The Alpha Male, an archetype whose time has long past

Starting with a posture that includes understanding, compassion, empathy and the openness to that kind of authentic acceptance, when dealing with any human interaction infused with tension and conflict, rather than the kind of rage that blurts out in too many contemporary tense moments, sounds idyllic, utopian and utterly delusional.

Would it limit the degree and the extent to which revenge characterizes our current attitudes and discourse? Who really knows? Yet it just might.

Oh, I can already hear the voices in the ‘cheap seats’ crying out, “Look at what happened when the U.S. started communicating with children/students solely in a positive and supportive manner! The kids turned into psychological dependents, believing or at least thinking they could do anything, when they could not even pass the basic tests in their classroom.”

And while that is true, starting with a basic premise that conflict is the expression of a wound from a different time and place is not the same as telling the kid he can do no wrong, or that he can do anything, including math, science, languages or abstract thought. Let’s separate cognitive development from emotional/psychological development, and start to look at the driving forces behind most human conflicts.

Each of us is afraid of failure, and each of us defines failure in our own unique way, much of that definition coming out of those portraits of failure our parents held as fixed and determinative. And while fear is a highly radioactive motivator, it is not necessarily a healthy, ethical, moral or developmental motivator. And as the commercial reminds us, “Managing was all I was doing!”….as in managing our fears, as opposed to confronting them honestly, courageously and compassionately.

And in a culture dominated by stereotypical forms of masculinity, fear, anxiety, nervousness, vulnerability, illness, failure and especially death are emotional, social, political, career and familial taboos. Not surprisingly, those very things we deny, avoid, and fail to acknowledge take on a power far in excess of their reasonable significance. Repressed, buried, ‘forgotten’ and expunged from our family history and memory, fears and vulnerabilities, anxieties and even socially unacceptable behaviour, most often with names and faces (“Uncle Charlie was a drunk”, for example) our fears have the capacity to exert highly toxic and iron shackles on our psyches, individually and culturally.

Invincibility, and the belief in its life-long presence, unfortunately, is not restricted to adolescent males; it seems to be an integral component of the hard wiring of western masculinity. And the “costs” are substantial, and continue mounting. We teach boys and girls the “facts” of how to be an honoured member of each respective gender. And we have been doing this for centuries; and while the trend-lines are moving at a glacial pace, we are still living with some self-destructive cultural archetypes around the perception of healthy masculinity, held by both men and women.

The contemporary fixation on “me” and on “winning” and on “success” crosses gender lines, and seems to have opened the gates of masculinity to the other gender, in their pursuit of positions of power influence, income, status and what is generally defined as “equality”. Many women have discovered their “animus” that unconscious masculine component of their psyche and, clearly they welcome both the discovery and the results. From a political perspective, this goal of gender equality makes sense; yet, a similar and balancing shift of the feminine attributes toward the masculine side of the gender equation is so resisted by most men. Others men, fortunately, have begun to acknowledge their unconscious “feminine” anima, as Jung theorized. However, as one firefighter put it, when asked about support services, like Employee Assistance or Chaplaincy, for the crew following a traumatic rescue, “If anyone sought professional help, he certainly would not tell anyone else on the crew!”

Masculine resistance to their own gentler, more sensitive and more empathic sides, including their learning the language to express the complexity of their (our) feelings, remains one of the major stumbling blocks to equality. So long as men are driven to prove their “masculinity” their sex-appeal and their need for power over others, there will continue to be a litany of male names in headlines the notoriety of sexual abuse.

And while there have been serious attempts to “get men to talk” about their feelings, both in therapy and in less formal settings, it is still a truism that men prefer to “act” out their feelings, including their feelings of love and devotion. Stories abound of young boys earning money for good causes by volunteering at a very early age, when, if they had been asked to name or detail their emotions, most would have drawn a blank.

It says here that, unless and until a specific woman enters a man’s life, and together helps to develop a relationship, including “taking that man’s hand and walking him into and through very unsettling emotional experiences like the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a job, or the loss of an exemplary reputation (probably through some form of self-sabotage), men will continue to “skate” around the boards of the rink of their own heart. They will demonstrate a degree of creativity in their avoidance rationalizations, their excuses, their resistance and the associations they make with “girly” men of their acquaintance.

Straight men, it seems, are quite literally terrified of being thought of as less than “real men”,….and that includes being considered gay, the worst and most damning “accusation” they might ever hear, from their own perspective. So long as this “fear” (and there really is no other way to depict the obsession) continues to play a prominent role in the psyches of mothers, fathers, teachers, coaches of athletic teams, employers and other community leaders, there is very little prospect that young boys will learn both the advantages and the excitement of multiple masculinities, each of them accessible to all young men.

The movie is somewhat out of date now; yet Dead Poet’s Society illustrated a highly damaging theme in many adolescent male lives. A male student really aspired to become an actor, yet was seriously wounded psychically by his father for his choice. Whether there are still such human dramas playing out in high schools across North America today, I really do not know the data. However, I do know that red-blooded masculinity still seeks opportunity to show off, to bully weaker young men, to compete for the most beautiful young woman on campus, and to exude a confidence that far exceeds his capacity to match it with his self-respect[ja1] .

Churches, too, especially those of a fundamentalist, literalist, evangelical bent, champion the Alpha Male as their choice of traditional masculinity and in their clinging to that model, go a long way to preserving it among a particular demographic. The NRA, by propagating their “only a good man with a gun can stop a bad man with a gun” slogan, has succeeded in sustaining and even enhancing the Alpha Male model, armed as he is as part of his identity. The NFL’s persistent refusal to acknowledge the correlation between the tackles on the field and the literally destroyed brains that show up after many careers end, and their tardiness and reluctance in penalizing direct head hits with meaningful punishments, illustrates another of the many “established” institutions that keep the Alpha Male archetype seducing young men. Of course, the military is another of society’s established institutions that keeps supporting and enhancing the Alpha Male model, as do many law enforcement bureaucracies.

