What is good and bad?
How should a society think and act?
What should it prioritize?
What limits should it set on its citizens?
Is it enough to keep the peace and let them find their own way?
Is corruption inevitable?
How bad is it?

It is customary among US politicians to praise the people and credit them with whatever good befalls the nation.
Inaccurate.
US citizens are like everybody else–mostly working for their daily bread and looking after their own.
If things go better for the US it is due to a system with enough checks and balances that when one group starts to overreach and corrupt the government, there are enough strong opponents there to push back on the evildoer.

People can’t get along.
They say it is the other side’s fault.
The truth is the fault is always corruption: within oneself and between people.
We could spend time debating who is more to blame than who. We all have our ideas about that. I certainly have mine.
But is it not better to use our time at the crux: fighting against loose-thinking, dishonesty, unclarity, meanness, selfishness, greed within ourselves and within the government?

Politics must start where we can all agree and it must constantly be brought back to that point, otherwise we cannot journey together to political thoughts and actions.
Just as an individual human’s thought cannot be meaningful to her if she thinks unclearly, dishonestly, or unkindly (her brain cannot follow logic that fails to meet the first two requirements, and her heart cannot follow logic that fails to meet any of them), a society cannot think and act meaningfully together if they allow their public discourse to become unclear, dishonest, and/or unkind (no one actually follows the conversation; the conversation just becomes part of a war of noise/propaganda).

So let us begin again and begin again and again: Where is the awareness, clarity, honesty, accuracy, loving kindness, true togetherness? There we have a chance. Everywhere else we slip, we slide, we proudly sink the ship.

AMW/BW