Livin’ La Vida Loca

Waking up, day after day, and seeing continuous disasters visited upon the Palestinian people forecasts a day of facing the light at an increasingly dark level. It is impossible to be unaware of the genocide; yet an entire nation reinforces it. The American people are disposed to the sufferings its government inflicts upon others.

Election of an authoritarian to the highest office, who appoints cabinet positions with qualifications that require little experience in government affairs and extensive experience in extramarital affairs, completes the mystification. Elise Stefanik, selected as America’s representative to the United Nations, agrees to the proposition that “Israel has a biblical right to the West Bank.” Shuddering! Doesn’t qualification for a cabinet position require knowledge that the bible does not determine right and that the Earth is round and not flat? Hopefully, UN security guards will bar entry of her and other vocal terrorists into the UN building.

Maintaining the Declaration of Independence and Constitution will be a battle. Refusing to have the Old Testament on a night table and the Ten Commandments on the living room wall will be challenging . Knowing that America is in a dystopia, “livin’ a vida loca,” will be difficult to absorb. These are not the principal problems that prevent America from being great again. The principal problem in the United States is a government that has been unable to resolve its problems. For decades, a multitude of problems have surfaced, talked about, and been ignored. Suggestions for solutions are cast aside as empty words ─ U.S. governments are only interested in donor offerings and contributing lobbyists; attention to the people’s problems is time consuming and not remunerative.

Look at the extensive record of problems, which has been growing for decades and have some obvious solutions. After these crisp answers, I might elaborate on them in forthcoming articles.

(1) Social Security
The ready to collapse Social Security system has present earners paying for retired workers and closely resembles a national pension plan. Instead of having workers and corporations pay FICA taxes, why not collect revenue from income and corporation taxes and finance a real national pension plan?

(2) Gun Violence
Decades of gun violence and shootings in schools have been succeeded by decades of gun violence and shootings in schools. An idea ─ get rid of the guns; nobody will miss them.

(3) Climate Change
In the 1964 presidential contest between Senator Goldwater and President Johnson, Goldwater posed as the “war hawk,” ready to pounce on the North Vietnamese. Johnson’s famous phrase was, “I’ll not have American boys do what Vietnamese boys should do.” After Johnson won the presidency and had “American boys do what Vietnamese boys should do,” Goldwater voters reminded everyone, “They told me if I voted for Goldwater our military intervention in Vietnam would greatly increase. I voted for Goldwater and they were correct.”

In all elections, voters are reminded that voting Republican enhances global warming. In all elections that the Democrats won, those who voted Republican noted that global warming continued to increase.

(4) Government debt
Mention government debt and blood boils ─ another of those internalized issues, courtesy of the mind manipulators. Government debt is the result of problems and not the problem. The problems are (1) Income taxes are too low to finance meaningful government projects; (2) The military spending is too high and; (3) The economy runs on debt and government debt rescues a faltering economy. Give attention to the real problems and government debt will be greatly reduced.

(5) War
Since its official inception in 1789, the United States has attached itself to war in almost every day of its existence. Not widely mentioned and not widely apparent, U.S. forces are still shooting it up in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and parts of Africa. U.S. arms explode throughout the world. U.S. involvement in the genocide of the Palestinian people is inescapable. Americans do not know they prosper on the degradation of others and they survive well because others do not survive at all. While intending to end all wars, President Trump may learn that the U.S. cannot progress without war; war is a preventive for economic and social collapse in all 50 states.

(6) Immigration
Immigration to the United States has become a political football. Political correctness, catering to voters, and ultra-Right nationalism vs. ultra-Left internationalism have strangled an intelligent and objective analysis of a major issue, which is not immigration. The major issue is that the U.S. has supported oligarchies in Latin American nations. These oligarchies have created significant social and economic problems, which the disenfranchised relieve by fleeing to America’s shores. Uncontrolled emigration to the United States skews nations from their natural growth and conveniently deters them from seeking approaches to resolve their problems. The U.S. contributes to the emigration problem and should resolve the problem and not perpetuate it. Wouldn’t it be beneficial for all countries, including the United States, if the Latinos did not have the urge to emigrate?

(7) International terrorism
The September 11, 2001 attack – the first aerial bombings on American soil – compelled the United States government to wage a War on Terrorism. After more than twenty years of this battle, the U.S. has neither won the war nor totally contained terrorism; just the opposite ─ terrorism has grown in size, geographical extent, and power. Observe Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, and all of North Africa. One reason for this contradiction is obvious; the initial source of international terrorism is Israel’s terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza. The U.S. blends its battle against terrorism with preservation of American global interests. Each blended component contradicts the other and creates confusing missions in the U.S. War on Terrorism.

