Follow-up to 'the tyranny of absolutes'

Previously, the ‘tyranny of absolutes’ was the title of a post.

It is necessary to name, identify and acknowledge at least one perspective of a presenting dynamic in human relations before one can begin to consider the dimensions of the issue, the potential impulses for the issue, and only then begin to consider how any thoughts about mediating or modifying and ameliorating the issue.

There is unlikely to be a single sentient, conscious, thoughtful person who, if asked, ‘how do you feel about the world’s situation these days?’ would answer, “I’m fine with it!” Most of us feel anxious, withdrawn, skeptical, fearful, somewhat impotent and powerless, perhaps resigned and ultimately worried about the now and the foreseeable future.

An unfortunate and regrettable statement by Obama during one of his campaigns for the presidency alluded to the notion that when people are frightened, they ‘turn to their guns and bibles’. Of course, millions were deeply offended. The politics of his insight was deplorable; the magnitude of the issue, immeasurable.

Whether acknowledged or not, if in however imperfect language, fear stalked the land when Obama made his statement and the depth, range and insidious implications of its tentacles have only been inflated by steroidal injections of angst in the intervening years. We are, together, a region, nation, continent and world struggling with our worst and most debilitating fears. Anyone who would deny our shared symptom, presumably does not wish to acknowledge its existence and role in our shared ethos.

We could almost be justified in dubbing this period of our history as the period of ‘EC’, the universal Existential Crisis. Not completely divorced from the dreaded ED, this ‘condition (EC) is one to which we all waken each morning, to the morning headlines, the hourly reports, the social media, and the long-range reports with both data and predictions about such matters as rising temperatures around the planet. War, savage take-overs of land, dictators withdrawing from review, appeal, caution, sanctions and outright protests of both legal and ‘street’ kinds.

§  Laws written by a single pen in a single potentate’s hand, executed by armies of thugs masked, unidentified and unchallengable,

§  tonnes of toxic gases pouring into the atmosphere we all breathe,

§  undersea mining threatening aquatic ecosystems and species extinction at an every faster rate,

§  children kidnapped, imprisoned and brain-washed to comply with a tyrant’s wish, under the guise of national pride and honour, unilateral declarations of ‘never a Palestinian state’ without even reasonable and muscular retort, reprisal and withdrawal of support of the weapons needed to execute such a vision,

§  refugees, immigrants and desperate migrants pouring over borders of both physical barbed wire and metaphoric mental ‘walls’ while others are deported, with or without just cause or appeal, to foreign lands where they will rot potentially for the remainder of their lives

§  tariffs imposed, again by the single stroke of a unilateral pen, on any nation or product deemed to be ‘unfair’ to the nation imposing the tariff

§  war drones invading borders of neutral nations (Poland) activating NATO fighter jets, in what many deem a potential prelude to another European military conflict, or at least an expansion of the current three-year-old devastation of Ukraine

§  Ukraine patiently yet fervently asking for cash to continue to defend their homeland against a tyrant charged with war crimes for the abduction and imprisonment of Ukrainian children (numbers start at 20,000)

§  U.S. support for Ukraine, as well as for the Palestinians somehow etherized into designed ambiguity and ambivalence, leaving the Chief Executive all options, without any levers of ‘control or influence.

§  Public acknowledgements by Republicans that all (or virtually all) members of that political party are definitely and deplorably terrified of the repercussion of confronting and disagreeing with the ‘orange thug’ in the Oval Office.

§  World leaders unable or unwilling to confront the Oval Office occupant, also for fear of tariff or other unmentionable vengeful reprisals

§  The China summit of at leaders of at least half of the world’s population, comprising a phalanx of ‘muscle’ in opposition to the ‘American and western democratic side’, in effect sticking their thumb in the eye of the United States, and with that, all those allied to her

§  The obvious and deteriorating crumbling of the United Nations, whose Security Council desperately needs serious revision, removing vetoes from the five countries currently able and willing to sabotage any legitimate resolution that might offend one of their number.

 And this is neither intended to be, nor is, an exhaustive list. We are besieged by a significant escalation of power, money, influence and nefarious motives of the multiple oligarchs who, themselves, enjoy their hubristic and pretentious drinking from the fountain of bounty offered by their tyrant-friends.

We are far beyond the place where a critique of Peter Thiel’s $15million subsidy of the J.D Vance Senatorial election in Ohio is deplorable.

We are far beyond critiquing the dismissal of Steven Colbert from CBS because of his legitimate and stinging critique of the U.S. administration.

We are far beyond critiquing the impotence of complicity of the U.S. Supreme Court, and the multiple deaths threats to American judges.

We are far beyond critiquing the administration’s brazen and unilateral, unapproved kidnapping of those they deem ‘dangerous enemies’ without evidence.

We are also far beyond wondering about the future of the American democracy, indeed even the several other democracies clinging to history and tradition to abstract notions  like human rights, voting rights, right of free speech (now morphed into hate speech).

Decay, devolution, deconstruction and dismemberment of existing institutions cannot be considered individually and separately from the totality of the destruction. What is happening in GAZA is, metaphorically taking place under our eyes in the United States, spurred on by allies like Orban, and paradoxically Putin and Netanyahu….

Whom can we trust?

Whom can we believe?

And why would all of us not be confronted by the prospect of the temptation and the seduction of a desperate searching for and clinging to what amount to self-sabotaging ‘absolutes’ that neither represent reality, in the big picture, nor legitimacy on their own merits? Bromides, as ideological absolutes, or religious prejudice and bigotry, are minimally impactful, in the short run, and demonstrably dangerous for the health of the body politic.

Bromides, the instant-relief pill, the glib and instant intellectual solution, (really only a vacuous opinion inflated by the utter’s desperate need for control, agency, and purpose and meaning.

 Of course this is an existentialist’s as well as a pedestrian’s perspective, that, when under stress we all seek refuge in simplistic, easily proferred and digested ‘fast-food’ non-nutritional ‘food replacements.

Rather than fight the conspiracy of ‘replacement theories’ and dangerous DEI programs, and allying the United States with forces at home and abroad that seek to undo her honour, integrity prestige and history and tradition, America, as former and now dubious leader of the free world, needs to look in the mirror, both individual and nationally, see the fear and insecurity that lines each and every visage looking back, and, perhaps after a long walk in the snow in a nearby park, summon both the courage and the tenacity and the resilience and the determination of those, back in the 1860’s, like Lincoln and is cohorts, to bring about the demise of slavery. Or, perhaps, another model, to review the life and commitment and courage and resilience of men like Mandala, and more recently, Navalny and Litvinenko….It is going to take millions of us, world citizens, to counter the forces feeding on and fueling the flames of international world fear.