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What Should We Do With The 1%?

Posted by Curt Day on Monday, January 28, 2013 1:51:40 PM
Over a year ago, the battlefield was well defined and partitioned into Good vs Evil, the 99% vs the 1%. This was and still is the view of the Occupy Movement, a movement I belong to. Though such a picture helped define the problem, it was also both inconsistent and self-sabotaging. It was inconsistent in that those of us in the Occupy Movement wanted a full democracy that represented the 99%. It was self-sabotaging in that individuals from the 1% who might have been inclined to listen and at least partially join us were hardened by our vilification of them. It is as if we asked them to cross a river while we burnt all of the bridges and constructed extra obstacles. This was a tactical error on our (the Occupy Movement) part.  If we had followed Martin Luther King's approach to winning over enemies, we would be more consistent and might have even made more headway. 

What should we do with the 1%? Let's first define their problem. Currently, they are, to put it mildly, acting like sociopaths. That is, they are doing whatever they want without even a twinge of conscience when they cause others to suffer. It's not that all of them are sociopaths, but most of them are acting that way. The opportunity to maximize profits, which makes self-interest the only interest, liberates those enslaved to wealth and status. Much of society regards them as heroes because of their worldly success. The fact that many are sorely wanting in compassion is of no significance. 

Why do many from the 1% not care about the suffering of others? There isn't a single answer. Some might not care at all about people while others are unable see the connection between their actions and the price others must pay. But there is another reason that might not have been considered and it is a reason that might be share by some in the military. Because of their self-imposed social and economic apartheid, they might not be able to see the damage they inflict on others. It might be like Howard Zinn when he flew on bombing missions some 30,000 feet above the targets. He could see the bombs explode but could not see the lives taken or the people who were maimed. All he could see is whether the bombs of his plane hit their target. Similarly, those who control drones and kill by remote control cannot be up close and personal to the collateral damage their skill and following orders has wrought. 

Because the 1% are insulated from financial shrapnel that is tearing apart the rest of the world, it could be that some of the 1% are not sociopaths at all, they are just ignorant. And if that is the case, then part of undoing the status quo must include educating those from the 1% who are not just willing to see the connection between their financial success and the suffering of others, they are willing to do something about it.

What is it that we want them to do, after all, there are philanthropists amongst the 1%. Some from the 1% are sharing a significant amount to help those in need. And though this is good and should be warmly celebrated, it is incomplete. For just as the financial decisions of individuals from the 1% is like the dropping of individual bombs on civilians, the system by which the 1% benefits provides the carpet bombing of the cities where we live. What we need from the 1% is not just individuals who will graciously give charity, we need a movement amongst the 1% which will work to change the system so that more and more people have the chance to work their ways out of needing charity. We should also note that it was Martin Luther King who said that individual charity is not enough, we also need to examine the system that puts so many people in need.

How do we move those in the 1% to work for a change in the system? Again, there is no silver bullet here, but part of the answer is finding ways to eliminate the distance between those flying the bombers and the civilians below. We must find ways to put those in the 1% as boots on the ground so they can see the carnage their success causes. We must discover ways involve the 1% with helping others to the extent that they too start cursing the system that has blessed them so richly. To do this, we need to bring the suffering of the many to the doors of the 1%. We have to learn how to hang out where the 1% hangs out so we can start the necessary conversations that will help the 1% see the truth regardless of whether they can handle it.

Not all from the 1% can be converted but nobody knows how many can. And for those who don't convert, by trying to educate them regarding how their riches means poverty for others, they will show that they are the real antagonists who are attempting to steal from others rather than the have nots who want what is necessary to live in dignity.

This different approach is a necessary change for the Occupy Movement if we are to continue to build a better world. We should note how many crimes the U.S. government has committed because they have employed bipolar thinking when confronting Communism. We too could fall prey to similar faults if we embrace the horribly flawed black-white thinking from the past. Separating today's people into the 99% and the 1% conducts such an embrace. In addition, because some of the natural results of such thinking include externalizing evil, we can easily deny our own faults that are so visible to others.

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Money Rules!

Posted by Curt Day on Saturday, January 19, 2013 11:15:17 AM
In the second Lethal Weapon movie, the bad guys, who were guilty of money laundering and drug running, almost always had a "Get Out Of Jail Card Free" regardless of what the police could cite them with. That card was called Diplomatic Immunity. For the bad guys worked out of the Union of South Africa's embassy in California. 

A new kind of "Get Out Of Jail Card Free" immunity has been created particularly for the 21st century. Its use was in effect albeit hidden after the 2008 financial collapse.  But those using that immunity, thanks to the Obama Administration's decision not to prosecute HSBC, have been forced out of the closet. Yes, those whose possible loss of services due to a jail sentence is projected be too catastrophic to the financial sector can now proudly claim "Economic Immunity" regardless of their crime.

And if we have a class of people who have Economic Immunity, it is not a logical leap at all to conclude that there could be those who have political immunity. And this is why nobody from the Bush Administration was indicted or even investigated for crimes during the Bush Presidency. 

It matters not whether having political immunity preceded the existence of economic immunity. That we have any group of Americans who are above the law of the land proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are no longer a nation that is under the rule of law. Rather, we are now under the rule of power.  And we should have seen this coming because for a long time, our nation's leaders have assumed that America is above all international law, a "City On The Hill Immunity," if you will.  This is what made America the "King Of The World," to borrow the words of Muhammad Ali, and the forever oxymoronic "Leader of the Free World."

That the rich powerful have excused themselves any legal accountability is not the only way in which money rules.  As Howard Zinn often pointed out that those in power become powerless when enough people withdraw their obedience. The corollary to this is that the refusal of the general public to withdraw their obedience from those with wealth and power means that they enable those in control to continue their crimes. This is what makes us complicit in the crimes of our leaders whether they be from the public or private sectors. And why we choose to remain involved here is that money rules over us as well as our laws. 

Why we let money rule over us is might be because some of use confuse freedom with privilege. Freedom and liberty are based on principles that are not a respecter of persons. That is rules that make us free apply to all or they apply to none. Privilege is different. In today's world, privilege is based on one's prosperity and power. Because there is wealth disparity, privilege is applied unequally. And since most of America's wars have been waged to control prosperity and power, we must realize that our troops have not been fighting for our freedoms; rather, they have been fighting to maintain our privileged status. 

So when the masses continue to obey to maintain the status quo, they are doing this to either maintain or gain a privileged status. Conserving the status quo is not an exercise in being faithful to absolute moral values, but for the sake of one's self-esteem, it must become morally marketable. Thus, we tell ourselves a multitude of myths in order to anesthetize our consciences over our elevated state. Two such myths are that we are the leaders and preservers of the free world and that we are a city on the hill.

However, the worst is yet to come. If what the Bible says is true in I Timothy 6:10, that the "love of money is the root of all evil," if money rules, so does evil. And by this we know the mark of all who are antihuman. Where profit is king, death and oppression reign. And since we live in a system that commands us to maximize profits, we live in an environment that minimizes life and instigates conflicts and wars. 

