Is it biopolitics or perhaps "narcissus-politics" that rules?

In March 1976, philosopher Michel Foucault described the advent of a new logic of government, specific to Western liberal societies. He called it biopolitics. States were becoming obsessed with the health and wellbeing of their populations.
And sure enough, 40 years later, Western states rarely have been more busy promoting healthy food, banning tobacco, regulating alcohol, organising breast cancer checks, or churning out information on the risk probabilities of this or that disease.
Foucault never claimed this was a bad trend – it saves lives after all. But he did warn that paying so much attention to the health and wealth of one population necessitates the exclusion of those who are not entitled to – and are perceived to endanger – this health maximisation programme.
Biopolitics is therefore the politics of live and let die. The more a state focuses on its own population, the more it creates the conditions of possibility for others to die, “exposing people to death, increasing the risk of death for some people.
Rarely has this paradox been more apparent than in the crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands of people seeking asylum in Europe over the past few years. It is striking to watch European societies investing so much in health at home and, at the same time, erecting ever more impermeable legal and material barriers to keep refugees at bay, actively contributing to human deaths. (Live and let die: did Michel Foucault predict Europe’s refugee crisis?, from The Conversation, February 26, 2016)
While there is considerable evidence supporting Foucault's "biopolitics" notion, it can be argued, these forty years later, that "bio", or an emphasis on biology and preventing illness, has been replaced by "narcissus-politics" in which, human ambition for whatever feeds personal instant gratification is ruling the barnyard.
Obsession with personal hygiene, health, perfect grammar and spelling (spoiler alert: 65% of women in the United States say that grammar errors by their male partners would be a deal-breaker on further dating), having the most up-to-date tech device, driving the most coveted car, wearing the most chic attire, coveting the largest corner office with the largest stock option package, and turning a deaf ear to the plight of millions of starving, displaced and least likely to survive indigents (refugees, migrants, the incarcerated, the unemployed, the underemployed, the millions who have simply stopped looking for or expecting employment, while seeking access to both prescription and illicit drugs, and bullying all those who block, confront or even disagree with a chosen point of view and a career path or an ideological conviction.....
these are some of the symptoms of the narcissism that has grown to epidemic proportions in our political system.
Any ordinary citizen, with only a nominal stethoscope that includes a television and a computer screen, living in the most remote location, can smell the decay that is wreaking havoc in obviously open geopolitical abscesses that simply will not stop hemorrhaging their puss. And while there are nominal attempts to determine both the causes and the remedies for these open political sores, if the patient (the planet) were admitted to the emergency room of a well-staffed and well-equipped hospital for treatment, after a few x-rays, MRI's and CTScans, the patient would be sent home with a note for a pain-killer prescription and a diagnosis note on the discharge document that read: Undetermined diagnosis.
We have more statistical data from more sources, with more software programs to collate, analyse and predict the probability of these symptoms repeating, under similar conditions, we have no ability, no willingness and no courage to face our own conundrums square on, knowing that all the technology and the meta-data will not be much use with the essential conscription of our human will to tell the truth to ourselves and to our leaders.
We are obsessed with the pursuit of happiness, itself a hollow goal, so ephemeral and so illusive that, although billions have been spent in its diagnosis and its prescriptions and grad schools have granted graduate degrees for disciples to spread the word, we are not only no closer to realizing its potential. In fact, in our pursuit of its gift, we have lost ground in our development of the strengths of character/muscle/courage/ through our having avoided paying attention to their importance.
We are, as a species, much more interested in finding blame for our troubles than in finding responsibility for our individual and our collective circumstances.
In our workplaces, we reduce our workers to machines with production quotas;
In our schools, we reduce our students to cognitive scores, in their competitive march to post-secondary education.
In our families, we reduce our relationships to "transactional interactions" based on good vibes for good performances, and bad vibes for lesser behaviour.
In our churches, we reduce the people in the pews to children, whose need for attention and black/white answers trumps a healthy search in the ambiguities of each faith pilgrimage, and then demand their philanthropy as signs of their spiritual health.
In our towns and cities, we "certify" our public officials, after they meet specific criteria, and then watch as they under-or-over-perform their duties depending on their need for their own agenda.
In our newsrooms, we reward the reporter who breaks the story first, providing the instant gratification of the best ratings tonight, regardless of whom that story broke the lives of unnamed sources, so long as we 'won' the ratings war.
In the military, we subject recruits to a form of  brainwashing that legitimizes absolute power and authority and obedience to that symbol of power and authority, the commander, under the argument that every recruit has to follow orders, so that we each have each other's back in danger.
In our corporations, we reward the biggest deal for the largest account, and the agent who achieved that account, rendering others, implicitly, as "less than" and then wonder why our bars and our pubs are filled after work each day, and our emergency rooms are filled with those whose depression and/or anger has rendered them in need of help, whether from formal accidents or from self-inflicted abuse.
And, we continue to hold as sacred, this competitive model in all activities, as the "generator" of all of human achievements, while thousands of athletes, for example, join a class-action suit upon review of the overwhelming evidence that their sport literally killed them, (while making their masters/owners millionaires). And we continue to laud the "business model" of their sport, and many if not most other for-profit organizations, that treat their human component as mere "raw materials" in a production line of entertainment, or products or services, and our air and water as simply other raw materials in our machines-for-profit.
And then, to add insult to injury, we take our profits off shore where there are no or barely any income taxes to be paid, thereby fleecing our workers and their communities, to serve our greed and narcissism.
And our greed and our narcissism, in themselves, are neither criminal nor are they evidence of culpability, in our headlong rush to "success".
We simply do not give a damn about "the other" no matter who the other happens to be. And we care even less for those "others" who do not speak our language, who do not worship our 'god', who do not have the same colour of skin as we do, and who 'invade' our space in their attempt to escape their own trauma.
And then, if we happen to shed a single tear for the less-fortunate, and, like Canada, bring in some 25,000 refugees from the Syrian and the Afghan conflict zones, we pat ourselves on the back as if we were heroes, when we have merely assuage our guilty conscience, and fed our national pride because we are 'better than" those countries, like the United States who refuse to accept such refugees.
It is not that we should not lend a helping hand, in modest ways; Rather it is that we should be crying out in protest of the way we think the world and the economy should operate. We should be demanding the reigning in of corporate greed, and of political narcissism, especially those examples that seek to satisfy their own personal gratification, without regard for the larger pictures of human plight that surround us on all side.
If we are unable and unwilling to see the other as "one of us" then how will we ever come to the place where a shared eco-system requires our universal, total and long-term protection?
How will we ever come to the place where we no longer need or even want nuclear weapons?
How will we ever come to the place where biological and chemical weapons no longer belong on the planet anywhere, anytime?
How will we ever come to the place where we replace our narcissism and greed, in a world whose scarcity and plenty are continually in conflict, with authentic compassion, collaboration, and commitment to the survival of all?
The short answer is, "We wont!"

