The New Hampshire primaries are tomorrow and my son, Brycen is now just old enough to vote in his first election. Both of us, usually considering ourselves very progressive, face an ethical dilemma in 2012. The problem at hand is that NO candidate or side in any US Presidential election is for children’s rights, or for total compassion for all people and living things! Human and environmental rights have been co-opted into political “isms” and funding lobbies, with groups using propaganda and rhetoric to deceive people into believing they want equality for all, rights for all humans and respite for our planet. In actuality, they want funding for their narrow-minded political causes. Here I discuss each Party’s record on children’s rights and overall social and environmental justice. [...]

In 2009, 13 year old Christian Choate was beaten to death after years of physical and mental torture by his father and step mother. He was confined to a wire dog cage for the last year of his life, not being allowed to eat, hydrate, use the toilet, play or move around. He wrote pages of heart-wrenching accounts of his suffering, wondering when an adult would come to rescue him. After dying from blows to the head, his body was wrapped in trash bags, buried and encased in cement by his father and step mother. In July of 2011, his body was finally discovered by authorities.

For ten years prior to Christian’s death, child protective authorities investigated and visited the family, most of the time concluding that they found “no evidence” of abuse and neglect. The Indiana child protective (DCS) spokesperson, Anne Houseworth claimed, “We followed all state laws, all policies and procedures.” She added, “If we don’t see evidence of abuse, and no one admits anything is going on, there is nothing for us to do.” [...]

This CNN article, “Audiences Experience Avatar Blues” http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html about moviegoers becoming depressed and suicidal after watching Avatar is troubling yet strangely hopeful. It is curious as well as shocking that people have been so asleep for so many centuries that only now that they have seen a computer generated movie have they become depressed by, shocked, outraged and aware of the severity of the loss of human life, of the loss of the natural, luscious beauty of our planet and of the loss of the joyous, symbiotic cultures that once inhabited the continent of North America.

I think it is testimony to how dull, arduous and downright painfully boring public school has presented history– in attempts by our government to deter people from deeper inquiry and research into the truth behind the atrocities and genocide that our government has committed against the indigenous peoples of the world. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn is the real-life “Avatar” that every American should be reading.

I suggest and hope that the mass numbers of depressed and suicidal viewers use their angst to rally together to save our very real life planet and the remaining peaceful indigenous cultures from further destruction and seriously rethink our society, our culture, our Government, our Capitalism and our worship of money and material objects. [...]