The Monsters of Unreason

Critical thinking, Death of Truth, Vaccines

 

The Spanish painter Goya labelled one of his paintings with this caption: “The Sleep of Reason brings forth monsters.” I think that is a profound statement that is deeply true. That has become extremely important during the pandemic. It is my belief that in the United States in particular, but including many other countries, it has become painfully obvious that reason has gone to sleep and we have had to suffer the consequences.  We don’t have to look any further than the refusal to use vaccines by millions of people even after the scientific evidence and real-world evidence made it overwhelming clear, that the best chance we had to combat Covid-19 was to take the vaccines. There were no good reasons not to take vaccines in almost all cases. Yet people resisted.  Why was that?

 

I have been talking about the sleep of reason since my second post in this blog. That was long before the pandemic. I was concerned that many people, particularly in the United States, have forsaken evidence-based decisions making, critical reasoning, and thinking obsolete in favor of faith, hunches, feelings, instincts, and ultimately conspiracy theories. It seemed people prefer living in FantasyLand to the real boring world of truth and facts.  Some call this a “post truth world” as it seemed people no longer cared about truth. I believed this was a dangerous development.

 

I have been amazed that it could happen in the United States home to the finest universities and scientists in the world. How could this have happened? In previous posts I have tried to explain why I think this happened. This was a pandemic of unreason long before anyone heard of Covid-19.  Since then, this disease has been delivered to us in high-def and there are no vaccines to save us or mitigate the harms. We just have to suffer. And we are suffering from the monsters of unreason.

Those monsters of unreason are still lurking and are more dangerous than ever

Critical thinking, Freedom, Vaccines

Freedom

 

The first word Carol Off tackles in her book At a Loss for Words, is the word I immediately thought of when I realized what her subject was. Off like me was appalled at how the word “freedom” has been repeatedly hijacked by diverse groups in their own personal interests, at the expense of truth. The one group that came top of mind to me was Canada’s truckers’ convoy and their allies around the country, including Steinbach. To them the word “freedom” has come to mean the capacity to do anything one wants no matter what the consequences to others. Any restraint, no matter how rational is considered an affront to freedom.

 

In Ottawa and across the country the truckers demanded release from the tyranny of government-imposed vaccine mandates, even after those mandates  had been largely eased, while they forgot about the fact that millions of lives had been amazingly protected by those vaccines from a novel virus that was threatening them even though the problems with the vaccines were miniscule to minute compared to the substantial benefits for the vast majority of people.

 

As Carol Off said, “They’ve attempted to repurpose the word for a political agenda that seeks to exclude anyone outside their tribe. For those who have truly escaped the iron hand of oppression, these freedom chants smack of privilege and historical revisionism.”

 

I think she nailed it.

 

The best Defense is our Mind

Authoritarianism, Books, Critical thinking, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Fascism, Tyranny and Fascism

 

When the capacity to think is destroyed, as it seems to have done in the United States, we must realize we have entered very dangerous waters filled with dangerous predators and we have no defenses. For example, in the wars of Yugoslavia people were driven by demagogues to attack their former friends and neighbours for the vital goal of ethnic cleansing. Sort of what Trump has done by claiming that illegal immigrants have poisoned the blood of the country.  We must always remember, as Carol Off makes clear in her book At a Loss for Words, that

 

“words are freighted with ideas. They carry meaning but also hide it. They inspire great acts of kindness and incite people to kill. We live in a moment…where we need to pay very close attention to the language around us—and the language we use—because it holds the secrets of what might be coming.”

 

 

We must always remember as Voltaire told us, “If someone can make you believe an absurdity, he can make you commit an atrocity.” If Trump can make you believe that the 2020 election was stolen against all the amazing amount of evidence to the contrary, he probably would be able to persuade you to attack immigrants with your bare hands. That is what might be coming.

 

Similarly, when Trump persuaded his followers that the rioters on January 6th were engaged in a love in, we must understand that his oratory was important. His words were important. As Carol Off explained,

 

“The January 6 insurrection provoked by the oratory of Donald Trump demonstrated the connection between words and actions and revealed the darkest qualities of this threat: that the language that Trump and his supporters shared is coded. Everyone in the crowd knew what the outgoing president meant when he told the mob that they needed to “save America” and “fight like hell,” just like …that Serbian politician meant when he said that Christians and Muslims could no longer share the same space. What we saw in Bosnia during the war, in the UK during Brexit, and in the United States during Trump’s speeches is the power of demagogues to speak to people in the language of fear, uncertainty, and anger using rhetoric to break down our trust in our governments, our societies, and each other. Our only defence is language that’s clear, rational and unambiguous.”[2]

 

I would summarize these thoughts as follows: our only defence is our ability to think critically. If we lose that we are sunk.

 

We can’t Speak anymore

Books, Critical thinking, Decline of the west, Extremism, Hate

 

I did not realize it but Carol Off the former host of CBC’s long running talk show As it Happens on his radio network, and the author of a very good book, At a Loss for Words: Conversation in an Age of Rage, has a lot of wise things to say about words. Words and our inability to use them properly. In this respect she follows in the path of that great English writer George Orwell. Of course, Off has experience as she was employed by the CBC for many years to talk to people around the world 5 days a week. She knows how to have conversations from personal experience, not just book-learning.

 

Off points out that in our current age, which she calls, not without justification, ‘The Age of Rage,’ it has become very difficult to hold rational conversations.  People don’t want to talk anymore. They want to yell instead. She believes the reason for that is that our lives have been taken over to a significant extent by extremists.  It often seems like only the extremists get to speak. Only extremists have platforms. The rest of us have to suck socks.  Off put it this way:

 

…we have become incapable of talking to each other. The language we once shared has been co-opted by extremists and we’re reduced to barking and snapping. It’s not just that we dispute what path to take; we no longer agree on the meaning of the words that define our destination. I’m not saying we should be of one collective mind about anything, but surely, we need the vocabulary to coherently disagree, to negotiate our way to some rational understanding, with reasonable  people on all sides. Without an embrace of a shared and logical discourse, we can’t even agree on the facts. Without facts we can’t hope to conclude what is true, and without truth we lose trust. This is not a good position to be in as the planet burns.

