Ronald Reagan – Engaging Peace

TO ENGAGE OR NOT TO ENGAGE – THAT IS THE QUESTION

Posted on January 9, 2019March 9, 2021 by kathiemm

_{San Francisco protesters of the U.S. immigration ban hold signs reading “Imagine All The People” and “People For Peace”. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Pax Ahimsa Gethen}

Part Two: BREAKING THE CHAINS OF ILLUSION

by Stefan Schindler

Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

How do wars start? Politicians lie to journalists, then believe what they read.

Karl Kraus

The battles of the Sixties may someday come to seem merely an early skirmish in a conflict whose dimensions we have yet to grasp.

Mike Marqusee

President Donald Trump makes a telling point when he refers to the mainstream news media as “fake news.” There’s a lot of truth in his accusation, the dimensions of which ought to be honestly explored. Behold: those dimensions have indeed been explored, with awesome authenticity and shocking revelations, by Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Lewis Lapham, and Noam Chomsky, all of whom ought to have won a Nobel Peace Prize and a Pulitzer Prize for Literature. They have long been denied such recognition. Had their insights been widely discussed in the U.S. “marketplace of ideas,” Nixon, Reagan, Cheney-Bush and Trump would never have risen to the heights of power.

The elephantiastical lies of the Republican Party – for example: American-trained death squads in Central America are “freedom fighters;” Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons; global warming is a “liberal hoax;” mega-tax-breaks for the mega-rich will make everybody happy and secure – such lies too often succeed thanks to a criminally complicit Democratic Party, a mainstream news media owned by a handful of Republican oligarchs, an historically illiterate citizen population who (in Noam Chomsky’s astute observation) “don’t know they don’t know,” and an educational system designed primarily to ignorate, manipulate, stupefy and confuse.

When President Trump slings his accusation of “fake news” at American journalists – usually exempting the Fox News Network owned by right-wing Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch, and championed by Newt Gingrich – he only does so in order to lie about his lies.

And why not? It worked for Ronald Reagan, who turned “liberal” into a dirty word, perpetuating the myth of America’s “liberal media.”

That Gingrich and Murdoch succeeded in turning American political discourse into a poisonous swamp is largely the fault of the traditional American mainstream news media, which perpetuates the ignoration that is the primary function of American education.

Thomas Jefferson recognized the problem, noting: “A country cannot long remain ignorant and free.” American citizens have lost more freedoms than they know, thanks to the most unpatriotic act in American history: the post-9/11 Congressional passing of the unread 340 pages of the Cheney-Bush “USA Patriot Act.”

Democracy cannot survive the shredding of civil rights, nor can it long endure sophistry and deception. It might be worthwhile, then, to pause a moment to reflect upon the words truth and trust. In his book On the Meaning of Human Being, Richard Oxenberg notes:

The English word ‘truth’ is related to the Middle English ‘troth,’ whose principal meaning is ‘trust’ (to be-troth someone … is to enter into a relation of trust ….) A truthful account, then, is one that is maximally trustworthy. … That Plato had [such an] understanding of truth is evident from his association of the true and the good. [The true is good – has maximal value – because it is worth our trust.]

To restore truth and trust in American social discourse and electoral politics, it is necessary to oppose the Weapons of Mass Dysfunction – deception, distortion, distraction – employed by the National Security State to bind its citizens with chains of illusion.

Let us give profound thanks that progress toward honesty and enlightenment is now being made. Although fraught with danger, and subject to abuse, the internet has nevertheless become a major instrument for awakening, as evidenced by websites like Common Dreams, Political Animal Magazine, and Engaging Peace.

This is a timely breakthrough in communication, enhancing solidarity among peacemakers and justice-seekers in the present conflict-ridden crucible of history.

John Le Carre provides context:

In our supposed ideological rectitude, we sacrificed our compassion to the great god of indifference. We protected the strong against the weak, and we perfected the art of the public lie. We made enemies of decent reformers and friends of the most disgusting potentates. And we scarcely paused to ask ourselves how much longer we could defend our society by these means and remain a society worth defending.