The American light in the "beacon on the hill" is flickering from suffocation....thanks to Trump

Der Spiegel calls it Madness!

People on the streets of Great Britain cry, “It’s terrifying!”

The president of CBS declares that Trump will be good for corporate profits.

And the mucky-mucks in the Republican Party are shovelling propaganda into former candidate Mitt Romney who is to be charged with delivering the knock out speech intended to derail the Trump fascist train. Now that we have the transcript of the Romney diatribe, we know that Trump Vodka, and Trump whatever including the Trump University have all failed, portraying Trump, not as the successful businessman he pretends but rather as a business failure. A fraud and a con-man are essentially the themes that Romney focussed on.

Trouble is, Romney is already emasculated as a political figure and the masses have already been aroused in some kind of ‘rock-concert’ frenzy of uber masculinity that wreeks of racism, sexism, and American jingoism, chauvinism and a war for the heart and the soul of the American enterprise....Building faux universities, and skyscrapers whose glass is falling off in Toronto, and casinos in Jersey that close and hiring thousands of illegal immigrants, ordering the blocking of the American border to Muslims (“until we figure this out”) and deploying eminent domain to evict an elderly widow (unsuccessfully) will look like painting that lipstick on a pig, when compared with a foreign policy that “bombs the hell out of them” and “makes the Mexicans pay for a wall” and “makes America great again”!

And, not only is Romney ineffectual, the army of the masses has already taken over the Trump campaign, and, just as the black folks who interrupted his rally were evicted without respect, so too will all opposition to this juggernaut be rolled over, as if the leader were one of the bulldozers he deploys to clear the ground for his real estate projects,

“Get them out’o’here” would be a more appropriate slogan for the Trump campaign. Any voice with whom Il Duce disagrees is silenced. All voices of protest are considered incompetent losers. Bullying through ad hominums will look like a frat party if this man is permitted the keys to the White House. Kim Jong Il and Putin will be drunk with joy at some virtual bar, hosted by the new “leader of the free world” if this man continues to be courted by the ugly, restive and unapproachable masses of homophobes, racists, xenophobes, and ultimately control-freaks who have “glom’d” onto this mass movement wrapped and guilded in the kind of propaganda for which George Orwell warned his readers.

Peace is War, War is Peace, and the Truth Ministry is charged with re-writing history to conform with current reality, whatever the leaders say that is in 1984. The only truth that matters is the truth that is declared by the cabal in charge. The only truth that really matters is that the leader is sacred and the leader is in charge, promising only good things for the people whom he “serves”. And truth be told, (if that is still feasible!) the only one he serves is himself, his monomaniacal ego, and his ambition, both dramatic images for his monumental insecurity and narcissism.

Born in the middle of the second world war (1942), I have often wondered about the courage and the defiance of my parents, that, in the face of the most horrific stories from the “front”, they made a joint decision to conceive their first child, after nearly eight years of marriage. Although my father was not formally conscripted, (he was granted exemption to serve the war machine by meeting its massive and urgent retail needs, in close proximity to a defence production factory) he nevertheless warrants, along with my mother, a medal of family honour for his courage, and his resilience to serve at a much less heralded level, without the badges, the stripes and the marching bands and the weapons. He did not tell me stories of the ‘front’ because he simply was not there. He did, however, work tirelessly to serve those who were making the weapons and who were keeping the home ‘front’ functioning in the war effort. And his story is not especially unique; everyone knew what they were fighting for, and what they were fighting against. And, once again, the whole world knows that this (Trump/American) response to the current vortex of a transitioning economy, a threatened ecosystem, a tsunami of refugees from barely paused military conflict, a rising tide of nuclear ambitions, the loss of jobs at home and the focus on undocumented immigrants...is the last thing the world needs, wants, deserves or can cope with.

And, in this struggle we are all Americans. And we are joined in a struggle to thwart these personal ambitions that are threatening to subvert not only the American democracy, but also to extinguish the signal American democracy sends around the world for millions who continue to see in America a ‘beacon on a hill’ for themselves and their children and grandchildren. And whether we claim American as our homeland, or either of the political parties in that country as our’s, or we are citizens of a different country, on whatever continent, for citizens of the world, standing idly by and remaining silent is not  an option. We are all, like the woman in the CBS interview from London, terrified  by the prospect of a Trump presidency.
We need to read Chris Hedges column from today, on truthdig.com (The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism) and we all need to speak up at whatever water fountain we frequent and send cash if we are able to a campaign like that of Bernie Sanders (who raised $40 million in February, compared with only $32 for Hillary Clinton). This fight, not only for the White House, but for the future of the planet, requires the voices of all reasonable, compassionate and committed individuals who seek peace, collaboration, clean air and water and who know that greed and narcissism are deep and heavily defended enemies of the public good although they represent the values of too many who do truly stand to profit from a Trump presidency.

Blacks living in the inner cities are not going to get the jobs Trump promises; nor are they going to get the free tuition and the education that Bernie Sanders promise. Women are going to watch the number of abortion clinics close, just as they have already in Texas, in the case currently before the crippled Supreme Court (following the death of Antonin Scalia, and the refusal of the Republican Senate even to hold confirmation hearings and a vote to confirm). Muslims and Mexicans, both those already living in the United States, and those seeking to enter, are going to face increasing jolts of racism, masquerading as pity, under Trump’s leadership and example. ISIS, Al Nusra, Al Shabbab, amd all the other radical Islamic terrorists are, and will continue to find in Trump an energizer bunny recruiting machine. (One Muslim from Egypt has already been taken into custody, and will face a deportation hearing tomorrow, following a “bad joke” Facebook page in which he allegedly offered to knock Trump off, presenting the offer to his friends in the Muslim community who were offended by Trump’s throwing the Muslim community under the bus.

Letting ISIS remove Assad, and then taking over what’s left of Syria, as Trump would have us believe, is his choice of foreign policy, if anyone can bend his/her mind around that intellectual flatulence. Oh, and by the way, Trump wants to “bomb the hell out of ISIS”.....on his way to taking on China in a trade war, while also building that fifty-foot wall to keep out the Mexicans, most of whom are “drug dealers, prostitutes and bad people” according to the Trump world view.

Holding fast to a single principle, aside from self-aggrandizement, is something Trump is unable and unwilling to do. Consequently, he can and will deny anything and everything upon being challenged and if he were to assume office, could and would do whatever he “liked” with the same kind of bravado he displays when he tells the world that his voters are so loyal, he could shoot and kill someone on Fifth Avenue,without losing a single vote.

No, Mr. Trump. Such as act would be immediately followed by your arrest; your being charged and your being held for trial, pending a  bail hearing, which just might not be able to be purchased, using whatever currency you might be willing to offer. Further, the world is beginning to see through your veil of deception, into your cold, cold heart, notwithstanding the pleas of a small circle who think you might be the “second coming”.

