Sunsetting

There was a time when America was the leader in most of the things that really mattered in the world.

There was a time when we saw potential in everyone, and strived to create an atmosphere that gave a helping hand, allowed for freedom at the highest level while still maintaining safety for the greatest good. It seems that those times are sunsetting. Rapidly.

In the last 2 weeks, the Supreme Court has taken the right for a woman to make her own choice around her body away. SCOTUS has removed the safety valve that New York State had put in place to make the streets safer by allowing anyone who wishes to carry a firearm pretty much anywhere. They have removed still more sovereign rights of Native Americans. And today, they ruled in such a way as to endanger not only every person in the USA, but the effects will reach around the world.

By disallowing the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate poisonous gases that the fossil fuel generators expel into the atmosphere, SCOTUS has effectively handcuffed policy in this country from taking necessary action to protect the human race, as well as millions of species of our co-inhabitors of this place called Earth. The very reason for government to exist in the first place is to set rules and boundaries that benefit the good of the people. We have become so accustomed to short term thinking, always considering how to raise the immediate profit margin, how to get re-elected, and where is my next sense of gratification coming from. Long time thinking has never been a part of the way we operate in this country. Except, that is, by the indigenous people, who have long taken into consideration the next 7 generations when making decisions.

I’ve long realized that money is the driving force of so much of what happens in this country. It makes me weep that it has become so pervasive and purpose driven that we are perfectly willing to colonize the generations of the future in order for us to have a bit more, now. Today, SCOTUS made it still easier for the money grabbers to steal from the children of the future by making it even harder to implement common sense safeguards.

It seems that in many ways, along with a livable planet, democracy as we have known it is sunsetting.