And the Alpha Male operates not only in person-to-person encounters and relationships, it also has a magnified influence on policy design. Alpha Males look for the quick fix, the hard power response, the most heroic approach, whether or not such approaches are the most likely to be effective. It is a conflictual, confrontative and also turbulent approach without the benefit of nuance, subtlety, collaboration and a long-term perspective. One of the most visible pieces of evidence of this nano-second response is the daily crawl of stock prices, and the daily inclusion in the news broadcasts of stock market vicissitudes, even though this data is one of the most neurotic and frightened indicators of the day’s news.

And then there are the bear and the bull markets…and the most voracious appetites for accumulating wealth, power and the status that accompanies these pursuits, all of it staking out one’s territory and enlarging that turf.

Among very few men only is there a real and comprehensive conversation about how all males are “tarred” with the same brush as bullies, and testosterone-driven monsters and, given the male preference for ‘action’ as the representation of their thoughts and feelings, some are taking active steps, without the blaring headlines and the neon charges of abuse by women. Men are, as predicted, essentially mute in the public discourse about gender relations and conflicts.

They do not want to exacerbate the already boiling cauldron; they do not want to justify the mis-steps of their peers; they do not want to fall into the trap of being another headline; and for many, they are muzzled and confused, as to how to participate in a healthy and healing and reconciling manner as supportive men and welcome and equal partners with women.

Perhaps, this could be a moment in history from which men might ‘recover’ their voices, legitimate their needs and join a highly radioactive discussion, without fear, without the need to overcompensate and definitely without the need to  “win” the day.

As it stands today, there appear to be no ‘winners’..neither men nor women in the current turbulence.

---

 [ja1]

A modest, if irreverent, proposal for reforming the premises that enable the abuse of power

There is a concept in Christian teaching, extracted from the New Testament, about how the sins of the fathers are “visited” on ensuing generations. While contemporary culture does not spend time or energy talking specifically about “sins” and the concomitant repentance and redemption that are theologically linked to them, there is nevertheless something worth mining from the notion.

First, there is the nugget that we are all connected to both the past and the future, not only through our biology and our genetic composition, but also through our specific engagements and encounters, behaviours and attitudes. And, while it is certainly not either popular or self-enhancing to write it, we are all participants in spreading the impacts of our own woundedness on those whose paths have crossed ours.

In brief, to the degree that we have been ‘sinned upon’ or wounded, either deliberately or unconsciously by others, we will inevitably find, at least upon reflection, that we have negatively impacted the lives of others. Any attempt to deny our complicity in such a repeating and inevitable pattern only masks our own reality and that of those whose lives we have bruised, or worse. And yet, our culture prefers to isolate each incident from our biographies, prosecute each individual for the commission of a wrong and operate generally as if such a process results in fewer crimes and wrongs being committed.

And in a world driven and even compelled by extrinsic motivations, based on our observations of the ‘outside’ world (as opposed to our internal reflections) we have all been conditioned to the point where we spend a monumental amount of time and energy complaining about the misdeeds of others. Such a collective and individual obsession, however, rarely generates the kind of reformation that our angst would like to be able to claim credit for generating. History, the writings mainly of those who “won” their specific battles whether they were military, diplomatic or economic, details the strategies for further successful competitions. Even cultural history, filled as it is with religious and ethnic themes, is filled with a human motivation for power, for dominance, for what the world considers “success” whether that success is measured on a personal (leadership) scale, or on a tribal or national scale, or even on the scale of empire, the symbols, the monuments, the buildings and the jewels of success remain static for centuries.

And then, upon learning the complementary corollary, that we all learn from our mistakes, we enter upon a kind of rationalization and a justification for those mistakes that we make out of either or both innocence or malice. And yet, somewhere, someone, we hope, is currently engaged in a historic research project that begins to connect the dots between original woundedness and future attitudes, beliefs and behaviours that are different from the kind generated, for example, by composers like Beethoven who musical scores rise to the heavens, from the ashes of despair, despondency, and woundedness. The incidental shooting of a puck into one’s own team’s net, is not part of a category of incident, behaviour or even attitude that qualifies for consideration as an echo from previous woundedness.

The list of petty crimes, even up to and including the current spate of inappropriate behaviours by prominent men, also, it can be argued, most of the incidents for which mostly men are currently spending “time” behind bars, would seem, from a less than clinical perspective, to have some root in attitudes, behaviours, beliefs and cultures that were inflicted as pain, punishment, debasement, harassment, assault and defilement. Every bruise, whether emotional, physical or social, has the potential to generate another bruise often when the perpetrator is least conscious that there is a “rebound” aspect to his or her inflicting of that bruise.

As history has bent toward an extrinsic perception that “cleaning up messes” is more to our ease and comfort, (when compared with prevention, which does not generate the kind of reinforcing evidence that motivates our energies), we spend far less money, time, energy and obviously research into prevention of hurtful and harmful attitudes, beliefs, behaviours. In short, we are committed (addicted?) to pulling kids out of the bottom of the waterfall, after they have fallen in, rather than seeking to prevent their fall before it happens.

And that preference is motivated  by the notion that “we have to let each kid/person/friend/neighbour/colleague make his own mistakes, because that is the only way he will learn”.

Are we really telling ourselves the truth? Or perhaps are we exonerating ourselves, and disengaging ourselves from what we consider to be “other peoples’ business”….as our way of reinforcing and justifying our worship of the individual and the rational that only strong individuals can compete and survive in our capitalist, Darwinian jungle, where only the fittest survive?

Have we perhaps so militarized our notion of how to define and then to achieve success, and how to achieve relationships, and how to achieve even “love” that we have performed millions, if not trillions of emotional and psychological and political and intellectual lobotomies, in service to what amounts to a profound deception, distortion and self-sabotage? We have certainly militarized our “salvation” concepts into those who buy into the paint-by-number model of instant acceptance of/by a “Saviour”. And we have militarized our schools into a competition for marks, grades, references, and awards. And we have militarized our social strata, into those who have achieved wealth, prominence, social status from those who have not. And we have militarized our corporate world, both from a human relations perspective as well as from a marketing and sector dominance perspective. Our journalism is replete with militarism and the competition and the devices and techniques that attach to those who get the story first, (and get it right) and the accompanying punishment for those who deviate from that rule.