Although you have apparently escaped relatively unscathed from all the mud that has been thrown at and on you, and although you have succeeded in fooling some of the people some of the time, not even you can fool all of the people all of the time.

And time will bear that out!

Outliers breed and support outliers.....

There are some disturbing images on our television screens, from various quarters. While thankfully there is a slight pause in the bombing of Syria, on the border between Greece and Macedonia, refugees by the thousands from Syria, Afghanistan and other failing regions, are met with tear gas and stun guns when they use a battering ram to destroy a fence. In the United States, as Blacks protest a Trump rally, to Trumps dictatorial edict, “Get ‘em out!” following his “I’m only going to say it once, “All lives matter!” a Secret Service agent is filmed throwing a Time magazine reporter down, first smashing his head on a table and then throwing him to the floor at the same rally.

Ironically, and as a perfect foil, the President is honouring a Navy Seal with the Medal of Honour, for saving the life of one of his team in an invasion of a Taliban hold-out in Afghanistan. Violence, in pursuit of whatever goals seem urgent, by whatever individuals or groups, is the language of influence. And that includes the violence of the stump rhetoric through which human dignity, human decency, human honour, human cohesion and collaboration are all thrown under the bus in pursuit of power...by those already in power, through either political status or wealth.

And when the bar is lowered fully to the ground, can it go lower?

Pundits are predicting the breaking apart of the Republican Party of Lincoln and Reagan. Some like Chris Hedges are predicting the breaking apart of the republic, given the irreparable divide between the corporate structure and the people. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was heard telling an interviewer yesterday that Europe must not abandon Greece and her overwhelming problem with refugees to blow in the wind. And yet, the antipathy to refugees grows in all towns and cities across Europe, while the numbers continue virtually unabated even in the middle of the coldest weather. Great Britain is about to vote on June 23^rd to answer the question about whether to remain part of the EU, with Prime Minister Cameron facing serious opposition from the Mayor of London who advocates separation. The argument in some quarters is that, should Britain exit the EU, Scotland will likely exit the United Kingdom.

There is a pervasive sense that far from a chip on the shoulder of those who feel alienated from the community, now there is a large segment of the community that has a tree growing where there was once a chip. Anger, disaffection, disillusionment, and even hopelessness have infected the body politic, to a degree that has not been so deep and so pervasive. And the information we are being “fed” from around the world is also not encouraging, not hopeful, and not inspiring back home.

And there are so many places to lay responsibility both inside the United States, and abroad.

First, inside:

Physics tells us that for every action there is an equal and opposite action. Some would argue that Obama’s legacy of moderation, temperance, resistance to war even to the opportunity to drop bombs on Syria when it was proven that Assad had used chemical weapons on his people (preferring a Russian intervention that assisted the removal of those weapons) has played a role in generating the virulent form of overt and shameless demand for “bombing the hell out of them” (as Trump promises to do to ISIS). It is a similar demand from many Americans, even directed at the establishment(s) in both Republican and Democratic parties. Some would argue that the Wall Street “cabal” that underwrites many of the political campaigns of those seeking the White House, excluding Bernie Sanders shoulders considerable responsibility for having gutted the housing market and left millions stranded under water in their mortgages. Some would argue that trade agreements that provide opportunity to flood America with foreign-produced products, while preventing a similar exchange of American products into those countries flooding the American market have gutted much of the manufacturing sector in America eliminating millions of well paid jobs. Some would argue that Republican obstructionism from the first day of the Obama administration has so completely emasculated government leaving only token and ceremonial tasks to Washington, and has thereby also generated a level of contempt for the political process and the onslaught of  protest is indiscriminately fired off at all purporting to be politicians, including the president. Shootings of young black men by white police officers, incarceration of millions of blacks and Latinos for minor offences, while neglecting to hold Wall Street financiers accountable for what they did to the economy, the over and blatant poisoning of the water system in Flint Michigan (an act for which only criminal charges would be even remotely appropriate given the mental and social impairment by lead poisoning of a generation of children), and a nadir in respect for anyone considered a political opponent...these all have a share in the responsibility for the cancer of disillusionment that in metastasizing across America. And the media, so addicted to the ratings spikes that it can and will see only into the next nanosecond, parsing as it does every last syllable of the childish “debate” among presidential candidates, adamantly determined to cover only the hose race aspect of the presidential campaign, as well as the limitless blocks on any legislative proposal, (ignoring the merits, along with any full parsing of the policy alternatives of the candidates), is merely a vehicle for both the corporate vacuums sucking as much cash from the billions spent on advertising and for the pugilists in the campaign ‘ring’. Even Melissa Harris-Perry’s intelligent, provocative and courageous examination of political and cultural issues on Saturday and Sunday mornings on MSNBC has been cancelled, given her being victimized by executives demanding higher ratings,
(which translated means only wall-to-wall coverage of the horse race).

But let’s look at something both difficult to write and speak about, and also extremely difficult to experience: over hatred, contempt, bigotry and bullying tactics.

Back in the last decade of the last century, I served as an “alien” in a rural area of the United States, on the west side of the Continental Divide. From Canada, I was first considered a “novelty” especially since those for whom I worked had tried in vain for two years to acquire the services of an American to fill the role. As part of the novelty chapter of this saga, I was subjected to the most reductionistic parameters of the proposed ‘service’ I was expected to offer. And the reductionism resulted directly from a conventional perception of the “ability to pay”, based on the skeleton of individuals (6) who were still attempting to preserve a vestige of this community. Linked to the perceived ability to pay, was another heinous perception: the absolute need for complete control on the part of those ‘hiring’, especially considering the risk of taking on a “foreigner”. Arriving as a single and divorced male, I quickly learned that had I been accompanied by a black spouse, I would not have been offered the position.(I was told directly and offensively about this prior condition, not made available upon entry.) Not only were parsimony and absolute control inherent among the tiny group, so was a degree of racism that effectively painted me as a “black” in white skin. The writers of the Quebec Revolution in the 70’s called people like themselves, White Niggers given their perception of the subjugation of Quebecers by the rest of Canada, at that time.

Naively, however, I did not foresee my “outsidedness” nearly as clearly as I might have. Nor was there any source among the American cohort willing to or interested in orienting me to the deep and ugly realities of American life in the ‘wild west’. Pushing past the initial minimalist offering, I secured something like full-time work, only to learn that the interest among the group in sharing anything, including time, thoughts, perceptions, emotions or even aspirations was non-existent. These were “siloed” individuals living in a wall-off ghetto silo, able to perpetuate their contempt for anything outside their suffocating walls. Their walls were mental, physical, cultural, emotional, political and even spiritual. Never has there been a more obvious cloister of parochial, frozen, and neurotic both group and individual members.

