If the now apprehensive American citizen were painstakingly able to discern some benefit in the extant Trump-orchestrated societal dystopia, notably, the apocryphal state of our traditional democratic polity, the same, conceivably, would reside in its singular potential as a metaphysical teaching moment.
The concerned citizenry has sadly witnessed the growth of a guileless populism encroach on a disproportionate number of his fellow citizens, simultaneously with a proportionate decline in desire for culturally enlightening advancement. Its former success has been despoiled by a crass desire for material symbols of wealth such as expensive homes, automobiles, boats, and wristwatches. “Cool” has popularly displaced “sophisticated”” hockey has displaced theater, museums, and opera, and, sadly, computer games and televised sports have rendered literature passe.
Mainstream American citizens have unhappily witnessed a populist-oriented world in which individuals who are proficient at shooting a ball through a hoop, located on a pole, or hitting a small round object out of a stadium, are compensated with bonuses and seven-digit annual salaries while earnest, post-doctoral scientists, dedicating their careers to ridding Mankind’s of dread disease are compensated modestly; where fine educators are mundanely unappreciated and “rock stars” are popularly adulated, and where hand-held video games have popularly replaced the many ubiquitous benefits of reading. In the extant milieu the desire for power and influence, rather than dedication to service, motivates our politicians, and dressing “smart” and appearing confident is more effective than innate ability, expensive cosmetics are deemed vitally important to deny a felt undesirable appearance of natural aging, and where mundane “talk” and digitized electronic messaging has easily replaced the social and psychological benefits of personal conversation. In such a populist-oriented and witless society, contrasted with one that would, salubriously, aspire to growth, wisdom, and mature perception, deceitful demagogic purveyors of ubiquitous “snake oil cures” thrive, and a consequential decline in democratic humanism consequently eventuate.
To eliminate the impediment of a tyrannical government and its undemocratic practice of government, as now confronts the Nation, we must take the necessary steps to increase the practice of the enrichment of meaningful citizen interaction, and, in the interest of societal advancement take up rewarding activities, like reading good literature, involvement in the arts, or an elective and personally enriching elective interest, We must also maintain appropriate criteria to reward actual merit, and above all, exercise our capacity for reason and development of enlightenment, by keeping ourselves well-informed and voting for our own perceived interest and the corresponding interests o our Democratic Republic.
A return to the former state of well-informed and enlightened citizenry is the effective panacea to the present onset of populist, autonomous tyranny and its shameful degradation of our traditionally admirable Republican Democracy. The same would be desirably productive of a true renaissance of freedom and liberty and constitute the reinstatement of our Nation as the avatar of humanism, and equal and appropriate opportunity for self-fulfillment.
-p.
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