In these United States of America our perpetual dilemma seems to have been about trying to develop a civil society, a democratic society, a sustainable society while being caught of the horns of a dilemma. That dilemma is that all solutions must accept the premises that all choices must support some version of laissez faire capitalism and some degree of white supremacy. Between those two horns of our dilemma, we are free to find any solutions that will fit those two requirements. It is not too difficult to see how limited those options tend to be and how ultimately undemocratic any possible solutions will tend to be. Any real sense of equality cannot exist between those two poles, and many ordinary citizens end up being gored on the horns of that dilemma.
Unless you can buy into those two premises of American life, those who have accumulated the wealth and power in this nation will not allow you to participate in any meaningful way with ultimate solutions, much less any solutions that support the basic equality of a democracy. Most of us are left to live with the realities of these two pillars of American society; trying to find some way to survive between these two horns without being impaled in the process. But is becoming very clear that like the bull in the China shop this bull is destructive of any society that attempts to tame it. It continues to thrash about destroying anything that gets in its way. It simply gores and tosses aside any real solutions that might restrict its freedom.
Like the bullfighter, we must be willing to run the risk of confronting the power of that beast and find a way to prevail. To find a way to deliver the death thrust between the horns, severing the spinal cord and finally watch as the bull is pulled off the field. Only when we kill that bull and find an integrated place within nature will we form a sustainable, mature, democratic society that allows equality.
