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by @anarchyroll

You gotta have faith, faith, faith.

Faith is essential, when going through hard times. During hard times one must have faith that things will get better. One needs to have faith in his or herself to do the work needed to dig out of the hole they are in. Faith in other people is essential to living in civilized societies. Our currency is backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. More than 3/4 of the world’s population belongs to a religious faith.

The leader of the world’s largest religion believes in global warming and believes science is the way forward on the issue.

I wonder how many of his followers across the globe feel the same or in this case, believe as he does. I’m pretty sure they have to, or are at least supposed to. But aren’t we supposed to believe 97% of scientists, NASA, and the Pentagon when they all agree global warming is happening and is a threat to our security and very existence?

Is it faith that a higher power will protect us that stops people from accepting the reality of global warming? Is it greed from money earned from contributing to the acceleration of global warming over the past thirty years? Is it ignorance in thinking that because the weather in one’s hometown is fine that global warming is a hoax? Is it denial? Accepting global warming as the reality of our present and future forces both a painful look in the mirror and even more painful wide scale changes moving forward.

The Military Industrial Complex knows global warming is real. When did they become a bastion of liberal ideology? The effects of global warming are presently causing security risks and have potential for greater security threats in the future. Maybe fighting two wars for oil got them to change their tune on wind, hydro, and solar energy. Or maybe its the nature of military operations being centered around collecting, analyzing, and accepting results of measurable data that got them to come around to the reality of global warming.

On the other end of the spectrum is the current President of the United States who has said that global warming is a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese. Many of his supporters/voters are also climate change deniers. Trump is backing up his words on this issue by attempting to cut the Environmental Protection Agency budget. He also recently green-lit the Keystone XL Pipeline which has negative environmental concerns associated with it.

Climate change deniers may sound and come across as ignorant, but at least they don’t have the power to further damage the planet in an negative way. Trump, in his first 100 days in office has taken two measures to tangibly create negative consequences for the planet. I suppose I could have faith that Trump will do the right thing, change course, and become an environmentally friendly President. I could have faith and believe that all the climate skeptics will accept the scientific facts and reality.

They can have faith, I’ll trust…but verify.

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By @anarchyroll

In his first weekly address, Trump made sure to speak to what he called the forgotten Americans. Do you know who those people are? If you don’t, you are apart of the problem, not the solution.

If you live in a major metropolitan city, with a job dependent on technology, an artistic mindset, a liberal paradigm: with no understanding or empathy for the old, rural, industrial, rust belt, baseball, apple pie Americana folks who have been left behind since the 1970s
then your faux rage, uproar, rallies, marches, and hashtag revolts are not only irrelevant, but also impetice for Trump’s re election.

Remember how galvanized the left was after eight years of republican rule in America. When two wars were stared. Stem cell therapy was disabled. Religion was prioritized over science. Then a mixed race gentleman ran for the highest office in the land with the potential to make history, The level of enthusiasm, effort, and existential encouragement to reach beyond the brass ring for annals of history was no longer a wet dream of ideology but a forgone consequence the rise of a political base.

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Empathy and compromise must be paid to the south and rust belt at some point. The former Confederacy has been guaranteed red on the electoral map for many generations now. The former manufacturing havens of the mid west have turned electorally red year by year. If the deep blue states of California and Illinois can have red governors multiple times over in recent years, then red states can change majors in the electoral college as well.

The Affordable Care Act has caught on quite well in the Bible belt and the new Pope says a lot of leftist things. Is there not common ground to be gained there?

Trump winning the elections defied many perceived norms. But one old school norm that holds true is that all politics are local. There must be focus paid to state elections. One vote doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot in a national election. But in state, county, and township elections one vote can go a long way. There must be national emphasis paid to state elections. That may sound like a lot. But in the era of the never-ending news cycle and the unquenchable thirst for content of varying quality, a national spotlight paid to local elections is a natural fit. Think I’m stretching here? Watch a major sports network during an off-season or a preseason.

Solar power is creating more jobs than the coal industry. Legalized marijuana will be creating more jobs than the manufacturing sector. Both of those things scream common ground for liberals and conservatives. But can that common ground be found if we are all lost in the trees of pundit reactivity?

