Filosofa’s Philosophical Nuggets

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Economic issues, education, guns, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Today I’m offloading some of the bits ‘n pieces, jumbled thoughts about anything or nothing, that are clogging up my mental lines.  Take them with a grain of salt, or for whatever they’re worth, for they are just snippets I jot down when I need to get a thought out of my head so I can focus.

  • What does it take to truly outrage Americans? Short answer:  You can’t.  If killing their children doesn’t earn any sustained outrage, then they are blind, deaf, dumb and numb to the gun culture and incapable of caring.  If Uvalde, Parkland, Sandy Hook and other school shootings haven’t managed to capture their attention for more than a 3-day news cycle, then nothing will.  They sit around and pray to whatever deity they find comfort in that their own children will be spared, rather than actually demanding action on the part of the lawmakers they elected and whose salaries they pay.
  • Justices Thomas, Barrett, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito and to a lesser degree Roberts have ensured that we can no longer trust the U.S. Supreme Court to ‘do the right thing’ in handing down justice. The Republicans in Congress have guaranteed us that the law works in favour of only the wealthy and the uber-religious.  Police forces around the nation have shown us that they ‘protect and serve’ the white portion of the population at the expense of all others.  They tell us to ‘trust’, but just who are we to trust?  Who has earned our trust?
  • If you need a church, synagogue, mosque or temple, if you need a bible, quran, or talmud, if you need a rabbi, priest, or minister to tell you what the right thing is to do, then I would suggest you are not listening to your own conscience. I think we ALL know right from wrong, but some people will allow religion to silence or override the voice of reason from within.
  • My granddaughter, Natasha, and I often have conversations about events happening near and far, and her voice is always refreshingly astute. I don’t remember the topic we were discussing when she uttered these words, but I found them spot-on!
    • “If you don’t want to be insulted when you’re dead, don’t be a piece of garbage while you’re alive.”

  • Ever wonder how people across the pond view our antics? This is a comment from a UK reader on one of Robert Reich’s recent posts:

    • “I am just utterly staggered and confounded by how those in the House and in Congress are prepared to abandon all normal rules and, it would appear, your constitution, to support this liar, fraud and sexual predator. It is also, I fear, a very sad reflection on the educational and intelligence levels of so many in the USA that they are also prepared to vote for this man, to support people who at least purport to believe in QAnon and to see nothing wrong with all the attempts to deny large numbers of people their basic human rights. However, anybody who finds a small group of cells to be vastly more important than the child that it might grow into or the woman whose body is required to support it, has to be verging on insane in my book. It’s just a shame that so many of your population appear to fall into that category.”

  • The people of the United States have become so ideologically divided that we’ve made it easy for politicians at all levels to prey on us, to use us as pawns in their games where the prize is wealth and power. Quite honestly, I do not see how we can become any more divided, but then I’ve said that before.  Some predict a civil war in this country, but … there are only ideological boundaries, not physical or geographical ones.  It is We the People who are the problem, not the politicians who are opportunists and not missing a chance to use our divisions to their own advantage.

  • What’s in your checking account right now … no, just go check, don’t project or extrapolate … the dollar or pound amount right this minute? Now … I want you to just think about this … what if you donated half of that amount right now, right this minute.  Would you have to default on the rent/mortgage?  Would you and your family have to go without food tomorrow or next week?
  • Does this statement make any sense to you?
    • “To save free speech on college campuses, Republican lawmakers and governors say it’s time to stop talking about diversity, equity and inclusion.”
      • WHOSE free speech??? Confusing, to say the very least.  Seems to me they are saying that to save free speech, we need to kill it.

Well, I feel much better now!  The cobwebs are clearing and I think I might be able to find a focus soon!  Thanks for putting up with my jumbled collection of thoughts, for helping me sweep a few of the cobwebs from the corners of my mind!

16 thoughts on “Filosofa’s Philosophical Nuggets”

    • There has been so much, so many tragic, senseless mass shootings, that I think many people have become inured to it. There’s only so much outrage the human psyche can take before it shuts down, before it tunes out.