(8) Economy
A roller coaster American economy of accelerated growth and gasping recessions flattened itself with slow but steady growth in the Democratic administrations that succeeded the George W. Bush recession. Now we have Donald J. Trump, who claims he had the greatest economy ever, when all presidents had, in their times, the greatest economy ever, and previous administrations had more rapid growth and captured much more of world production. By proposing lower taxes, lower interest rates, and blistering tariffs, Trump is heading the U.S. into massive speculation, heightened debt, increased inflation, a falling dollar, and a return to a 19th century economy of robber barons, boom-and-bust, financial bankruptcies, and a drastic “beggar thy neighbor” policy. His sink China policy will sink the United States. America will no longer have friendly neighbors and might become the beggar.

(9) Racism
The United States consists of a mixture of several cultures and has no unique culture. People feel comfortable in their own culture and attach themselves to others and to institutions that reflect that culture. In a competitive society, this extends to gaining economic advantage and security by dominating other cultures. Social, political, and economic agendas use racism to promote this strategy and maintain domination.

Competition between cultures, manifested as racism, is built into the American socio-economic system. Political, legal, and educational methods have ameliorated racism and have not abolished its corrosive effects. Slow progress to an integrated and unified culture, decades away, might finally resolve the problem of racism.

(10) Health Care
Health care is posed as a financial problem, insufficient funds to treat all equally. Health care is a socio-economic problem, where statistics show that nations having the most unequal distribution of income have the most maladjusted health care. More equal distribution of income is a key to adequate health care for all.

(11) Political Divide
Connie Morella, previous representative from Maryland’s 8th congressional district, enjoyed saying, “I sit and serve in the people’s house,” a phrase echoed by many congressionals. No people or sitters exist in the “people’s house.” Representatives stand for the special interest groups, Lobbies, and Political Action Committees (PAC) that donate to their campaigns and assure their return to office. The two political Parties stand united against the wants of the other and the political divide leads to political stagnation. Whatever Gilda wants, Gilda does not get. America coasts on a frictionless surface of contracting previous legislation and inaction, which is its preferred method of government.

(12) Foreign Policy
All administrations, the present included, have had foreign policies driven by two words, “empire expansion.” Until now, the U.S. has sought markets and resources and financed the expansion from its own banks. Donald trump seeks expansion by real estate maneuvers and seeks to have foreign sources finance the expansion. This emperor has no clothes and will bankrupt the U.S. in the same manner as he bankrupted his real estate enterprises.

(13) Drug Addiction
The epidemic drug addiction problem summarizes the attention given to most other national problems — despite a century of organized efforts to subdue the problem, “New numbers show drug abuse is getting worse across the country and in every community. Overdose deaths have never been higher and opioids and synthetic drugs are major contributors to the rising numbers.” President Nixon popularized the term “war on drugs,” but his administration’s Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 had an antecedent in the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914.

Blaming China for supplying fentanyl ingredients to Mexican manufacturers, only one part of the total drug economy, does not change the source of the drug addiction and provides no resolution to the problem. Looking elsewhere, at nations where drug addiction is minor or has been alleviated is a start. Japan has a “strong social stigma against drug use, and some of the strictest drug laws globally; Iceland responded to high rates of teen substance abuse with “a comprehensive program that included increased funding for organized sports, music, and art programs, as well as a strictly enforced curfew for teens;” Singapore’s “notoriously strict drug laws have resulted in some of the lowest addiction rates in the world, including a zero-tolerance approach to drug use and trafficking, with mandatory death penalties for certain drug offenses;” Sweden “combines strict laws with a comprehensive rehabilitation approach in a ‘caring society’ model that emphasizes treatment and social support over punishment. Time Magazine recommends another approach.

…history exposes the truth: the drug war isn’t winnable, as the Global Commission on Drug Policy stated in 2011. And simply legalizing marijuana is not enough. Instead only a wholesale rethinking of drug policy—one that abandons criminalization and focuses on true harm reduction, not coercive rehabilitation—can begin to undo the damage of decades of a misguided “war.”

Skewing the GDP
Replacing a building destroyed in a catastrophe augments the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in four ways — housing and helping those affected by the catastrophe, responding to mitigating the catastrophe, tearing down the destroyed home, and building a new home. The GDP benefits from the continual and unresolved problems.

• Opioid cases generated a cost estimated at $1.5 trillion in the United States for the year 2010.
• Gun violence generates over $1 billion in direct health care costs for victims and their families each year.
• Climate change during 2011-2020 decade cost $1.5T in losses (Ed: might be debatable).
• Health care costs are almost 20 percent of GDP.
• The Defense budget for 2025 is $850 billion.

In the disturbing world that is characterizing the United States, a combination of political stagnation, misdirection action, and low level of intellect and knowledge prevents solutions to recurring problems. American nationalists boast about having the highest GDP, not realizing that the boast uses tragedy to disguise more significant tragedies — moral, political, and economic decay of the once mighty USA.

She’ll push and pull you down
Livin’ la vida loca

Her lips are devil red
And her skin’s the color of mocha
She will wear you out
Livin’ la vida loca

Livin’ la vida loca
She’s livin’ la vida loca.