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Interest rates should be raised, the educational system should not be based on testing, health care should be available to all and at very affordable rates, the use of torture and other extraordinary measures against other human beings should be punished, lying to the people should be an immediately impeachable offense. Yes, the list could go on and on and include of course ending all wars this moment and bringing the armed forces home for some real job training that does not involve killing people and destroying families, homes and polluting water and earth. So many things to do and so few really good ideas for how to accomplish them given the system we are in thrall to.A suggestion sometimes seems to absurd that it has to be buried in the second or third paragraph of a diary entry not many people will see. Yet the answer is that all must stop.
I used to want a month when Americans shut off their tvs and closed their computers and had to go out on the streets to talk to their neighbors about what was going on in their lives, around town and what they heard from friends elsewhere. Another suggestion that never gained any traction.
My new one is similar but more extreme. Just shut the whole thing down. Close the schools, don't go to work. Stop traveling and buy only the food you need. Do this for a day.
What happens when a nation goes on strike? And what happens when the next day we all go back to work? Would we be able to reset our allegiances to each other rather than to becoming number one?
Would we sit next to a stranger on the subway and begin to talk about what it felt like to be home, with everyone else at home and nothing more to do than just be at home? Knowing we all participated in something so massive there was no way to dismiss it?
Is this another idea whose time may never come? I don't know.