The tenet of maximizing profits is a black hole that swallows all moral values. And the fewer such values recognized, the less intrinsic value each person has. Thus, my fellow fundamentalists are wrong when they attribute the decline of our society to kicking God out of our schools. There are plenty of God-believing people whose canon is the financial bottom line. Their only disagreement with the financial world is that they believe the Bible gives us the formula for producing the largest profit despite the fact that it is then relentless search for the largest profit that is tearing our society from limb to limb. In contrast, there are unbelievers who are far exceeding many Christians in sharing and holding to moral values. How is it that their unbelief has not turned them over to the dark side of valuing profits over people? 

If money rules and from money springs evil, then evil rules. And the only way to combat evil becomes a call to share and cooperate. This is what the Declaration Of The Occupation Of New York City is based on. The question is will we use this document and likeminded works to overthrow the Almighty Dollar or will we roll the dice with our future where the odds continue to grow against us?
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Reflections On The Occupy Movement For 2013

Posted by Curt Day on Friday, January 11, 2013 5:36:04 AM
According to many, including some of its own participants, the Occupy Movement is dead. But such is life when one considers America to be the center of the world and that life is determined by whether one lives in the headlines. The Occupy Movement neither started in America nor has it passed away. Certainly it has fewer active American members today than before the encampments were broken up, but it is alive and kicking.

We must first realize that the real Occupy Movement started in Tunisia and then Egypt at the beginning of 2011. We know this because some of their activists, along with those from other countries, came over here and helped set the stage for Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in September of 2011. Significant protests are still occurring in Egypt, Greece, and Spain. In addition, some communities in Spain are beginning to self-organize using principles from anachism.

In NYC, we still see the Occupy Movement going strong. What makes it seem invisible is that it no longer is a headline grabber. But it still provides teach-ins, such as the ones at the Free University of New York, it helped with the Russell Tribunals, and since Hurricane Sandy hit, the Occupy Movement has been focusing its efforts on helping the storm's victims in part by being where the government is not.

In the meantime, those in the Occupy Movement from some of the other cities have seen a huge drop off in participation and with that is disillusionment for those who were involved. With that disillusionment can come a hopelessness or a reluctance to participate in another similar movement. And so the following reflections are aimed at such activists.

First, we must ask ourselves what result did we expect from the Occupy Movement? Did we expect the masses to immediately join us? I remember my first, and only, night at the encampment at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. Compared with the number of people available, there were relatively few protesters and that was despite what was promised to me by one of its founders at the beginning of Occupy Wall Street.

Why were there so few, relatively speaking, people at that encampment? The reason why is the same as why there were so few participants in the rest of the cities. The Occupy Movement was asking people to do the most difficult task in the world to do: change. Change takes the most energy of any human endeavor we engage in. And thus, people would do anything, which usually means interpret their world in any way, possible that does not necessitate change. This pretty much follows Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance. This theory states that when people are confronted with contradictory ideas, they will usually pick the path of least resistance or energy in resolving the conflict. And since change requires the most energy, change is usually the last option chosen by most people. And when are people most ready to change? Historically speaking, it is when their dissatisfaction with the status quo is great enough.

This reluctance to change does not bother those revolutionaries who intend on replacing one elite regime with another because such a reluctance is not seen as an obstacle. But when we want to replace an elite regime with a real democratic process, we need to be ready to wait. This is because it is only in waiting until enough of the audience is ready that we break the pattern of using revolution to replace one elite regime with another. Those who cannot wait usually try to force the issue and this results in either resignation because of disillusionment or in a willingness to resort to violence. In either case, such revolutionaries follow the same failed model from the past. 

We should also note that waiting does not guarantee breaking the chain of abuse that comes when we replace one elite regime with another. Egypt is a prime example here. Though their move to overthrow Mubarak started ten years before it succeeded, their revolution is endanger of being co-opted, as was the Iranian Revolution, by those seeking to maintain elite rule but with a change in the lineup. Egyptian revolutionaries now know what it takes to overthrow an elite-centered regime. The question becomes will they be willing to continue to suffer through those methods to secure a truly democratic system. We should only note what has been said before that: "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

So we should note that our one demand is the process, not the policy. Certainly the process needed here to install a more democratic system in America does not imply OWS style General Assemblies. But what is implied is a process that involves a participatory democracy. And the choice we must offer to the rest of the 99% is whether the time and energy required to maintain such a democracy is worth sacrifices in individual prosperity and patriotic pride. We should also note that we are sitting on a ticking timebomb. We know that if we do not pick democracy that emphasizes collectivism in time, it is "game over." This is because of the consequences being amassed by elite rule. However, it is "game over" if we try to force the issue as well. This is because if we force the issue, we only make it more likely that what we want will be replaced by others who will force the issue for their agenda.

So our initial wave of occupations, encampments, and decision by General Assembly consensus did not bring the change we want, so what! It is as John Lennon said after the failure of "Flower Power," we try again. We gain nothing by giving up because we could not win over a critical mass of the population this time. Again, the Egyptian overthrow of Mubarak took 10 years. And, not only that, if we are doing things right, part of that target audience whom we wish to win over must include our unofficial sworn enemy, the "1%."

From the beginning, the "1%" of the wealthiest Americans have created their own economic apartheid. They live under different rules and thus in a different world. This is because they can buy the rules made by government.  They can do this by funding lobbyists who significantly contribute to the laws that Congress writes and passes. They can also write the rules because there is a revolving door for those running or working in our financial institutions and government appointed positions. One only needs to consider whom President Obama appointed to be in charge of the Fed, the Secretary of the Treasury as well as to other advisor positions to get a glimpse of how this works.

In addition, the "1% have arranged things so that our economy revolves around their desires and resources. This separates them from the rest of us in that they have become the sun of economic solar system while the rest of us are planets, if that. Their ability to regard the government as a rescuer further shows how the "1%" is another difference that separates us. More and more Americans are finding that that their pleas to the government for help are falling on deaf ears while the "1%" find themselves saying, "oh my, what big ears you have" when pleading the case to the same audience.

But it was our, those in the Occupy Movement, mistake to further this chasm between the "1%" and the rest of us by portraying them as enemy to conquer and punish rather than as an opponent to win over. If we were to follow Martin Luther King's example of dealing with those who would do one harm, we would be inviting the "1%" to join the rest of us rather than pushing them away by painting a target on their backs. The first word in the title of the song Brother, Can You Spare A Dime tells us how to address the "1%." Certainly those in the "1%" need to change with regard to being legally and morally accountable; but threatening them by singing "we will rock you" rather than beseeching them to bridge the abyss they created makes matters worse. The question we must ask ourselves is are we more interested in punishing the "1%," which is well merited, or do we prefer see them change their ways. Is this participatory democracy we desire to only include the "99%" or should it involve everybody?