There is a decent percentage of people on each side who are lost. Too dug in the trenches of their side as if it will give them bonus points in this life or the next. But there are vastly more people who simply want a to live a happy life without hurting anyone. If everyone had more income than debt, only the freaks would care about getting rid of second amendment or transgender rights.

But that common ground must be diligently searched for through action and policy. Rhetoric and campaign promises are simply not good enough. The forgotten Americans have been left behind for almost half a century. Their anger is as justified as it is misdirected. Who closed the factories? Who outsourced the jobs? Who cut the aide checks? The answer is not liberal elites.

It isn’t ridicule nor parades that will convince the forgotten Americans about the wonders of social progressivism. It is a path out of poverty that involves a purpose. For generations politicians have leveraged social issues against economics to channel the angry attention away from the people who closed the factories and outsourced their jobs towards the sex, science, and sin of city dwellers.

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Getting angry or nasty and marching in the streets of major metropolitan cities does nothing but satisfy ego and social media content appetite. The actual work must be done in the broken rural communities of the country that have been so economically depressed and culturally starved for so long that they have become nationally infamous as centers for the meth and opium epidemics of the past decade.

So instead of trying to cram fringe left-wing issues down America’s throat from New York and LA, try putting boots, brains, and plans of action on the ground one flyover state at a time. The rust belt must be acknowledged and tended to. From factory towns to mill villages. These people need to be explained, then shown through action, a plan for sustainable economic success in the knowledge worker age. Until this entire section of the country, until these forgotten Americans are given a hand up from the other side of the aisle, transgender rights, environmental accountability, progressive income taxes, and marijuana legalization are all mere pipe dreams of a voting block too apathetic and naive to bring about the real change they publically pout about with placards and impotent anger.

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By @anarchyroll

Have you heard that Donald Trump is the POTUS?

People are either in ectasy or agony with very little middle ground. He won the electoral college by a large margin. An electorate of very excited, engaged, angry voters who wanted change. Does that sound familiar? It should, that’s how Obama surged into the White House in 2008.

I had a female in my social circle shed a few tears saying she was worried Trump will bring about the apocalypse. The apocalypse? I literally had to calm her down by taking some deep breaths and then consoled her using positive skepticism. I told her, that Trump is a businessman, if he destroys the world, how is he going to make any money?

There is a limit to how bad Trump can make things. It is built into the Constitution as well as the Democratic party’s bureaucracy machine that like the RNC and lobbyists, is dug into the D.C political scene like a tick. Try not to get lost in the media industrial complex’s nonstop coverage and punditry of what Trump is doing. Bullet point reviews will do just fine, you know where you stand on the issues he is tackling, there is no need, nor any good to come from watching hours and hours of talking heads enveloping what he is doing.

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I proudly voted for Bernie Sanders in the Illinois Democratic Primary Election. I voted for Jill Stein in November because I live in Illinois and in Illinois the vote for President doesn’t matter
Dukakis won our state in 88 after all. I am also a white male, I can’t pretend to relate to what women and immigrants are experiencing internally with Trump in office.

I do feel that the ramifications of Trump’s potential actions are being sensationalized in the name of a never ending loop of creating content to sell to advertisers. Evoking intense emotional response for the sake of ratings and revenue regardless of where one gets their news, fake or legit.

I also feel that the galvanization of democrat, liberal, independent, female, minority, and youth voters is exactly what our country needs and has needed for a long time. Too many people, myself included, checked out when Obama took office. Obama ran a campaign on hope, once elected, the left felt victory had been achieved permanently. A natural human instinct to think that since we just swept the floor, the dust and dirt will stay away forever.

Unfortunately the floor gets dirty again, the dishes need to get rewashed, the hamper fills back up, the bills keep getting sent. The same goes for voting. The other side of the aisle doesn’t pack it in just because they lose one election or two or three. One must continuously go to the polls to further push or cement their political agenda whether liberal or conservative. And by one, I mean EVERYONE!

Trump has certainly lit a fire under the ass of a lot of voters. That is a good thing in the long term. Yes, in the short term it will be painful especially for immigrants, women, the impoverished, and environmentalists. But in the long term if those who are angry, nasty, marching, protesting, paying attention, and getting involved can stay that way, then actually show up in mass to the fucking mid term elections then maybe “progress” can begin anew.

