Electricity and Social Emotional Learning for Equity of Woke Warriors

The Roman soldier was not concerned about the fate of the Empire, stretching beyond the administrative reach, the politics of the day, the power and overreach of the patricians, the 600 Senators (senex = old man), the Roman army; soldiers only cared about the pebbles in their shoes because those pebbles caused them pain and discomfort when they marched on campaigns.  They were happy when they were given “pane et circenses,” bread and circuses.  Free gladiatorial performances in the arena kept them placid and pacified with free tokens for plain bread.

The Roman empire was so vast that, when its most important city, Rome, the “Eternal City,” fell in 410 A.D. to Gothic armies camped outside its walls, the world then, devoid of instant communication, took a lengthy gasp. The city that stood unconquered for 800 years fell to Germanic barbarians under the leadership of Alaric the Goth.

St. Jerome, living in Bethlehem, is reported to have said, “When the brightest light on the whole Earth was extinguished, when the Roman empire was deprived of its head, when to speak more correctly, the whole world perished in one city, I was dumb with silence.”

But the western part of the empire lingered on for 66 more years until 476, at the end of which Emperor Romulus Augustus was deposed by his German commanders. But the sacking was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Citizens had been poisoning themselves with lead for a long time:  Romans drank from lead cups, cooked in lead pots, transported water through lead pipes, and used lead oxide to sweeten their wine, just to name a few of its many uses. Skeletons found around the vast empire exhibited classic evidence of lead poisoning.

Sterility, probably caused by lead, prompted emperors to encourage having more children to stop the population decline. But, poor health, population decline, and indefensible vast borders were just three of the reasons the empire declined and eventually fell.

One Greek historian had remarked almost three hundred years before Rome’s downfall that it had turned “from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron.” Our infrastructure today, government, American exceptionalism, and everything that had made America great a long time ago is fast turning into ruin and rust just like Rome, the Eternal City.

Centuries later, humans have not changed that much, they just have better medicine, machines, and transportation. They may not all be soldiers but most only care about their lives, the mundane, sports entertainment, the modern version of “bread and circuses,” and the ability to feed, clothe, shelter, and protect their families. They follow obediently the “government knows best” directives with blind obsequiousness. But the government is made up of little dictators with many faults, inabilities, dishonesty, and lack of vision for generations to come.

The population does not care about politics, the machinations of Washington, D.C., the power grabs, the agendas, the control, and the theft of the nation. They want a home, a car, electricity for heat and air conditioning, medical care, preferably free, dignity, and freedom to live as they please. So, what will happen to their “Shining City on the Hill,” the symbol of their empire? Will it turn to ruin and rust as well?

What is the pebble in the shoe of the 21^st century American woke warriors? It is capitalism and its tool of progress, fossil fuels.

The current woke and delusional generations are determined to destroy their own successful economy and replace it with a disaster promoted under the label of Democrat Socialism and their platform of the Green New Deal.

Democrat Socialism is just a new phrase invented by the left to repackage and sell the old failed socialism model to the ignorant masses.  The Green New Deal is neither Green, nor New, and no Deal, it is just U.N. Agenda 21/2030 retreaded and euphemized to convince the woke voting base that there is an annoying pebble in their shoe and they can regress to a primitive life they’ve never experienced before and go barefoot in order to save the planet from the scourge of humanity.

The old Greenies and the younger Woke Warriors applaud the Green New Deal without giving it a thought where electricity for their Teslas and other electric cars will come from. They just feel instinctively that solar panels and wind turbines will replace the “evil” and “poisonous” fossil fuels” that are killing the planet and the cute little turtles choking on plastic straws, fishing nets, plastic bags, and plastic bottles.

It is so much better to make paper bags and destroy the trees that produce oxygen, trees are so abundant and grow so fast, but, once Bill Gates and Harvard mitigate global warming by spraying chalk in the upper atmosphere to block the harmful rays of the sun, good luck growing anything, including trees.

So where will electricity come from, woke warriors? Where will charging stations for your fully electric cars, millions of them, get their electricity from? From the fairy dust in the atmosphere, the same place where your food will come from once you kill agriculture.  Will you produce enough electricity to sustain our large economy, production, travel, heating, cooling, shopping malls, industry, technology, hospitals, and your ever-increasing electronic gadgets and toys? Will this electricity come from:

-          Wind turbines that only produce a small fraction of electricity when the wind blows at a certain peak speed, turbines that must be manufactured and maintained with help from fossil fuels, turbine blades that are difficult to recycle and must be transported with heavy machinery operated by fossil fuels?

-          Solar panels – the wafers do not last long, must be replaced, produced using fossil fuels, cannot be recycled, are toxic for the environment, and need a lot of land to display, land that is needed for agriculture.  Who needs land to make food when you can eat Bill Gates’ fake meat?

-          Nuclear power plants – none have not been built in this country in quite sometime and the greenies reject the idea of ever building new ones, it is too dangerous to humans and to the environment.

-          Hydroelectric power plants - The environmentalists want to destroy the dams necessary for hydropower, the rivers must flow just like they did centuries ago, unimpeded by man

-          Fossil fuels, oil, and coal - These are dirty words for the woke generation, they are convinced that our current civilization can survive and prosper without them.

