America's Addiction
The Scooby-doo Culprit?
With the government shutdown, people are at risk of going without food if they do not receive public assistance, and to be clear, the highest demographic on food public assistance is White people, coming in at 36%. My guess is that many White people on public assistance believed in Trump’s promises to help them.
Yet, Trump just gave Argentina $20 billion at the request of a friend. He also told a reporter that Argentina is fighting for its life when the reporter asked him about concerns from American farmers. Trump doesn’t care about poor White people any more than he cares about America First.
It’s time to Scooby-doo this current crisis unfolding in the US, which will likely continue to devolve over the next few months and years. Remember how Fred, Daphne, Shaggy, Velma, and Scooby would catch the ghost/ghoul, and it would turn out to be just an old guy who owned the amusement park?
Well, let’s take the mask off of the culprit, and no, I am not going to say it’s Trump, or the Republicans, or any isms, or ideologies. The culprit under the mask is the addiction to duality. It’s the mindset of ‘us versus them,’ ‘the good guys versus the bad guys,’ ’ black or white’ - zero-sum mentality, it’s an addiction to certainty. This duality drug induces a state of self-righteousness and smugness, motivating people to be punitive. This affects the left as well; look at the past election. People voted to prioritize moral superiority over considering what was best for the most vulnerable. Whatever you wish on others will affect you because no person is an island. We are all interdependent. All flourishing is mutual.
How do we address the culprit? It takes a collective ego-death, but unfortunately, we are nowhere near as bad as things are going to have to get before people will be willing to address the underlying causes of the MAGA movement. However, that day will come, and I believe it will bring with it tribunals, trials, and truth commissions with reparative actions. Until then, as philosopher Antonio Gramsci said, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”