We have militarized our political discourse, and our legal system, into gathering of superficial intelligence, (governed largely by the costs of more deep and profound biographical research), its presentation by the state, whose belief is that lowering the incidents of crime justifies our methods, while other approaches might generate even less crime to pursue.

It says here that we are individually and collectively engaged, even conscripted, into a military machine-like culture where we have defined “success” and failure so narrowly and so restrictively and so reductionistically, in order to fit into our governing economic and political and historical archetypes that no longer serve us. In fact they are serving as a counter-force to our very existence.

Considering the individual as “supreme” when compared to the “collective” (a nuclear word, given the association with communism) precludes a more balanced perspective and world view, in which the similarities of our individual stories is either neglected completely, or at least significantly reduced in influence in favour of an individual, punitive, competitive “medical” model where the symptom is at the core of the intervention. And the intervention is framed as an “attack” against the “enemy”. As a consequence, we have framed a universe populated, even dominated, by enemies….in the form of diseases, maladaptive behaviours, thefts, and the litany of physical and emotional and psychological abuses. And of course, defining the “enemy” and the “attack” mode, as a basic principle of social organization and management, comportment and cultural convention is now endemic to how our western world operates.

It is not rocket science to note that the greatest enemy in our metaphysic is death, that horrible “end” to our life on this planet that is the natural outcome for each of us. If death is an enemy, then it is, and has been throughout human history very easy and glib to extend the ‘enemy’ archetype to other enemies, evils, and taboo’s. And, given a fear-based foundation of our collective world view, that list includes listing many attitudes behaviours and beliefs that emerge, in part, from the “Decalogue” in the Old Testament. However, in spite of the dedication of centuries to standards outlined in that document, and others, we are continuing to “combat” the evils that now dominate our culture.

And our obsession with our own evils, and our “depravity” and our “having sinned and come short of the glory of God” (see Saint Paul’s writing in the New Testament) presumably detailed by those leading the initiative to establish a Christian church to gain and to maintain control over their “charges” has, it would seem, not led us to a better understanding of our true condition. Naturally, such a concentration on “evil” and the need for an external deity to save us from ourselves can and would predictably generate both multiple agencies and careers as “redemptive” agents, and a faith institution that holds fast to the dogma originally expounded.

Perhaps, just perhaps, we have been misleading ourselves, out of the best of intentions, motivations and designs. Perhaps, just perhaps we have bought into the humility of hair shirts that so controlled many of the early religious orders, and thereby unconsciously and innocently and somewhat childishly succumbed to a state of being that denies our inherent dignity, including a spark of the divine. And in the process, we have effectively turned centuries of young people into obsequious and disciplined soldiers in a war against evil in all of its many forms, faces and incarnations.

I have listened to too many people in church pews tell me that the only reason they sit there Sunday by Sunday is to provide some assurance of a “heavenly afterlife”….as if they were in a bargaining and negotiating process with some kind of higher power. And of course, the notion of imperfection, as compared with a perfect, holy, all-knowing, and ubiquitous deity, originated and sustained by an organization whose existence and survival depends on their succeeding in getting millions to subscribe, and to “confess” loyalty to their hierarchical design of the universe. Has anyone asked the question about the impact of the inevitable, predictable and apparently irreversible infantilization of millions of men and women, as a consequence of this hierarchical structure?

Has anyone thought through the implications of a kind of military colonization of the very people the society was created to help flower and flourish? Has anyone really penetrated the implications of the battles within families for control of the children, and even too often for control of the opposite spouse? What if, for example, the legal principle of “Habeus Corpus” (innocent until proven guilty) has a theological, ethical, moral, spiritual basis as well? And what if such a premise were to be extended beyond the legal system, beyond the court room and into the main streets of our towns and cities?  What if, with the possible exception of certifiable sociopaths and psychopaths, there is no wrong-doing that does not have a legitimate root in the biography of the “offender” and that the biography is a direct (or even indirect) consequence of a social, economic and political system that renders a large proportion of human beings powerless, unable even to feed themselves, unable to seek out and find access to even minimal health care, unable to find work with dignity, simply because we have, innocently and unconsciously, or willfully and quite deliberately subscribed to a social structure that is little more than a replication of the old feudal system, in which those with land, money and political status controlled the lives of their “serfs”. What if our pursuit of the wrong-doing and the wrong-doer is in an of itself upside down, in the more far-reaching pursuit of a society that can sustain and develop its people? What if our prisons, and our schools and our corporations are little more than replicas of a long-ago outdated Greek tragedy that pitted the top 1% against the bottom 99%, as a drama that spoke loudly of the fear of the 1% of losing their status, their power and their wealth in any other structure?

What if, perhaps unbeknownst to those who govern, they are embedded in a system that places their own status (and the prospect of losing that status) as the sole justification for the kind of political and economic system we are inheriting? What if, rather than requiring that all “serfs” become lifelong agents of the generation of wealth for the very rich, we were to re-think, and to re-imagine a society in which the dignity (not the wealth, amount of land owned, size of the investment account, name on the hood of the car in the garage, not the square footage of the mansion in which they live, not the size and degree to which the wardrobe is fashionable) of the people, both as individuals and as members of a collective, was the highest good, and was the primary guiding principle of the exercise of power in our society?

What if our social, military and tax policy were not based, as they currently are on fear of the poor, fear of the uneducated, fear of the different other, but rather on the premise that we are all, literally, ethically, morally and in real terms evident by the policies, the laws, the premises and the conventional beliefs of the society, not only by the symbol of the right to vote, and the right to own property and the right to make a living, but by the starting point of a guaranteed annual income, a guaranteed right to quality health care, a guaranteed post-secondary education and a guaranteed right to work with dignity, commensurate with both ability and qualifications.

Of course, this dramatic shift would require a substantial defunding of the military, a defunding of the tax breaks and tax havens for the rich, and a shift in how corporations pay their workers, supplement their pensions. And it would also demand a dramatic shift in how decisions are made in all public and private organizations, away from a top-down, hierarchical privilege and power, to a circle of committed and participating workers, investors, suppliers and consumers.

