Like A Kitten

April 2022

Bryan Kelly

This country, and the humanity of this world, are facing some existential threats.

Like many other powerful words, existential has been overworked, and more so in recent years.  If  you are uncertain of the meaning, please look it up.  Then you may understand the dept of these words.

Two existential threats we face are:

The lost of our republic that we call these United States.  There are many people striving mightily to destroy this republic and change the United States into an authoritarian regime.  Maybe divide the states up into several regimes.

The second is the lost of habitability of this earth for all higher forms of life.  The dividing line for higher forms of life is unclear.  But we can be pretty certain that bacteria and low levels of life such as, maybe cockroaches, will continue.  More complex forms of life, humanity for example, may not survive the changes that we humans have started.  Indeed, the case has been made that if we don’t start changing our behaviors, our environment, worldwide, will, and already is, changing for the worse, much worse.

The case for these two claims is not the purpose of these few words.  There are many places that can, and do, justify the rationale of those claims.

The first point here is that despite the overwhelming evidence, the politicians of the United States, and much of the world, are not paying sufficiently close attention to the problems.  Indeed, many of them are directly contributing to the problems while proclaiming the problems do not exist.  All the while telling us, and themselves, they are doing incredibly good work.

The second, and final, point here is that we, citizens of these United States, citizens of the world, can get the politicians to listen.  We can get them to change their minds.

The how of that is exceedingly difficult.  Yet, it is rather simple.  We citizens, each and every single one of us, must take the time to participate in our republic.  We must tell our elected representatives the things we have learned.  We must be heard.  And we will only be heard when sufficient numbers of us begin communicating these messages to our elected officials.

As can be seen from this website, I have done the best I know how to do.  The fact that a grand total of one person has responded to all my efforts is evidence that I don’t know how to get people to work together.  I recognize this, but lacking direction, I keep trying.

I have reached the limits of what I know how to do.  Now I need you, dear readers, to join me.  Write letters and postcards to your elected officials.  Make phone calls and leave messages. 

And if you know a better method, please tell me, so I can join you and become more effective.

And write your elected officials, every week, and maybe several times a week.  And yes, I do exactly that.

But I am a single individual.  I feel like a kitten, meowing into a hurricane.  If you join us, our meowing can generate its own hurricane.  It will be heard.

The choice is yours.  You make that choice, …, every single day.