After six months of enduring this tragic but
preventable COVID-19 pandemic, there is still no national leadership. More than
200,000 Americans will die, and hundreds of thousands will suffer through the
disease process, and then continue to have debilitating symptoms long after.
Compare the response to how quickly our nation mobilized for war after less
than 3000 died on 9/11; war that we continue to fight in the Middle East and
Africa.
The inadequacies of our healthcare and public
health systems and the persistent shortages of equipment, supplies, hospital
beds and timely testing underscore the fact that military-related activities
are the highest priority of the U.S. government. Its 2020 military budget is
$738 billion. That’s over $84 million an hour for war. That’s where our tax
dollars go and that’s where the resources are—spread around the world to
intimidate and do harm, rather than good.
The President’s recent extravagant patriotic
speeches and ceremonies ignore the pandemic and instead, extol the virtues of
“law and order” and the largest military budget ever. Flyovers of fighter jets,
used as a way of showing appreciation to healthcare workers treating COVID-19,
demonstrates an effort to tie all aspects of our life, even this most desperate
public health situation, into the U.S. war culture. Obviously, the cost of
these nationwide military tributes and ceremonies, which is significant, could
have provided medicine, testing, facemasks, and other items that are still
desperately needed to help stem the spread of this disease. Perhaps these
expensive public relations stunts were an effort to distract us from the
government’s continuing failed leadership in handling the COVID-19 crisis.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if war was deemed a
non-essential activity, and our country focused instead on eliminating
healthcare disparities, systemic racism, aggressive policing, poverty, and
this heartbreaking pandemic. These are the things that are terrorizing
Americans.
On June 6, in Lisbon, 5000 people gathered in Alameda and marched down Almirante Reis Ave in a peaceful manner to protest against the killing of George Floyd and for the Black Lives Matter movement, remembering the portuguese victims of police brutality and racism since the 90’s. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Anita Braga
By Marc Pilisuk
So many of my white friends and I are anguished over the injustice of yet another Black man murdered by police. We find ourselves agreeing with Black Lives Matter that the strong and necessary response to the recent killings involves working not only for justice in these individual cases, but also for addressing the systemic racism underlying the repeated injustices.
Calls for system change must be more than slogans to which we nod our approval. The change must involve going beyond our comfort zone—affecting how we communicate with political leaders and friends about the types of change needed, and impressing on them how urgent our efforts are. Even if we can prevent the imminent destruction to the planet posed by global warming and nuclear war, survival demands that we also work to build a more just society.
System change has many parts and provides many opportunities for involvement. A first step is to communicate to political leaders our dismay that a system providing greater funding for policing, criminalizing, and imprisoning people than for feeding, providing healthcare, and housing deprives people of dignity and healthy lives. We must also question why budgets for urban police provide military grade materials for surveilling and shooting protestors, when money for human social services is insufficient. In response to our own question, we must point out that this systemic misallocation of resources contributes to a bloated Defense Department budget that bolsters authoritarian governments that neglect the needs of their own people.
To take that first step, you can phone the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to obtain contact information for elected officials. You can send the same message to candidates for office and as op-eds or letters to local media. For example, you can recommend forming a nonpartisan group of experts to confront the legacy of slavery and racism in the U.S. and propose ways forward, as proposed by Representative Barbara Lee
A second action involves assisting community organizations to speak with a larger megaphone by joining together. Several groups across the country are working hard to promote racial justice in our systems, amplify Black voices, and rid our country of an implicit caste system. If you’re able to do so, you can help by splitting a donation among organizations such as these, Reclaim the Block, Movement for Black Lives, Black Visions Collective, and Violence in Boston, as recommended by Senator Elizabeth Warren.
In addition, an important step we can all take is to examine the often unnoticed ways in which our own actions may unwittingly impede the needed change from a racist society to a more just and fair society. There are ways to be more reflective and to be more active in addressing racism in sectors of our personal lives, in schools, in work situations, and within families. A well thought out compilation of resources specifically for anti-racism work can be found here.
This is a lightly edited post originally published by Dr. Pilisuk on the discussion group of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility, of which he is a member.
Closeup of page from a draft of Eisenhower’s farewell address, January 17, 1961. In the public domain.
