Veni...Vedi...Vici... (I came... I saw... I conquered...)

I sit down look at the laptop... I want to post something new on the blog... 

But then I remember the Myth of Sisyphus...  I wrote about it last week on the blog... 

The Myth urges me not to write... but the urge in my mind does not 

subside... The urge, wave after wave laps the shores of my reality... I sit there and 

muse and wait for the struggle to subside... It does not... the struggle - to write, it is 

useless to write... But, then the blog wins... After all, I write for myself and in order to 

reorient myself... my being... my thinking...

***

I left at this point and went for a walk... a long two-and-a-
half hours… The sun made me warm and happy… 

There was a woman negotiating the parking meter... I noticed that she was dismayed and having difficulties... She noticed me but hesitated to talk... eventually I guess my white goatee reassured her and she asked; "Do you have change for a dollar... for the meter..."

I was very happy to help her... She thanked me over and over agin... she even said; "You are an angel..."

It was a very simple gesture on my part... but made her very happy and made me happy too... I was very happy while I continued my walk...

***

I noticed two homeless on the sidewalk... One was sleeping wrapped in a silvery waterproof wrap... and the other was attempting to get into a transparent plastic wrap... They wanted to protect themselves from the windchill... also from the rain... 

***

I wondered what people were doing in their gold gilded towers... Are homeless allowed on the 5th Avenue in New York...?

I read that eight people have as much wealth as half of the global population... Do they care about the two homeless... who were wrapping themselves in water resistant wraps...?

 The Theater of the Absurd... on a global scale...! I 

remembered my thought that were irritating me last 

week...  Refugees... are globalized homelessness...

I arrived home again... and focussed on my thoughts 

which were with me in the morning...

Since early November two books are haunting me... 1984 by Orwell and The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood...

I have read both of them few times over... Both were compulsory reading in the university curriculum... But then I read 1984 while resisting Big Brother business in the Soviet era... and I read Handmaid's Tale while observing the degeneration of Western Democracies...

I do not much appreciate Western Democracy to start with... These just give the right to "everyone" to vote... But,

1. After the election... the "democracy" is converted to the "dictatorship of the electoral majority..."

2. The immense influence of money/capital... skews the election in favour of the 1% and attributes new meaning to money/capital and introduces new dimensions for the undemocratic democracies of the Western world...

3. The rights of minorities are never an issue... they can be trampled by the electoral majority... 

4. Corruption of the elected official and the influence of money/capital... has created a swamp... which cannot be drained... unless the system is changed... to what...? I don't know... Maybe you have a better suggestion...!!!

Still, I am worried... degenerated democracies are not 

democracies at all... As "alternate facts" are not facts... 

they are just... the lies of the Big Brother...

The influence of puritanical evangelicals... in the society 

makes a mockery of the "separation of Church and 

State." That's what makes Atwood's Handmaid's Tale as 

relevant to our times as Orwell's 1984...

       

I had never imagined that after the Vietnam Anti-War, 

after Paris 1968 and the Prague Spring and Invasion of 

Czechoslovakia...After the collapse of the Soviet Union...

1984 will down upon us in 2017... and Handmaid's Tale 

will emerge as a relevant dystopia...

***

  

Set in a totalitarian, Christian fundamentalist regime called "Gilead" in which women are property, it was written in 1985 — when the Moral Majority was going strong — and I read it during the George W. Bush administration, when abstinence-only education, purity balls, and the Westboro Baptist Church were all part of the national conversation.

Margaret Atwood's popular dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale explores a broad range of issues relating to power, gender, and religious politics. Multiple Emmy and Golden Globe award-winner Claire Danes (Temple Grandin, Homeland) gives a stirring performance of this classic in speculative fiction, one of the most powerful and widely read novels of our time. *** After a staged terrorist attack kills the President and most of Congress, the government is deposed and taken over by the oppressive and all controlling Republic of Gilead. Offred, now a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Despite the danger, Offred learns to navigate the intimate secrets of those who  control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules in hopes of ending this oppression.

Will the world witness 1984 in 2017...?

I am apprehensive...

But I believe in the people...

I believe people will just use their common sense and reject the dictatorship of the electoral majority... 

1) An estimated 57.9% of eligible voters voted in 2016... in the U.S.

2) If, 50% voted to any one candidate...

3) Then, 57.9 x 50 = 28.95% of the electorate voted for the "majority"...

4) Now the U. S. has a "democracy" where 28.95%, that is less than one third... is establishing "the dictatorship of the majority..."