4th of July celebration? Or agenda for urgent action.

 

A new book is out by Steven Brill, titled the “Death of Truth”.  It blames our bad media diets for the current state of the world.   This may not be true, but this book is an attempt to answer the January 2017 Time magazine cover page story as Trump was inaugurated, “Is Truth Dead?”.  Exactly 50 years earlier TIME used exactly same unique cover page with the words “Is God Dead? in white, on an entirely black page thinly boarded in red.  After the Fact checkers verified all the lies, misinformation, and pure poppycock spewing from mostly one candidate in the recent Presidential contest its truthful to say that if Trump is elected truth is defiantly on life support.  And a sustainable remedy is urgently needed

What Americans in much of the world fails to grasp is the ‘one sidedness’ of truth. Neil deGrasse Tyson wisely and correctly asserted that our minds can possess three kinds of truth.   The first is our personal truth. What God do we believe in or not.  We all know there are plenty of sides to this truth and will never agree on which one is correct.   Then there are our political truths.  And again, there is no limit to the number of these increasingly polarizing sides.  The globally accepted ‘one sided truth’ is determined by objective analysis. This truth has provided all of humanity with profoundly useful technologies for any application.  Communication, transportation, medicine, banking, and life prolonging preventive health measures along with unprecedentedly powerful weapon systems enabling any one disgruntled nation or leader to globally end all life as we know it.  Because “Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....” Jen Easterly. CISA director.  Oct. 29, 2021. [the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency is our nation’s newest federal agency established by the Trump Administration in 2018].  And our environment is our most fundamental and essential infrastructure!

So, this Fourth of July, instead of celebrating our mental delusion of independence, we should think deep and hard about the profound words starting the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, “WE hold these truths to be self-evident”.   Meanwhile, many Americans and others around the world also blessed with abundance have managed to redefine happiness.  Too many believe it’s about ‘feeling good”.  But humanity will never be able to truly achieve the lasting happiness that was intended back when that word was written.  Then it meant as contentment with finding, creating, and applying one’s talents and using these in service to those they loved and others in their community, with the intent of ensuring the protection of their freedom, security, prosperity, and posterity.

 Today our global community allows wars, genocides, violent extremism, extreme lethal weather events, hunger, starvation, and the global spread of pandemics and other lethal and debilitating infectious diseases.   Nearly all of these are affordably preventable.   Yet our existing global governance system was never given the power to do this.  Humanity once achieved a global success in cooperating to eradicate the Smallpox.   That saved more lives in last century than all the lives lost in all the wars, revolutions, and genocides combined during the same century.   And because everything is connected interdependent and vulnerable, such a global effort is increasingly and urgently needed for all the global threats we each face today. 

Its certain that this Fourth of July Americans will not be celebrating our commitment to prevention.  Or our achieving any of the seven intentions in our Constitution’s preamble.   And we will remain intentionally ignorant of the most profound set of laws offered in the first sentence of our Declaration of Independence related to keeping everyone’s alienable rights.   The most basic rights based on “the Laws of Nature and Nature‘s God.”   We ignore this profound truth that we must take care of nature and each other if we intend to preserve our freedoms and security or achieve any of the intentions in the preamble of our Constitution. 

Most Americans and other religious believer also appear oblivious to the fact that every major religion in the world is founded on the ideal of the Golden rule. 

Abraham Lincoln once wrote that our Declaration of Independence is our “Apple of Gold” and our constitution it’s “Frame of Silver”.   With our Constitution based on the illusion of independence that exists nowhere in the known universe, we can only expect increasing chaos.  Because we exist in an entirely interdependent reality.  And until we accept this fundamental truth nothing is safe, secure, or sustainable.   And our lack of virtue is what’s killing us.  Benjimen Franklin said “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

"We have no government armed in power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the
government of any other."  -- John Adams   (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President
Source: Oct. 11, 1798; Address to the military

 

“Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death taxes.”  -- Benjamin Franklin

 

Our national and global governance systems based on the illusion of independence was created 400 years ago.   It’s way past time we created a global governance system that is true to our reality of interdependence and our flag pledge of “liberty and Justice for all”.

 

If we truly intend to achieve each of the seven intentions in our Constitution, we need to amend it to codify this fundamental truth.  ‘Everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable.  And a global effort is needed.’   Only this will make America Great Again and prevent our republic from meeting the same end as Rome.   “We the people” need to rethink and do more than react to this fundamental truth.  It’s this or prepare for the consequences.