(via Thaumaturgy Foramina 🕳🚪🔬☮♎️🔞♻️ on Instagram: “#SynchronicityHappens While meditating upon completing an #AmericanPrivilege essay for posting to alanfann.tumblr.com the universe brought this image forth. In the words of #JewelKilcher “there are addictions to feed and mouths to pay…” Please standby for #WouldYouLikeFriesWithThat on my blog 🍟🙉🙈🙊🤓🗯👊🏻🍔 ***/ #Repost @consumecool with @repostapp. ・・・ #cheeseburger #addiction /***”)
Above image used by permission from @consumecool
On #AmericanPrivilege and Why Many Misunderstand #TheMovement and the Work of The Clintons
Or #WouldYouLIkeFriesWithThat / #WhereIsTheBeef
S. Alan Fann, © March 9, 2016
Despite what some suggest, Madame Secretary and 2016 Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton is not a colonialist. Her motivating force for “intervention” is all about the #HillaryDoctrine – being a force for international rights as well as education that is independent of religious doctrine, and supportive of women’s rights in all foreign relations.
And as far as capitalism being unregulated? That could not be further from the truth. Where the sense of that comes from, however, has to do with two or three factors: lobbying influences, tax accountants, and unfair business practices (i.e., caveat emptor). Thus, consumers have a strong burden to proactively call into account (e.g., demanding refunds, suing when direct injury or damages result or when the exchange of value for price paid is demonstrably out of par) and in some cases exert market influence divestiture.
When I speak of public investment, I am also talking about funding not only social services [e.g., administering health, education and “welfare” (HEW) agencies/programs], but also infrastructure from not only hard investments (roads, bridges, tunnels, and service delivery systems), but also the soft investments such as tax collection, and other administrative agencies that serve HEW. We all know very well just how much the sequester indiscriminately cut budgets - that was not President Obama’s plan, but the negotiated requirement because once the Affordable Care Act (ACA, often referred to as Obama Care) was passed, the battle was on and the Democratic majority was lost.
So downstream, public funding was lost for the infrastructure that I mention.
Lastly, I could not agree more about the problem with public-private boondoggles that happen. I believe that they were significantly more egregious with Bush-Cheney conflict-of-interest laden war mongering re: blood-for-oil and private “security” practices, and the prioritization of building foreign oil industry infrastructure over the protection of refugees and nation-building support. The only upside to the overblown military investments are the innovations that are pushed, but the emphasis on anything that constitutes hard assets, such as vehicles or auxiliary means of manufacture or deployment of weapons of deadly force, I personally do not support.
Having said that, in reviewing Hillary’s foci while Secretary, one has to give her credit for the positive influence and areas that she insisted be leveraged - soft power. Ensuring that internationally, as many as possible have the means to access to communicate with their leaders so that they can express their relative satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The expansion of the internet and social media as agents of change as well as her #HillaryDoctrine were no small accomplishments, and the effects are not only reverberating, but also building a slow momentum toward educated citizenry throughout the world.
Geopolitical boundaries are for the most part quite arbitrary and in too many cases ineffectual at increasing understanding both within and between the “imaginary boundaries.” When we Americans vote simply with “our pocketbooks,” we fall into the category of ethnocentric behavior of #AmericanPrivilege – how exactly is that something of which we should be proud, if we “protect our freedoms - our Democracy, free enterprise - or even Democratic Socialist institutions to the extent that they exist” – when significant portions of the world live in squalor, suffer under oppressive political or religious regimes, etc., and in some cases have no sense whatsoever of their relative degree of deprivation? Many of us Americans have no sense, whatsoever, of our relative degree of privilege and freedoms that we take for granted.
And just to be clear, when I talk about #AmericanPrivilege, that includes our tendency to ignore these facts regarding reality within our geopolitically constructed borders:
• diversity of access to opportunity and job sectors
• relative population in our country, as compared to other nations
• diversity of population
Contrast that with our “exclusive” immigration “policy.” We have limits on how many political or economic refugees we accept. We have preferences that we give on immigration for those with financial or intellectual means…
Any hypocrisy in any of that, especially when it comes to allowing technology for means of productivity to be exported? What price should the rest of the world pay so that we can have our “freedom of choice” and ways and standards of living in all the ways that we do?
Having said that, of course, we have to have safety nets; increase our education standards; our innovation/status and integrity of our infrastructure; opportunities for all within our borders, but what right do we have to severely disenfranchise and ignore the rest of the world in the process of transforming our American society, level of civilization and equity, when so much is out of balance? Our impact and complicity has to be taken into account.
And on the list too is the impact of the military/terrorism industrial complex – so many of the hard assets are responsible for consuming and producing or otherwise impacting global climate change, disproportionately. We have much of which to be proud, indeed, need to be made whole, but in the process have to ensure that we do not perpetuate a nationalism that is the scourge of The Earth.
Hungry much? We should seek and chew on and digest the truth, taking a hard look at ourselves as we strive to be neighborly. Success at the expense of oppression of a subset of the Earth’s majority population – when in fact we – as Americans – are a minority in real numbers? Where is the evidence of love and kindness in that?
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