Opportunity does not knock, but it is out there for those willing to seek it out. But watch out because it comes cloaked in secrecy, a genie offering three wishes, none for nothing.

Out in the wilds of the unknown, it will appear on the horizon with a smirk on its face and promise in its eyes. Walk long enough and you will find it standing in the most inopportune place, waiting.

It is just a decision, you will tell yourself all the while knowing it is a lie. It is my fate, you will think, knowing that there is no such thing. It is what it is, opportunity will say. It is up to you. And there you both will stand, staring at the crossroads saying nothing.

The greatest thing in life is not hope, but opportunity. The biggest chance is not faith, but decision. The darkest day is regret and the clearest morning is the day that opportunity walks away.

We wake and the sun is not yet up but our brains are busy with the night’s work. So much. There is so much going on. There is the political mess that we often find ourselves in, and this time (of course) is so much worse. There is the overwhelming feeling of tiredness, especially in the mornings just before we tap our phones just to see. Oh, and Covid. We have to be responsible, we have to consider the possible consequences.

Oh, and our family. Our spouses, our children. Our responsibilities creep up on us, a conveyor belt of crass compensations follow. Busy work defines us, our jobs fill our days. We eat, we watch TV, phones in hand. The sun goes down on another beautiful day. Night blankets us in comfortable darkness allowing the blue haze of pixels to engulf us. We are social creatures living on a computer planet.

It gets late and our eyes tire. We’ve watched the world go by another day and we brace ourselves for the next. In our bed, the comfort of sleep not far away, we begin to worry about things that might happen, possible scenarios and deep-seated concerns about real issues. The pillow and sheets become our womb and we fall into a fitful sleep dreaming about the next day and the balance that it will bring.

Steven Pinker, in Enlightenment Now, wrote “[Wealth] is created primarily by knowledge and cooperation: networks of people arrange matter into improbable but useful configurations and combine the fruits of their ingenuity and labor.” (80)

That is to say, the wealthy did not create their wealth alone, but with the cooperation of many people. The point that Pinker is making is that wealth is created, wealth has a cause, and that creation is the result of many inventors.

Consider corporations. By their very definition they are not individualistic. Therefore, the wealth that they create is not individualistically created. But many of the wealthy, especially what is sometimes called the “ultra” wealthy, make the argument that they deserve the wealth that they have. They are correct, but so do all of the other people that it took to create that wealth. Corporations are, in fact, the result of a community workforce.

Today’s political and social divide is not that of ideological beliefs, but of wealth. That there are those that choose to defend the unjust deserts of the wealthy is another matter, but it cannot be argued that the wealthy pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. What the wealthy are doing at this point, for the most part, is dismantling a working government and hence a viable community and at the same time claiming that they have right to do so because they alone have created their wealth.

I know one man that has done just that, created his own wealth, and he had a hard row to hoe. But his wealth, even his, has been made on the understanding that there were others backs and others minds that put money in his bank account. Whatever else we choose to fight for, we must remember this: wage labor does not have to be slave labor.

Politics always seem to be important, but often it is not and should not be.  It does not determine happiness on a daily or personal basis.  Done correctly, the politic is the machine that works silently in the background allowing us to believe that we have rights.  It is important and allows us all to live day to day without the worries that most of our forefathers have had to deal with.  This has all changed.

When politics does not work it becomes important and it does determine happiness on a daily and a personal basis.  When the politic is done incorrectly, or criminally as it is now, the machine churns out smoke and rattles as its gears do not mesh and the mechanization works against itself.  It reminds us that our rights are precarious.

As  the American government is sold off piecemeal to the highest bidder we the public are bogged down and being bogged down by details that do not matter, they do not count, and that will change nothing towards fixing the problems we deem so important.  We fight each other and defend our parties and our tribes, yelling about our rights.  We fight for our rights as the political machine slowly reminds us that our rights are nothing but an illusion.

Or as George Carlin so aptly put it, ”

“Yeah… sooner or later the people in this country gonna realize the government does not give a fuck about them. The government doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare, or your safety, it simply doesn’t give a fuck about you. It’s interested in its own power, that’s the only thing, keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.”

These are interesting times in politics and regarding social changes.  And in interesting times arguments and grievances are often over simplified.  Such is the case with the current progressive movements such as Black Lives Matter and the MeToo movements, to use a few popular examples.

These are needed movements, no doubt, and continued progress towards equal opportunity for blacks and women is necessary.  And there is, as ever, a ‘however’.  However, the enemy in the sights is the wrong man.

It is true that it has been white, patriarchal powers that have constantly stood in the way of equal opportunity for all, but it is not white men that are at fault here. It has been and continues to be god and greed.  It has and has always been desire to undermine Truth,  and power that is at fault.

To say that white men have created the road blocks that stand in the way of social progress can be likened to the argument that the prisons are primarily filled with black men because black men are guilty of most of the crime.  There is a disconnect.  There is a hidden falsehood.

