Tag: Michael Parenti

TO ENGAGE OR NOT TO ENGAGE – THAT IS THE QUESTION

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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.

Growing into The Spirit of The Sixties

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Stefan Schindler with John Lennon collage

by Stefan Schindler

In my early childhood – born just north of San Francisco, and fresh from two years in England – I spent four years in Texas, then one in Alabama, unconsciously absorbing from both states a culture of racism and American superiority.

Then the family moved to Japan, where I spent three years absorbing a new culture, and, subconsciously, an alternative worldview. It changed my life, and I shall be forever grateful. When the family moved from Japan to Pennsylvania, I was shocked to discover fellow students who had never been out of their home state. I was like a visitor from the moon.

My formal education continued to be mostly ignoration, but the year was 1960, just in time for me to grow into The Spirit of The Sixties. As I  watched The Beatles evolve into Peacemakers, coinciding with my college years, I began to realize just how brainwashed I had been.

My father, a bomber pilot in World War Two, was a career officer in the U.S. Air Force, rising through the ranks to become a Lieutenant Colonel. Hence our family’s many moves around the country and the world. Hence also my military upbringing.

When I entered Dickinson College in 1966, I joined ROTC (and its elite “Pershing Rifles” group). I quit after six weeks, having been ordered to do this and that my entire life, and now, in college, finally free from my father’s commanding influence, and joyfully participating more and more in the anti-establishment counter-culture revolution.

By my senior year at Dickinson, 1970, while President Nixon continued The Vietnam War, I was a member of S.D.S – Students for a Democratic Society – and with fellow peacemakers disrupting ROTC drill performances on the football field, and, more importantly, marching in peace demonstrations outside the gates of the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, just a few blocks from Dickinson.

After graduate school, post-1975,  I embarked upon a self-education program, leading to my further political awakening, a new appreciation for Mark Twain and William James as members of The Anti-Imperialism League, and the writing of my book, America’s Indochina Holocaust: The History and Global Matrix of The Vietnam War.

Now, just about a year from 2020, I see The United States of Amnesia failing to learn the lessons of history, and increasingly becoming a high-tech version of Plato’s cave, governed by plutocracy, divided more and more by economic apartheid, and careening toward ecological apocalypse, nuclear war, and another Great Depression. John Lennon was right – “We are led by lunatics.”

Fortunately, the spirit of Emerson, James, and Twain lives on in the activism, writings and wisdom of people like H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, I. F. Stone, Martin Luther King, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, John Pilger, John Prados, Dan Ellsberg, the Berrigan brothers, Molly Ivins, Howard Zinn, Bertrand Russell, Amy Goodman, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Victor Wallis, Naomi Klein, Lewis Lapham, Thich Nhat Hann, Sulak Sivaraksa, the Dalai Lama, Vandana Shiva, and so many others.

Like Maya Angelou, I know “Why The Caged Bird Sings.” I know that the meaning of life is learning and service. And I give thanks for friends like Toni Snow and Lewis Randa, who help me keep the faith and keep on truckin’, as a Compassionate Peacemaker and global citizen, committed to Universal Brother-Sisterhood.

Note from Kathie MM: Please share with people on your email lists Stefan’s inspiring story of his journey to peace activism-and send us your own story for publication on engaging peace. Many families, many communities, include peace activists who go about the business of making the world a safer more just and human place. Share the stories. 

 

CRAZY WISDOM

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By Stefan Schindler

 Do you occasionally feel that you’re about to go crazy? Or think that perhaps you already have? Do you often feel like Don Quixote, vainly tilting at windmills? Yes, probably. But then you remember the meaning of the term Greater Fool. A Greater Fool is one who exhibits greatness in commitment to peace, no matter how foolish that commitment seems in a world intent on going mad.

You remember that you are not alone. You have comrades. Millions of brothers and sisters equally committed to kindness and compassion. They too are Greater Fools, like Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Romero, Tolstoy, Emerson, Tagore. Like Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, Dorothy Day, Helen Keller, Vandana Shiva, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein. Like Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali. Like Mark Twain, William James, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn. Like Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton, George Fox, Matthew Fox, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama. Like Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Susan Sarandon, the Trung sisters of Vietnam. Like Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. John and Robert Kennedy, too. Greater Fools, one and all.

And, yes, The Beatles. “All you need is love,” they sang, and you hum it every day. War without end seems to be the world’s way, and yet you never cease to chant, “Give peace a chance.” The Statue of Liberty weeps. Mother Earth is crucified. Storm clouds darken the horizon. And yet you sing: “Here comes the sun.” Yes, I am you, you are me, and we are all the walrus. We have each other. We keep the faith. We persevere.

Chogyam Trungpa, combining Tibetan Buddhism and Zen, called it Crazy Wisdom. So, yes, it’s OK to be a little crazy, as long as your craziness is that of the Greater Fool. Humanity may elect lunatics for leaders, and go about their business sleepwalking through history. Yet you, at least, are awake. Indeed, you are part of The Great Awakening. You belong to The Global Peace Abbey. It welcomes all and has no walls. We are warriors for peace, on the cutting edge of evolution. There is no greater satisfaction, no greater joy, no greater service.

So rejoice, my friend. The angels sing your praises, and lend you unconditional support. The reward for service is increased opportunity to serve.

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

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Mark Twain. In the public domain.

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.