Right-Wing Planet Earth

The planet earth is basically right-wing. By that I mean we are basically looking after our own interests, and that’s totally natural, as has been so well proven lately by the American Republican Party.

I don’t think that one particular country or nationality is better than others in that regard. Though they are usually promoted thus, and we spoiled Americans are not particularly better.  We’re just isolated, and have not had to deal with suffering war brings since the 1860s. If you moved the suffering people of Gaza, Palestine, and Lebanon here, they would become self-interested American-Style Republicans so fast it would make my head spin. I think so, anyway. And if we could make registered Republicans in America move to, say, Syria, they would immediately cry out that the world was not listening to their extreme suffering. When it was so very obvious.

But I think prioritizing one’s own interests is totally natural, even historically, as a glance at the old Roman Empire will show.

When a political system coincides with self-interest the political system is usually clung to and preached as its virtues usually become obvious. This happened with Communism early in the twentieth century: people were hungry, and Communism offered bread. Hey— presto, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say.

Democracy remained a counterweight to communism until around the 1980s with the advent of Ronald Reagan and with the rise of self-interest that the American Republican Party represented. Even though Reagan was really stupid and completely self-serving, he is still looked to as a sort of saint by Right-Wingers.

Now stupid Americans, not understanding our governmental system in the least (the study of Civics has been made irrelevant since the 1960s) have elected a fascist (Mussolini coined that term) dictator to rule over them (I say “rule” because I think he and they don’t know what “preside” means). And it is thus our fate to be ruled by a fascist dictator. He aims to destroy  American government, and he will likely succeed at that because that is what he said, very plainly, that he would do, plus, he has no understanding of how the system works. He and his many followers don’t need to.

It used to be that the United States was a great global power that was a beacon of freedom for the entire world. That is no longer the case, unfortunately. With the election of the Trump monster, Earth has turned right definitively at last.

In the midst of this, I am happy to agree with Vasily Grosman, author of the novel LIFE AND FATE. He believed that history  is about great evil confronting a tiny kernel of good. Great evil is eternally surprised that the tiny kernel arises. It makes no sense. And that it seems to be indestructible.  Which also makes no sense. Just look at tradition.  But, efforts on behalf of that tiny kernel are never wasted. May I always work for that tiny kernel, dying for it, if necessary.