If what we want is a change from elite rule to democratic rule, then we must continue doing what we are doing. We must persist in educating people on what is happening and the consequences. We must continue in serving and helping those in need. And we must never give in to frustration and disillusionment. So what if we don't have encampments now or if attendance at General Assemblies is low. The only way to have a chance at success is to never give up. We must look to expand what the Occupy Movement is currently doing and to add to that what any new movement, which is working for the same goals, requires. And we must remember that what took 10 years to happen in Egypt is now being co-opted. This means that if we are really working for a more participatory democracy with a greater egalitarianism, we have job security.


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A New Year's Resolution For Survival

Posted by Curt Day on Tuesday, January 01, 2013 8:54:00 PM
When listening to or reading the experts on what most threatens human survival, I get the feeling that they can't see the forest for the trees. Oldie but goodie threats like nuclear war and asteroids continue to jeopardize our future and they are now joined by ecological and biological concerns. But, with one exception, what is lacking in the list of dangers are driving forces that put our lives at risk. The running out of resources is consistently identified as a threat because such can cause an increase in wars. But even the loss of resources does not give us a complete picture of what most threatens our future on earth.

The biggest driving force that threatens human life on earth is not a single factor but a conjunction of factors. And unfortunately, each of these components seems to be fixed costs in our world. What will most probably cause the life after human scenario, which is often depicted on one of the History Channels, is the combination of tribalism and technology. Though we have always had both, the combination has never before posed the possibility of ending all human life. But even with today's technology, let alone tomorrow's, we can do just that. And tribalism only guarantees a malevolent use of technology in order to extend the superiority of one's own group over all others.

Here, I am going to use a relaxed definition of tribe as referring to any group to which we belong, because of the strong loyalty exhibited in tribalism, it moves us to use moral equivalences as pejoratives while embracing moral relativity. This is because the basic ethic exhibited in tribalism is to define what is moral and immoral by who does what to whom. And the most often apologetic used for employing relativity to defend one's actions is those actions are declared to be necessary for the sake of group survival. 

Security is an important reason why we join different groups but it is not the only reason why we do so. Belonging to groups also provides us with a sense of significance. This significance is often achieved through the status and that can be obtained by garnering an abundance of wealth. Here, wealth is often achieved by the hoarding of goods and resources even if they are from far away. And what we must always remember is that the more one person or group grabs for themselves, the less there is for everybody else. Sometimes that less is tolerable but other times it is life threatening.

We should note that one's tribe or group here can refer to one's country, but it can also refer to one's business or even one's family as well. Thus, what we see is somewhat illustrated by the Hunger Games within the movie The Hunger Games. And that is that one's success depends on the demise of others. This forever sets up conflicting or threatening relationships between all groups, especially those groups that do not have symbiotic or even parasitic relationships with those groups that are profiting.

This gaining at other people's expense brings in two additional issues. The first one is how can one rationalize causing someone else to lose? This question is answered by declaring that one is entitled to their success. In the West, Free Markets, competition, and the Protestant work ethic are often all that most need to salve consciences that have been compromised. Of course such explanations are needed only for those who still have some shred of conscience left.

The second issue that arises here is how one is able to rise financial while others lose? Ascendency is often achieved through the threat or use of force. On our city streets, turf wars are fought by gangs. In the world, the gang members who battle to determine whose flag flies where wear uniforms. A country doesn't always have to send its own troops in to take control. Sponsoring coups and ruling through proxy leaders enables the greedy and ambitious from other lands to expand their empire. We in the West are all to familiar with how the old Soviet Union did this but are we aware that our own country and their allies have done this as well. Iran in 1953, Guatamala in 1954, and Chile in 1973 are examples where those in the West gained control without ordering their country to send its own troops in. Of course, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 accomplished the same goal of gaining control over oil resources with minimal help from friends in Iraq's government without having complete control of the government. So it is not as if it is the old "Socialists" are the only ones who have hearts full of greed and eyes lusting for power.

It is at this point that we must introduce technology as the other part of a one-two punch that threatens. We have used technology in self-destructive ways to increase wealth of our tribes and we do so without regard for future consequences. This can be seen in how we build on barrier islands to remaining so heavily reliant on fossil fuels. Whether be our environment or our food, we have given those with power permission to wantonly pollute in order to maximize profits for our groups. In the meantime, as a fellow activist and good friend of mine, Rita Corriel, has said, we measure progress by how far we remove ourselves from nature. Not wanting to know that nature has its own way of exacting a toll from us, we live in denial as the effects of poisoning our own world.

And as while we are killing ourselves softly with toxins, we have weapons that can kill us harshly. We have lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation for decades and it is perhaps the fact that there have been no nuclear attacks since WWII which allows us to live in denial of how close we are to using such weapons. But we might also ask how close we are from the development of other kinds of WMDs besides nuclear weapons? Here, I am thinking of kinds of WMDs that do not take the combined effort of state and corporate partners to create and use. We allow certain tribes to possess both the WMDs themselves or the capacity to create new kinds of WMDs and we do so in the name of our tribes.

With technology, we have the capacity to do both good and evil. Because tribalism causes us to be mostly concerned for our own, a moral myopia sets in where what is right and wrong is determined by what happens to us first. We lose sight of the big picture and thus we can no longer see moral absolutes. We then externalize evil and allow ourselves to do anything to others in the name of protection and advancement. And since technology continues to help all become more powerful, it is merely a matter of time before we do ourselves in.

Therefore, the resolution needed to help all survive is to, as much as possible, forsake tribalism. It is not that we can completely escape all loyalty to the groups to which we belong; but we need to show an equal concern for all and not just for our own. We need to embrace moral absolutes to the extent that we will call for the punishment of our own when they abuse others. Some say this is too idealistic but the opposite is the case. To think that we can survive the combination of tribalism with an ever advancing and accessible technology is to lose contact with reality.  

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There Is More Than One Way To Resist The Status Quo

Posted by Curt Day on Tuesday, October 23, 2012 12:14:12 AM
Those of us on the left have been hearing more and more that things are so dire that civil disobedience is the only way to resist the system and possibly save ourselves. One of the people who says this is a deservedly well esteemed writer and moralist, Chris Hedges. He is one of my favorite writers and, as I have written before, we ignore his words at our own peril. And yet, that does not imply that he is always right.

The idea of resisting through civil disobedience rests on the perception that it is wrong to be well-adjusted in a pathological environment. That the only sane way to exist in such a situation is to be maladjusted. And thus, one should not cooperate to the point of breaking the law to show the system how sick it is. And though our world is becoming increasingly morally insane, and resistance and noncooperation are essential to maintaining any kind of personal and moral sanity, civil disobedience does not have a monopoly on resistance.

 Here I would like to use a computer programming analogy. When teaching students to write code, we tell them about two sets of rules. One set of rules has to do with syntax while the other is concerned with convention. Syntax rules are rules that code must adhere to in order to be compiled and run by the computer. If a program, regardless of its size, has one syntax error, that program will not run. 

But programs that break programming conventions do not suffer the same fate. Programmers who do not follow programming conventions are simply failing to fully cooperate with other programmers. Their programs will compile and run on a computer because programming conventions are not syntax rules.