These people had access to full hygienic facilities, without the benefits of a world view that might have accompanied the amenities, at least a century earlier. These people were the forerunners of the Trump cavalcade. They were angry for many valid and invalid reasons; they were self-styled outliers, even outlaws, of the kind that currently frequent the Trump rallies. They were frozen in their contempt for the “other”, and their other included this Canadian, the people from the big cities, the people who had graduated university, and especially the people of the “east” whom their considered both effeminate and offensive. For example, one of the complaints about me was that I read  books, and proposed ideas from books written by scholars, many of whom lived and worked in some of the cities on the eastern seaboard. And they were so contemptuous that in one specific situation, I was dubbed “another pinko communist bastard” just as Nixon had dubbed Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. My experience occurred in 1999, indicating the longevity of the “type” that continued to survive among these outliers.

Trump has given voice to these people, to their fears and to their alienation. He seduces them with candy-floss promises to which he is not now and never was and never will be committed. He rides the wave of their energy, prompting ever more intensity each time he takes a microphone. Racism, inverse snobbery, contempt for moderation, sacralising the hard power to be deployed in all situations....and a highly loose and suspect command of reality (except the reality of the kool-aid Trump is peddling). These people, like the people on the western side of the continental divide are reminiscent of the people who drank the kool-aid in Jonestown. Only, Trump is merely offering the canapés to his banquet of deception and duplicity, the lofty promises, not promises really but rather mere sound and fury signifying only a personal narcissism of such proportions that evoke images of all the dictators from history.

And, his lead in the race merely paints a picture of a society and a culture immune to the truth, to the dangers of his rise to power, immune to the profound complexities of issues the world has never had to grapple with.

And the rest of the world, including those of us north of the 49^th parallel, are not only watching; we are shuddering in our boots, fearful that two men, Putin and Trump could each have their fingers on the nuclear buttons, if the current evidence continues to unfold as predicted by many. And so too could Kim Jong Un, as well as the insiders in Pakistan. If we thought we faced dangers before Trump (BT) try to get your mind around the dangers With Trump (WT).

A hearty endorsement of the LEAP Manifesto

There will be millions in Canada and around the world who, having been nurtured in the spirit of “An Inconvenient Truth” produced by Al Gore, will next turn to a new movie, as their catalyst for attitudes, perceptions and actions that can only be considered natural, if not absolutely necessary. Seizing this moment in history in which we all face an existential threat from climate change and global warming, “This Changes Everything,” a movie produced by Avi Lewis, and based on the book of the same name, written by his partner, Naomi Klein, proposes a rethinking of the capitalist economic model to bring about dramatic humane and panoramic change:

·       ending our dependence on fossil fuels,

·       ending our obsessive subsidies to the fossil fuel sector

·       building energy efficient and non-polluting buildings, targeting low income communities and neighbourhoods first

·       providing a guaranteed annual income

·       expanding low carbon sectors: caregiving, teaching, social work, the arts, public interest media

·       respecting the inherent right of indigenous people through implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,

·       high-speed rail powered by renewable

·       affordable public transit

·       a local, ecologically-based agriculture

·       an end to all trade deals that obstruct the rebuilding of local economies

·       ensuring immigration status and full protection for all workers

·       initiating financial transaction taxes,

·       increasing resource royalties

·       imposing high income taxes of corporations and the wealthy

·       initiating a progressive carbon tax

·       cutting military spending

 

This is no modest proposal. It overturns many of the conventional and deeply ingrained habits, behaviours, customs, and practices of the last century or more. It proposes a transformation that amounts not to skipping stones on the mirror surface of a lake but rather dropping a monumental boulder smack into the middle of the world’s lakes and oceans. The ripples, very different from the rising waters that are predicted if we continue to ignore the threat of global warming, will bring moderation to the climate energies in which we are currently engulfed; they will also signal a dramatic shift in the attitudes of all majorities to their minority peoples, shift the basic premises on which human discourse is based away from a virtual sacralising of the profit and the status motive and ambition that currently drives much of our transactional culture to a culture in which equality, compassion, dignity and a much more sustainable ethic prevails.

In order to bring about such a shift in global patterns of behaviour and attitude, amounting to nothing short of another “reformation” in the church, or a Sputnik in space travel, or another wave like that of the digital age, there will have to be a rethink in many of the academic departments of many of the world’s universities. History will include a celebration of the frontiers-folk who were building houses from recycled tires, and those who were “off-grid” from people known primarily for their eccentricities, to a respect for their courage and their leadership in our shared struggle for a decent and sustainable world, as the legacy we wish to leave for our grandchildren.

Bernie Sanders will not be permitted to be a mere footnote in the history of humanity. Al Gore will not  be permitted to be merely a tragic “wannabe” president of the United States who got a Nobel Peace Prize for his “Inconvenient Truth”. Bill McKibben will no longer be relegated to the airwaves of NPR and will spawn disciples in all academic disciplines, as a matter of ensconcing the new “ethic” in the curriculum of the world’s greatest universities, and their reduced dependence on the corporate benefactors who pollute planet with excess carbon. UBC will no longer reject a bid to off-load all investments in the fossil fuel sector, and they will be joined by a majority of universities in both developed and developing countries.

The liberal arts will experience a re-birth. And perhaps it will no longer be a shameful decision for young male university graduates to enlist as elementary school teachers, even kindergarten teachers.

There will, however, be both naysayers and political opposition, perhaps even street demonstrations in protest to such a “communist” proposal. Substantially raising the taxes of both the rich (and powerful) and the corporations (also the powerful), both of which measures will be necessary to accomplish these lofty and worthy goals. Defanging the fossil fuel industry, along with the fracking industry, will only generate howls of anguish, grief and perhaps even revenge. Giving aboriginal and indigenous communities a real voice in their lives, and in those issues that impact their lives, as local, provincial and national tables, on their own merit, (and not as representatives of the Liberal Party of Canada, or any other national political party) will generate hostility and resentment, extending beyond the level of anger when national rail lines are blocked by aboriginal people, in a vain attempt to get their voices acknowledged (never mind actually heard). Cutting military spending, especially by those amounts required to make this vision feasible, will undercut those whose lives, careers and reputations are embedded in the military establishment. And cutting military spending will also require, whether openly stated or not, a significant change in the direction of our foreign policy, away from guns, bombs, missiles and fighter jets and towards negotiations, agreements, treaties and contracts even with those who consider us their enemy. All political leaders who depend on the “macho” applications of hard power (and that includes nearly every current world leader, with a possible nod to Obama who has determinedly tried to avoid military action whenever possible) and the generals, admirals and sargeants who advise them will have to generate different options for resolving disputes between and among nations.