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If half of the world has less money than less than ten people, something is either wrong or rigged. There is no middle ground or shade of gray. Either we are living in a world of kings and peasants or we are living in a world where all people are created equal. The very idea that there will always be poverty at a time of mega yachts, vacation homes, million dollar cars, Botox and private islands is to spit in the face of reason.

A very real present day consequence of this growing, institutional, massive wealth disparity is seen in the rise of populism politics in the industrialized world. Brexit, Donald Trump in America, the growing  Made in France movement, and so on. It has finally caught on that globalism doesn’t work for the common man, because it wasn’t designed or put in place by the common man. It was put in place by the elite, to benefit the elite. The manual labor workers of the first world have been forgotten and left behind. Whether on purpose or on accident no longer matters, they have made their voice heard by organizing and getting behind far right political parties and candidates.

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The political consequences of the wave of populism that we are currently in the beginning of, are just now starting to take shape. But politics is just the tip of what is going on. Follow the money, because neither political populism nor big philanthropy will be enough to stem the tide of the rising groups of people with no jobs, no homes, nothing to lose but debt.

They are going to the voting booth for now, protesting in mass on the streets for now. But the history of the world shows that concentrated wealth and power are the planted seeds for rebellion.  And unless the elite share the love as well as their wealth, it is not a question of if but when their favorable debt to liquidity ratio can no longer save them from the ratio of have-nots to haves that are past the point of no return.

Eight men possess more wealth than half the world combined? That doesn’t happen on accident. This has been done on purpose. This is long-term, purposeful, monetary migration. The problem is known. The solution is known. But the money keeps going the same direction, up. These super charged capitalists have certainly skirted some laws to amass their obscene wealth concentration. But nothing skirts Newton’s Third Law of Motion. What goes up, must come down.

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By @anarchyroll

What do you call a transgender person in the military who provides Wikileaks with access to one of the largest data collections of the US military to ever be made public?

Her name is Chelsea Manning. When she first made world-wide headlines she was known as Bradley Manning. A person at the center of one of the biggest news stories of all time. Manning will finally walk out of military prison this spring. Barack Obama commuted the sentence on one of his final days in office.

There is something about giving up ones freedom to expose not simply the truth, but the hidden truth. The hidden truth that has been hidden purposefully. The hidden truth that has been hidden purposefully by people in positions of power and authority.

We all see injustice in our lives. Living life means to witness injustice. There is so much good in the world, but there is also a lot of bad. To stare the good in face and actually do something about it is commendable. To do something knowing there will be a negative personal consequence is admirable. When those consequences are solitary confinement in military prison, well, now we’re talking about a whole new level.

Cowardice is the standard in the developed world. Bravery is showcased in clothing choices and mate selection. Passive aggressive no longer aptly fits the abeyant nature of the modern condition.

Many were too scared to even look at some of the video material Manning leaked. Many more don’t have the conviction to read much of the other material manning leaked that shows the true nature and motives of modern warfare. It makes sense that many of those same people would reflect their self-hatred for those failures of character onto someone who has them in spades and is one of those millennial cross dressers to boot.

There are many people who don’t even want to look another person in the eye on the bus, at the coffee shop, or waiting in line at the grocery store. Are people like that going to stare down solitary confinement in a military prison in the face, and still take action to serve the greater good in the face of being called a traitor by their government and fellow (hu)man?

We accept many wrongs as the norm. Chelsea Manning refused to do this. The price for consent or defiance of these norms is the same, freedom. The norm is to accept our gender whether we are congruent with it or not. The norm is to accept what the Military Industrial Complex does regardless of cost or collateral damage. Both of these norms are very powerful and entrenched.

Just as passive aggressive is no longer a suitable term for confrontation in the modern condition, brave is not a suitable term for what Chelsea Manning has done for the global village. A living, breathing dark knight. Hated and maligned for being very ordinary yet willing to do the extraordinary without care for the personal cost she must pay and has paid.

Not a martyr, a harbinger. A symbol of the future. A future where we don’t accept or stay silent about what is wrong regardless of perceived norms. A symbol of hope. Hope for every confused coward that walks through life in a daze that they can tangibly change themselves and the world. An icon of the millennial generation that desperately needs heroes of substance over style.