Moving away from a suspicion and an ingrained presupposition of wrong-doing, chicanery, personal avarice and a personal subversive agenda to a starting place of full support and encouragement of the best ideas, the best practices and the best policies that will generate a fair return on investment, judged on a much more fair distribution of organizational income. Laws limiting the number of times a chief executive’s income is multiplied over that of the factory floor worker, probably to not more than 5-10 times the base income, would go a long way to levelling the playing field.

The notion that each individual can carve out an existence of fairness, justice and equality simply no longer holds, when any reasonable, sentient and morally conscious person scans the political, economic, social and ethical landscape.

And having slid into what Bunyan would call the morass, there is really no other approach than a total turn-around.

Of course, this piece will be found to be highly irresponsible, highly out of touch with reality, and probably written by someone who is smoking very strong illicit drugs.

Well, dear reader, I am very sorry to disappoint those who hold that view. I am neither under the influence of any illicit or prescription drug nor am I out of touch with reality, nor have I ever been thought to be worthy of the irresponsible label.

It is precisely the current status quo that reeks of the stench of the abuse of power, the abuse of a majority of ordinary people, especially in the western world, as well as even more heinous abuses of those in the developing world where violence, disease, poverty and hopelessness pervade. If this is our shared nadir, then we can start to look upward from this oppressive, dark and threatening cave.

Are we not both more intelligent and more insightful, more imaginative and more compassionate than the current historical evidence demonstrates? And, if so, then what are we individually and collectively prepared to do to turn this contemporary 21^st century cultural, political and social ship around 180 degrees? And when are we really going to admit that the world is going in the wrong direction, a direction that promises more abuse, with even more impunity for the abusers?

If not now, then when?

If I were an adolescent today....I would be confused, disillusioned and angry

If I were an adolescent today, watching and listening to the public discourse about how “shame” and the power to inflict it, taken together, is running rampant over some, while leaving others seemingly exempt, I would be confused, a little shocked and greatly drained of energy and hope, at the kind of world my generation is inheriting.

Some people attempt to purchase their exemption from the shame and the guilt and the embarrassment of their own indiscretions: witness the taxpayer-funded silence payments to staffers in the United States Congress. Others, with the help of evangelical fundamentalist “Christians” find a modicum of escape from guilt, responsibility and shame, as they are buoyed by the “he is a man of God” chorus swelling up around his Alabama campaign. Others issue public apologies, (Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Marc Halpern and now Matt Lauer) some in an attempt to begin their road back to “redemption” and acceptance in the public eye and mind, innocent perhaps of the indelible stain on their reputation.

And there is the “groper-in-chief” who sits in the Oval Office, busily issuing moral edicts and attacks in 280 characters, grateful to Twitter for the expansion of his opportunity to spread his kind of darkness and innuendo and castigation of others, completely oblivious to the maxim that “he who lives in a glass house ought not throw stones.” He sides with his own party’s Alabama candidate for Senate, by deriding his Democratic opponent as a disaster, indicating that policy options appear to take precedence, if convenient, over the morality of the candidate as attested by several women, from encounters four decades ago.

The chief executive himself is also the master “blurrer” of the lines between fact and fiction, so as to suit his own depraved, deprived and decimated, yet ever tyrannical, ego. The latest battle of the genders, on top of the already deeply and emotionally engaged battle for political power, through the selling of images, mixed with a healthy dose of exaggeration, dissembling and outright lying, has left the policy issues muted, except for the occasional outburst against the character of another leader, or even occasionally in support of an already infamous leader like Duterte. Forbes magazine features a story whose import is, “the new American religion is ideology”.

On NBC’s Meet the Press this past Sunday when Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, being interviewed by Chuck Todd, was forced to attempt a last-minute interjection of her objections to the tax reform bill that is before Congress. And that was the topic on which she based her agreement to appear on the show in the first place. Of course, however, sex took over, and dominated her time allotment on the show which had been built, of course, to generate the highest ratings, not to provide the best vehicle of government oversight and fourth estate critique.

Just as facts have morphed into “alternative facts” (courtesy of Kelly Ann Conway, the president’s image-maker), so too has much of contemporary journalism morphed into tabloid journalism, so too has much of public debate morphed into “’locker room” talk (courtesy of the chief executive), as the race to the bottom of the public gutter gets faster and less inhibited. Just Monday, a scurrilous person, acting as an agent of Project Veritas, a right-wing nut-job organization dedicated to discrediting the mainstream media, told the Washington Post that she had been raped by Moore who then wanted her to have an abortion, the ersatz Republican candidate for Senate, to replace the now Attorney General Sessions in Alabama. Her story was  found to be a hoax when Post reporters dug deeper.

Fortunately, for the public, those who work as professional journalists at the Washington Post found her story was another “smeer” job on the media. Just imagine the extent to which these people will go to re-invent a universe that is more to their liking, given their contempt for a political and cultural universe which they do not and cannot, and must not dominate and control!

Alice in Wonderland, the 1865 fantasy novel written by English mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, under the pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, seems to be a legitimate foreshadowing of the world of 2017, with all of us living in that same rabbit hole. Only trouble is the novel was intended as literary nonsense, playing imaginatively with logic whereas what we are witnessing and having to live through is anything but literary nonsense. Satire, today, would fall on deaf ears, as does irony, and all forms of literary language that express the imaginary world of either wish-fulfillment dreams or avoidance dreams.

We are being flooded with millions of archeological, anthropological “digs” into scraps of evidence, mostly in the digital universe, and all of them steaming forth from the new smokestacks of a digital world where no one is a reputable authority and everyone has his finger on the trigger of political influence. Many propagandists, however, have not been trained or disciplined into a respect for the “public” and “wider” truth, that concept having become the sacrificial lamb of the pool of narcissism in which we are all swimming. Theirs is the universe of manipulation, and in the case of the white supremacists, even scurrilous defamation of character, with a kind of impunity that those of us living outside the United States simply do not comprehend. The American courts have found and ruled on a very subtle nuance between what comprises “hate speech” and what does not. In short, a statement like “All Muslims (Jews) or whatever group must be banished,” since it does not target a specific person, is not considered hate speech. If a name were to be inserted as target into such a statement, then the statement would qualify as hate speech.