So if we say that syntax rules are analogous to the laws of the land and programming conventions are analogous to society's norms and traditions, we find that there are other ways to resist a sick world than to break the law. Certainly, we need people to practice civil disobedience and such people should be greatly respected for their moral stand and courage. But what if the number of those who engage in civil disobedience is not great enough to change our current direction? What do we do then?

In conjunction with civil disobedience, we can resist by rejecting many of our society's conventions. Such a rejection is another way of challenging the status quo. And the first convention do away with can be done by both conservatives and non-conservatives together. That first convention is voting to support the two party system. 

The reason why both conservatives and non-conservatives can work together here is that there are some third parties that are conservative and some that are non-conservative. The reason why all should boycott the two party system, as opposed to boycotting the election as some have suggested, is that, for the most part, each of the two parties only work to have us vote against the other guy. Therefore, they offer no compelling reason to vote for themselves other than fear of the other guy. This happens every election year. Yes, many conservatives are not happy  with the selection of a flip-flopper like Mitt Romney. But, to them, anything is preferable to the Black "Socialist" President Barack Obama--note the quotes around the word socialist.  So, for as long as their base is secure because of a commitment to unseat Obama, the Republicans can run on a vacuous or even venomous platform.

As for non-conservatives, as long as they would vote for any Democrat to prevent another Republican President, Obama and the Democrats do not have to worry about walking the campaign talk as well as being a worse war President than Bush. So the Democrats can fling promises with a flare and without a care that they will have to keep them. Why? Because, of how they have marketed their opponent; anything is better the current Republican candidate.

So, for as long as the base of each party is more committed to voting against someone, because we can't afford to let that person win, or are afraid to vote for a loser who has no chance of winning, the two parties can depend on our support. Thus, neither party has to offer anything significant in terms of  performance; they only have to show that they are not the other guy. In the meantime, only cosmetic changes separate the two parties in both rhetoric and accomplishments.

Therefore, voting 3rd party is the only way to either bring the Republicans and Democrats back to their senses or to replace them because both parties are hopelessly lost in their own banality.

But there must be other ways to break convention than what we do every x number of years. And whereas voting for third party candidates is difficult but not impossible to do, the next way of breaking society's conventions will try many a soul. The next convention to break is patriotism. The next convention to undo is holding onto the deeply moral conviction of loving one's country. Here, we are not saying that we should hate one's country, not at all. Rather, this claim of being special by association, the holding a reverence for a set of boundaries, the worship of colors and a pattern on a piece of cloth, and a religious belief in a mythological past in order to insist on being privileged over all others who do not belong to one's national gang is not just irrational, it is immoral.  

In Romans 2, we understand that God is not a respecter of persons. In Paul's letter to the Philippians, we see Paul eagerly void himself of all national and ethnic pride in order to gain his significance from only one source. So why should we invest so much of ourselves into our national identity?

Those who are full of patriotism will proudly point out that our nation has afforded us privileges and prosperity that no other nation has ever provided for their own people. Thus, because we are blessed with such a special life and set of opportunities, we would be the worst of ungrateful children if we do not show a proper, and more accurately a worshipful, appreciation for the sacrifices made to give us the opportunities and rights we now enjoy.  And such an argument carries some weight.

At the same time, what we are blind to is the fact that the pre and post conditions of privilege rests on the abuse of others. And the more we gain our own significance by group identity, the less able we will be to see the hidden costs of our privileges when it is our group that is benefitting rather than paying the price. For most of America's history, its wealth has been built on the backs and graves of those who lived in our own borders. We stole the land from indigenous people and we used slave or near slave labor to produce and sell a remarkable amount of goods with huge profit margins. And when the rights of more and more groups finally gained more recognition, we exploited the labor of more and more foreigners to maintain that luxurious profit margin. And when we were not stealing land and exploiting land here, we are intervening in other countries so that we could rule them through heavy-handed proxy rulers . 

And why do we callously abuse and exploit so many others? Isn't it because we believe that our own group is more entitled to a prosperous life than any other group? That sense of entitlement is at the heart of patriotism.

Here, a special word must be given to our troops who have given or risk giving the ultimate sacrifice for our national group. We must acknowledge and respect them for their courage and willingness to risk immense suffering and even death so we can have a better life. But then we must point out the price that abused victims must pay for us to gain such a privileged life. And we should point out that as our troops are on the front lines of sacrifice, they are also on the front lines of harming innocent others whether they shoot up close and in person or from remote locations using machines. It is that willingness to pull the trigger that enables our leaders to live by the rule of force.

We should replace patriotism with a love of mankind. And we should add to our protest of regimes and groups that abuse others abroad, our sharp criticisms of our own when they do the same. Mindless flag waving can never obscure the guilt that one should feel for supporting theft and murder. We can't afford to just "trust and obey" leaders who order the murder of others while lying to us about the two reasons for almost every conflict--ambition and greed. And a funny thing can happen to us on the road to internationalism, we make it possible to experience a reciprocal support when we need help.

The short of it is this: in a world where both proliferation of WMDs has become inevitable because of an ever adulterous technology and sharing has become the only way to survive because of diminishing resources is being met by growing need, we can't afford to not work for the benefit of others regardless of their ethnicity, religion, national identity, and whatever difference one can name. That is because the refusal to share is another nail in the coffin.

Finally, though it is not really finally, we have to address our consumerism. Convention has it that we should buy as much as we can at the lowest price. This is the consumer's version of maximize profits. By reducing all concerns to the lowest price, we become concerned solely about our short-term gain and apathetic to the price others must pay today and what we all must pay in the long run. 

So what we should do our best at is to buy not using price as our only or final criteria, but to buy using price and other considerations as criteria.Those other conditions should include the company's impact on the environment and their labor practices. If a company carelessly pollutes the environment or does not invest in their employees, then breaking with convention would mean not buying that company's products even when, because of prices, you could get more for your money. Why? We should not reward companies that harm others through destroying the environment or by abusing employees. 

Thus, just as we have more than 2 choices for President, we have more than one way to resist the status quo. This is good news for those who cannot afford or are unwilling to be arrested. The more we break with those conventions that contribute to the abuse of others or our environment, the closer we are to determining our future. But we keep on with the same old same old while visions from the past dance in our heads, we will meet with self-destruction. 

So the question becomes are you willing to forgo more and more comforts so as not be well-adjusted in severely pathological world or are you going to turn your back on both righteousness and those in need because you've got yours. One does not have to be a protester who is arrested and manhandled in those in authority to speak up. One can speak up by replacing each norm of society that contributes to the abuse of others with something that is different and individual. I have targeted 3 conventions, there are far more to be considered.  

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Restoring Impotence

Posted by Curt Day on Saturday, July 14, 2012 7:25:00 PM
At the end of the documentary on the Freedom Riders (see video), one of the riders said that an effect of the Freedom Rides was that they shattered the myth of Black impotence before Whites. The rides demolished the idea that Blacks were powerless in the face of White oppression. Well, guess what. Impotence is on the mend and it is no longer respecting color line.  It is coming after you and me and everyone who is not part of the 1%, metaphorically speaking. 

