In chaos there is pattern. This is the pattern emerging amidst our national chaos: people are dying in floods because early warning systems were interrupted by “waste, fraud, and abuse” cuts to the National Weather Service. People all over the world are dying due to the shuttering of USAID. People are losing their social safety net and public services to afford tax cuts for the morbidly wealthy; it’s estimated that over 50,000 citizens each year will die unnecessarily due to loss of their health care and access to services. People are being plucked off the streets and out of their homes by masked government agents and being “disappeared”.
The pattern in the chaos: ordinary people are suffering and dying, sacrificed on the altar of financial gain. Apparently the common person is counted among the waste to be cut. Certainly, it’s clear that the everyday person on the street is seen as a resource to be exploited, used and discarded. Republican Joni Ernst in a contentious town hall told her constituents protesting cuts to MEDICAID that, “We are all going to die.”
Consider this: The children were swept away in a flood that surprised them because the early warning system broke down due to staffing cuts. There was no one staffing the office necessary to pass on the evacuation warnings. The director of the DHS couldn’t be bothered to sign off on an emergency response for over 72 hours after the flooding began. She was too busy posing for the camera.
Indignation is useful fuel but can only carry us so far. As Kara Swisher asked in a recent podcast, “Would you rather be right or effective?” Yes, we are right to be indignant about the lies, the gaslighting, the fraud, the corruption, the grift, the incompetence, the brutality, the immorality, the hubris…
And, as we watch our democracy swirl around the drain, it is obvious that we are not-at-all being effective in our response. Words to myself and to you: perhaps it is time to rethink our ranting and raising-awareness about how wrong this is. That certainly feels good to share in the indignation. It certainly feels like we’re doing something. A lesson I learned early in my consulting life: raising awareness is not action. It’s a step toward action. If raising awareness was action, gun violence would not be the leading cause of death of children in the USA.
If the republican’s BBB is any indication, we are not being effective at all because our actions are limited to awareness raising: we call representatives who no longer listen; we march in order to send a message to representatives who no longer care. The polls have the tyrant and his party in the basement and they do not seem concerned at all. We raise awareness within our social media bubbles with people who are already abundantly aware how wrong this is.
Calls to representatives. Marches and civil unrest. Polls. If you are hearing what I am hearing, then we have to realize that this is a whole new ballgame. They are playing as if our votes – our voices – no longer matter. We are assuming that our votes will eventually correct the course. The clear message that we need to grok is made obvious in the pattern: To them we are waste to be cut, an unnecessary obstacle on the road to their gluttony. We can protest all we want. They are aware. They do not care since democracy is not in their plan.
It’s way past time to be effective. Our right to vote, our representative government, is being auctioned off to the highest bidder. What actions – beyond awareness-raising – will effectively save our democracy from a leadership so bloated and corrupt that it cannot be bothered to care or to listen?
read Kerri’s blogpost about PATHETIC
Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: action, artistry, corruption, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, effective action, indignation, Joni Ernst, Kara Swisher, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Medicaid, pathetic, story, studio melange, Texas Floods, the melange | 1 Comment »
The Direction of Intention 