Yesterday Nic went to the library in town and took out a bunch of movies for us to watch. The kids have been into music, especially by reading the “Who Was? Books.” We’ve dug into Who are the Beatles?, Who are the Rolling Stones?, Who is Bruce Springsteen?, and Who is Michael Jackson? so far. And, that has prompted the boys to be very interested in going to concerts.
So, we started a Beatles documentary last night with the boys, so they could “see” them in concert. At bedtime, we stopped it, and we’ll probably circle back to it tonight to finish it. Once they were in bed we decided to watch An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. If you know me you may know I am not a movie person – I would much rather sit and read a book – but a good documentary gets me every time.
I looked at Nic after the end of the movie and said. “The one thing I learned tonight is the human race really hasn’t evolved very well.” Why? Because in the Beatles documentary we watched people chasing the Beatles, breaking through barriers, throwing themselves on the car – for what? What were they thinking? To touch them? I just don’t get it. I know they were different and unique, but come on, what did you think was going to come of chasing after them. I mean they are just freaking people, people! I don’t think I’ll ever get it.
Then, we watch a documentary explaining climate change, showing charts, images, etc. and you have people like our dumb-ass president who think it’s all made up. It’s not all made up. Do you want to know who keeps telling you it’s all made up? FOLLOW THE MONEY PEOPLE. It’s super simple to find the answer when you just FOLLOW THE MONEY. Who is paying who off? You see this with our idiotic Congress and Senate’s inability to pass any time of gun regulation. Why? Money. The NRA has lots of it – and they are giving it away to stay in control.
How do you think ISIS is funded? Oil money. Don’t believe me? Do your research. Why don’t you think the personal care industry isn’t regulated in the United States? Money. Again, start researching if you don’t believe me. It’s not hard to find the data.
In the end, whether you are conservative or liberal this shouldn’t be a difficult thing to understand. I know I may sound condescending here, I don’t mean to, I’m just so frustrated by the inability of people to make a change, especially when that change may be slightly inconvenient to them.
So, what am I suggesting we do? Start by weaning off of our dependence on oil. Go to town/county/state meetings. Push for installations of solar panels as an alternate form of energy. If you do it at that level, it can SAVE YOU MONEY on your utilities. Next, talk to your representatives. They can support bills that subsidize and encourage alternate energy production to make it more affordable. No, the oil and gas companies don’t want them passing because that means they’ll lose money, but it will put money in your pocket. It will create more jobs, it will help put us in a global leadership position to help other, poorer countries, develop their energy infrastructure.
Talk to those some representatives about regulating industries that need it. Talk to them about taking money from big business. Use your VOTE to vote out those that are influenced by big businesses who have an agenda, and not their constituents.
We need a balance of power. We need Republicans and Democrats. But, we need them working together, across the aisle. We need them to have real conversations, about real people, and real problems – NOT about what big businesses want. We need to work to make our democracy work again for us.
You may be one person. I may be one person, but we can make a difference, and we need to.
