Sunday, November 8, 2015

A Post-Election Attitude Check - Malaise is Not an Island in the Pacific!




Another election has come and gone.  And some voters might rightfully wonder if the election was rigged.  Add to that, the universal feeling (make that, “certainty”) that government is dangerously out-of-touch with voters and too indebted to the fat cats.  And top it off with the overwhelming feeling that you’re powerless to change things… then, Congratulations are definitely in order!  You’ve got yourself a healthy dose of “MALAISE”!  And that ain’t no island in the Pacific.  

So how do we snap out of it?  What can we do?  When faced with a challenge of this magnitude, we need to take in the big picture and forge an all-encompassing vision for Good Government and Personal Commitment, a “Land, Sea, and Air” approach to the battle at hand, if you will.  But keep it simple. So here’s mine in a nutshell: 

1    1. Minimize the need for government.  Clearly, if government wasn’t so all-pervasive to begin with, it wouldn’t matter as much. Local self-reliance is already a fast-growing movement, and you can do your part to help it along.  Minimize your consumption and maximize your production.  Become as self-reliant as possible on an individual, community, and national basis.  Learn how to feed, clothe, shelter, medicate, educate, and protect your community locally.  Relying on imports and expecting others to do these vital tasks for us, has left local communities across the global missing critical skills and becoming easy targets for natural and manmade disasters. Besides, it’s a lot of fun knowing what nature can do for you. I started a foraging group in Philadelphia five years ago and have never seen such enthusiasm.  Lots of good people joined with a sincere desire to learn about nature and how they can live cooperatively with it.  See: www.WildFoodies.org

2     2. Get involved in government.  That’s right.  It sounds trite and counter to the previous suggestion.  But if we don’t get involved, others will continue to mess things up “big time”.  Government is made up of all kinds of people. It is up to us to create a positive atmosphere and produce productive results to counter the negative influences we should expect in the halls of power. I have run for office (and lost) and worked with my political representatives on all sorts of issues, sometimes with success and other times not.  But the strategy I have found that works the best is to treat politians with respect, but let them know that I’m not going away.  It sounds simple, but it’s pretty effective.  All politicians, no matter how they got into office, are vulnerable to public pressure. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.  Of course it helps if they were fairly elected to office, which brings me to my next suggestion.

3     3. Vote openly.  You heard me.  Sign up and be counted.  Let everyone know who you voted for, as our Founding Fathers did.  Voting is the lynchpin of a democracy.  But the “secret ballot” is an open door for vote fraud.  It always has been.  Granted, the election process has been rigged from the dawn of time through a variety of means, but today the situation is completely ridiculous.  We are letting a couple of corporations electronically count (using both touchscreen and scanned paper ballots) most of the votes. Meaning, that literally one person can decide who wins or loses most of our elections.  Certainly, individuals within our military and government agencies, like the NSA, have long known how to reach into the backdoors of election computers and rig elections. Open voting can help defeat their efforts to control election results.  See: www.thelandesreport.com/VotingSecurity.htm  and  www.counttheballots.org 

I know how exhausting civic life can be.  In the 1990s I was deeply involved in environmental issues, mainly to do with waste and landfills.  And then for many years after the 2000 Bush-Gore election, I wrote articles about the history of vote fraud, particularly computer voting and how easy it is to rig our elections.  For both environmental and voting issues, I did considerable research, wrote articles, attended conferences, made speeches, appeared in documentaries, contacted our elected officials, and even filed lawsuits to sound the alarm… all to little avail it seemed, although I know that’s not really true.  Many people heard my message and still visit my websites, as I continue to get emails and calls from concerned citizens far and wide.  See: www.LynnLandes.com

Admittedly, after a couple of decades of that kind of intense activism I got discouraged and changed course, for my own sanity and those around me.  I entered the field of self-reliance and nature, started some meetup groups, and learned to enjoy life again.  But I could never entirely escape the need to communicate with our political representatives in office.  It’s an unavoidable fact of civic life.

So, here I am coming full circle, but this time suggesting a more comprehensive, holistic approach to good government that includes more personal responsibility and self-reliant living on my part.  Suggesting to myself and others to get involved and fight the good fight on every level.  Because we can’t afford to ignore the damage and good, governments can do.   

Get Sensical and Get Involved!  Because Malaise Ain’t No Island in the Pacific!

www.LynnLandes.com 

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