Life Between 0 and 1

I watched this documentary again last night after having seen it a few years ago. For those that aren’t familiar, this is the documentary that Al Gore released on the problem of global warming. Knowing most of the facts, as I’m convinced it’s been happening for decades, I’m still so confused why some still don’t see it. This isn’t a standard topic anymore in mainstream media and I believe the lack of coverage has lulled people into a sense of comfort that things are changing and getting fixed. That is so far from the actual truth. This post isn’t about global warming though despite using the title from the documentary. I felt it needed clarification.

Al Gore made some really good points about how truth is often inconvenient to things like economy, power, politics, personal wealth, a requirement to change. One such example he gave, that is used as an argument, is an old-school balance showing gold bars on one side and the entire planet Earth on the other. His point was that the economy could never be compared to the whole planet becuase if the planet stopped supporting life, no amount of gold could compensate for that. Unforutnately, media and politicians have said that changing things to slow or reverse global warming effects would impact global economies. I see this as an unwillingness to change (they won’t get richer) now because its a problem other generations will have to endure (they’ll die rich). Typing that just now, I see how ridiculous that argument actually is. The cost of not doing anything will result in a world that we will not recognize in 50-100 years. How can I tell my daughter that its her responsibility to fix?

The term “inconvenient truth” can be applied to a lot of the issues that we’re currently facing in this year’s Presidential election. It’s inconvenient for the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) to allow parties other than Democrats and Republicans to participate in the debates. Doing so would allow the American people a real choice in candidates and break the duopoloy that the current political system has created and fought to preserve. The 15% polling rule to allow a third party candidate to debate is unfair for multiple reasons, especially when the polls selected are chosen by the CPD. I wrote about that here.

The term “inconvenient truth” can be applied to the massive amount of debt the U.S. is carrying right now to the tune of around $20 trillion. Taking into account that $9 trillion of that was the result of the bailout in 2008-09 by the Federal Reserve, it’s inconvenient to think that the recovery we’ve had in the resulting years since is propped up on money that was printed. Any normal business operating with a 97% debt ratio would certainly fail if drastic changes to the company are not made. The government is unwilling or unable to make the changes necessary to start to address the amount of debt we have in place. A core concept of Liberalism is debt cancellation, a concept that I think we’re going to have to embrace in the near future in order to prevent the collapse of the American financial system.

The term “inconvenient truth” can be applied to Donald Trump. For all the negativity he represents, the American people elected him through a national primary that he won squarely; the jury is still out on whether he won it fairly. He used a rhetoric that resonated with a lot of Americans in that they had a way to show their anger and frustration by pushing a button in a voting booth. We’re now living with all the discovered inconvenient truths of his paste and realize now that this person is a few weeks away of becoming our next President; for 4 years. My concern about the political system aside, this man is NOT the person we want representing America to the world. We’re already being laughed at as a result of this year’s Presidential race. The last thing we need is to have this type of individual in the seat of the President.

The term “inconvenient truth” can be applied to everyone questioning the system and seeking information to become more informed. It isn’t hard for someone to find sources of news and information that aren’t biased or owned by the elite in this country. One such source for news is CounterPunch.org, a site that I’ve visited multiple times a day since learning about it from a blog post on Learning to Speak Politics. Reading raw and uncensored news was amazingly eye-opening and scary at the same time. Comparing stories on mainstream media with the same content on CounterPunch brings to light the glaring censorship that mainstream media actually has. It would appear to the uninformed or mis-informed that this is not the case. Yes, CounterPunch might be considered radical, but not in the sense that they’re conspiracy theorists, rather in the sense that they have committed to reporting uncensored and unfiltered news. If that’s radical, then consider me a radical.

There is so much around us that we just don’t know about or understand and I’ll be honest, it’s been a difficult journey finding out the truth about our political and financial systems. It wasn’t until I started reading about the founding fathers and economists of their day that I truly understood the scope of the sleeping bomb we’re all sitting on right now. It is not a stretch of the imagination to see that the political and financial systems are integrated so tightly that a minor bump for either of them throws the delicate system completely out of balance. As an example, the political system, fearful of a completely collapse of the financial system, urged the Federal Reserve to bail-out the financial system, in turn, protecting the wealth of the politicians. A sickening cyclical system that self-reinforces with every change in legislation that makes it easier to make more money. It’s the rest of us, the non-wealthy, that end up paying for it with taxes, higher prices, and the burden of increasing debt.

Our entire country is in a pandora’s box of inconvenient truths. I choose to be informed and fight the status quo. How about you?