bring the world to the edge of the abyss and doesn’t care about the Syrian people, international law, the Children’s Health Insurance or the rights and dignity of the poor.
There should be robust discussions of pluralist economics and reduced working hours, post-growth, post-fossil and post-patriarchal economies. Progressive taxation, closing tax havens and sharing the benefits of productivity, dignitalization and information technology could create new revenues and new possibilities. Community centers (like the 26 in Vancouver B.C.) have multiplier and cushioning effects!
more at citizen.org, www.openculture.com, www.grin.com and www.onthecommons.org
