First the et ceteras, and yes, I butchered the title, but I sometimes enjoy playing with the language. Coming sea change at this site?

sea change |ˈsi ˌtʃeɪnʤ|
noun
a profound or notable transformation.
from Shakespeare’s Tempest ( i. ii. 403)

Following my recent ‘short tome’ (7,000+ words), Beware the Perception, some introspection occurred; having to with whether my overall approach might be made more useful/effective. To now, I’ve mostly worked to put small but bright spotlights on sundry aspects of the criminality of those who would presume to rule us. Now, with that wealth of thumbnails to draw upon, I’m looking at delving into the dilemma; where to go/what to do with a larger or developing focus. The inclination is to produce the less frequent, but longer and more thoughtful work, building on themes of social psychology in our [altogether failing] geopolitics. Not only where we are, but how we got here from a point of view via human behavior integrated analysis; applied to the now with certain historical perspectives. Restated in a common vernacular, from a point of view of woodsmanship, if you would like to make a course correction, having become misdirected in the forest, it is critical one know how to backtrack and understand the mistake, how it is one is on the wrong track. I don’t see a lot of that sort of capable thinking in today’s leadership.

My thinking is to lay Beware the Perception as a foundation stone in what should become a series of social-psychological articles in the geopolitical context with the next title “Real Politik is Dead”, a natural next step/theme that has been simmering in the back of my mind for some time. What has become clear is, at least in the Western liberal democracies, Statesmanship is a thing of the past, we simply don’t produce quality leadership anymore, instead we simple elevate psychopaths to power. This is result of organic deficit in the system of liberal democracies where ‘freedom’ has come to mean free to take advantage of those lesser than oneself, whether those of lesser wealth & power, those lesser gifted, those lesser ambitious or those simply lesser inclined to behave aggressively. It’s just not possible to have a secure, simple and honest life, this is something our ‘leaders’ can’t deliver. The bottom line is, it would appear they actually don’t know how.

In any case, I have time to think this through while rehabilitating a bit of burned out farmland, developing seed and generally learning how to organically farm (2nd season!) which is (at least in part) responsible for the slowdown in producing recent articles at this site. Last season was what amounted to a very large garden, this season is a reprise of the same. Of the property’s two fields, the field with commercial potential (enough area) is probably 4-5 years away from production; it had poor quality soil to begin, and what little life was in that soil has been exhausted, constituting a major rehabilitation project. The  second, smaller field, is in better shape and there has already been progress improving the soil since last fall. It is enough area to both; develop seed and take a solid step towards self-sufficiency (feed oneself) while on the learning curve. The property was contracted for purchase, the first season, it is since paid for and there is no debt whatsoever. The fine print for adversarial types: I’d arranged to hand it all off and become what amounts to a squatter with an understanding landlady who admires my retirement hobby. You won’t find me in the tax records.

I wish we could produce leaders in a system providing opportunity where everyone desiring self-sufficiency could be in circumstance to unplug from the grid. It is as simple as greed, and associated impulse to control, prevents this.

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A former Special Forces Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence, Ronald Thomas West is a retired paralegal/investigator (living in exile) whose work focus had been anti-corruption and human rights. Ronald is published in International Law as a layman (The Mueller-Wilson Report, co-authored with Dr Mark D Cole) and has been adjunct professor of American Constitutional Law at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (for English credit, summer semester 2008.) Ronald’s educational background is developmental & social psychology. His therapeutic device is satire.