William James, Mark Twain, I. F. Stone. Emma Goldman, Helen Keller, Molly Ivins. Jim Hightower, John Pilger, William Blum. Lewis Lapham, Michael Parenti, Victor Wallis. Vandana Shiva, Joan Baez, Naomi Klein. Ami Goodman, Abby Martin, Daniel Berrigan.
David Talbot, James Douglass, Thich Nhat Hanh. Oscar Romero, the Dalai Lama, Dan
Ellsberg. And, of course, Chris Hedges, Noam
Chomsky and Howard Zinn. These are just
a few of the torch-bearers of the spirit of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King
and John Lennon.
Peace is possible.
Progress has been made. Meanwhile,
the struggle continues.
A crisis can be ongoing and deepening for a very long
time. This has been the case with the
USA for forty years at least. 1968 might
well be seen as the pivot point. The
full and fatal swerve toward economic apartheid and the rollback of FDR’s New
Deal began in earnest in 1981 with Reaganomics.
The hammer-blows against social enlightenment have kept the war machine
in full throttle and kept too many Americans in thrall to sloganeering and
sophistry.
The earth groans, bees disappear, and in 2020 the wasteland
grows.
But danger is also opportunity. Breakdown is often breakthrough.
Behind the news there is a global dance. A collective invitation to give peace a
chance.
What is true for the individual is true for the whole. Fate is determined by the choices we
make. Let us use our freedom
wisely. What Kant said at the end of the
18th century is true now: “We live in an age of enlightenment; but
we do not yet live in an enlightened age.”
Perhaps the essence of life really is learning and
service. Siddhartha Gautama, Meister Eckhart
and Thomas Merton thought so. I believe
it too.
Keep the faith, my friend.
We may yet be on the verge of something great. A turning of the civilizational wheel toward
the wisdom of James and Twain and company.
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
The vast majority of American citizens have been conditioned
to think that democracy and capitalism are synonymous, and that socialism
equals fascism. To which we can apply
Mark Twain’s observation: “Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain
or freed a human soul.”
John Lennon said: “I think our society is run by insane
people for insane objectives. I think
we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends.
I think they’re all insane. But I
am liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what is insane about it.”
Noam Chomsky notes: “I don’t know what word in the English
language … applies to people who are willing to sacrifice the literal existence
of organized human life so they can put a few more dollars into highly stuffed
pockets. The word ‘evil’ doesn’t even
begin to approach it.”
Plato said in The Phaedo that “all wars are fought for the acquisition of wealth.” Today, the American landscape is littered with statues of generals on stallions, while memorials to prophetic peacemakers are barely to be found.
War memorials abound, but where are the institutes for the
study and practice of peace that could hold the promise of a better future?
Imperialism is the most potent and nefarious force in human
history, and it haunts us today. America
has nearly a thousand military bases scattered across the globe, mostly in
countries that don’t want them there.
New York calls itself “The Empire State;” and the Empire State Building
on Fifth Avenue in New York City remains a popular tourist attraction, its very
name unrecognized as a paean to the unrelenting violence, death and destruction
of mega-wealth’s imperial ambitions.
Decade after decade, American students say history is the
most boring subject in school. Perhaps
this would change if every history textbook began with Mark Twain’s observation
that “America’s flag should be a skull-and-crossbones,” and if parents and students
demanded to know why he said that, and teachers were sufficiently well-informed
to provide an honest answer.
The only sane and civil alternative to global capitalism
gone amok is democratic ecosocialism, wherein citizens are keenly attuned to
the lessons of history, respect and revere the biosphere, have ample time to
continue their self-education, and are well-schooled in the critical thinking
skills necessary to detect and refute sophistic speechifying.
A just society is committed to the well-being of all, and is therefore committed to egalitarian economics, universal healthcare, voluntary simplicity, free lifelong educational opportunity, preservation of natural resources, and a modest and well-tamed military overseen by “guardians” committed to peace.
Note from Kathie MM:
Pegean says, “”Joy is a form of resistance.” (Attributed to Maya Angelou)
Part One: Resurrecting the Wisdom and Spirit of Tom Paine, Mark Twain, Emerson, and Kurt Vonnegut
Future historians will write that, with all too few
exceptions, the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican
Party is the difference between neurotic and psychotic. They will show that America’s self-destruction
was caused primarily by three factors. 1)
A lack of viable multi-party pluralism. 2)
A lack of authentic education. 3) The
failure of the mainstream news media to inform, edify, enlighten.
Almost all mainstream news media in the USA exemplify
“fake news,” and this has long been the case. Their primary function is to ignorate, not
educate. That’s precisely why, for
example, Americans ended up with such viciously criminal presidents as Nixon, Ford,
Reagan, Bush, Cheney-Bush, and Trump, and why most American citizens remain
equally oblivious of the war crimes of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson,
Carter, Clinton, and Obama.
There is nothing in American history as unpatriotic as the
USA Patriot Act. And there is nothing in
recent American history as self-defeating as the overturning of the
Glass-Steagall Act and the passing of the Citizens United Act. Yet most Americans could neither date nor
explain these democracy-shredding events.
Americans are the most historically illiterate citizens in
the advanced industrial Western world.
They are products of an educational system almost wholly devoted to
ignoration. Right-wing religious and
neo-conservative radio and television have in recent decades made the problem
infinitely worse. Newt Gingrich and his
beloved bastard Rupert Murdoch institutionalized the postmodern quantum leap
into the vortex of political and news-media sophistry and lies.
