By SJ Otto

All my life I have questioned what I have been told about “the system.” By the system I do mean the system we live under. When I was in high school we were exposed to a constant barrage of warnings that drugs were bad for us. At the time we had LSD[1] and Marijuana. We were told that using marijuana would lead us to heroin. The drug marijuana was supposed to be extremely dangerous and would lead to all kinds of health problems including insanity. Since my high school days, LSD and its many variations have pretty much disappeared. Marijuana has not gone away and in many parts of the country it has been made legal.

But this article is not about drugs. It is about how our political leaders lie to us. They lied to us about pot. They lied to us about LSD. They have lied about a lot of things. As I have grown though out my adult life, I have found over and over, that the system I live under is about lies and cheating.

The system we live under is bourgeois democracy and capitalism. I have been raised a Catholic and as the years have gone by, I have learned to ditch Catholicism and Christianity. As an American I don’t have to be a Christian. I can believe or not believe in god. Supposedly I can choose that, but in reality it is a lot easier to be “a believer” than a “non-believer.”

I don’t even smoke marijuana anymore, but I’m glad that many states have given me that option if I decide I want to smoke it again. Unlike my father and people of his generation[2], I have the option of drinking alcohol as they did or I can eat magic mushrooms (psilocybin),

kratom or a lot of other herbal highs that the generation before me would never even consider using. They had been raised to believe that any drug besides alcohol was just plain “unthinkable” for a person to use.

This was just the beginning. I began reading about Salvador Allende, the Marxist president or Chile, during my high school days. This was my introduction to socialism and Marxism. As a youth, I watched as US President Richard Nixon tried everything he could to topple Allende. He was able to use the CIA to replace the Marxist, yet democratically elected, Allende with a fascist leader, Augusto Pinochet. It was between these two important issues, democratic Marxism and the legalization of Marijuana, that I learned to distrust out elected leaders.

I have written several articles about these two issues in my life. It was between the two of these that I learned not to trust the so called “system.” The system, which was not so definitely defined in the late 1960s or 1970s, was quite well defined by the 1980s. It was after that, we had another Nixon like President, Ronald Reagan. We had another Allende type revolution, the Sandinistas of Nicaragua.

So today we have a new set of players, President Donald Trump on the right, President Nicolás Maduro, of Venezuela on the left. Today we have a new, graver added player, the big epidemic; Coronavirus. US attempts to oust a South American president who is not a US team player—there is Trump—the capitalist boss. We have the entire medical establishment that is part of the system, and yet it is a part of the system we can’t just simply ignore. People have died and will die if they ignore all the so called “social distancing” rules.

On top of the usual problems we have to face—such as imperialism, where the

Trump has assumed the authority to, as he says, “open the economy.” Trump, as with all Republicans, sees the economy as his life line to rule. He has no interest in seeing the economy tank, just because it will save someone’s life.

Some politicians and media pundits have challenged Trump’s assertion that he has the right to open the economy. As I have been writing here, there are times when it is in our personal interests to challenge what our leaders are telling us. However, testing out what the medical establishment has told us may not be such a good idea at this time.

I am in one of those “risk” groups. I am diabetic and I’m 65 years of age. That means I can easily die from that virus. So should I challenge our leaders on the “social distancing” rules? I don’t think so. I’m not that eager to die right now. If I have to, that is fine. If I can avoid it I will. I will also help others, as myself, who also don’t want to die right now. Here is a run down from The New York Times:

Trump Insists He Has ‘Total’ Authority to Supersede Governors

State leaders on both coasts are starting to debate how and when to reopen. The closure of a major meat processing plant could affect the nation’s food supply.

· Published April 13, 2020Updated April 14, 2020, 8:45 a.m. ET,

2319

This briefing has ended. Follow our latest coverage of the coronavirus epidemic.

Here’s what you need to know:

· Governors team up to discuss reopening their states. Trump asserts “total” authority to overrule them.

· Trump defends his response and attacks the news media.

· Business leaders and the C.D.C. warn that the economy will recover slowly.

· A major meat plant’s closing could affect the food supply chain.

· A stalemate in Congress over emergency aid seems likely to continue.

· Facing testing backlogs, sick patients wait all night at drive-through sites.

· Coronavirus concerns could lead to fewer measles vaccinations.

This country is under one of the most intense health problems of the last century and 1/2. At the same time, we have the most irresponsible, maniacal buffoon of a leader. We can’t allow such a buffoon to run this country into the ground. People my age and with the health problems we have, we need to push for health officials, who care about human life, to be able to make the important decisions as to when we open the economy. We can’t allow a psychopath to make these decisions based on what works for him and Wall Street. We are lucky that there are some state governors who have challenged Trump. Again, from The New York Times:

Governors team up to discuss reopening their states. Trump asserts “total” authority to overrule them.

Hours after two groups of governors announced that they were forming regional working groups to help plan when it would be safe to ease restrictions and reopen their economies, President Trump asserted in a White House news briefing that the authority to make such decisions rested with him.

“The president of the United States calls the shots,” Mr. Trump said. “They can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States.”

The announcements by the governors, who formed groups on both coasts, came hours after the president wrote on Twitter that such a decision lies with the president, not the states, and before he made the point more forcefully to reporters in Washington.

So at this time, I will focus on challenging Trump, a major ass hole who cares about opening the economy so he can get re-elected. I have chosen to support the medical establishment who are concerned about saving lives. Some of us are not willing to die in order to preserve Trump’s (and his party’s) economic plans. The economy will not die and if we play our cards right—we won’t have to die either.