To argue that white men are the problem, the core of the issue is to imply that other cultures and genders would be or are any different.  They would not and are not, as a study of world history will attest.

If it is white men that are the problem, and currently it is for the most part white men that are the problem, then it is those particular white men that need to step down.  However, and more importantly, it is the power (the corporate and religious power here) that is the problem, not white men.  Rid the country of corporate and religious power, and black lives will actually matter and women will be able to finally claim: me too!

We cannot let those minority of human beings that refuse to evolve with evidence slow the progress of intelligence.  We cannot let those marginalized by their own fear and ignorance, stand in the way of the inevitable march of truth and happiness, of equal opportunity for all, of safety and security.

Teach the ignorant, and remember that we all are ignorant.  Tolerate those that tolerate, and remember that we are all intolerant.  Learn from those who teach and remember that we can all be teachers.

The Truth, like all things of value is worth defending.  Do not censor stupidity, but bring into the light so it too will burn off into the forgotten depths of the evil, that so many bad ideas have disappeared and are destined to disappear.

We have ambitious morons in our presence, and their lies, their trepidation, their unequivocal love of hate, of fear, of power, of money, and deceit will dissolve with their antiquated and unappealing, foolish ideas of a civil society.

We can hate the ambitious morons, but hate is never enough.  Hate is the ambitious sibling of fear, and we must never be afraid.

The ambitious morons of the world must be treated like the fools that they are, like the liars that they pretend not to be.

It is difficult to look at the present situation and hold hope up as a possible future.  The booze flows as we drown out the insanity one glass at a time.  We numb ourselves to ignorance and stupidity right outside of our doors.  We seek solace in social media.  None of these things bring us any closer to the hope that we desire.

But hope does not work in mysterious ways.  It is simple.

There is no future as our feeds contend.  It does not exist.  It is not set in stone, just as there is no past, as our drinks promise us.   We can get lost in the illusion of a dystopian future and be weighed down by the ignoble past so easily.  But, in doing so we give up on the hope that we desire.

We only have the present and this is where hope resides.

If there is a mask on the face of hope it does not mean that there is not a smile behind that cloak.  Hope has proof.  It has been verified.  With every corrupt act from all the power and greed hungry politicians that have ever effaced the country, with every corporate turn of the screw, with every ignorant and angry retort, hope has marched forward in the form of progress.

Hope is the realization of past progress, and the actualization of present progress.  If you don’t have hope, act as if you do.  If you don’t want hope, then lay down and let the waves of progress wash over you.  If you have hope, then march forward as the orange ignorance slowly gives way to the inevitable progress that we have made.

The old adage, follow the money, applies to every situation which entails injustice and attacks against the rights and privileges that Americans take so much for granted.  There is no doubt that profit is the underlying motivation of the conservative movement, but perhaps more heinous is the ideological motivation that is behind it.

With a patriotic, a nationalistic, and religious ideology in place the conservative movement can justify their actions without having to retort to the truth: base monetary desire.

Make no mistake about it, the conservative movement that placed Trump and his administration into office is motivated by money, but money does not sell, ironically enough.  What does sell is ideology.  Both are powerful tools, money and ideologies, especially in the rhetorical realities of people who have the one and lack the other.

The conservative movement’s current stranglehold on this country is no less than a legal government takeover.  Money buys power, and power makes laws.  While the conservative movement is nothing less than a criminal movement, it is not altogether illegal.

The legalization of criminal acts is the beginning of the end for any country, as history will attest to.  And the legitimacy of the Trump administration and the conservative movement that supports it hinges upon nothing more than empty laws.  The emperor has no clothes, but it is becoming against the law to point this out.

IF we can simply put aside our differences we could create magnificence, the utopian ideas that so many before us have held, could become a reality.

IF we could somehow set aside our superstitions we could drop the heavy weight of guilt and fear, and ignorance would become the knowledge that we have spent lifetimes searching for.

IF we could turn our back on our selfish tendencies, we could cease to compete with each other for those things that come free: happiness, security, comfort and love.  We could evolve beyond our nature.

IF we would consume books and literature, philosophy and music, we could see through the fog of lies and empty promises, the darkness of fascism and the light of ideologies  We could leave the shoulders of giants and stand on our own.

IF we could accept our humble ignorance and shed our arrogant desires we could die in peace knowing that others after us would have all of this and so much more.

If only.

There are changes coming.  Don’t be afraid.  They will come of their own accord.  You do not have to do anything.  They come slowly and methodically and without our notice.

Change goes by many different names: progress, regression, passion, hatred, happiness, love, but one name remains consistent.

Inevitable.

We can choose to watch them pass us by or pretend that they are an illusion.  Or we can embrace them.  We do not need to do anything other than choose what we call them.

Change is the only consistent.

But nihilism is not the answer, nor is hope.  Life changes us and we life.  Change has led to life and change will take life away.

Change is the god we worship no matter what we call it.  Do not bow down, but use it to your advantage.

We have very little time to change those things we want to change.