Those of us who are mere generalists, neither legal experts nor linguistic scholars, find this ruling to be a distinction without a difference. If one is advocating the banishment of any ethnic group, then it follows to smaller minds like your scribe’s, that one has the intent to carry out, enable, support and perhaps even enact such a banishment goal. 

And hate is at the core of the statement. To argue “irony” as the modus operandi of such a statement and sentiment and intent, simply does not hold water. Therapists, when faced with a client expressing the wish to commit suicide, are trained to take such a statement of intent very seriously. The alternative is, in a word, unacceptable and perhaps lethal. A similar caveat needs to cover the hate speech issue.

This space has referred, above, to the Narcissus myth and archetype. Unlike Narcissus however, we are not merely fawning over the image of our visages on the surface of the water; we have, collectively in effect, drowned in that pool. It is not only that legal protections against defamatory statements have yet to keep pace with the technological opportunities to spew them around, in the manner of the “twitterer in chief”, taking aim at anyone who might have a different view. His kind of “leadership” is simply not worthy of the name; it ranks as the latest version of chicanery that has been practiced for centuries by midway hucksters barking out sales of tickets to a freak show.

This time, however, the barker and the freak are one and the same. And as the world watches and listens to the smoke and mirrors coming from the "trumpstack," mocking the science of global warming and climate change so venomously and defiantly that all wonder what other security threshold he might cross, under the pretense of this own pardon.

The dung pile of mixed metaphors above, normally unacceptable as they constitute the extremely pervasive and noxious stench of  linguistic insouciance, are finding what might be considered a normal  place amid a current mind-and-spirit “stew” of angst, confusion, fear and not a little hopelessness.

What has been unleashed is not merely the democratizing of information. Unleashed now is the range of human evils from Pandora’s Box, that previously sealed vault of human depravity from Greek mythology. Now there is nothing left in the vault; everything including plutonium, poison, libel, pubescent and pre-pubescent pornography, unlicensed character defamation, money-laundering, corporate malfeasance and the impunity that denial, deflection and huge sacks of money can “buy”.

After all, when human interactions are so debased as to be reduced to nothing more than just another transaction, like buying another package of sausages in the supermarket, how can we expect anything more substantive than pork left-overs wrapped in some kind of slick skin. We have only to question the “expiry date” and the “brand” name on the label, in order to determine whether or not to make the purchase.

Such superficiality of the consumer renders both the consumer and the producer mere agents in another commercial transaction. And only if and when the meat is infected with listeria, or salmonella, e-coli, or worse, botulism is there a blast of public anger, disgust and withdrawal of consumer confidence. Meanwhile, lives could have been lost; certainly humans have become ill through no “fault” of their own. And those who imposed their defective product evoke an instant recall, issue a proforma apology, and try to re-market their product as the new champion of healthy food production and consumption.

In politics, however, once elected, it seems, the political botulism continues to wreak its havoc on everything it touches.

For this kind of bacteria, there is no official “court” and no official “inspector general” and no penicillin to combat the effects of the self-inflicted cultural disease. Even Mueller’s charge against Flynn, the disgraced National Security Advisor for 24 days in this administration, and Flynn’s guilty plea, are only the early steps in what so far is a “closed door” legal investigation.

And, with respect to public anger, frustration and push-back that ought to be overflowing the streets of hundreds of American streets:

·        over the bellicose rhetoric on North Korea,

·        on climate change denials,

·        on a tax “reform” package that robs $5+ billion from the poor and middle class, while moving that tax benefit to the top 10% of income earners

·        on the support and enabling of white supremacists, quite literally home-grown terrorists

·        on the denials of collusion with Russia in the election

·        on the refusal to staff fully the State Department and

·        on the massive list of unqualified candidates for the judiciary

·        on the rejection of the application of the emoluments clause, while continuing to gather millions from private business interests

I am still a highly confused, disappointed and disillusioned “adolescent” growing impatient with the kind of world my ancestors are leaving to my generation.    

Men bringing more shame on men....where is the light of healing and reconciliation?

The current tidal wave of news reports of inappropriate sexual behaviour of many prominent men cannot be anything but disturbing to both men and women. It clearly represents a watershed moment in the conflict between the genders, demonstrating that women will no longer be silent and complicit in their own debasement by men.

And their debasement is both a disease by itself and a symptom of a much larger and more ubiquitous abuse of power that abounds in contemporary culture. It is a cliché to note that each of us has become, wittingly or not, a “thing” in the lives of our employers, our teachers, our doctors, lawyers and especially our “suppliers”. We have morphed individual human lives to fit a model of a mini-corporation, a business apparatus or machine that seeks to function in the service of its own best interests. We have so micro-defined behaviour into observable and reportable bytes, bites, digits and sound bites that have become bullets in a scorched-earth game of war between political actors, corporations, professional practitioners, hospitals, universities, colleges, churches, families and undoubtedly individuals cannot escape.

Demographic interest groups have lobbied for decades to seek and attain the attention of the political class, in an overt and determined initiative to gain political clout, a voice for what they considered their own impotence. And that impotence, they believed was neither deserved nor of their own making; it was imposed by a built-in power structure that has been centuries in the making. And one of the most powerful and growing “interest” group is the women’s movement, feminism, radical feminism, moderate feminism.

Perceived as the victim of male dominance, the feminist movement has undergone the normal iterations, starting in the 70’s with writers like Germaine Greer's Female Eunuch. From the beginning of the feminist movement, men have been on the defensive, in a way and to a degree that was neither visible nor accountable previously.  Various faces of feminism have variously wanted to “despise” men, to “tolerate” men, to “patronize” men, and some even wanted to “work with” men as partners toward the goal of male-female equality and equilibrium.