Having been betrayed by a corrupt political system, we are now in the early stages of America’s third Civil War. The second Civil War was embodied in The Spirit of The Sixties, when the civil rights and anti-war movements – quietly but greatly aided by Harry Belafonte and Marlon Brando – coalesced into an anti-establishment revolution, emphasizing peace, justice, gender rights, Earth Day, holistic health, nuclear disarmament, egalitarian economics, and authentically edifying education.

The Reagan counter-revolution succeeded in crushing that national outburst of activism, hope, and pragmatic idealism. It was aided in doing so by the pseudo-liberal wing of the Democratic Party, embodied in the Trilateral Commission, which in 1975 published The Crisis of Democracy. The crisis? Citizen activism in the body politic, hoping to influence a government supposedly “of, by, and for the people.” Citizen participation in the functioning of democracy was, and still is, considered outrageous by what C. Wright Mills called “the power elite.”

Yet citizen activism was the origin and impetus for the American Revolution; for the anti-slavery “abolitionist” movement; for the women’s-right-to-vote “suffragette” movement; and for the 1960s and 1970s anti-war and civil rights movements. Today, with an echo of Thomas Paine’s “these are the times that try men’s souls,” citizen insistence on a just society remains our only hope for democracy, peace, and ecological sanity.

To engage or not to engage in self-education, global citizenship, and active resistance to the forces of mega-wealth and tyranny – that is the question which every citizen now faces, and upon which the future of our children and grandchildren depends.

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.

FROM DARKNESS AT NOON TO THE GLOW OF HOPE, Part 1

Posted on July 9, 2018 by kathiemm

A Female demonstrator offers a flower to military police on guard at the Pentagon during an anti-Vietnam demonstration. Arlington, Virginia, USA. Oct 21, 1967. In the public domain. Author: S.Sgt. Albert R. Simpson.

The Tragic Triumph of the Reagan Counter-Revolution

Against The Spirit of the Sixties, Now Counterbalanced by

the Rekindling of Candles in the Wind

by Stefan Schindler

The 1960s were a time of hope in America and the world. A time of questioning and protest. A renaissance of The Renaissance. The blossoming of a counter-culture committed to peace, freedom, and creative expression.

The Spirit of The Sixties carried over into the 1970s. America and the world saw the continuation and growth of the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the environmental movement; and, of course, the feminist protest against sexism, perhaps best captured in the bumper sticker: “Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition.”

Alas, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, as were the leaders of the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement.

Richard Nixon was elected president twice; then Gerald Ford pardoned him for crimes against humanity.

Jimmy Carter was convinced by his national security adviser to start a covert war against the newly elected social democratic government of Afghanistan, which led to a Russian counter-intervention, which led to America’s creating, funding, and arming of Al Qaeda.

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party saw citizen activism as a “crisis of democracy.” Ronald Reagan applauded American-financed terrorists as “freedom fighters,” and launched the Bush-whacking of FDR’s socialist inspired “New Deal” for the American people.

Bush The First continued Reagan’s attack on America’s middle class and poor, as well as continuing Reagan’s wars abroad, saying, after America shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 civilians, including 66 children: “I will never apologize for America, I don’t care what the facts are.”

Newt Gingrich, in one of history’s greatest ironies, was elected Speaker of the House, successfully championing lies, insults, and divisive sophistry as the road to power during the failed presidency of Bill Clinton, whose Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, said that half a million dead Iraqi children from American bombings and sanctions was “a small price to pay” for freedom, although Iraq was in fact no threat to America’s national security, and Saddam Hussein had long been Ronald Reagan’s favorite dictator.

The Cheney-Bush administration lie-launched America’s Second Vietnam War, this time in the Middle East, convincing Congress to pass the least patriotic legislation in American history, called “The USA Patriot Acts.”

Obama wasted eight years compromising, betraying his base, and succumbing to a cowardice of conscience that made possible the tragic triumph of a new Trumpeting of racism, sexism, militarism, economic apartheid, and fanatical pseudo-patriotism.

Recalling Jeremiah’s warning that “Ye shall reap the whirlwind,” I’m reminded of another bumper sticker: “God is coming; and, boy, is She mad.”