The impotence that is on the mend is a political-economic one, rather than a racial one. This impotence charges that those who are not rich enough to own a lobbyist or politician are unable to connect with their government. And though there has been a certain degree of electile dysfunction for a while, the powerlessness of the people to move their representatives is almost in full blossom today. 

When did this happen and who was President? We can't say precisely but we can note important milestones. One such milestone occurred during the campaigning for and passage of NAFTA. Up until the 1992 election, NAFTA was used as a political football by the Bush campaign team. They thought that NAFTA could split the Democratic party between the unions, which opposed NAFTA, and Hispanic voters as well as make candidate Clinton appear to be indecisive. In fact, unions had to govern their opposition to NAFTA because of fears of Hispanic members. In addition, environmentalists also opposed NAFTA because of pollution fears--that polluters would move South of the border. But what was significant here was that when Clinton embraced NAFTA, he began to cement a closer relationship between the corporate sector and the Democratic Party. And as these two became more tightly joined, there was no political party to represent those feeling pressed on by the business world.

The next tipping point came with the advent of the Iraq War. Millions here and across the world protested in perhaps the largest prewar antiwar demonstrations in history. But it was all to no avail as President Bush went ahead and invaded Iraq. Initially, Bush had the patriotic support of the people. But after he lost that support, a loss that cost his party control over Congress, he continued prosecuting the war as if there was no opposition at all. Though Obama followed by withdrawing many troops from Iraq, American security contractors stayed behind on America's dime. In addition, the majority of Americans now oppose the same Afghanistan War that Obama has spread into Pakistan through the use of drones. And though Obama can claim partial credit for the death of Bin Laden, he can take the same amount of credit for all of the side effects that come with both staying in Afghanistan and fighting a drone war against Pakistan. 

On the domestic front, both Presidents Bush and Obama have furthered business interests through the bailouts and Healthcare. Both Presidents presided over huge bailouts to our financial institutions and the auto industry. And though some, and I think correctly so, can argue the necessity of the bailouts, they were given with virtually no strings attached in either paybacks or subsequent regulations. Again, this is a bipartisan favoring of the business community leaving the public without a voice. What has just been listed is a partial list of acts of deliberate deafness exercised by leaders of both parties to the American public. This refusal to listen makes any popular protest practically moot. Plus, Obamacare garnered more business for the Health Insurance Industry making his healthcare plan unsustainable because of the costs.

Besides turning a deaf ear to the public, Obama's Administration has outdone Bush's in term of squelching whistleblowers and protesters. In fact, it has been pointed out that President Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton combined. So far, the count is up to five (see article). In addition, it is under President Obama's tenure that the Occupy encampments were violently attacked and destroyed. And it is by Obama's Justice Department that both protesters and activists have been subpoenaed or indicted for trying to further peace.  Finally, Obama signed the 2012 NDAA that gave the President unprecedented powers, removing all necessary burden of proof responsibilities, to detain American citizens.

But perhaps what incapacitates the political ability of the people more than hard of hearing elected officials are the choices we (don't) have. Martin Luther King once stated that there was no difference between a Black person in South not having the right to vote from a Black person from the North not having anyone to vote for. With the capitulation of the Democratic Party to Big Business, Americans, feeling infringed on by Big Business, have no one to vote for. The Citizens United case and the Clinton sellout of the Democratic Party has made almost carte blanche support of Big Business a bipartisan affair. With the virtual lockout of 3rd party candidates at almost every Federal office, the electoral choice for Americans has been reduced to being between Thing 1 and Thing 2. And despite that, we have convinced ourselves that voting for anyone else is a wasted vote.

We are currently a political impotent nation. Money and marketing is now controlling who are leaders and representatives are and what their policies will be. And unless we stand up and change, this trend will continue until our nation collapses.

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Is The Conservative Church Disturbing The Peace?

Posted by Curt Day on Wednesday, June 27, 2012 8:13:10 PM
The article linked to below describes how the Conservative Church both disturbs the peace and does not disturb the peace



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Conservative Misconceptions

Posted by Curt Day on Tuesday, June 26, 2012 2:41:40 PM
Of course I will be writing about a subset of Conservatives in this post, but I am still writing about Conservatives. One of the Conservative misconceptions I have heard or read is about Muslims. While at a protest against the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, a lady stopped her vehicle to tell me that Muslims only wanted to kill me. I responded by telling her that I have Muslim friends and that has not been my experience.

This lady is not the only conservative who has concerns about Muslims. I know another conservative who thinks that attacking America is the rule for Muslims, not the exception.  And there are many conservatives who worry about Sharia law coming to the U.S. in a town near them. The problem here is that such conservatives simply have refused to be exposed to the necessary information that would alleviate their fears. This is not to say that there are no Muslims interested in conquering others. For some of those Muslims, that desire comes from having seen the exploitation and destruction that has come with Western Imperialism. Others are just extremists.

Jason Burke, who wrote a book on Al-Qaeda, travelled and investigated the terrorist side of 9-11. He makes an observation that is obvious to all but those who are shackled by fear. He said that the vast majority of those in the Muslim community are peaceful. And who could disagree considering that there are over 1 billion Muslims spread around the world. Would we not have to expend much more force and see more destruction if Burke was wrong? In addition, Burke claims that terrorists are made, not born and that the willingness to commit terror is related to the degree of humiliation one has suffered coupled with the inability to politically address significant grievances. Many of the conservatives I know would be hardpressed to even consider such a view despite Burke's work and research. And Burke's research isn't the only research that holds this view.

I find a similar misconception by conservatives regarding Socialism. Most think of it as a monolith and equate it with big government. Such a view comes from learning about Socialism only from its critics. This kind of learning would be equivalent to trying to understand Christianity solely by watching the movie Religulous. Others think that Socialism rewards laziness or lack of achievement because life is guaranteed. All are wrong. And they are not just wrong, the conclusions are arrived at deductively rather than through observation. 

Socialism is as much about shared power as it is about shared resources. This is a severe affront to proud conservative individualists who, despite the warning that exists in Deuteronomy 8, wish to claim that they themselves are responsible for their own success. Such people want a hierarchy where either they or other likeminded individuals rule over all others. Such individualists want to call shared power and resources theft and rewarding laziness.  And such individualists want to forget that not only are there no individual successes in an interdependent society, but we are also charged with being our brother's keeper. For Christ tells us that how we treat the least of those in society is how we treat Him (Matthew 25:31-46). 

This socialism stands in sharp contrast to our current form of capitalism where one works far too much to participate in a Democratic Society. And the more hours one works, the more one must rely on others to govern whether that ruling over occurs in the workplace or in society.  The conservative has an answer to this. It is called "limited government." A limited government tries to control the damage that any bad government can cause and government is expected to be bad. 

