Mariner brushed away the pile of mail, a few hand tools, newspapers, a magazine or two, and sure enough, the old laptop was still there. Needless to say, mariner hasn’t been at the keyboard since June 1. Today, June 11, he slowly works his way back into his daily routines after a ten-day bout with Influenza A.

He will not make his readers listen to a long lamentation of the experience. Suffice it to say, mariner really wasn’t around for a while.  His wife did an angelic job of bringing him through the experience.

Mariner turned to the outside world today to catch up on things; seems like the same deck, just another dealing of the cards. His candidate did not win the primary but made a fine showing especially in the Southeast portion of the state. Mariner continues to worry as every indicator in the election is aimed at nationalizing the people’s vote.

Mariner may be a bit of a dreamer and philosopher but he knows one thing for sure: democracy is a one-person-one vote philosophy. Yet the pressure brought by organizers is to make one citizen’s Presidential vote a collaboration of many votes cast as one. This is too deep; mariner is going to rest for a while.

Ancient Mariner

The new solution for defeating the gun lobby is floating around newsrooms: children do not go back to school until new gun legislation is passed. It is a bad idea because the growth of an entire generation of young Americans already has been distorted by the pandemic lockout; adding yet another year of disrupted schooling can further burden the growth of these children. It is a good idea because it is a positive gesture ‘by the people’ who should have been managing their representatives more closely all along.

In case the reader feels there is not enough news to think about, American Native Indians are up against White Man’s courts. Politico reports:

“The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is slated to come under the court’s microscope this fall via Brackeen v. Haaland, and the stakes are sky high. If ICWA is overturned, a slew of laws that rest on a centuries-long precedent of tribal sovereignty could be in jeopardy, say the law’s supporters. These policies relate to everything from housing and health care to education and employment.”

The core legislative impact is that the ICWA was passed by Congress in 1979 to bring an end to the old agreement, Indian Adoption Project, a federal drive to assimilate American Indians into white culture. As many as 35 percent of Native children were removed from their families. Eighty-five percent of those children were placed in non-Indian homes. It was also under the Indian Adoption Project that thousands of Indian children were rounded up by the Federal government and put in highly prejudiced boarding schools where many children were abused and died.

If the court overturns ICWA, the Native American has no tailored protection and will lose Indian sovereignty.

Judges need term limits as much as legislators do.

As the Iowa primary approaches, mariner has abided by his own rules for voting. His Senate candidate is under 55, not an ideologue, not a favorite of national PACs, speaks generically for the wellbeing of Iowans, has state and local experience in office, has a positive personality and is a woman. If she wins the primary, she will oppose Chuck Grassley who is 88 years old, a defender of the status quo, who represents a national government driven by party first instead of citizens first and is incapable of understanding the issues that confront Millennials and Zees.

Ancient Mariner

Sorry for the pessimism. For many decades mariner has been sensitive to an imbalance between humans and the biosphere. In all of Earth’s history, life has been dependent on a global balance between the provisions of nature and the needs of the species – whether microbe or elephant. Today, mariner is extremely aware of the blatant disregard humans have for this balance.

Even ants have war between colonies and there are predators galore for every species but these confrontations are part of the balancing act. Nature didn’t expect a nuclear bomb; nature didn’t expect overpopulation because a species eliminated the balancing act between age, disease and deprivation; nature didn’t expect the disrespect for hundreds of thousands of species going extinct because of human intentional and excessive abuses; nature didn’t expect the violation of basic atmospheric rules or poisoning the land. In short, humans have trashed the biosphere for nothing more than convenience and disrespect for nature’s rules.

Mariner is accused of being a Luddite. Perhaps but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Two popular personalities were Luddites as well, condemning the disrespect that humans possess – Mark Twain and Will Rogers.

Evolution didn’t expect nuclear families; in the name of convenience and under the terms “We do it because we can”, transportation has created new meaning for the word ‘migration’. Two-footed, 4-wheeled humans travel farther and more often than the Humpback whale.  The security found in extended families is now replaced by expensive life, health and property insurance policies. There’s a human trope, “Anything can be fixed [or ruined] with money”.

Mariner can go on and on about doing injury to the biosphere. But this attitude is part of a bigger problem that spans the developed world – and the wealthier the nation, the bigger the problem.

For focus, mariner will address only the United States.

American Society has no soul. It has no beliefs. It has no identity. There is not one truth that every American will abide. There is not one social grace that represents the United States to the planet and its biosphere or to the billions of individuals living in that biosphere.

Ever wonder why we can’t discern the future? It’s because we don’t believe the present; what can we build future faith on? The nation believes nothing works, nothing is worth commitment, nothing is meaningful.

So the country runs on two things: money and ego – there is nothing else. The American Society today has no seeds to grow the future. Hence the seedless orange.

Ancient Mariner