Everybody's Talkin'

And they're chattering about the year to come

First off, great news: My documentary feature film, “How to Save Democracy,” is just about finished! I have a few final touches to go, and then it’s ready! I’ll be letting you know where to view it in the near future. The topic of saving democracy is clearly one that’s very relevant to our current times.

Now onto the main event:

It goes without saying that it’s been quite the year, one that’s thankfully coming to a close. Next year, though, guarantees to be a wild ride, unpredictable in what’s to come or expect. A lot of people are looking with dread at the incoming Trump administration, wondering if democracy will be able to carry on.

We can be grateful for what we have, and continue to hold hope for the future, for a future in which everyone can flourish. Yet at the same time, we don’t want to pretend all is well.

All is not well.

I joined the social media site Blue Sky recently. Blue Sky has been around a few years, but only opened themselves up to the general public in the early part of 2024. Growth accelerated after the election, when people started to bail from Twitter, which has become overrun by right-wing extremists.

I’ve posted something on Blue Sky recently, and someone replied that I was a “f**king idiot.” While that’s a typical response you might get on Twitter, it’s uncommon to find that on Blue Sky, because Blue Sky is known for its civility.

So I immediately blocked them.

I bring this up because this is what passes for civil discourse on social media these days. Someone says something, and the person who disagrees resorts to calling them a “f**king idiot,” or something similar.

That’s no way to have a conversation.

But it’s not just social media where these conversations are found. You find it in the media, particularly in right-wing extremist circles. People say outlandish things, and when someone disagrees with them, it can get verbally abusive.

I want to live in a world where people respect each other, even care about each other, and even, dare I say, love each other, as brothers and sisters (I know, I know, I’m a crazy, wild-eyed optimist). But how can this be achieved, when people are willing to be so abusive towards one another?

And how can this be achieved when there’s so many people struggling to makes end meet, while at the same time, a tiny morsel of the population are accruing all the money?

How have we become so heartless that we allow this to happen, as if it’s normal?

It’s not normal. It’s a sign of sickness, of a society whose priorities have become warped. The warp is in the direction of money, where money is the end all and be all, and altruism is no longer seen as a virtue.

Instead, everything seems transactional these days, predicated on an agenda of “what’s in it for me?”

What would happen if the agenda of what’s in it for me was replaced with an agenda of what’s in it for everyone and for the greater good?

That sounds radical. But it’s not. It’s very conservative. And if I exhibit those values of thinking of the greater good, I guess that makes me a conservative.

Which is an oxymoron for a democratic socialist like myself.

But these values of thinking about the greater good are hard to hear above the noise. That’s because everybody’s talkin’, making noise, yet no one’s listening. Not a lot of people are making sense, because they’re talkin’ shit out of both sides of their mouths.

The values to prize are: peace, compassion, living by the golden rule, making sure all are taken care—especially the least of us.

We are far adrift from those values, and as we go even further down the drain, the fabric of American society is being ripped apart at the seams.

You know the story of Luigi Mangione, the young man whose body was wracked by pain from a failed back fusion surgery and who committed a brazen murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of Unitedhealthcare, the largest healthcare insurance company in the U.S.

For Mangione, it was an attack of vengeance, assaulting the person who represented everything that had gone wrong in his life. Mangione’s act was one that Gandhi spoke of when he said “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

I don’t condone what Mangione did, but I understand it. A few days later, a woman was charged with domestic terrorism for saying, while on the phone with an insurance company, “deny, delay, depose,” after a claim for treatment was denied.

“Deny, delay, depose,” were the words etched into the bullet casings found at the scene of the murder of Brian Thompson.

Everybody’s talkin’, understandably pissed at a system that has screwed them over, while the wealthy enjoy lives of luxury and untold riches. But vigilante justice isn’t the cure—although it should be a wake-up call for the wealthy.

Sadly, it won’t be. They instead will beef up their security details to make sure they’re better protected. The true response would be for the wealthy to start talkin’ and say, Yes, we know we have hoarded most of the wealth, and we now realize it’s time that we redistribute what we have.

But that’s a pipedream—it’s not going to happen.