The above conservative approach has its problems. The first of which it is a resignation to bad and corrupt government and it attempts to make life with such a government acceptable. But in the end, all it does is to make such a government secure. For there is no motivation, with such an approach, to address and change how leaders rule because all that can be done about controlling government has already been done by limiting its size. This approach to government leads to a laissez-faire approach to government where distraction by government is kept at a minimum, such as voting every x number of years. This is done to enable conservatives to spend as much time as possible pursuing their personal pot of gold.   

To such Conservatives who believe in as small a government as possible, the measure of any man can be seen in one's striving for individual treasure. And this shows the second problem with the over reliance on small government. That is a lack of understanding with what it takes to maintain a full participatory democracy. In addition to one's job, one must have spent time reading and discussing the issues of the day. And then one must go to meetings to listen, debate, vote, and be sometimes frustrated. It takes real work to maintain a participatory democracy and that work is added to ones employment. Only here, the work one puts in to preserve a more direct democracy is work that is put in for the benefit of many rather than the benefit of just oneself. 

It takes hard work to both earn a living and preserve an active democracy that involves more participation than just an occasional visit to the voting booth. Those who discount all work other than that required to accumulate one's treasure on earth have an agenda. They don't want a more consistent democracy. They are scared of what others might vote for. They are afraid not that they could be voted off the island, but that their own personal fantasy island might have to change so that it shares with others. They want to call that theft. In reality, it is simply paying for services rendered by the community for no man succeeds as an island.

 
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How A Christian Fundamentalist Became A Socialist

Posted by Curt Day on Wednesday, June 20, 2012 9:07:31 AM
Below is an article describing how, as a Christian Fundamentalist and political conservative, I changed.



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We Are Dehumanizing Society

Posted by Curt Day on Saturday, June 02, 2012 10:26:39 PM
Regardless of the speed, we are surely making people lose touch with what it means to be human. We are desensitizing society to what should be felt when people suffer. We are caging people in, making them into machines, and thus stifling their creativity. And we are doing this with tools we have in our culture and around the house. And if we don't stop, future generations will feel less and less and will be less and less connected with each other as well as themselves.

The first tool being used to numb people to themselves is our ever advancing technology. It isn't that technology is all negative. As someone who has survived cancer surgery, I can attest to the benefits of technology. And I didn't need to go through such surgery to appreciate technology. But, as with anything else, there is a point of diminishing returns when increasing our use of technology returns more negatives than positives. This is true especially when it comes to communication.

I really do appreciate cell phones. They give the wife and I a certain amount of freedom when we go to the mall. We only need to call each other to know where and when to meet. And I loved cell phones when the kids just got their drivers licenses. But with cell phones came texting. And with texting comes a less personal way of communicating. Texting dilutes the affect we express and receive when conversing with others. This makes our conversations less personal, less human. We don't have to be fully there with the people we are texting and we are certainly not fully there with the people we are with at the time. With texting, we exercise an absence while being present. And yet, we only need to ask young people how many times do they prefer to reach out and touch someone through texting than through talking in person to see its growing effects.

But not only does texting filter out our personal reactions, it limits the depth of sharing and the contents of our communications. In texting, communication tends to be brief and abbreviated. So not only does texting filter out our emotions, it sifts out depth and reduces the amount of content we can communicate and then handle. 

And if the cell phone was not enough, there is whatever device we use to connect to the web. Yes, there are advantages to the web. We can reach out and touch more people from around the globe. But the web is similar to cell phones in that it too acts as a strainer that limits the feelings that can be expressed and decreases the amount of content that can be considered. In addition, people can hide behind avatars when meeting others. This can make the web, especially the social networking places, the world's biggest disguise party where we, nor the people we meet, have to see what we prefer not to. So we meet new people and become attracted and attached to the costumes being worn rather than the real people wearing them. 

Sherry Turkle, from MIT, has already written about much of what I described above in her book Alone Together. In the book, she describes not just what we are doing to ourselves now but how we are conditioning others for the future. And if our social life was the only part that was being revolutionized by the overuse of technology, we could live with that. But it isn't. Education is now beginning to rely more and more on the virtual presence of instructors than being up close and in person. Educational institutions are currently pursuing a greater reliance on communications technology to teach. We now have universities that revolve around students learning from professors who can only provide an electronic presence. These institutions reason that students no longer need teachers who are fully present to learn. In other words, students need less and less the humanity from their instructors. Students don't need teacher reaction to students' feedback and teachers' mistakes. On the other hand, these educational institutions also reckon that teachers need no reactions from their students to get their points across. As was said by one police officer from the TV series Dragnet, "just the facts" is all that is needed in education. In short, there is an ever diminishing personal communication and relationships between those who teach and those attempting to learn. 

Certainly there is more in technology that is changing us than our communication technology. Turkle emphasizes in her book the point that not only do we make our own tools, they, in turn, shape us. And if we wanted to anticipate how our previously mentioned communication tools  could change us, just think of the following. The technology we use cannot sense when we are frustrated or angry when it fails or frustrates us. In addition, like all electronic tools, we expect our machines to blindly follow orders. If we are shaped by these communication tools, will we become less and less aware of how those around us feel and will life consist of nothing more than mindlessly following orders?

But our use of technology is not the only culprit here, there is another. And one such perpetrator is business. Let's face it, business is highly impersonal, especially when we seek to maximize profits and maximizing profits is the ethic of the day. For when profit is king, people are pawns. And being pawns means that we are the most disposable piece in the game. And the more expendable people are, the more our humanity becomes moot.

In today's world, all that matters is the accumulation of the wealth that those in the in group can garner. And as Chris Hedges so aptly said about the wealthiest, the only word they know is "more." For those for whom this is true, all others become invisible. 

In the movie, Analyze This, Billy Crystal plays a therapist to a mob boss. When he was suspected of having become an informant, the mob boss's assistant points a gun at him to shoot him while trying to soothe Crystal's character by saying, "it isn't personal." Crystal's character gave the wrong response. He said that it could not get more personal. It was the wrong response because when business dictates ethics, the personal no longer matters. People's needs are easily discarded. People who cost more than others are regarded as an inflamed appendix. People who have lost their jobs because their existence could no longer be financially justified can attest to how dehumanizing and painful their experiences have been. But their feelings no longer matter. In addition,  austerity cuts that maintains tax cuts for the rich spreads this heartache to those in the community.

Those in business have a ready reply to charges of being inhuman. They say that for the good of others in the company, they must be quick to let go those who do not contribute to the maximizing of profits. Otherwise, the company becomes at risk and shareholders lose what they deserve because of the laws of gravity, as they apply in the business world. But what such apologists forget is that the economic system we worship is one of choice. We don't have to continue to rely on an economic system that so heavily leans on competition. That is we don't have to unless the desire for more has precedence over the humanity of others. And yet, not only are we worshipping our competitive economic system, we are allowing our business environment built on competition to metastasize into other spheres. And again, education is seeing more than its fair share of a business mentality being forced on it. So whereas in the past, we depended on a certain degree of inefficiency in education because of how much we learn from our mistakes, we can no longer afford to be so wasteful.