I Pray Daily to Awaken from the Nightmare of History (James Joyce) Part 2

Posted on June 25, 2018March 9, 2021 by kathiemm

by Stefan Schindler

During America’s conquest of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, Mark Twain declared: “America’s flag should be a skull and crossbones.”

More recently, Martin Luther King reminded us: “Wealth, poverty, racism, and war – these four always go together.” To these four we should also add the pervasive presence of political sophistry, now culminating in the tragic triumph of the Reagan counter-revolution against The Spirit of The Sixties.

Masters of mind control, the puppeteers at the apex of world power continue to steer the planet toward economic collapse, ecological apocalypse, and nuclear holocaust. Decades ago, Noam Chomsky published an essay on “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” to address these questions, thus echoing Bertrand Russell, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley. In Orwell’s words: “History is more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”

The reason we are now collectively sliding back toward medieval barbarism – supported by evangelical voters of whom Jesus is ashamed – is simple. In Michael Parenti’s words: “The rich are never satisfied. They want it all. If you know that, and nothing else, you still know more than all those people who know everything else, but not that.”

Recalling Plato’s cave parable, Howard Zinn observed: “The truth is so often the opposite of what we are told that we can no longer turn our heads around far enough to see it.” Chomsky adds the Socratic twist: “The problem is not that people don’t know; it’s that they don’t know they don’t know.” And the problem is exacerbated by the moral and intellectual cowardice of most teachers in American public, private, and higher education, dazed and confused by their own historical illiteracy, and unable to comprehend George Santayana’s prescient warning that “those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

When perpetual kindness is met with constant and increasing cruelty, it’s time for some righteous ferocity. Even Jesus chased the money-changers out of the temple; and he likely did it with a bull-whip, since he knew that merely saying “please” was utterly futile. Yes, peace begins with us; and peace and justice sometimes require a ferocious roar, like the late-life speeches of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

To paraphrase Michael Parenti: It is better to swim against the current than to be swept over the cliff.

As Victor Wallis notes in his book Red-Green Revolution, the long overdue and most effective solution to our social and global crisis is the merger of resistance movements into a unified force, because this is what it will take to overcome the lunacy of those in power.

America desperately needs a news media no longer subservient to the dominant corporate elite; just as it desperately needs a civic discourse informed by informed citizens. Meanwhile, it is well to remember that individual innocence is no protection from collective responsibility.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, CONCLUSION

Posted on January 1, 2017 by kathiemm

by Stefan Schindler

To paraphrase George Santayana: Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Not only is America the most militarized and largest debtor country in the world, it remains the only technologically advanced country lacking universal health care and still clinging to the death penalty.

Since 1985, middle class income in Germany has risen five times faster than middle class income in America. German workers have two months paid vacation per year; guaranteed, taxpayer financed, universal health care; and a higher quality, more egalitarian national education system than America, with generous funding for the arts.

Meanwhile, among the advanced industrial nations of the world, America has one of the highest infant mortality rates, the highest percentage of citizens in prison, and more than 40 million American families deprived of health insurance (a number recently mitigated by Obamacare).

In addition to his militarization and deficit spending, Ronald Reagan’s most profound domestic legacy was the vast expansion of two segments of the American population: billionaires and the homeless.

Instead of being the most militarized, debt ridden, fundamentalist, stupefied, historically illiterate, consumer driven, energy gulping, empire building, sports and celebrity obsessed, advertising drenched, and dangerous nation in the world today, the U.S.A. could, as it once was, be a beacon of hope.

This could easily be accomplished by instituting: a four-day work week, a five-hour work day, universal health care, affordable child care, guaranteed economic security and a living wage, taxpayer-financed life-time educational opportunity, global interfaith dialogue, nuclear disarmament, demilitarization, democratic pluralism with multi-party choice, supremely well-paid full-time teachers across the educational spectrum, a sane and modest teacher-student ratio in classrooms, the teaching of real history instead of mythic mush, the de-monopolization of the media, the “greening” of ecological sustainability, and vastly increased funding for the arts in schools and beyond, with daily street fairs and festivals for everybody and time enough to enjoy them.