Insofar as most teachers, politicians, journalists,
intellectuals and scientists fail to emphasize these points, they embody what a
modern philosopher calls “bullshit.” A kind of intellectual masturbation which,
along with omnipresent advertising, is the curse of the modern world. A self-imposed alienation from the catastrophic
lack of relevant insight that dominates what currently passes for “civilization.”
We face a quaternity from hell. Economic apartheid, another Great Depression,
ecological apocalypse, and nuclear holocaust.
What is to be done?
Commit to a life of voluntary simplicity and lifelong
self-education. Demand an end to the
American empire. Bring the troops home
and have them engage in ecological cleanup, reforestation, infrastructure
repair, and the nation-wide building of solar panels, windmills, and recycling
centers.
Promote discussion of universal health care and progressive taxation. Challenge the Pentagon budget. Support authentically progressive people and causes. Institute comprehensive and forceful regulation of the banking system. Educate about the nation-wide Savings and Loan institutions destroyed during the Reagan Administration. Become historically informed. Be the change you want to see in the world.
Vote in local as well as national elections, not least in
order to preserve sanity and virtue in local school boards.
Monitor your children’s education and teach them what they
are not learning in school, especially about modern American history and
imperialism since World War Two, and most especially about the wholly
unconstitutional and morally depraved House and Senate Un-American Activities
Committees in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the not-so-surreptitious
efforts of the Republican Party to bring them back to life.
And meanwhile spread the word: What we do to others and the
earth we do to ourselves.
Part One: YESTERDAY’S STORM AND TOMORROW’S RAINBOW
There is nothing stable in the world; uproar’s your only music. – John Keats
Fifty years after President
Eisenhower launched a multi-trillion dollar arms race with the Soviet Union,
the Cheney-Bush Administration (in a version of “the boy who cried wolf”) saw
fit to shout the greatest and most dangerous lie in American history, claiming
that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and repeating – day after day, week
after week, in the post-9/11 rush to vengeance and preemptive war – “Mushroom
cloud! Mushroom cloud! Mushroom cloud!”
Thus did Cheney-Bush – and their
cabal of Gingrichian sycophants, aided by a cheering mainstream news media –
bring to fruition the nightmare envisioned in Bob Dylan’s 1963 tour de force, “Masters of War.” Dylan sings, and the lyrics still resonate:
You’ve thrown the worst fear / that can ever be hurled:
fear to bring children / into the world.
In the dawning of the year 2019, it
remains to be seen whether President Donald Trump will also escape punishment
for his narcissistic and multitudinous lies, for his continuation of American
militaristic violence, and for his Reagan-Cheney-Bush-like crimes – economic
and ecological – against the American people and the planet.
In what Gore Vidal called “The
United States of Amnesia,” the Orwellian ignoration of the citizen population
continues unabated. For example:
I go to the store and buy some
stamps. The clerk hands me a packet. Each stamp has an American flag on it. In the lower left hand corner of each stamp
is written “USA Forever” – a truly insidious slogan. Nothing lasts forever. Not a season; not a life; not an empire. George Carlin said: “That’s why they call it
the American dream. You have to be
asleep to believe it.”
In 1821, John
Quincy Adams warned that America should not go abroad “in search of monsters to
destroy,” for in doing so, “she might become the dictatress of the world, [but]
she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
In the late 1890s, Mark Twain
witnessed America’s imperial acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the
Philippines in the Spanish-American war.
Twain responded with an observation not taught in school: “America’s
flag should be a skull-and-crossbones.”
Then he added: “America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at
home.” Adams and Twain understood that
empire and democracy are mutually exclusive.
Lyndon Johnson said in 1964 that he
did not want “a wider war” in Vietnam, even as he was lying about events in the
Gulf of Tonkin and planning the invasion that President Kennedy refused to
launch. Richard Nixon said he would
bring The Vietnam War to an early end with “peace and honor,” yet disgraced
himself with a heartless disregard for peace and an utter lack of honor,
becoming the first American president to resign from office.
Due to the lies and depredations of
Johnson and Nixon, the American people grew increasingly suspicious of their
political leaders. That distrust deepened
into cynicism when President George W. Bush’s claim – that Iraq had “weapons of
mass destruction,” which he then used as a pretext for war – proved to be an
outrageous lie. And now, alas, Donald
Trump inhabits the White House, proving once again that a Nixonian neurotic and
Bush-whacking ideologue can become the most powerful and most dangerous man in
the world.
Yet all is not lost, not hopeless,
not without redemptive possibilities.
Despite the forces of obstruction, the American landscape is filled with
a multitude of brave, inquisitive, vocal, active, dedicated justice-seekers and
peacemakers. They recognize that they
are not alone, that solidarity is our only hope, and that their collective
voice indicates something like A Renaissance of The Renaissance. They – We! – know who Tom Paine was, and why
he wrote “Common Sense” and “The Rights of Man.”
We know that John and Robert
Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed for their courage of conscience; and
because we refuse to let their lives and deaths be in vain, we carry the torch
they lit for a sane and better world. We
dare, with John Lennon, to Imagine. We
know that there are millions around the world who feel the same, and who are
also doing their part to bequeath to a new generation the world of peace and
beauty they deserve. Accordingly, we
shall not despair; we shall not relinquish hope; and we shall indeed do
whatever is necessary to restore America’s tarnished ideals to their once and
future glory, for the sake of all humanity, and for Mother Earth and all her
blessings.
Stefan Schindler
…………………….
Stefan Schindler is the co-founder of The National Registry
for Conscientious Objection; a Board Member of The Life Experience School and
Peace Abbey; and author of America’s
Indochina Holocaust: The History and Global Matrix of The Vietnam War. His forthcoming book is entitled Buddha’s Political Philosophy.