BAD ALPHABET SOUP
Whatever your own nation of residence and citizenship status, I encourage everyone reading this to research (I recommend using ixquick or startpage, both of which provide relative privacy protection), if you have not already done so, the economic-globalization agreements TTP, TTIP, and TISA, and take legal actions to oppose them: our mutual futures quite literally depend on abandoning the "race to the bottom" and preserving national sovereignty from the very real danger of widespread, legalized corporate rule, especially "investor-state dispute settlements" (ISDS).
Regardless of whether their sources are "big government," "big business," or worst of all, the collusion of the two (often referred to as fascism, inverted totalitarianism, or corporate totalitarianism) opposed to individual freedoms and the common better,** many non-personal problems originate due to hypercentralized control and power.
Communism only works when it's voluntary.
Capitalism only works when there is significant competition beyond monopoly and oligopolies, held in balance with moderate-sized governments.
**Above the "common good". . .but there is no "common best."
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VINTAGE INNOCENCE
Its blooms are the same yellow and white
As lamplight shining through ancestral lace
And a layer of falling snow
Yet the root of all nostalgia is
Survival, thick and convoluted
Reaching outward and downward to taper just above
Fear's permafrost. The child now old
Who could not finish a bowl of oyster stew
One December 7th after his father
Turned on the lunchtime radio
Thinks things were safer then
Yes, because he was a child, responsible only
For cleaning his plate, collecting paper, selling bonds
Yet more because he is still here
Seeing across decades with reddened blue eyes.
How he wants to reach out
And pass more crackers, carrots sticks, milk
To that boy of 1941, and even a molasses cookie, mother-baked
With the assurance that yes, he will grow up, grow old.
Because he cannot, he watches snow falling in moonlight
Through his sleeping granddaughter's window
And hopes she hears her own voice calling from the future
Loud, clear, free
And free.
Conformity is not a virtue.
Thank you, Citizen4. . .
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Robea
[email protected]
United States