BEST ANALYSIS YET OF AMERICA AND THE COURSE WE ARE ON

The following article is a must-read for all thinking people.  It tells the truth, matter-of-factly, about this world and how it works (and has worked, for many centuries).  It also speaks of the way out.  As the author says, "The only way out is in."  In other words, to turn to spiritual understanding (not religious, but spiritual), where we come to realize our connectedness with all people and all things.  Today is Bodhi Day, the day of celebration of Buddha's enlightenment.  On my blog (www.starwisdom.net) I have posted an article about it that appears in the Huffington Post site today. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roshi-pat-enkyo-o/bodhi-day-celebrating-the_b_791349.html For anyone who would like to see our world change for the better, it would be helpful to read that article and this one together -- and understand that, in their different ways, they are both pointing to the same thing. Without curiosity and an enlightened perspective on the nature of life and our own being, our suffering (on earth, and personally, within each person) is bound to continue.

AMERICA:  Ignorance and Courage in the Age of Lady Gaga
By Joe Bageant

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/joe-bageant/32993/america-y-ur-peeps-b-so-dum-ignorance-and-courage-in-the-age-of-lady-gaga

SMALL EXCERPT (but please read the entire article for a full perspective): 

The WikiLeaks affair is surely seismic to those whose asses ride on the elite diplomatic intrigues. But in the big picture it will not change the way the top lizards in global politics, money and war have done business since the feudal age -- which is to say with arrogant disregard for the rest of us. Theirs is an ancient system of human dominance that only shifts names and methodologies over the centuries. Two years from now, little will have changed in the old, old story of the powerful few over the powerless many. In this overarching drama, Obama, Hillary and Julian Assange are passing players. Watching the sweaty, fetid machinations of our overlords with such passionate involvement only keeps us from seeing the big picture -- that they are the players and we are the pawns....

Once unencumbered by self-induced and manufactured cultural ignorance, it becomes clear that politics worldwide is entirely about money, power and national mythology, with or without some degree of human rights. America still has all of the above to one degree or another. Yet for all practical purposes, such as advancing the freedom and the well being of its own people, the American republic has collapsed.

Of course, there is still money to be made by the already rich. So the million or so people who own the country and the government use their control to convince us that there is no collapse, just economic and political problems that need to be solved. Naturally, they are willing to do that for us. Consequently, the economy is discussed in political terms, because the government is the only body with the power to legislate, and therefore render the will of the owning class into law.

But politics and money are never going to fill what is essentially a public vacuum that is moral, philosophical and spiritual. (The latter was instantly recognized by fundamentalist Christians, disfigured by cultural ignorance, as they may be.) Not many ordinary Americans talk about this vacuum. The required spiritual and philosophical language has been successfully purged by newspeak, popular culture, a human regimentation process masquerading as a national educational system, and the ruthlessness of everyday competition, which leaves no time to contemplate anything.

Still, the void, the meaninglessness of ordinary work and the emptiness of daily life scares thinking citizens shitless, with its many unspeakables, spy cams, security state pronouncements, citizens being economically disappeared, and general back-of-the-mind unease. Capitalism's faceless machinery has colonized our very souls. If the political was not personal to begin with, it's personal now. Some Americans believe we can collectively triumph over the monolith we presently fear and worship. Others believe the best we can do is to find the personal strength to endure and go forward on lonely inner plains of the self.

Doing either will take inner moral, spiritual and intellectual liberation. It all depends on where you choose to fight your battle. Or if you even choose to fight it. But one thing is certain. The only way out is in.