My Restless, Discontented Mind

Multiple matters are on my mind before this election. Here's a couple.

The morality of the capitalist mind, and its 

intent to deceive, knowing or not

One of the things I am exposed to for hours and hours and hours is financial reporting, information and news on cable TV. If it were up to me, I would be exposed to very little of it. Maybe that mindset is a mistake. 

But once awakening to that kind of content and listening carefully for years, it is now clear that the word moral and the concept of morality is almost never used. The closest the capitalist folks ever get to is 'good' or 'bad', almost always in the context of future earnings. That now strikes me as intending to wall off broader thoughts about morality beyond the culprit(s) and heroes du jour. That is how I interpret this. My personal opinion.

What basis in logic or reason is there for that? Why would the concept of morality be walled off, even by Bloomberg? As best I can tell, people deeply involved in capitalism are all most on the same page. Capitalism, free markets and profits are sacrosanct. Social impacts are downplayed into almost non-existence. Adverse social impacts, more pollution, exploitation of poor people, etc., are almost never even mentioned, much less discussed in significant detail. The modern capitalist propaganda mirage (lie) is that business is "amoral" and thus off the table for moral consideration.

IMHO, that is a false capitalist lie and deceit propaganda tactic. That said, there is also such a thing as pure socialist, communist, fascist and/or Christian-religious propaganda. We are awash in in all of that nastiness and deceit. It is not going to go away because it is protected free speech, at least so far.

The morality of rigid political, economic and religious ideology, and their 

hidden intent to deceive and enslave

Over the years, the power of rigid ideology to corrupt and deceive minds, societies and governments has become clearer and clearer. Ideology tends to kill acceptance of, real facts, true truths and sound reasoning. Rigid and/or sacred ideology goes a long way to lead minds to reject inconvenient facts, inconvenient true truths and inconvenient sound reasoning. Al Gore was partially right to label the concept of inconvenient reality and reason as inconvenience. The rest of the right he didn't mention was that intentional deceit is immoral and unwitting deceit is ignorance.

As social and political polarization stays in place, or increases, ideological distortion and misplaced beliefs are more likely to get worse than better. The radical right has been working relentlessly for decades to get most conservative minds to where they are today. That cannot be undone in my lifetime. The problem is multigenerational. One line of thought posits that this problem could eventually lead to forever human enslavement as the power of tyrants and demagogues to deceive, divide and enslave populations increases. One source labeled that technology-enabled potential outcome as "The grim fate that could be ‘worse than extinction’." 

The question is whether societies can keep up and self-preserve against the increasing power of evil, often powered in the name of (1) sacred profit, (2) a sacred ideology, and/or (3) a sacred God.

Now, exhale

Obviously, that is all potential, not certainty. Societies can and do learn to self-defend. It is possible that on Nov. 3, Americans will reject the path we are now on. That would come in the face of millions of Americans who see the path we are now on as the road to salvation, goodness and morality, not something worse than human extinction. From what I can tell, the differing visions of reality and possible outcomes could not be much different.