Politics is about the “distribution” of power;
Power is the capacity to effect “change” through control and domination of power sources and distribution;
“Asymmetric” distributions of power risk abuses of individual, group, and nation rights, privilege, and choice;
“Governance” constitutes a structure, organization, and process for monitoring, distributing, and sustaining power;
Vertical “governance” structures and processes are subject to abuse via hierarchical concentrations of power;
Societal population sectors with disproportionate wealth, privilege, and position can establish power “hegemony” (i.e., excessive self-serving influences);
“Hegemonic” power sanctions use of “force” both to maintain control, dominance, and influence, and to preserve the status quo favoring power bases;
“Force” options used by those in power include violence, war, “total” war, assassination, false flags, propaganda, deceit, character defamation, and assassination;
“Absolute” power may be invested in a dictator, secret government, established government-military-corporate-media-educational complex, and/or cabals of undemocratic sources;
“Absolute” power corrupts “absolutely;”
All forms of power corruption result in asymmetric distribution of rights, privileges, and opportunities;
Power corruption is evident in cronyism, bribery, favoritism, secrecy, advantage, force, nepotism, tribalism, and excessive wealth accumulation;
“Absolute” power does not yield readily to public criticism, disapproval, or condemnation;
Legal, ethical, constitutional, and moral codes of power distribution are often “biased” in favor of those in power, resulting in “injustice;”
Power “injustice” abuses result in reactive and compensatory uses of “force” by victims of “injustice,” including protests, rebellion, violence, and “allegations” and “accusations” of “terrorism.”
“Non-violence” protests are the best choice among victims seeking redress from power abuses. If this non-violence fails to effect change, other forms of violent redress may be pursued by those dissatisfied by continued victimhood.
“Injustice,” associated with power asymmetries, can be changed and neutralized by transparency, accountability, and equality among power sources;
Inherited power sources are among the most egregious power abuses. These familial sources of power often continue generations of offense, and should be subject to public legal, ethical, and moral scrutiny and appraisal;
Understanding and acceptance of assumptions about politics, power, and perils of power are essential requirements for citizenship;
Liberation education, theology, psychology, and philosophy assertions and proposals, expressed eloquently in the work of pioneers, including Paulo Friere, Ignacio Martin-Baro, and Martin Luther King, Jr., contesting the sanctioning of power by corrupt national and international sources.
If trust in governance is lost or abandoned because of power abuses, governance purpose, meaning, and “integrity” are subject to remediation;
Integrity must be a guiding arbiter of individuals, groups, or nations involved in the distribution of power;
Those elected to positions of power, based upon expressed political platforms and personal values, must be held to their expressions or should be compelled to resign on the basis of deceit, betrayal, and immoral election abuses;
Terrorism, by and among terrorist individuals, groups, and/or nations, must be contextualized within a framework of mal-distribution and abuses of power.
I offer these 24 assumptions regarding politics, power, and peril to promote both public-forum and education-setting discussion and debate. World populations have now consciousness of the consequences of power asymmetries, especially preservation of entrenched financial interests through endless wars and military occupations by cabalistic Western powers. Cui Bono?
Throughout our world, civil, national, and international strife and struggle abound. Lies, deceit, and propaganda flood our minds, seeking acquiescence, submission, and control. At stake are anachronistic actions and ideologies of colonization, imperialism, and empire.
Tragically, these century-old disgraceful remnants remain and thrive amid government-corporate-military-media-education complexes. This anachronistic complex must be considered a “fascistic” concentration of power, seeking to homogenize populations for control, domination, and exploitation.
Institutions (i.e., religion, education, government, commerce, and media) created to support and preserve equality, justice, and opportunity, are now sources of human and natural peril. We stand and fall at the cusp of the world’s destruction, seemingly oblivious to tragic unfolding events, and helpless in our efforts to address them.
There are a score of hot wars occurring (e.g., Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Congo, Sudan, Nigeria, Israel-Palestine), dozens of failed states (e.g., USA, Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, Pakistan), numerous examples of starvation, famine, and poverty (e.g., Somalia, Congo, Sudan, USA, Ethiopia, Libya).
Concerns for these situations have been spoken and written before, in both flawed and aspired documents seeking to improve the human condition. Perhaps we all need reminding of the Declaration of Independence, USA Constitution, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Gettysburg Address, Magna Carta, Sermon on the Mount, and all eloquent and inspiring words offered by gifted and courageous seekers of peace and justice.
What happened? Idealism lost! Connections denied! Solidarity mocked! History forgotten!
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
May 11, 2017
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Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Emeritus Professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa Campus in Honolulu, Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 21 books and more than 300 articles, tech reports, and popular commentaries. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 15 May 2017. Reprinted with author’s permission.