What happens historically is that things get far worse as the shit hits the fan; and then finally it gets realized that things need to be fixed.

Here’s some recent historical examples: In the late 19th and early 20th century, wealth inequality had become so obscene and gross that steps were finally taken to fix it during the Progressive Era.

In the 1940s, the countries of Europe were so decimated by a war that had torn it apart, that when Europe was rebuilt, the countries were transformed into social democracies.

And from the ashes of this war, the United Nations and European Union were born, as a means for countries to find ways to interact with one another in a manner that preclude war. Sadly, war still continues, but at least nations can talk to one another and attempt to find a way out of the madness of war.

And another example: After the stock market crash of 1929, when the Great Depression had shattered the U.S. and tens of millions of people were jobless, homeless, and penniless, the nation elected new leadership with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who ushered in the New Deal policies that represented a new direction for the country. Its mission was to make sure everyone could potentially flourish.

The New Deal was an imperfect system, as it didn’t fully bring into the economic fold people of color, but it was the first time since the Reconstruction amendments were added to the U.S. Constitution that the U.S. attempted to fulfill its legacy of an aspirational democracy—that all were equal, and that all were imbued with the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The New Deal saved the U.S. from descending into chaos and anarchy, and it cohered the nation together for the next forty years. The great majority of people were enthralled with the New Deal policies that allowed them to live with the potentiality to achieve whatever they aspired to.

Thus was the so-called American Dream born, where a person has opportunity imbued with possibilities. This period of time, from the 1930s to the 1970s, was known as the Great Compression, because of how much economic equality there was: the prosperity of the upper class, middle class, and working class all grew at the same pace. It truly was a Golden Age.

Now we live in the opposite: a Dreary Age, rooted in extreme wealth inequality, an epoch filled with cynicism, pessimism, narcissism, angst, anxiety, depression, anger, rage, and hate. Everybody’s talkin’ at each other about this bleakness, and yelling and cursing at one another as they do so.

There is a way out, although we won’t be seeing that exit strategy from our new national leaders next year. Instead we will be seeing a kleptocracy of the highest order.

Yet, we don’t have to rely on our national leaders to show us the way. It’s up to us, the people, to shift things. Life is too short, too sacred, to allow a kleptocratic regime to obscure what we need and what is most important. If we know what we want, and act in that way, we can get there.

This is the hope for the future. That’s what everybody’s got to be talkin’ about. We can’t let the negative overwhelm us—though the reality is, the next few years will be a very cynical time, one in which the modus operandi will be money and how much can the wealthy loot and hoard.

But the good news is, that’s not sustainable.

As I said at the beginning of this essay, all is not well. Things may just get pretty darn fucked up. The amount of looting of the national treasury will be mind-boggling, which is why you need to know what a sustainable, healthy society and civilization looks like.

The reality is that creating a healthy society and civilization takes work. It will mean reinventing the wheel, as there are very few role models for what a healthy society and civilization look like.

To achieve this end, we will have to examine our relationship to money, and determine how to neutralize that most basest of human instincts, greed.

The first culture to use paper money took place in the year 1000 A.D., with the Chinese, who invented paper money. By 1200, China was the richest and most technologically advanced civilization in the world, all because of that creation.

But a hundred years later, China got rid of its paper money. What happened? The emperor saw what money had done to the Chinese people and determined it had changed them for the worse. They were chasing material things and shiny objects, and the Emperor, in all his wisdom, understood that Chinese society was fast declining because of this.

At this point in time we’re not going to be able to eliminate money. It’s what greases the wheel for civilization. But we’re going to have to come up with a new way of conducting business, and with that, a new way of conducting ourselves and how we interact with one another.

I believe Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the greatest American president, because he saw what greed had done to the nation, and counterbalanced that with the solution—a society in which everyone had a fair chance and a new deal.

That’s what we need today, leaders who recognize that we need to go in that same direction. We can create a new nation, dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal, and also all men and women have the opportunity and potential to flourish, in whatever way they choose.

When we go in that direction, that’s when people will really start talkin’—talkin’ of their dreams and aspirations and hopes for living in a humane, compassionate, and fair society.

Got it? Ok, everybody, start talkin’.