IS GOOD EVEN RELEVANT ANYMORE?

      The times are as confusing today, meaning many todays, as ever was in history. There are armed militants, -  no, terrorists, rebels, insurrectionists - descending in force upon multiple state capitals. More are coming, we are told. DC, the capital of our nation, is under siege at the very moment that we should be celebrating a path to the return of national sanity. Video has caught the organized core of the disaster on January 6 with the rest of the mob stating they are listening to Trump, and follow along with the apparent organizers. We are a nation under siege from its own wayward citizens, under the ridiculous name of "boogaloo", surely an affirmation of their permanent position of toddlerhood, even as they play dangerous games with guns.

We are a nation under siege from a virus that will have us crossing the 400,000 mark of dead, and all that in less than a year. We are struggling to feed families, house people in the cold, meet health care needs, and we should be fulfilling those demands even as we are under threat, existential threat. What the hell!!! WHAT THE HELL!!! Hence the question of the title, for does the concept, the meaning, the importance of 'good' have any relevance anymore in our devolving society and what does that mean. What does it portend for the future.

According to Immanuel Kant, there is only one thing that can be called "good". That is a 'good will'. And what is that? That is the innate desire, drive, necessity, whatever, to do what is moral because, and ONLY because, that is what should be done. Period. For no other reason than that it is moral. Thus it follows that doing something following the moral law is tainted if one does it for other reasons, such as gaining profit or personal gain somehow, from the doing of it. In other words, mixed motives introduce a taint that spreads, that becomes an eddy of growing size that engulfs society, leading, I believe, to less of the moral law and more of the immoral gaining strength. Less of the concept of good and even the valuing of 'good'.

So look around at us today. Ignore the rest of the world for the moment, though they too are caught in this growing reeking eddy of immorality. Start with the drama of today's America, possibly within its last days as such, one way or another. Even should we defeat the forces of immorality here, imposing 'moral law' back on society, or stressing its importance, we will have changed forever. We were attacked from within. We are now vetting the troops in DC brought in to protect the country and its continued existence. Why the vetting? Because there is fear of the traitors within! Goddamn!!

So does 'good' and 'good will' count today? It should. We should be having a huge opposition to this attack because that is the right thing to do. Is that 'good will' tainted by what we have to gain ourselves from it? Possibly? We will gain a continued existence of our country, albeit one wounded terribly with and of life altering seriousness and consequences. But it will be, nonetheless,  a manifestation of the 'good will', of 'good' for us, for society. Certainly it is better than the evil wishing to be let in the gates, to chew us down, to corrupt and demoralize, to grind good to dust in all its manifestations and motivations.

And here we are. I plead with all those out there, those still enamored of Trump for whatever fantastical reasons one has made up. I plead with you to come back to this dimension and see the truth. See his evil nakedness, the lizard skin beneath. The man and his self avowed "movement", his followers, urged by the leader of that 'movement' to go be wild, to use force, to destroy the country - they are the total antithesis of good. Good, even without pure philosophical standards, does not allow Auschwitz shirts. It does not allow hatred and mantras of kill the other, be it Brown, Black, Jewish, or Democrat. It seeks the good and welfare of others because that will lead to the good and welfare of self. And society. And life.

Shake it off. Desert and abandon the falsehoods that have plagued this country for the past five years, growing in consequence, almost to the point of no return. Perhaps we have reached that already. But we do have a chance if the good, the concept of good, of good will, the  practicing of it, is accepted and taken upon our shoulders, into our heads and hearts, into our very souls, as the mainstay of a fair and progressive society that desires to take care of all within it, to seek the good. Simple - and as complicated - as that.