Bernie

     When I was in the eighth grade, Mrs. Weiss assigned us to write an essay on "What Americanism Means to Me".  While I included apple pie and sports and Saturday mornings, I turned negative attention toward some things.  At 13 years, I was not precociously socially aware, but I had been sensitized to a few things.  When I was eleven I walked in to a "colored men and women" bathroom in Louisiana that was located behind the gas station. I had to go badly and I actually looked at my arms and decided they were "colored" so figured it was OK.   The bathroom was an outhouse that was poorly kept.  When I came out, the men in the gas station were laughing and pointing at me.  I physically internalized racism for the first time.  The feeling stays with me today, but in my 8th grade paper all I was able to say was that racism was a looming problem for our country.   
     I had experienced polluted and unusable water when I lived in El Paso, and in making excursions into Juarez, I realized we were leaving the Rio Grande a mess as it trickled into Mexico, so I read about the great rivers of the U.S.  The topic of sickened waterways was impossible to avoid.  I included in my 8th grade paper, my disappointment at the lack of attention to what we were doing to some of the people and so much of our lands and waterways.  For that, and for not giving more on apple pie, I got an A- instead of an A, but my literary merit was praised.  
     From then until now I have had a growing awareness that large segments of our population work to remain unaware of how our corporate and nationalistic thinking affects the rest of the world.  We have remained ignorant not only about our treatment of so many people, but the natural and physical world we are incredibly dependent upon, as well.  The machinery of our economic system has seized our thought processes and praised capitalism to the position of God.  The machinery has made dirty words of liberal and anything that finds fault with unfettered capitalism.  The economic machinery controls morality and even religion is bent to its will.   
     And today, at a beautiful Burlington park, next to a threatened but hopeful and still beautiful Lake Champlain, Bernie Sanders talked about all of those things and more, in a way no other politician, no other Presidential candidate has ever admitted nor addressed so bluntly.   It is time for everyone who has known these things in their guts, as I have, and as so many of you have, to get up and take a stand. It is time.  Now is the time.  I don't believe there will be another opportunity, if we do not do it now. 

Wealth, ignorance, and empathy.

     From UCal at Berkeley research, the drivers of expensive cars are four times more likely to cut in front of drivers than drivers of cheap cars at 4-way stops. At city crosswalks, cheap car drivers respected the right of pedestrian's way, while 46.2% of the time expensive car drivers ignored the pedestrians. The same study was conducted by an independent research team in Manhattan, which substantiated findings. Other research ran a cross section of the population through a series of tasks and when leaving the testing area they passed by a big jar of candy that had a sign indicating that the candy was for the children who came there. The richer the person, the more likely he was to take the candy.

Yet another study showed that the more cash prizes a person won at a set -up game situation, as that person's winnings grew, the more likely that person would cheat. People with incomes under 25 grand gave an average of 4.2% of their earnings while people with incomes over 150 grand gave 2.7% The rich are more likely to shoplift, and so on. There are many more studies, but in short, the rich have a skewed sense of empathy. I am not suggesting that rich people are evil. It seems to come from the very act of getting or being rich. Those who earn their way to riches talk more about the journey than the money itself. A rich person getting even richer gains nothing, zip, nada, in happiness. But when they were asked how they felt now, and how much wealth they would have to gain to be happier, they all replied two to three times richer. Even though the acquisition of more wealth by the wealthy demonstrated no gain in happiness, they thought it would. It would come from acquiring the money they did not yet have. As an article in The New Republic pointed out, This gap “is not just bad for the poor. It's bad for the rich.”

      It is as though the rich develop an empathy sickness, or they become ignorant about how their attitudes might affect others of lesser fortunes. It is not a big step to examine the way a rich country, such as ours, particularly after WWII, might also develop an ignorance about how their free market capitalism is corrupting other society's culture and economy. Since the root word of ignorance is “ignore”, it is quite plausible to assume the attitudes of our nation while exploiting the resources of other third world nations lack empathy, or even notice, despite the preponderance of published articles describing the plights our system has helped to create around the globe. It works best for our own gains in wealth to have lost our empathy or have justified our “interests” for better lives. It has served us to remain ignorant, since that serves our desires. Desires which at some level of consciousness become justifiable “needs” as our advancements then outpace “others”. This could go on until world society and power become so unbalanced that those with no hope begin insanely blowing up anything that can be pinpointed as having put them in a position of utter despair.

Of course there is more to it than that, but I am willing to bet that this has a lot to do with the current state of affairs. Throw in religion that forgets the point of the stories it has passed down and claims ultimate knowledge and truth, and it is easy to see that ignorance works well with the root of all evil.