Georgia, I think you have redirected our conversation in a much more useful direction! While we may feel threatened by the religious right and religious zealots of all stripes, the real threats to true democracy lie in the concentration of wealth and the many ways the money is used to reinforce rules, regulations and laws for the further…
Georgia, I think you have redirected our conversation in a much more useful direction! While we may feel threatened by the religious right and religious zealots of all stripes, the real threats to true democracy lie in the concentration of wealth and the many ways the money is used to reinforce rules, regulations and laws for the further benefit of those at the very top of the economic scale. This momentum actually shifted some 200 years ago when government began to be used to support industry and the industrialists who ran industry. See Yuval Noah Harrari's Sapiens for details of the establishment of "universal Greenwich Mean Time" to support (and make some sense of timetables) the newly established railroad lines. This marked the time when government was used to help factories and other industries get all those workers essential to their respective products to their places of employment on time...and it terminally eroded the previous near hegemony of the family and the local environment (day/night, cold/heat, summer/winter) over daily life.
We have been left with the need to counterbalance these immense forces of money with a government of, by and for the people as opposed to a government of and for moneyed interests.
Georgia, I think you have redirected our conversation in a much more useful direction! While we may feel threatened by the religious right and religious zealots of all stripes, the real threats to true democracy lie in the concentration of wealth and the many ways the money is used to reinforce rules, regulations and laws for the further benefit of those at the very top of the economic scale. This momentum actually shifted some 200 years ago when government began to be used to support industry and the industrialists who ran industry. See Yuval Noah Harrari's Sapiens for details of the establishment of "universal Greenwich Mean Time" to support (and make some sense of timetables) the newly established railroad lines. This marked the time when government was used to help factories and other industries get all those workers essential to their respective products to their places of employment on time...and it terminally eroded the previous near hegemony of the family and the local environment (day/night, cold/heat, summer/winter) over daily life.
We have been left with the need to counterbalance these immense forces of money with a government of, by and for the people as opposed to a government of and for moneyed interests.