Military colleges will be expected to develop curriculum that focuses on the strategies, tactics, the theories and philosophies that attend peacekeeping. Corporations too will have to chift their focus from a narcissistic pursuit of the greatest profit for the smallest number of executives, at the expense of service and product deficits and consumer trust, to a perspective that respects their workers and their consumers ahead of their pursuit of profits, ironically thereby generating enhanced profits, through better business practices. Since everyone will be elegible for a guaranteed annual income (a social policy profoundly and eagerly supported elsewhere in this space), the notion of government hand-outs will be eliminated as will the reduction of social stigma on those who choose to work less than the currently required excessive number of hours to impress their bosses and their neighbours, but not their doctors (who hardly ever caution patients working too hard or too long, given their own ridiculous and self-sabotaging schedules, introduced as a matter of the rigeur of the medical profession, way back in medical school).

In a culture that elevates the reasonable expectation that we are each “our brother’s keeper” (while keeping an eye on the potential for abuses by those who seek a free ride) our culture will elevate the aspirations and the imaginations, not to mention the contributions of generations of young people, whose pride and respect for their homeland will inevitably rise.

In Canada, the level of militarism remains considerably lower than it is in the United States, while the penetration of vegetarianism is significantly higher. Nevertheless, if this revolution is to have real roots in Canada, it would be preferable for it to be linked intimately to a similar movement in the United States where militarism including arms manufacturing dominates the culture and the national mind-set, verging tragically on being its own ‘religion.’ Vegetarianism, too, would support the reduction of the pollution contributed by animal farming. It is not an incidental observation to note that in Canada, just announced today, a mere 44% of Canadians believe that humans are the main cause of global warming and climate change. Whatever the comparable figure is in the United States, both populations will have be more rigorously educated on the science that supports the conclusion that human contributions have to be reduced, if not completely eliminated, if we are to reach legitimate and reasonable emission controls.

Let’s be clear, we are drowning in our own effluent; we are suffocating in our own poisoned atmosphere; we are atrophying in our own hope for a reasonable change in the direction we are heading; we are all complicit in the over-consumption of needless and contaminating products, given the status and reputation we attach to their acquisition; and we are all political actors (whether we choose to participate or not) and only through our conscious political choices, conversations and activism will such a vision as that proposed by LEAP come to reality.

This is just one more voice, perhaps crying the wilderness, encouraging each person reading these digits to reflect on our own lives, on the premises that guide our lives, on the colleagues who influence our lives, and contemplate taking the “radical” step of attending a showing of the movie, “This Changes Everything”....being shown in Canada on dates available on their website, of signing a commitment to support LEAP, and then of engaging with those in our circles in conversations that put these ideas on the table.

Consider this modest piece a sincere endorsement of what I consider modest proposals in LEAP, and an invitation to join with others in your community to move the conversation in the direction of these goals.

A heretic's guide to the universe (:

We all know that we live in a culture in which transactions define our existence; not relationships, not vacations, not our preferred novels, poetry, plays or music, not even our favourite sports teams, our favourite beer, wine, culinary delight....but exchanges of time and money, building an account balance with each and every human, including those humans we call ‘family’. We are judged by the quality and the quantity of our transactions, not from the perspective of how it is to “BE” with us, but rather what we “DO” for ourselves, for others, especially for our chosen social and cultural associations. And there are virtually two different kinds of main transactions: we are selling something, some idea, some proposal, some project, some vacation or even some THING....or we are prosecuting another for perceived misdeeds, misjudgements, mis-statements, mis-demeanours or perhaps (although this dynamic is much less frequent) advocating for those we choose to defend, in the face of what we consider unjust criticism.

We vote for a person, a political party of perhaps even (idealistically, a political philosophy); sometimes we write a cheque to signify our engagement with that specific party or person. We might even knock on doors, make phone calls, drive voters, prepare lunches for volunteers, or perhaps even interview prospective voters with a view to establishing or predicting a pattern of voter behaviour. We attend a church, mosque or synagogue, or we reject such activity, and our decision becomes a political statement.
Our purchases are recorded, collated, studied and pursued by those whose professional advisors direct in our direction, for the purpose of additional sales. We have become that “thing” so feared and loathed by Margaret Atwood, when she became famous for her writing. No, we do not have the celebrity/notoriety of an Atwood, but we are nevertheless considered a thing to many of the forces/agencies/organizations/marketing companies/ retail consumer companies/ tech companies and even a digit to the tax collectors in our lives, municipal, provincial and national. We are lumped with hundreds of thousands of our demographic, our age bracket, our postal code, our choice of vehicle, our choice of shoes (especially if we are still in the athletic wear market where brands dominate), our choice of movies, television shows, computer software and games.

We are the pawns of the warlords of computer games, those pawns willing to shell out millions to feed our habit, not alcoholic, but nevertheless, equally intoxicating for many. We live vicariously through our virtual realities, whether they are coming to us directly from our computer screen or through our television screens, now loaded with decades of programming, most of which was available in all other decades of our lives.

Participation in any group, whether for leisure or for service is branded with level of engagement, level of commitment and level of agreement with the conventional wisdom, not at all with the level of friendship that once characterized such associations. Of course, there are life-long friendships in some quarters, where one is so familiar with one’s colleagues having been classmates in elementary and secondary school. However, that reality is infrequent, reserved mainly for some villages that still draw their originals into the stories that have circulated for decades, lifetimes even.

Opinions, if shared, are relegated to “too high fallootin’” or stupid, dreaming or just plain pie in the sky. We are a nation of people clinging to some lost picture of reality that we believe can and will never leave our consciousness. And to the extent that our memories cannot be expunged, that is true. But we live in an age of individual silos, protected by our coveting of our privacy, our secret past and our determination to remain aloof from our colleagues. It was John Powell, a Jesuit, who, in his little book, “Why I do not tell you who I am”....remind us that he does not tell us who he is because ‘that is all I have’ and you might reject it, and in rejecting my story you will reject me, and I cannot stand that rejection.

Ironically, we apparently are prepared, increasingly, to pour our banalities all over the twitterverse, in a vain pursuit of bff’s, really just others engaged in a similar pursuit of being noticed, as compared with being known. Being known, understood, sharing vulnerabilities....well that’s OK for the ‘sisterhood’ according to the male segment of the population. Guys, on the other hand, hang out in their mancaves, hoping the world will not find them completely irrelevant. There is a popular perception that life consists of ‘special moments’ as if generating such moments is one of the main purposes of a fulfilled human existence. So, in a perverted sense, with such a mind-set we are engaged in a subversive pursuit of morphing into transactional agents for our own pleasure, seeking and finding those ‘special moments’ on U-Tube, or instagram, where millions of ‘hits’ constitute success. In this world where becoming a star trumps being an ordinary struggling human fully engaged with those who matter, performance, however that is defined and expected, evokes public scrutiny and even applause, unless and until our performance ‘goes south’ and we find that those who previously fawned over our success are the quickest to revoke their previous support and replace it with contempt, disdain, aggressive bullying and worst of all, alienation.

Being played like a pawn in the lives of others, and fully complicit in such a dance, we have to know that we are all hanging out to dry, no matter whether or not our efforts to contribute to a humane, compassionate and healing culture have guided us all our days.