Raising the consciousness of the establishment culture (dominated by male leaders and acolytes for centuries) was only the first goal of the movement. Changing behaviour, attitudes, and numbers of pay and positions of leadership and responsibility was also deeply embedded into the “cake” of the ideology. Equal pay for equal work, membership on corporate boards, and in the executive suites, leadership in colleges, universities, high and elementary schools, and in political and governmental offices, enrollment in graduate schools, maternity leave, parental leave, and even paternity leave, and the human right of access to an education, to quality and affordable health care, access to affordable day care and pre-school…..these are just some of the goals, and attainments of the feminist movement.

While some of these worthy goals have been at least partially attained, there remain many significant gaps, especially the equal pay for equal work, since evidencing a 25% gap, while women fall far short of filling top jobs in major corporations, and in filling politically elected positions, in many western countries.

Knowing that two already established “hot buttons” on the political radar of a prurient nation like the United States are sex and money, strategists for the feminist movement picked the more obvious “nuclear option”…the historic abuse of women’s bodies by men who neither respect themselves nor their female colleagues.

You may be surprised to read that last sentence, pointing to the lack of self-respect of male abusers. Yet, after all, the abuse of power, whether of a sexual nature, a law enforcement nature, a geopolitical or a spiritual nature is almost invariably the impetus of a neurosis, sometimes in extreme cases, of a psychosis, regardless of whether the abuse is inflicted by a man or a woman. Our culture has a difficult time, generally, differentiating between obedience and respect on the one hand and sycophancy, defiance, rebellion and violence on the other. The former comes from a relatively secure individual, conscious of his/her strengths, weaknesses and comfortable in his/her own skin. The latter, whether extremes of servility or defiance, comes from a less than secure individual, perhaps self-loathing, perhaps believing others’ put-downs of value, perhaps falling into the victim trap so prevalent in situations in which the people in power are themselves lacking in self-respect. Those people in power could be parents, teachers, principals, coaches, clergy, doctors and care-givers and how they interact with their charges goes a long way to laying the groundwork of a sense of self that develops through childhood and adolescence.

None of this background excuses any abuse of power, including the abuse of power by men over women’s bodies and wills. Womens’ too often silenced voices of protest have been a repeating pattern in this abuse for decades, perhaps even centuries. Let’s be honest! We are a long way from developing a “freeway” of easy, honest, open, equal and free conversation between men and women. And unless and until that freeway is opened, nurtured, sustained and updated by each succeeding generation, we will travel the back-roads of washboards, ditches, icy patches and outright lethal collisions.

We are currently in the midst of a cultural collision for which there are no formal and appointed detectives or lawyers or judges assigned to the case. It is the court of public opinion that is “hearing” these cases, and the presumed innocence that pertains in the legal system is no longer tolerated.

There is no reason to justify the abuse of a woman by any man, and, as some very old popular songs once intoned, men frequently asked “permission” to hold, touch, kiss and variously ‘romance’ a member of the opposite gender. Whether men lack the language or the patience, or the respect (for both themselves and the woman) to engage their female partners in any physical (or emotional or psychological) shared encounter, there is a long journey ahead, to be able to see a world on the horizon in which men and women are no longer in a competitive and conflicted tension for sexual favours.

However, the current cultural landscape idealizes and idolizes “power” and the “abuse of power”. Tabloid headlines, tabloid reporting, tabloid social media  attitudes and personal attacks supplemented by an entertainment industry on violence and sexual steroids saturate our public discourse and culture. In this moment, we have a confluence of microphones for violence, and a history of repressed resentment, anger and contempt for the millions of incidents of sexual injustice linked to a political climate in which personal character is the single defining issue of the day. Policy, legislation, foreign policy, negotiations, treaties, agreements and the ‘stuff’ of public discourse have all been swept off the public consciousness, to be replaced by the obsessive-compulsive attraction to “sex”….not only as a marketing instrument, and a titillation of the entertainment industry, and a billion-dollar industry in itself, but now as a tidal wave of political and legal import easily and relevantly comparable to a recession, a depression or even another military engagement.

It is not possible to turn on any television channel, especially the 24-7 new-channels on cable, without confronting the names of accusers and the targets of their accusations in multiple sexual “assaults”. And while attempting to “right the wrongs” of centuries of male dominance in both domestic and public affairs, and to “level the playing field of male-female relationships” with a view to the achievement of equality, equanimity and justice is a laudable goal, the current narrative of our public discourse is clearly not going to accomplish that worthy goal.

In fact, the current massive “bombing” of the airwaves, the courts and the tabloids with the names of prominent men who have wantonly and irresponsibly abused women, supported by teams of victims will invoke one of the most blunt instruments of human design, the legal system. The court of public opinion, too, is not interested in the nuances, the complexities and the details of the offences. So on both fronts, the legal court system and the court of public opinion, all of the male names are now presumed guilty, with no chance of either defending themselves or bringing clarity to one of the most complex interactions on  the human landscape.

Just as divorce settlements have come to a ‘no fault’ precipitate, after years of throwing blame from one side to the other, there will have to be a similar “precipitate” in the battle to deal with sexual offences. Such a position, of course, will be intolerable for those who consider themselves victims. And for those men currently under a cloud of contempt, embarrassment and quite literal degradation of reputation, there may not be either the public appetite for a responsible path toward redemption, reconciliation and healing. Some will argue that all men under such a cloud deserve the most nuclear punishment available. Others will argue that a different approach, in the long run, will generate a conversation, a full airing of the complexities of the many hidden and ‘private’ details that are neither worthy of public disclosure nor are they likely to generate a more equitable and healthy gender playing field.

Their women accusers, whose “public statements” generate 72-point headlines in the tabloid and mainstream media, will always find another Gloria Aldred to defend them, behind the microphones and in the court rooms. And those who have accepted the public apology from their abusers, will be grouped among all other accusers, without having the opportunity to seek dialogue and reconciliation.

This needed step is never going to be achieved in the current climate. While attempting to “right the wrongs” of centuries of male dominance in both domestic and public affairs, and to “level the playing field of male-female relationships” with a view to the achievement of equality, equanimity and justice is a laudable goal shared by a preponderance of reasonable self-respecting men and women, the current narrative of our public discourse is clearly not going to accomplish that worthy goal.