Maybe the social emotional learning standards of equity over academic content now proposed by the “progressive” Department of Education in Virginia will fill the social justice warriors’ plates with food, bring electricity, heat, air conditioning, transportation, and medical care. https://townhall.virginia.gov/L/GetFile.cfm?File=C:%5CTownHall%5Cdocroot%5CGuidanceDocs_Proposed%5C201%5CGDoc_DOE_4780_20210329.pdf

Perhaps the woke generation has it all imagined and resolved – technology will be everything and the news media, social media, and the climate change industrial complex will take care of ALL their basic needs – food, shelter, cars, energy, education, health care, travel, and non-stop virtual entertainment if they obey the ruling elites.

 

 

 

 

 

The Sustainability Shoe Dilemma

A beautiful pair of sandals caught my eyes. The beading design on top in red, white, and black reminded me of an African motif I had seen on Nat Geo years ago. The flat shoe had an elegant zipper in the back, adding it a touch of modern and chic. I decided to try them on.

The box was rather interesting; it looked like a beige paper-wrapped package that arrived from Kenya, with embossed fake postage, stamped, Nairobi. The sender’s address in the upper left hand corner was the information that it contained a pair of sandals shipped from Kenya via Spain. A brown map of the world showed the red route that the “authentic Maasai design” sandals had traveled to make it into this beige box.

Touting that “another world is possible,” these intricate sandals were “ornamented in Kenya” and made in Spain. The box also told me that each sandal was “embroidered by a Maasai woman from Kenya in the shade of an acacia tree.”

“Each bead, which reflects the essence Maasai culture tradition and craft skills, has been placed with the spirit of hope and enthusiasm for a prosperous, sustainable future. Thank you for supporting this initiative.” Didn’t Native Americans use beading as well?

I became intrigued when I saw the word “sustainable.” The price seemed rather steep, $200, but they were very comfortable and flexible. I ordered a pair in my favorite design color, teal, and waited.

When my box arrived, I opened the package with anticipation and was instantly disappointed when the content revealed a different pair with the exquisite beaded design of the American flag. I love and respect our flag. I believe that it is sacrilegious to wear the flag on your feet. The flag is made to be flown and draped over the caskets of heroes, not to be used as a door mat, bathing suit, swim trunks, or shoe ornaments.

But I found a glossy inside talking about the story of this brand. This was no ordinary shoe. It was a project developed by the non-governmental organization (NGO) called ADCAM (Association for Development, Alternative Trade and Microcredit) which “specializes in empowering women in developing countries and focuses on establishing stable trade channels with developed nations.”

I was getting warm and fuzzy when the brochure said that when we, the often maligned and “greedy” capitalists, buy these expensive shoes, we are supporting the NGOs vision of “Corporate Social Responsibility,” collaborating with communities that need corporate social responsibility most, and we are pioneering the NGOs quest for developing fair trade.

Here I was, supporting the initiative of integrating United Nation’s desire of Sustainability with comfortable shoes and fashionable bags. Bingo! The Maasai preserved their traditions and lifestyles and I got the light and color of Africa for $200. How clever!

The brochure said, “The Maasai tribe is one of the most threatened on the planet according to the UN” and the international sales revenue from the shoes and bags “pays fair wages to support 1,600 families with stable source of income that allows them to obtain basic needs items such as food and medicines.”

If the 1,600 women received income from just nine pairs of sandals, it is $1,800, exceeding Kenya’s per capita income of $1,700 a year. According to the International Monetary Fund, Kenya is at number 154 out of 183 countries in per capita income. By now, if the shoes sold well, the Maasai families in the project and their tribe should be quite well off. They kept accounting and orders straight even though they do not have computers or technological literacy.

There is even an Ambassador of the Maasai Project for the 2013 collection, who apparently visited the women in Kenya and Tanzania who make the beading by hand. “The women shared with Olivia, their hopes and dreams for taking this project forward in a sustainable way and for making the beautiful sandals and bags available throughout the world.”

I am not sure how the project is moved forward in a sustainable way, but I wondered how much these women were paid in fair wages, what is their definition of a fair wage, and why is the Maasai tribe the most endangered in the world.

According to one site, eco-tourism prompted big government to create parks and reserves without the input and consent of the indigenous people.

http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/Jones/maasai.htm

The Maasai and other pastoral groups squeezed off their lands created their own NGOs in order to go to court to defend their land rights. Isn’t the government ultimately responsible for the social welfare of their people? Why do United Nations and NGOs step in to demand social responsibility from corporations and citizens of other countries?

The dilemma is that part of me applauds the idea of helping employ women in dire living conditions and poverty, but part of me is repulsed by the “sustainable eco-chic” label, the NGOs demanding social responsibility, the United Nations forcing Agenda 21 policies on developed countries, and, most of all, by the blatant disrespect for the American flag.

How much of the profit is actually shared with the Maasai women who do such tedious and labor intensive bead work? One magazine claims that “all profits from the sales of the Maasai Project are put towards the creation and further development of these community projects that support the Maasai Mara National Reserve in both Kenya and Tanzania.”

http://myculturemagazine.com/pikolinos-these-shoes-arent-just-made-for-walking/

Ultimately, I venture to say, the women’s lives in Kenya will probably be less enriched than the coffers of the NGO and the Spanish brand that sells the sandals world-wide. 

It is glitz, glamor, and greed, carefully packaged in the brochure with tug-at-your-heart strings propaganda. A quote from Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, appears at the end of the glossy. “Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven’t done a thing. You are just talking.” What does this have to do with selling expensive sandals? Regretfully, I returned the shoes.