Though we could list a few more coconspirators in this crime of dehumanizing society, we will stop with the next one, authoritarianism. We all know how many Nazis tried to defend themselves in court against charges of war crimes. Many claimed that they were merely following orders. And those orders not only enabled many Nazis to practice immeasurably gross crimes against humanity, orders shielded them from the threat of feeling what their victims felt. Orders were their defense and following orders caused their conviction of war crimes.

But the problem with using the Nazis to illustrate our point is that we don't see ourselves as being on their level of evil and most of us would be correct here. So the authoritarianism we practice, though not preferable, can't possibly be dehumanizing. And that reasoning would hold if the Nazi atrocities provided a minimal standard of evil or if the negative effects of authoritarianism were restricted to evil rulers only. 

What authoritarianism does is to numb us to the pain others feel when we follow orders because we zero in on our duties. In addition, it takes away our freedom. It threatens all who would question and criticize and thus pushes us to become automatons that, not who, wait for the next set of instructions. 

Truth is determined differently in an authoritarian environment than it is in a free world. In the authoritarian world, truth is determined by the credentials of the one speaking. If the person's credentials are good, we tend to accept what they say without question. If, however, the person's credentials are inadequate or questionable, then we refuse to listen. Thus, our listening to a person depends on the pedestal on which they are standing. This high dependence on credentials by the audience is a reason why we see the kinds of political campaigns that we have in this country. When acceptance or rejection depends on credentials, more time is spent on building candidates up or tearing them down than analyzing their views and proposals. And when what they say is scrutinized, the public depends on the "experts' who are provided by either the government, the media, or some other institution for an interpretation than on their own ability to listen and think. 

Since the 9-11 atrocities, we have seen a spike in authoritarianism in this country from the federal government on down. We allowed the President to tell us that we were attacked for our freedoms despite the death and destruction our policies have caused in the Middle East. That the President was scapegoating our freedoms for the attacks indicated that he was looking for more power, more authority. For if the President acknowledged that our abuse of power in the Middle East was what motivated the 9-11 hijackers, then asking for more power and authority would be an impossible sell. 

The marks that governmental authoritarianism leaves on society is the vast reduction, and even elimination, of accountability our officials have by either their citizens or the world. At the same time, our government will hold all others more accountable and even has assumed the right to attack anyone anyplace at anytime. When it does attack, as it did with Iraq, it cites violation of either international law or the will of the international community as the justification for using force. However, if the world even attempts to hold America accountable, our government nullifies it by claiming that such attempts violates our sovereignty. 

At home, the progression that has occurred starting with the Patriot Act through the 2012 NDAA is frightening. That is because abuse of power that has been exercised overseas is now being authorized for use at home. The government can now wantonly arrest whomever they want at will so long as they claim that those they arrest are terrorists. The checks and balances that would have prevented such an overreach have been nullified by new laws and procedures.

Why do we the people accept this more powerful and authoritarian government? Why don't more people speak out than already do? The reason is simple. Our government has immunized itself from accountability by injecting fear into the population. As a result, we tend to see our government's growing abuse of power as necessary to protect us from foreign enemies. In the meantime, many current arrests and other harassments performed by our government remind us of the world that existed in the movie Minority Report. And less we question our government for this rise in authoritarianism, we should note that many of our institutions, including our educational institutions and our churches, are doing their fair share to indoctrinate people into accepting our new nation's order. We might add to this that there is a growing tend for those who are charged with enforcing the laws to be brutal and act as if they have no accountability when engaging with dissidents.  And the public's perceived need for more protection quiets their consciences for their lack of solidarity with those who have suffered police brutality.

Our world is becoming a more scary place and it is not because of a growing threat from the monsters under our beds or in our closets. Rather, it is becoming more frightening because of those whom we have trusted to guide us and because we have a greater acceptance of and trust in machines, whether technological or institutional, than we have in being human. And it looks as if we have no will to change.
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Is There More To Prolife Than Anti-Abortion?

Posted by Curt Day on Tuesday, May 29, 2012 10:58:58 AM
The article linked to below explores what does it mean to be pro-life and whether it means more than just being against abortion.



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Interfering With The Gospel

Posted by Curt Day on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 6:21:04 AM
The article linked to below examines an attitude that can interfere with sharing the Gospel



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The Boy Who Cried War With Iran

Posted by Curt Day on Monday, May 21, 2012 9:08:18 AM
Sometimes, we see officials serve under two different Presidential administrations. For example, Robert Gates, was a Secretary of Defense under Presidents Bush and Obama.  But officials are not the only thing that can carry over from one administration to another, so can fears. And one of the most prominent fears that has served under both of these Presidents is an upcoming war with Iran.

The fear that an assault might occur started sometime around 2006. It was first expressed by those on the Left. Some very respectable writers, including John Pilger and Chris Hedges, predicted that then President Bush would attack Iran which would result in disastrous economic consequences. One person has remained very steadfast, until maybe recently, in saying that there was no imminent incursion. That was Noam Chomsky. But despite that and the fact that, while Bush was President, 5 top American military leaders had said they would resign if such an attack took place, the fears have persisted.

Now it is no longer those from the leery Left who are talking about war with Iran, world leaders have now weighed in. And the question seems to have changed from will we attack to when will we attack.

Critics who are certain that there will be military intervention make comparisons between the current build up to hostilities with Iran with what occurred with Iraq. There are the prewar sanctions suffered by each country, the hyperbole of charges regarding the possession of or quest for WMDs, and the unnecessary demonization of the countries' self-demonizing leaders. And yet, something appears to be different here because an attack on Iran has yet to occur. So the question becomes is bombing Iran still a possibility or are fears of war a distraction from a real wolf.

Despite the posturing, there is a very significant reason why there will be no bombing of Iranian facilities in the near future. That reason is because we're in an election year. Since the last election, the clear lesson for the incumbent party to remain in power is to avoid economic downturns. Since war with Iran would play havoc with the price of oil, there should be no war before the election.

But what about after the election? Isn't war with Iran just a matter of time? To address this concern, we would only have to ask if destroying Iranian nuclear facilities is both necessary and feasible, why haven't we done so already? Part of the reason for a delay could be that we were already involved in two wars and couldn't afford a third front. Thus we could reason that an attack on Iran could start any time now since we have "finished" military involvement with Iraq and Afghanistan is winding down. 

However,  we should note that there are differences between Iran and Iraq besides the last letter. First, Iran has a deterent. It isn't a military one, it is an economic one. Second, perhaps, just perhaps, we have learned from our wars against Afghanistan and Iraq that the use of brute force in the Middle East can cost too much. Finally, fighting a war against Iran would be far different from the wars we have been in engaged in because an invasion is not feasible and it is likely that we could not accomplish our objectives with an air war alone without paying too high of a cost.

