Well said, Steve, and I am fully with you. I was already not-buying anything Russian, and for sure I won't right now. I am hoping the sanctions continue and even get harsher. The good news: half of the Russians are now not in favor of the war.
I found Whatsapp phone numbers on the internet at 1920.in and I am actually communicating with Russians via Whatsapp. Difficult, but small victories are victories.
For instance, a Russian claims a willingness to do everything to defend Russia. I point that he is human before he is Russian, and if he swaps these places of being Russian first and only then human, then he knows exactly what he is, not human first.
But you are also showing that the list of horrible atrocities has been going on too long. We have to look at what we are doing to our world and see that Russia's invasion is a symptom of something we actually contribute to ourselves.
There are enormous economic pressures put on people everywhere; we are involved in competitiveness that is actually bizarre. Something is truly wrong with what we are doing ourselves.
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My words often point to our own voting system. We do not have a system of representation in the United States. Rather, we have a system that gives us a chance of representation.
We, ourselves, have competition built-in into our voting system. How stupid is that? Thomas Jefferson already devised the inclusive system. We should use it.
Today, in the US, we must compete with other voters for the win, and when we lose then next time we are going to fight harder for the win, right? Or we stay home because it does not matter. We have one of the lowest voter turnouts in the world (turnout is completely hilarious at the local level).
Those that want representation will have to give it their all. We must compete until we drop just to get someone to represent us. And that is plain wrong.
To explain this from a different perspective:
We have Majority Rule occurring twice. First, the majority of the voters win the representative, and second, the majority of the representatives make the decision. 0.6 x 0.6 = 0.36 which means that the decision is supported by a minority of voters.
We have an elitist voting system in place, one round of divide-and-conquer included. And to get on top, we have to compete harder still. We are being maximized. And the benefits do not always come home with us.
That competition for the sake of competition that is what WE are exporting.
We don't just put pressure on ourselves, but we also put pressure on the rest of the world. They must now compete with mad people competing to their maximum of their abilities. It is not natural.
The system devised by Thomas Jefferson has Majority Rule occurring just once, as it should be. We should get it.
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Germany and Italy would not have come into existence as countries had it not been for UK and France dominating the world in the 19th Century. The Germans needed lebensraum exactly because the English and the French were occupying most of the world. To keep up with the Joneses, the German tribes united, the Italian states united. And then… they became shit-hole countries, just to keep competing until they had their heads above water (plus many people dead). After WW II, the US finally said enough with all that imperialism. We did not liberate all these countries, but as the leader we did say the right things.
With our competitive voting system still in place, we contribute to the evil forces in the world because we are competing to our very max (while suppressing many in our own nation, not paying all workers decent wages).
We have to stop competing like madmen. We have to incorporate the better form of democracy: Proportional Voting.
We already can have it, say the Founding Fathers.
Join the Local Revolutions to make this the better world you desire. We can take some pressure off the world by becoming better humans ourselves in our voting system.
'Citizens Invoking the US Constitution'
For the people of Ukraine? Let’s hope that our actions can beat the Russians back into their own despair.
