Truth vs. the Establishment and the Professional Punditry

It seems to me that what is missing from the viewpoint of the establishment in the current intense discussion of the USA presidential candidates is the understanding that it has been shown to be false.

I mean by “establishment” the existing group of people who consider their money and their self-esteem and power to be real, true, legitimate, benign.

They haven't quite realized the validity and extent of our perception of the establishment's falsity in every walk of life - in the academy, politics, the USA's wars, medicine, law, business, law enforcement, prisons, drug laws, police, finance, education, entertainment, sports, TV, radio, newspapers, the military.

It is like the fairy tale in which an emperor and his dependents are experiencing a child point out what every body else can see - but they themselves have not yet registered it, have not yet been able to see what everyone else can now see very clearly. They have an inkling, but they haven't yet grasped the fact of their own destitution.

"I'm Dying"

A friend said to me recently “I'm dying.” She's ninety years old and in precarious health, so it's likely that she will die any day now. She said it in that sober way of people who have done a lot of thinking in preparation for the event. I recognized what she was saying immediately because dying has been the central question of my own life for over fifty years now.

What surprized me was how good her statement felt. It was true, and she was sharing it with me, and it was helping us both to hear it said, to acknowledge it, to deal with it. We would help each other with dying, help each other out at the end, like God's spies, a phrase that she has used with me. It felt good to hear her say “I'm dying.”

Conversely, I now see what a down, what a drag, what a frustration, it is to be with people who don't believe they will die.