So suppose that the talk of attacking Iran is just a ruse, is there at least one camouflaged wolf at work? Havaar (http://havaar.org/ ), a group of Iranian and international activists, claims that the current American and Israeli policies consisting of threats and sanctions do more harm than good. That is because the more foreign pressure that is put on Iran, the easier it is for the Iranian government to redirect accountability for their internal problems to the outside world. In addition, people who feel that their country is under attack can, in a spirit of national unity, become more tolerant of horrible regimes.

Now is there any reason why what is good for the target cannot also be good for those taking aim? We should remember that during last August was Arab Spring Israeli Style.  In what started as a few students protesting housing costs became a countrywide middle class protest against the costs of living and for economic justice. A few months later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revived talks of attacking Iran.

And just as the Israeli protests were dying down, Occupy fever hit America. This fever was reduced with the attacks on the camps and the Winter weather. But around the same time that Israel's leader was talking up attacking Iran, President Obama made his own public statements on about striking Iran.

The combination of sanctions, which only hurts the Iranian people, and military threats constitute what we could call war-lite. It has some of the benefits of war such as justifying military expenditures to campaign contributors and diverting people's attention from their economic suffering to moving them to stand behind their inept leaders. At the same time, it lacks some of the significant costs of war such as the eventual loss of public support and confidence that actual wars can cause over time.

In the meantime,  the Neoliberalism's wolf population, which has already become a protected dominant species, benefits from the military expenditures and price speculation on oil which war-lite causes. Like the terrorists our government is fighting, they know no national boundaries and so they are not controlled by Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand." But devour they do and last year's Israeli protests along with the Occupy Movement in America were sounding the alarm at their sight. So perhaps, Obama and Netanyahu are using the sounds of the war machine preparation to drown out the siren the protesters are sounding. 

If there is no real intention of going to war with Iran over the development of the nuclear capabilities, which has currently been legal as a member of the Treaty of Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, identifying the beneficiaries of the posturing can tell us what we might have known already. That the positions taken here by both sides, the Iranians and the West, are there to benefit those with wealth and power which is the same group that has everything to gain should there be a war with Iran.
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When Squeezed, Is The Church "Wimpy, Wimpy, Wimpy"

Posted by Curt Day on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 11:06:19 AM
An article dealing with how the Church responds to pressure both from individuals and the status quo can be found at the link below:

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Who Will Rescue Us From Post 9-11 Thinking?

Posted by Curt Day on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 11:03:58 AM
What is Post 9-11 thinking? What preceded it? Do inquiring minds really want to know?

Well, in case they do, we will start with pre 9-11 thinking. With pre 9-11 thinking, we treated terrorism like crime in that we didn't react to it until it occurred. And because we didn't pre-emptively act against terrorism, we didn't act against American citizens with today's surveillance. Thus, pre 9-11 thinking granted American citizens a few more rights and privacy than post 9-11 thinking did.  However, pure pre 9-11 thinking really didn't exist. For example, our government had acted pre-emptively to stop "millenium" terrorist attacks in 1999. Regardless of how the would-be  attacks were discovered, the Clinton Administration acted pre-emptively.

Then, tragically, the 9-11 atrocities occurred and we were asked to think in a new way, which was not really new to some in the Bush Administration or the rest of the country. The "new" way of thinking included more than just pre-emption, it meant that America could assume this dominating position over the rest of the world so that no rival would emerge. And a side benefit was that we would have more access to important resources and our products would have more access to markets around the world. 

This new 9-11 thinking was based on then President Bush's analysis of the attacks. He claimed we were attacked because those who want our destruction were jealous of our freedoms thus implying that future attacks were a fixed cost. But Chalmers Johnson and others pointed out that our foreign policies, including our history of covert actions,  gave more than adequate motivation to many groups, let alone Al-Qaida, for attacking us. In addition, interviews with Bin Laden pointed to policies like the Iraq sanctions, which caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, along with our unbalanced support for Israel in its brutal occupation and taking of Palestinian land as reasons for the attack.

But what stuck in the minds of the American people was the assertion that we were attacked because of our freedoms. It remained, despite our history, because it was based on how the American people wanted to think of themselves. It was also how the Bush Administration wanted Americans to think. That is because President Bush's response to the attacks included increased government power and authority and that would be a very hard sell if the attacks were due to the misuse of government power. 

So President Bush started to implement post 9-11 thinking that amounted to an intensification of past American hegemony along with warnings to any future would-be rivals for power and he insisted that the U.S. would own space. This intensification showed that we were giving pre 9-11 thinking steroids. We should also point out that Bush's post 9-11 thinking drew largely from the pre-911 thinking resources of a 1992 Paul Wolfowitz paper and the 2000 Project For The New American Century paper called Rebuilding America's Defenses. We could further summarize post 9-11 thinking by saying that America's use of power would increase while America's accountability would further decrease.

And as it so often happens with empires, the policies practiced against people abroad eventually find their way home. The increased surveillance and elimination of Habeas Corpus has been seen and raised by the "liberal" Obama Administration with an increase in the arrests of activists and his signing of the 2012 NDAA. In that document, our government could indefinitely detain us without pressing charges and a following trial by jury. The theme from Bush's first actions after 9-11 strike again. That theme is less government accountability but more power. This sounds like a lite-beer commercial for governments. 

What we find today is that this post 9-11 thinking is expanding at an alarming pace and it is bipartisan. The 2012 NDAA was not only signed by a Democratic President, it received substantial support from Democratic Congressmen along with their Republican counterparts. And the question we need to ask ourselves is if this government power trip continues, what will American life be like after the next 4 years? Does the movie Minority Report or the books 1984 and Brave New World give hints at our possible future?

So we come to the question posed in the title of this post. Who will rescue us from post 9-11 thinking? Who will stop the increase in power for and loss in accountability of our government? Historically speaking, there are only two solutions here, invasion by another country or resistance. My guess is that most people who favor change, favor the second option. And if we are the ones to stop this journey down the road to a more authoritarian society, we must readdress the reason why we were attacked on 9-11 and then reeducate. 

This is necessary because Bush's faulty analysis, since it soothes the ears of patriotic Americans, is the foundation for our government's continual quest for more. For if future attacks are more contingent on jealousy than the abuse of power, then our government will feel more entitled to infringe on our rights and privacy especially as technology continues to increase the power of the individual. And we can add that more Americans will feel obligated to accept this growing government intrusiveness. But if the 9-11 attacks were because of America's abusive use of power, then the obvious solution to reducing future attacks would be to reduce the power our government has and demand more accountability. We might quip that our government is currently reducing the chance of attack by reducing our freedoms, which, in turn, reduces the jealousy that that terrorists have.

The necessary readdressing and reeducation will not occur by books alone. Rather, it will occur by our conversations with friends and neighbors, with letters and articles sent to the newspapers, and with demanding that our educators and politicians acknowledge the facts. We must make the abuse of American power and its consequences one of the top ten issues people think and talk about. Only then will the call for power and less accountability not only fall on deaf ears, it will be played before a hostile audience.




 
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