It is so wonderfully beautiful outside this lovely spring day in south central Texas
Green grass, beautiful wildflowers, pecans a-leafing; birds a-singing; biota crawling, digging, jumping, hopping, springing, running, floating, flying, gliding, soaring … interacting … LIVING!!!
The temperature generally close to a comfortable 70s
The air seems clean, streams are flowing, crops are growing
El sol de esta primavera is so very nice!
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The four younger grandkids are such icing on the cake
So full of energy and giving in their living
And nice things to say
Wanting to learn and absorb knowledge
Smiles of innocence on their faces, love in their hearts, and compassion in their souls
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I personally have had such a relatively luxurious and free life
And the freedom to speak out
(Even if I reach very few …
And even though even then
Those that hear
Generally aren’t listening)
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The media I hear and watch on this day in March of 2024
Does regularly remind me of the complicated necessity of socio-economic politics in an extremely artificial world of eight billion
Some of whom as individuals transform more than 300,000 kilocalories of energy each day
And there’s Trump! The constant prevalence of Donald J. Trump. …
Well … there is no doubt that Trump is an insane narcissisitic populist demagogue responsible for deaths of January 6th, in mass shootings, and from Covid and other terrible occurrences
But the root responsibility, admittedly complicated
The basic blame lies with an ignorant and quite immoral populace which enables and empowers a monster like Trump
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“Well paul bain, at least we have relative freedom in THIS country! At least we are FREE to speak out and choose.”
Blurts out my old intellectual family friend from my south Texas village of divine Devine
Oh yes! With the highest number of its citizens incarcerated in the world!!!
With gerrymandering and voter suppression! Anti- LGBTIQ+ laws. “Don’t say gay!” Book banning. Serious curricula retrictions in public universities.
(Lack of “positively ethical applied community ecology” across the curricula and campuses of most U.S. organizational entities)
The end of federal protection of abortion rights. One of a minority of countries which has the death penalty.
Arbitrary mass immigrant detention. Guantanamo …
Rampant destruction of Nature, the Commons, and the Land.
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This “spring-good-life” is truly very nice here in Seguin Texas
But this “freedom for a good life” is not accessible to many in this nation of the U.S. of A.
For some … indigenous; those of some skin colors, various religions, ethnicies, and economic sectors; women; relatively powerless, suppressed castes; those of certain sexual orientations; those that didn’t fit the norms of the majority, … it wasn’t accessible from the get-go
Some freedom has been gained in this nation over time, but much freedom has also been lost over the years
And we are increasingly losing it
And I reemphasize, it is not because of Trump and Trumpsters
It truly is all of us
Yes as an a-hole contrarian citizen of the most poweful, greedy, and selfish county in the world …
I will also put most of the blame on us of the U.S. of A.
(Especially when our power
Our neoliberal capitalistic, military power
Snatches so much freedom for those of other nations of the world)
……………………………
… Nevertheless … this loss of freedom IS a widespread global disease
pbm ( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )