Hockey fans hurl beer and racial slurs, chasing dozens of Native American kids from game

[Newest Reality]

4. This whole

system reeks of that kind of abuse and incidents like that are just the violence, prejudice and ingrained narcissistic grandeur popping out onto the surface.

While it may be easy for us to point to certain people and specific situations that leave us stunned, disgruntled, dismayed and aghast, it is my opinion that these acts are not so random and individualized when you look at the the very structure of what is inherent in our social, political and economic systems once you put aside the grand facade of self-justifying rhetoric and moralistic, dogmatic superficiality that foments, supports and continues the systemic drive towards exploitation and divisiveness topped with a heaping helping of willful ignorance about the underlying disease.

We squeeze this toxin-filled balloon here and there, but that only changes the shape of the thing rather than popping it to let out the noxious substances of which it is comprised. In that sense, the negative and destructive behaviors can be linked to a system in an interdependent sense and not just on the old, jingoistic view where we imagine individuals as truly monolithic and separate entities within the whole, which is a one-sided approach to begin with.

A "holistic", (if you will forgive the term) view of our culture in relation to ourselves indicates that we all may be simultaneously agents of the system and victims of it as well. We are agents in the sense that are lifestyles and behavior supports its continuation and victims in the sense that we also fall prey to the various forms of propaganda and coercion, (overt and covert) that sustains the Status Quo. We are also victims when it comes to the outbreaks of violence and abuse that result from an internalized and collective pressure building in response to layers of manipulation, control and various forms of systematic persuasion that wears a finely tooled mask that pretends to be the face of freedom, liberty, rights and some idealistic, but yet unrealized, notion of democracy.