Of course, it is true that human beings, especially in groups, or demographics, or market niches, or congregations, or political parties, are self-referenced, self-focused and self-devoted, basically immune to the ravages of the planet, or of the poor, or of the victims of pandemics. We are victims, to the extent that we permit it, of the conventional value system of money, power, status and stardom. We need to be attentive to the need to guide our young people away from what is portrayed as success defined by those pursuit and into a worldview that seeks to serve the public good. In that regard, we need to extricate the news media from the profit motive, leaving those working in the fourth estate free to seek and to find the truth, especially when that truth explodes the conventional myth of success, that explodes the vacuity of “sunny ways” (Trudeau’s panacea for his government’s public relations campaign of governing) without incurring the wrath of the executive suite, addicted to the acquisition of investors and dividends.

We also need to amend our primary, secondary and university/college education, away from technical/job skills and inclusive of critical thought, poetry, music, art and community development. After all, human beings have always had, and will always continue to possess more complication and mystery than all of the high tech devices combined. And we are also in danger of abandoning our birthright, not the mere “right to life” of the wedge politics debates, but in the connotation of our capacity to rebel, to revolt and to withdraw from the kind of seductive schemes that the pursuit of money will inevitably subject us to.

Call this a piece written by a dreamer, if you like; however, rest assured, I am not smoking or drinking anything of a chemical or mood altering nature. Nor will I ever. Life is far too complex, interesting, challenging and enlivening to support a need for artificial substances!!

Desperation breeds desperation on ISIS

While the American media is drowning in its own self-indulgent addiction to the campaign rhetoric in their presidential race, Reuters and several other international media have reported the fact that in southern Iraq, near the city of Basra, some nuclear material, contained in a box the size of a laptop, was stolen in November, as well as a camera containing radioactive material (the I-192 isotope). Reports note that the location of the theft is some 500 kilometers from the nearest Daesh encampment, in a vain attempt to minimize the risk that the Islamic terrorists might have the material.* Really? We all know that, should ISIS ever gain possession of such material, they would consider such a “find” nothing short of the brass ring. Even if they were not able to generate a nuclear weapon from the use of such material, they could detonate a dirty bomb that would poison an area, once again inflicting their devastation almost without a fingerprint of evidence.

Listening to Secretary of Defence, Ashton Carter, being interviewed by Charlie Rose Wednesday night this week on Bloomberg, I was struck by his repetition of the notion, “ISIS will be defeated, we will defeat ISIS....and the President has always agreed whenever we have asked for more resources in that fight....and the President has told us to look for additional opportunities to fight ISIS....and we are all committed to the early defeat of ISIS”....His pleas were a virtual prayer of desperation as he attempts to preside over the United States’ leadership of the coalition whose avowed purpose is to destroy the “cancer” that Carter says starts in Iraq and Syria. However, we also all know, that just like every other cancer tumor, even the most dedicated oncology surgeon, oncology radiologist and oncology treatment specialist and researcher is never able to predict the complete elimination of the disease, unless and until tests many years after treatment demonstrate such a finding. Carter is in the unfortunate and even unenviable position of being caught in a political time warp, selling the campaign to eradicate ISIS in the last year of the Obama presidency, when, as Carter admitted to Rose, Obama wants to leave the slate clear of ISIS in Iraq and Syria for his successor as an important aspect of his legacy.

“Did the Paris attack change the environment for the campaign against ISIS?” asked Rose.

Well, it certainly aroused the Europeans who are now committing additional resources to the fight against ISIS. Even Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are contributing to the fight. All members of the coalition have increased their contribution and participation in the fight against ISIS...was Carter’s response.

Of course, the story of the stolen nuclear material had not broken Wednesday, prior to the Rose interview. In fact, it has not broken, having been suppressed since it actually occurred in November of 2015. What else have the political powers withheld from the public, fearing, naturally, that release of such information would only arouse the most basic and irrepressible fears? Just as in the communication with the patient and the family of a cancer patient, doctors do the situation no good through withholding significant information, whether that information is positive or negative. Unfortunately, politicians, especially those charged with national security and state secrets are not obliged to commit to the same level of disclosure. (And, it is true that there are situations in which public knowledge of specific information would be more dangerous to the public good than repression of that information. And we can only hope that those charged with the making of such decisions to disclose or to withhold, have the kind of maturity and sound judgement that we can trust their decisions are in the best interests not only of the power elite, but of the public good.)

ISIS, unfortunately, does not submit to the historic definitions of what the world has considered “warfare” in the conventional sense. Like the many disease pandemics that are not vulnerable to antibiotics, ISIS represents the kind of disease for which the world has not prepared, has not anticipated, has not built defences against, and has not studied in the war colleges. It is “asymmetrical” in the extreme. It is unpredictable in the extreme. It is ideological, even ‘theological’ in the extreme. It is a force that would traditionally have been dubbed a force from HELL (if there were such a place, and such an archetype.) And yet....

Here we are some 14 years after 9/11 and twenty years after the first attack on New York by Islamic terrorists and we all know that there is no evident de-escalation of the impact of ISIS, or its many iterations, and there seems to be a kind of bet going on, among the major world powers. They are betting that they can keep the ISIS threat from exploding with another or perhaps even several mass attacks before they can decimate the scourge. I am not a betting man, but I would not subscribe to their fantasy.They know more than we on the street know, yet they continue to bomb, and they continue to subvert all ISIS’ attempts to feed itself through black market sales, extortion, kidnapping and underground channels of money presumably via the internet. Individuals who have adopted the ISIS dogma, or who at least seek to appear as loyalists in the cause of Islamic terrorism, including the recent suicide bombings in Turkey attributable to Syrian refugees, form gangs of a few, or act solo, in their perpetration of death and destruction anywhere, everywhere, anytime, and seemingly all the time. Yet, everyday, with every bombing of an ISIS target, the recruitment to their ranks spikes. We are not only not decimating ISIS, we are in fact emboldening ISIS.

Russia, also emboldened by the fog of war, for her part, has considerably muddied the waters in Syria, purportedly in support of Assad, and also purportedly against ISIS,  and stands accused of deliberately targeting hospitals staffed and operated by MSF (Medecins Sans Frontiers) killing innocent children, and then denying any responsibility, while accusing the United States. There is even some evidence that links Russia to bombs dropped in Turkey, although those events are still to be prosecuted. And although Obama reportedly speaks on the phone with Putin, in the middle of the night (North American time) and asks him to change course in Sryia, and to stop deceiving the world about his desire to destroy ISIS, he continues unabated, even virtually unchallenged, since he knows, as the rest of us do, that Obama is not going to go to war against Russia, either over Syria or over Ukraine. Stepping up military exercises in the vicinity of Ukraine will not and do not threaten Putin; neither does a late night phone call from the White House over Syria threaten Putin. He, along with his other Middle East ally, Iran, is determined to cause havoc in the region, undermine the west and especially the United States, and proceed to aggrandize  both himself (top priority) and thereby his nation.