Shame is the cloud that hangs over the lives, the bodies, the minds and the hearts of millions of young boys and young men, as they wander through a labyrinth of conflicted messages exhorting them to be “strong,” “like a man,” and also vulnerable and sensitive. There are few mentors among their fathers, coaches and teachers who can or will demonstrate a discernment and practice of healthy, evolved and sensitive, self-confident masculinity. And the process of raising the curtain on the many entangling myths that have ensnared generations of men for centuries, and shedding light on a robust and confident and self-respecting masculinity (the very opposite of the kind currently occupying the Oval Office) will take decades, if not centuries. These are not noted as excuses for inappropriate behaviour and attitudes. They are merely a brief snapshot of some of the foundational stones that men will have to acknowledge and begin to shed. And they will need all the help they can get from their female family members, friends, lovers, partners and colleagues.

Meanwhile the current river of shame will engulf the lives and the careers of perhaps hundreds or thousands or perhaps even millions of men, with the potential risk of driving the prospect of reconciliation, healing, equality and equanimity further into the caves of the unconscious.

Glimpsing Chomsky’s kaleidoscopic exposure of American ‘foreign policy’

What we choose to fight is so tiny!

What fights with us is so great!

If only we would let ourselves be dominated

as things do by some immense storm,

we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,

And the triumph itself makes us small.

What is extraordinary and eternal

does not want to be bent by us.

(From The Man Watching, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, p. 298)

There is a real danger that the contemporary world, especially the people of the United States could fall into the trap of thinking that the world has been brought to the brink of war solely by the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Bellicose rhetoric, lies, character assassination, and a general deportment of bravado and blaming may characterize the current president’s record. And yet, the country’s resort to an attitude of dominance, superiority, and a determination to use each situation as another step on the predictable and determined path of sustaining that dominance certainly did not start with the election of 2016.

Writing in the New Republic in 1977, Hans Morganthau points out, “the concentrations of private power which have actually governed America since the Civil War have withstood all attempts to control, let alone dissolve them (and) have preserved their hold upon the levers of political decision.” (Noam Chomsky, Foreign Policy and the Intelligentsia, The Essential Chomsky, p.166) “Private power” is a direct reference to the hold on public decision-making by those with the money, the status and the concomitant “power” to call the shots in a manner that serves their private interests.

Chomsky then proceeds to document the attitudes and vision of the Council on Foreign Relations’ War and Peace Project in the early 1940’s. Proposing a “Grand Area” dominated by the U.S. One paper reads, (The United States) must cultivate a mental view toward world settlement after this war which will enable us to impose our own terms, amounting perhaps to a pax-Americana. Also, in 1944,  the State Department espouses (and exposes) the view and guiding principle of  equal access to oil for American companies, but not others (Ibid, p. 171)

And then there is the question of the persistent resort to military power in the pursuit of  the national interest, successfully in World War II and shortly thereafter in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada and then Iraq and Afghanistan. Naturally, there has been a ‘moral purpose’ to all conflicts, as if the nation were the agent of some deity, pursuing peace, justice, (and dominance) if and when any perceived provocation triggered its paranoia and the pursuit of its world dominance. Couching military actions under such evaluations as “stupid and accidental” when losses are incurred, without paying adequate attention to the savagery that was really going on, is just another way for the ‘establishment’ to preserve their hold on power by seducing the media and the public into support for their exaggerated and even lawless actions.

A report from the USAF (United States Air Force) details a series of targeted strikes in May 1953 at some twenty irrigation dams that furnished 75% of the water supply for North Korea’s rice production while wiping out supply lines to the North’s front lines. The report continues: The Westerner can little conceive the awesome meaning which the loss of this staple food commodity has for the Asian—starvation and slow death. ‘Rice famine,’for centuries the chronic scourge of the Orient, is more feared than the deadliest plague. Hence the show of rage, the flare of violent tempers, and the avowed threats of reprisals when bombs fell on five irrigation dams.” (Chomsky, Ibid, p. 185-86)

Does anyone think or believe that the current regime in North Korea is unfamiliar with this story, and others like it?

And it is not only the inhumane actions of the U.S. that need light shed into their dark corners. It is also the contravention of international rules, like Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. (Of course, the UN has throughout its history been regarded as an arm of United States foreign policy, by the Americans.) Article 51 assumes that the U.S. is engaged in collective self-defense against an armed attack from North Vietnam. However, the facts were discovered to be very different from the original estimate of danger. Quoting Chester Cooper, from The Lost Crusade, Chomsky (p. 127) writes:

Communist strength had increased substantially during the first few months of 1965. By the end of April it was believed that 100,000 VietCong irregulars and between 38,000 and 436,000 main-force troops, including a full battalion of regular North Vietnamese troops, were in South Vietnam. Meanwhile American combat forces were moving into South Vietnam at a rapid rate: in late April more than 35, 000 American troops had been deployed and by early May the number had increased to 45,000.

 Cutting through the “propaganda,” Chomsky notes: The single North Vietnamese battalion of 400 to 500 men was tentatively identified in late April. (Ibid)

And then there are the well-documented instances of bombing the Vietnamese with “agent orange,” a killer weapon if ever there was one, perhaps a prelude to the Weapons of Mass Destruction of which must was made in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003.

Oh, Iraq you say, just another case of  a sophisticated campaign of misinformation, misleading both the American public and the world’s public interest, into another military conflict, based on tenuous claims at best, and at worst, outright lies? Well, yes, and yet, the pattern persists of exaggerating the danger, for the purpose of “imposing a dominant and irrepressible and insatiable political will on perceived enemies, in the name of doing good, persists into this century, without either abatement or the kind of restraint for which Obama was excoriated for “leading from behind”.

The establishment, in its self-righteous pursuit of its own self-interest, armed with the power of the bomb, the drones, the chemical labs and the Congress, not to mention the sycophant media, and the silent and thereby compliant-by-default intellectual community, rides roughshod over all “other” “extraneous” interests, like the public will and public interest, in the pursuit of ‘national goals’ that are really the needs of the corporatist state: power, profit, control, dominance.

