The “Silent Majority” Is Entering A Time Of Rebellion And Demanding Change - Dick Rauscher
I wrote this article well before the election. Hillary and Trump were running neck and neck in the polls. So I had no special insight as to who would become our next President. Regardless of who won the election, I’m convinced the rebellion for change will continue. The anger of the “people” is not going to suddenly disappear.
The “people” are demanding change. They will no longer accept empty promises of change.
The issues highlighted by Bernie Sanders will need to be addressed. The rebellion will not settle back into silence and passive acceptance. The “people” are demanding a future that looks very different from the past.
Our new President will need to listen carefully to the voice and collective will of the “people” who elected her or him into office. The “silent majority” will not disappear back into passive acceptance and silence on issues including;
the passive acceptance of wall street greed and banking abuses,
the passive acceptance of poverty creating wages,
the lack of hope for a better future and better living conditions,
the passive acceptance of extreme wealth inequality,
the passive acceptance of our democracy being taken over by the 1%,
the passive acceptance of poverty and the never-ending struggle to simply “get by” and survive another day,
the hypocrisy of exclusion,
the passive acceptance of the poverty-creating “failure and ethical bankruptcy” of capitalism,
the ideological ignorance of politicians that deny the reality of human-caused global warming and storm intensification, ice melt and ocean water levels rising, global famine and droughts……in order to protect the power and wealth of their lucrative political positions, or
the passive acceptance of continued lack of access to the benefits of our American promise of justice and full equality.
The list of changes that will be required is almost endless. And it will take time. But one thing is certain. The political will of our nation has changed. The silence of the silent majority has come to an end. A new age of rebellion has begun. The people are demanding change. The same old, same old is no longer acceptable. The issues highlighted by Bernie Sander’s all need to be addressed by our new President.
Change Is Coming
Change is coming, and our politicians need to wake up to that reality while there is still time to avoid the violence we witnessed in the 1960’s. When anger gets ignored, it turns into violence. Regardless of who is President, hobnobbing with the “consoling proximity of other millionaires” will only continue to create more dangerous social blindness to the needs and concerns of the “people”.
Resisting change is never an option.“Pushing the River” only creates suffering, anxiety, angst, despair, and unhappiness for those who would attempt it. It ignores the reality that the foundational essence of our universe is change. Everything evolves. Everything is subject to change.
Stated even more simply, in time, everything changes. Everything!
When we resist change, we are choosing to do battle with the universe. Never a good idea….because we will always lose.
Forks In The Road
As someone once said, “The future always forks. New forks are available in every moment of every day. There are always better and worse paths that we can choose to walk.” At every fork in the road, the awesome power of choice awaits for us. We always have the choice to change the path we are walking on and begin creating a new “future”.
We can never accurately predict the outcome of any given choice. But we can not give up working together toward a better future. We need to hold onto hope and trust the wisdom of chaos theory. The idea that the flap of a butterfly wing here has the potential to change the weather in Africa. Or, in our case, the ability to trust the reality that extremely small changes or perturbations, in reality, made today will change the future in ways we have no ability to accurately predict.
The only choice we have at each fork in the road is to accept the reality of change and then work to the best of our ability to choose new paths into the future that are better. Everything changes……over time, bad changes die off, and new changes are born and evolve. But every change offers up new forks in the road. New opportunities for choice to create new and better paths.
Everything changes. This includes political systems, political parties, and the future of human civilization. The failure to choose new paths is the decision to embrace passive despair and powerlessness.
Conclusion
We need to embrace and trust change but actively commit to doing the work necessary to create ever better paths into the future. If we fail to embrace the changes we need to make to become a more sustainable species, the laws of nature warn that we could be heading toward the extinction of our species.
For example, the ecosystems required for individual humans to survive is not the same as a viable ecosystem for human civilization. Human’s have proven over the eons to be a very difficult species to kill off, but human civilization may prove to be far more fragile and vulnerable to global warming and the changes that are coming in nature’s global ecosystems.
I hope our new President has the courage and wisdom to accept the challenge of change. It’s coming whether She or He is ready….or not.
If Hillary is our new President, she will need to aggressively embrace the ideas, changes, and policies articulated by Bernie Sanders. She will need to listen more carefully to the people and begin to quickly create new and more sustainable paths for us to walk as we head toward the future. If she fails in this task; our future as a nation will certainly suffer more violence and social disruption…..until the “people” are heard, and more compassionate and realistic paths forward get created.
If Trump is our new President. All bets are off. I don’t have a clue about what to predict what might be coming. My only recommendation would be to fasten your seatbelts and hope that Congress has the wisdom and courage to resolutely limit the damage and danger of an American President that has virtually no ability to listen to anyone but himself. The future if Trump is our new President? Your guess is as good as mine.
It would not surprise me if Canada began building a wall.