Unfortunately, Putin’s complicated interventions can only elevate the temperature of the rhetoric in the presidential campaign in the U.S. And given the pre-adolescent mentality of the American voter, some 30-37% of Republican voters in South Carolina preferring Trump, the most bellicose and the most unpredictable and the most dangerous candidate on the U.S. stump, there is reason, not only to be concerned about the theft of nuclear material in Iraq, but the letting loose of the control of the Pentagon and the nuclear buttons to a potential president like Trump. Extremes do definitely seem to evoke extremes! That is true not only in personal arguments, school-yard combats, political campaigns, and inevitably in macro-conflicts.

Instead of heating up both the military combat and the supporting rhetoric, on all sides of the ISIS fight, as well as on the potentially diplomatic agreement to cease hostilities in Syria, is it not time for the world leaders, from all political stripes, and from all ethnicities and linguistic and cultural backgrounds, to put their best brains to effective use in designing a short-medium and long-term strategy to deal with terrorism, the burgeoning flood of refugees, and the stretching of the physical, political and ethical capacities of too many countries, and bring this scourge to a denoument?

Prosecuting another violent war is an admission that we have run out of other options. Prosecuting another violent war is another episode of the control by the politicians on the right who claim to sacralise the military, as the symbol of national security, and the symbol of military supremacy, and of course, of the strongest democracy in history.

And yet ISIS has demonstrated that this “hymn” to hard power is hollow, in the extreme, that it is at the core of the international self-sabotage that haunts all conversations about what to do about ISIS. Hard power depends on hard propaganda to perpetuate both the loyalty of service personnel and the continuing obeisance of the politicians and the public. The media, for its part, is merely the dispensing pharmaceutical technician, of the mind-numbing yet desperate prayers/propaganda of all the Ashton Carters who are charged with the military defeat of ISIS. Every single candidate for president, from both parties, cannot afford to speak ultimate truth to a desperate electorate who demands more military action against ISIS, that truth being that without a complete overhaul of the thinking that undergirds the military assaults, including the forbidden option of removing the military from the fight, all options are not really on the table.

Desperate people, as do desperate nations, revert to their previously ingrained habits, often habits borne of fear, and of a refusal to admit the depth of that fear, even to admit vulnerability. Desperate parents beat their children; and when they are confronted by those adult children on their reasons and motives, they are mute. The confronting adult child has to insert the only response that is feasible, “I guess you could not talk!” Of course, talking to those who lead ISIS would be hard, even distasteful and ugly in the extreme. And of course, it would take only back channels, out of public view and out of public consciousness, for such talks even to begin. However, spreading killing fields, with both the ISIS motive and the “defeat ISIS coalition” motive can and will only lead to more killing and enhanced escalation of the desperation on both sides. Escalating desperation, of the kind currently demonstrated by Putin, Assad, ISIS, and even the forces now aligned to surgical remove ISIS, will not produce the kind of ‘victory’ that Ashton Carter’s career and historic legacy demand. They may mark time, keep up the public face of hope that we are making progress, that we are ‘cutting off the head’ or crippling their resources, or whatever other reporting headlines can be sold.

North Korea has nuclear weapons and threatens to develop missiles that will carry them to the coast of North America; Iran could easily be developing a nuclear weaspon, (even if less easily that before the recent agreement), and should ISIS get their hands on nuclear fissionable material, who knows what havoc they can and will create through its discharge. Unguarded nuclear material sits ready for the persistent searching eyes and hands of those who would profit from providing such material to thugs like ISIS, as they would from providing chemical weapons to ISIS. We are know that the cauldron called planet earth is less safe and far less secure that those in power would have us believe.

The very fact that this latest report of the theft of nuclear material has not made headlines since it was first noticed in November is not a sign that we know who has the stuff, or that are prepared to let the public know what kind of danger we all face, or that we really know that we can and will defeat ISIS, not only prior to January 20, 2017, when a new president takes the oath of office.

If we are uncertain, that is a kind of truth that our leaders must disclose; their failure to disclose both their fear and their uncertainty is at the heart of our real danger. And the sooner we demand a full accounting, the sooner we will be more able to trust and thereby to commit to whatever measures are necessary to accomplish whatever needs to be done. And that includes talking to the dreaded beasts who control ISIS, and all the other faces of Islamic terrorism.

*UPDATE: February 21, 2016...
Reports now indicate that the missing nuclear material has been found, and is now secured in Iraq. (From the CNN news crawl)

The morning after the night before....can history be made in South Carolina and beyond in race relations?

The morning after the night before....the New Hampshire primary.....is another morning of mixed weather, and a complex muddle of candidates for the Republican nomination for president. Of course, Trump claims victory, as does Kasich, and as do Cruz, Rubio and Bush.... As for the others, it is often hard to remember their names. On the Democratic side, with a 20%+ margin of victory, Bernie Sanders acts as if securing the nomination is only a few weeks away. The Clinton “establishment” might have something to say about that perspective. Nevertheless, waiting just offstage, almost panting for the slightest crack of opportunity to open, calling the campaign thus far an “insult to the American people,” Michael Bloomberg, of cavernous pockets filled with cash, of considerable experience as Mayor of New York city for three terms, and of considerable impatience with the state of the current campaign and its candidates, threatens to run as an independent candidate. The history of that experiment, however, does not foreshadow his success in a general election, except that this is not a ‘normal’ election cycle. On that pundits, candidates and even the political establishment agree.

The American people are angry. And most of their anger is completely justified and directed at many of the icons of what has for centuries been considered the foundational stones of the very institutional structure of the country. Targets for that anger include police, the courts, the legislatures, the executives, the corporations, the media and to some extent the economy which promises fading prospects for university grads, burdened with billions of student debt, most of it under the weight of high interest rates. Both Clinton (Hillary) and Sanders are proposing either reduced costs for higher education, or in Sanders’ case, free tuition for all who qualify. Underlying the street expressions of anger at police killings of unarmed and purportedly innocent black men, linked to a history of racial discrimination, as disclosed by the Justice Department’s investigation of Ferguson’s police department, in a substantial strain of racial bigotry dating back to Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan, the mentality for which has never been erased or excised from the American psyche. How can a culture born on the trigger of muskets and sustained on the magnums of millions of gun-owners, infused with the stories of class consciousness saturated with the hubris of an upstart country, determined to demonstrate its “achievements” not unlike the struggling young man who is desperate to prove himself to his ungrateful, blind and often abusive father, grow up to put away its guns and its justification for those guns, put away its need for climbing over the backs and the reputations and the contemptible history of its inferiors, and turn its massive arsenal of bombs and missiles into the “ploughshares” it says it believes in?