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  3. Jill, well said. Just as many people who touted the Big Lie in the 2020 election did not get elected (although some did), people who support the candidacy of the former president who should be indicted on seditious actions, election tampering, taking classified materials, and additional counts of fraud, and who was voted by 150 plus presidential historians as in the bottom five of US presidents should also not be elected. Keith

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    • I find it deeply disturbing that the Republicans have sent more ‘entertainers’ than serious legislators to Congress. They waste time being front and center, as Margie Greene and others did at Trump’s Waco rally this weekend, than they spend doing the serious work of the nation. We have a looming debt ceiling crisis, but they are all bopping ’round the country, appearing on Fox ‘News’, and tooting their own horns while … the work is left to gather dust inside the Capitol.

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  4. When nations fracture it is as a result of tectonic build up, long in the making.
    Where does the fault line start?
    Was it 9/11? The subsequent predictable but ill advised naïve decisions over Iraq & Afghanistan? The election and re-election of Obama by clear majorities?
    Or do we go back further to the disillusionment and turbulence of Vietnam?
    Should we look even deeper to the White Privilege Fundamentalist’s anger at the rise of liberal diversity and equality which began its stuttering progress back in the 1950s? And the resulting culture wars?

    You and I Jill, of course will differ on the basic question of religion. Therein lie warnings for those who will not study in depth but simply seek selected parts to suit their prejudices For instance Isiaah 29:13-
    The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.” I daresay Evangelicals like to quote that one – thing is I can turn it around on them>

    Where does the US go? We have all asked this question of each other and ourselves long and often. One thing is likely those who think they are in control of The Right and MAGA are but second-rate surfers on a very large tsunami wave which itself is destined to crash on rocks of History’s Realities. Regrettably innocents are caught in the wreckage and debris.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Innocents and guilty alike will be caught up in that wreckage, Sir Roger! But the guilty never seem to realuze that! It cannot happen to me!
      For Jill, no natter what age Natasha was when she said that, my first thought was, “Out of the mouths of babes…”
      Hopefully, a more full comment will come tonight when I have time to think.

      Liked by 2 people

    • “Where does the fault line start?”, you ask. You mention some very good possibilities, none of which I can argue with. Perhaps, though, it starts back even further, with the beginning of the human species, or the point where humans travel further abroad than their own villages and see that there are others who are different than they are. Perhaps there is something in the human DNA that keeps them from accepting any who don’t look, act, and think exactly as they do. But then, how to explain the millions of us who are NOT like that, who accept people at face value, who care more about life itself than ‘tribalism’? Sigh. I dunno. I know that in this country, the election of a Black man not just once, but twice, was a trigger, and then came one of the nation’s biggest bigots/racists/conmen in the country to stoke the already existing anger, to pour fuel on the fires. But … the roots of today’s hatred were already planted long before Obama or Trump.

      You’re right that you and I view religion from different angles, but that quote seems apt to me. So many who I hear talk of ‘worshipping’ their god, don’t act at all according to the teachings of Jesus, but interpret what they can to suit their own beliefs, and omit mention of the rest.

      I think … and this is not hyperbole, but my honest thoughts … that the U.S. is on a collision course and has already passed the point of no return. 100 years from now, perhaps we’ll be on the road to recovery after hitting rock bottom, and it will be decades more after that before we are trusted again.

      🐺

      Liked by 2 people

      • The USA was always a bit of an experiment. It did follow one rule of history though, after a revolution there was a large internal conflict. The nation as an entity got lucky because it was willing to sacrifice the well-being and freedom of minorities to hold together.
        Times have now changed and minorities of many types are not willing to knuckle down to White Privilege. White Privilege having gone into the delusion it is a an oppressed minority all of its own.
        I’m not 100% certain a point of no return has been reached. The 2024 presidential election will be ‘a casting of the runes’ as a lot will depend on how the majority react to the White Privilege grouping and their few deluded associates.
        In the worst case scenario there follows a separation of communities and states, this weakens the USA. Now despite what a lot on the Left across the world and the neo-racist anti-Americans may feel that will mean the end of their cosy little Western World and we enter a whole new era.
        Which also makes Brexit a pretty short-sighted move as Europe will have to tighten up.
        Who can be wholly sure? We are usually prepared for the Past and that is only the Past as we wished it had been.

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