Especially now, with the fall of the Soviet Union, and only the beginning of the rise of China and India, the United States is in the unenviable position of the only world super power, a status that evokes, among Americans, strong arguments for enhancing the hard power, the nation’s economic might and the retrenchment from from global interests and issues. And yet, parochialism, provincialism, deceptions, lies and savagery of both word and deed... all of it is based on a deep and profound residue of paranoia. This paranoia is based first of all on an incipient revolutionary act of a few thousand troops, supplemented copiously by French troops, and then on a deep and profound need to maintain superior status and power inside the country by the elite, followed by a global vision of dominance, in economics and only secondarily in politics, and the obsessive-compulsive clinging onto the elite legacy by succeeding generations.

Proud of its exceptionalism, without paying attention to the underside of that “papier-mâché” maturity of self-contentment and well-being, the United States is in danger of being hoisted on its own petard. And while trump may be the current actor on the American stage, he inherits a long legacy of intemperate, indecent, savage, lawless and destructive ‘norms’ that have been permitted, enhanced and aggrandized both by overt actions and policies, and by the inert blindness of denial and a refusal to invoke a “reality check” on national attitudes, beliefs and behaviours.

Ostracising voices “crying in the wilderness” like Noam Chomsky, and others who, like him, refuse to be silenced, or to be excommunicated from the national and the international debate, however, will never keep the truth from poking its sometimes ugly head through the asphalt of national hubris. It is not surprising that thinkers and writers like Chomsky are frequently invited to address public issues by the media and academia in countries other than the United States but rarely if even by those sectors of American political culture.

Apparently, the old axiom that one cannot be a prophet in one’s own town, or nation still holds firm.

David Letterman wins Twain Prize for humour

In the midst of one the most turbulent and horrific periods on the American political landscape, there was Dave Letterman receiving the Mark Twain prize for humour at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.. And after he had paid homage to those who celebrated his 33-year television career as a host of Late Night, asking rhetorically if the prize could not be presented posthumously, he ended with a Twain quote on patriotism:

For Twain patriotism meant loving your country all of the time, and your government when it deserved it.

Such a nuanced and clarifying moment, in the midst of the political chaos that is contemporary Washington, serves as an fitting tribute to the man who served up a cocktail of interesting interviews, comedic moments and a health dose of reality checking each week-day night.

Having watched probably hundreds of hours of “Letterman” I could not be surprised by whatever mayhem spilled out of the television screen. For me, Letterman was “appointment” television, after the debacle over the sunset of the Johnny Carson show which was purportedly going to pass to Letterman, yet went, strangely, to Leno.

As the President of the Kennedy Center, Mr. David Rubenstein noted in his presentation address, Dave was both “class clown” and “valedictorian”. And it was that capacity to bridge the divide that exists in every high school graduating class in Canada and the United States, always able to laugh at himself, and never forgetting his roots, including his spotty academic record, until he enrolled in public speaking and later spent time on the radio station at Ball State. Both experiences (where there were no maths or languages) gave a podium and a microphone for one of the more memorable icons in American entertainment.

Having been “helped” by many, and taking the opportunity to acknowledge their significant contribution to his career, he reminded this audience, through PBS, of the benefits of helping others, an act after which one will always feel better.

For all of the pomp and intellectual complexity of much of the public debate and the policy analysis of an era in which the “expert” has become ‘god,’ Letterman reminds us that real ordinary people with courageous and independent values really matter, especially when those values are served on a menu of variety and interesting people from a multitude of walks of life.

Noam Chomsky in The Essential Chomsky, too, reminds us of the importance of the “value-oriented critic” of foreign policy. The “experts” in foreign policy will always disdain the “generalist” because his/her analysis is missing the details of the narrative, that always “make any issue more complicated” than the generalist perceives and posits. However, Chomsky assertively pays homage to those generalists among us. (Chomsky himself is an academic linguist with a deep and penetration intellect, who from his lair at MIT has been shifting wheat from chaff in public utterances by public figures for decades.) The fact that all of the miniscule details of any issue are not included in the generalist’s assessment of any political situation does not, and for Chomsky must not, make his critique any less valid.

Letterman’s most recent ‘gig’ involves a new contract with Netflix for $15 million, to host some modest number of shows. And it was Marty Short, the comedian from Hamilton Ontario, Canada, who, in separating Letterman from Twain, used two words, “Netflix sellout,” in what has to be the most prescient and penetration satire of the evening.

Dressed in Elizabethan garb, former recipient of the Twain prize, Bill Murray welcomed Letterman into the “king”-dom of winners, while munching on food he ordered as part of his schtick. Paul Schaffer, Letterman’s orchestra leader for all of those decades, in his comparison of Twain to Letterman, “I actually was invited to Twain’s house.” The reference is to the total and utter privacy Letterman has sought and secured in his private life, although both his renowned son Harry, and his wife were seated beside him. And there was a brief, but memorable appearance by Letterman’s Columbia University Psychiatrist, “shrink”…who repeated the comic’s litany of self-deprecating whining and “pity-party” utterances from his sessions, and then wondered abruptly, “How do I get out of here?

Sardonically, when Letterman appeared to accept his prize to a standing ovation, he quipped, “Oh right, a standing ovation on PBS!” a spontaneous quip about his checkered history with television networks, with PBS having the smallest audience.

Humbly and accurately comparing himself to his renowned benefactor, in whose name the award has been presented for twenty years, Letterman noted the many writings of Twain, compared with none by himself, and also underlined how each of the guests this night are “far funnier that I”.

The “Moses” beard and balding white hair documented the sunset years of the man whose untameable personal angst “Shadowed” his public performance and persona, giving all others the hope and the promise that if he could do what he did for decades, successfully, there is hope for all of us, no matter how self-doubting we really are.

Thanks for the memories, Mr. Letterman, and to the Kennedy Centre, thanks also for once again recognizing the important glue and paste that attempts, often without recognition or even notice, to hold a culture back from violent rupture.