If there is a way, just as the biologists searching for a way to impede if not destroy the breeding of Great Lakes lamprey, then the political class, dependent as it is on the drama of internecine warfare, seems unable to find it, even if their search does not bear the urgency of the biological search for a lampricide. And just like the lamprey themselves, the racism in American threatens to suck the life blood and juices from its prey, the American idealism that clings to the words and the lives of the poets and the activists and the peace-makers. (Elongated tubular creatures with a suction-cup-like mouth filled with hooked teeth, lamprey latch onto their innocent prey and suck the blood and life juices out for up to four months, leaving the weakened fish verging on death, the almost inevitable conclusion to the attack.) Without a physical body, racism, nevertheless, attaches to all the institutions, including the people inside, and with a force that emulates the most vehement toronado or hurricane, sucks the ethical, moral, spiritual and even intellectual blood and juices from the culture.

And while there have been significant positive steps toward the goal of equality, justice, integration and racial harmony, including the election of Barack Obama, the elevation of significant black leaders in the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, plus the mayors of major United States cities, there continues to be a really vehement and virulent monster eating away at the ideal of racial harmony. Witness the high proportion of black men sitting in prisons, the parade of shootings at the hands of white police officers, the unemployment rate of black men in the inner cities, the drug dependency of so many young black and white men, whose lives face a horizon of hopelessness, and even the hundreds of “black slaves” earning millions in both the NFL and the NBA, positions for which millions of young black men aspire, yet which millions of black men will not achieve, given the small ratio of entry to applicants. Poverty, also, impacts the black community profoundly, as does the drop-out rate of young black men from formal education. A high proportion of children, especially among the black community, are raised in single-parent families. And the dynamic of black oppression has grown so familiar that the rest of the culture is emotionally immune to its ugliness, its persistence and its devastation.

And while the world champions the first black family to reside in the White House (and Obama has consistently acquitted himself in an exemplary manner!) it is argued in some quarters that his election has enraged those white racists, especially the white supremacists, and fueled the kind of anger that provoked the shooting of nine blacks in the midst of their prayer meeting only a few months ago. Single incidents, by themselves, of course do not constitute an epidemic; yet the stream grows from a mere trickle to a kind of theme that divides especially the political class, although public discourse would seem to ‘cover’ the buried hatred under a veneer of sophistication. What has not gone unnoticed, outside the U.S. however, is that Obama has endured the most nefarious and persistent political opposition from Republican in both houses of Congress that we have witnessed in decades, if not in the whole history of the country. And, while they will deny it in a chorus of megaphones, there is little doubt that the president’s race is a factor in their contempt for him and his policies. Their nearly absolute refusal even to negotiate the many reasonable proposals, like immigration reform for example, and the enhancement of gun controls while the public approves such measures in sizeable proportions (70+%), signals their political obstreperousness, but also thinly veils their innate racism. And it is a kind of racism that has not and will not be openly charged, since the opposition is focused on some specific approach of the White House.

There is little doubt that the racism that bursts from the barrels of those hand-guns fired by white law enforcement officers is connected, either directly or indirectly, to a country’s writhing under a growing income divide, and that growing income divide is comprised also of a racial divide. Far more blacks are living on the edge than are either whites or Hispanics; far more blacks are unemployed than are either whites or Hispanics; far more blacks drop out of school than do either whites or blacks. And although the insurgent Democratic candidate for president, Bernie Sanders, champions the movement for income equality, he needs to break out the racial overtones and the racial implications of that income inequality. For his opponents to say ‘he has no track record on race’ (as compared with Hillary Clinton, for example) is for them to demonstrate their failure, or their unwillingness to observe more penetratingly the inscrutable connection between income inequality and rampant racism that festers in every urban centre in the United States.

And unlike the Great Lakes lamprey, racism is not confined to a single beast; it infects a multitude of beasts, especially those human beasts who require a ‘lower’ group beneath them to elevate their social and political status. And the neurosis, even the psychosis, that requires a drug like racism for its psychic snobbery mask is not easily impeded even with enhanced and vigorous education programs, nor with Pell Grants. Even free tuition, which is eminently desireable, will not eradicate the kind of intolerance and bigotry that suffocates too much of the national budget and the national dialogue and the national sprit.

And it is the spirit of the American culture that provides sustenance for the dream of the city on the hill, to which so many leaders like Ronald Reagan have rhetorically appealed. And when (not if) that spirit flags, then there is an enhanced window of “opportunity” for charismatic, and vacuous leaders to begin to seduce many who feel  both angry and hopeless, that not only is the political class not living up to expectations, but there is so little hope that ‘we might as well risk it all’ on somelike the Trump bandwagon.

This is not the only space that has declared Trump a danger to American and to the world. Holocaust survivors have likened him to the Fuehrer, so frightening is he and his rantings to their ears. Claiming to “employ” thousands of blacks and Hispanics is no substitute for social policy that offers a substantial hand-up to those in need of work, training, re-training, adequate and decent housing, health care (29 million are still without health care, and many more are underinsured); calling Mexican immigrants rapists, criminals and unwanted to the point of proposing an $8 billion wall, “paid for by the Mexicans is no recipe for integration, nor is it even remotely within the spirit of the Gettysburg Address, and the Emancipation Proclamation. Neither is deporting 11 million “illegals” either sustainable or even supportable from an ethical, moral and politically appropriate response to the mess that is the current immigration system.

This is not to argue that racism is the single or even the most important cause of the Trump drama; however, it is to suggest that without a dramatic change in the relationships between the have’s and the have-not’s, (currently beset by racism) there is little hope of the middle class regaining its lost hope and its flagging spirit, not to mention its empty bank accounts and retirement accounts. And that is not the American the world either needs or wants.

Bernie Sanders must start a full-throated effort that links his income equality gap theme to the issue of racial discrimination if he is to begin to close the near-40% gap in the opinion polls in South Carolina. (Hillary leads him by that kind of margin!) And he has to mount such an offensive without patronizing or condescending to the black community, and without invoking the “Nanny government” charge from the Republicans and from Clinton herself. This could be a significant turning point in the life of the nation if Sanders’ message catches on inside the “black community” which voted at a very high rate for Obama in both 2008 and 2012. Without the black vote, Sanders cannot win the White House, so the time for testing his mettle to reach out to that community is now.

Clinton does not compete with his imagination, nor with his courage to make substantial changes, even though such changes are warranted.

Let’s watch the next few days and weeks, as the rhetoric sharpens and the stakes rise. Those who eventually carry their party’s banner into the general election will have the opportunity to right the ship of state, should they choose to make some history of their own.

For more read this from an African American Legal Scholar from Ohio State University:

        

 Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote

From the crime bill to welfare reform, policies Bill Clinton enacted—and Hillary Clinton supported—decimated black America.

By Michelle Alexander

in The Nation, February 29, 2016 posted February 10, 2016