 

In the current era, much of the power of words has been unleashed by the power of algorithms that encourage rage, fear and hate because they attract engagement on the internet and multiply its power. Masters of harnessing such language include people like Donald Trump. He knows that by turning  people such as immigrants and Muslims and foreigners into objects of hatred people will pay attention to him. That is how demagogues take power. They are able to persuade ordinary people that they need a strongman, like Hitler, Mussolini, or Trump to control the rabble and bring them peace. Lately this is what is happening on the streets of Minneapolis. Recently, on PBS broadcasting who are working hard to listen to all points of view, they interviewed an intelligent right-wing commentator who really believed that Donald Trump was a moderating voice in Minneapolis bringing peace to quell the rabble.

Words are dynamite in the age of rage. And dynamite is dangerous.

 

 

At a Loss for Words

Books, Critical thinking, Extremism, Hate

There is a book I want to recommend. It was written by Carol Off who was for many years, the host of CBC radio’s As it Happens. I listened to it many times but never thought of her as an author. My bad. She is an excellent writer.

 

By now it is clear to everyone that we are living in an age of hate and political rage. Really, it is an age of extremism. Carol Off in her book At a Loss for Words: Converstaon in an Age of Rage,  nailed the problem on the head:

 

“The political rage that has engulfed us is exhausting, rendering us almost incapable of rational conversations. But that’s the intent of those who are fuelling it.”

In many ways it really is a book about extremism–one of the plagues of the modern world. Some say, the plague.

When we are consumed by rage truth becomes impossible. We are, as they say, blinded by rage, and that is exactly the problem. We lost the capacity to think. We only feel and what we mainly feel is rage. This is what the age of anger and rage is all about. Destroying our ability to think.

 

There is ample evidence in the language they use, that Americans and Canadians have lost the capacity to think. Here are some examples Carol offered up in her book:

 

“White men claim they are not privileged but persecuted. Politicians are devils, and some people disparagingly regard government—the system with which we organize our societies—as hell on earth.  One side insists liberals are really communists and the other argues that all conservatives are fascists. Teacher and librarians are alarmed to find themselves redefined as “groomers,” not to be trusted with children. “Feminist” is often hurled as an insult. After decades of struggling for dignity, queer is once again demonized. Words like antisemitism and genocide are used to shout down debate concerning Israel. Policies supporting social justice are branded as the cynical workings of the “deep state.”  And the climate crisis is vilified as a conspiracy to destroy our jobs and way of life.”

 

In her wonderful book, Off recognized that she could not possibly cover all cases of dead thought, so she selected some key words that she believed were hijacked, weaponized, or semantically bleached. She devoted a chapter to each of the following: Freedom. Democracy. Truth. Woke. Choice. Taxes.  An interesting list with some surprises, at least to me. But I assure you each chapter is interesting and worth the read.

Adding Life to the Death Penalty

Death Penalty, Social Issues, violence

 

It hasn’t been making a lot of news lately, amid all of the disarray in the United States, but Donald Trump has had, what The Guardian magazine called “a campaign to reinvigorate judicial killings” in that country. In 2025 in the United States 47 men and no women were executed for crimes.  That was almost double the previous year. That is also the highest number since 2009. Ed Pilkington in The Guardian used rather colourful language to describe it as “the greatest frenzy of capital punishment bloodletting in America since 2009.” The word “frenzy” seems a bit excessive to me.

 

Of course, we must remember, Obama was president in 2009. It was his first year in the presidency.  So if I want to blame Trump for 2025, and I do,  I must to be fair blame Obama for the executions in 2009. Obama, my favourite president, was also called “the deporter-in-chief.”. He also launched targeted assassinations by drones. He was no pansy when it came to killing. But he was no Trump either.

 

I am picking on Trump because he seems so keen on the official killings. On his first day of office in the second of his 2 terms as president he issued an executive order “restoring the death penalty.” I think he was referring to Biden who commuted the sentences of all but 3 convicted killers on death row in his last year as president.

 

Trump bragged about the change. He seemed to take glee in it. Just as he took glee in having his armed forces blast supposedly drug laden boats off the coast of Venezuela, invariably killing everyone on board.  Trump likes to show himself off as the tough guy, the strongman. What better way to do it than kill people?

 

Sister Helen Prejean, who is a well-known advocate for abolishing the death penalty and the author of Dead Man Walking on which the film by that name was based, described things in the US this way: “It’s in the air, it’s in the national rhetoric sent down from Trump—you use violence and cruelty to solve social problems.” That’s the point I want to make. America is a violent society. That does not mean everyone in that country is violent. Apparently 55% of Americans no longer support the death penalty. But violence this pervades America.  Killing people is still very popular—too popular in my view—in that country.

 

And of course, in America the killing cause is ably assisted by the very conservative US Supreme Court. Last year that court denied every request it received to stay an execution. Not one was granted. None, they thought, deserved mercy.

As if life in an American jail is mercy.

 

 

Why do Countries that Know Fascism Slip Back into Fascism?

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Death of Democracy, Fascism, Hungary, Populism, The Sleep of Reason, Tyranny and Fascism

 

 

During the entire time I was cruising through the Balkans along the Danube River I kept coming back to a question that was haunting me:  Why do so many countries that experienced fascism and know how awful it is, slip back into it?  You would think they know better and would avoid it, but so often they don’t.  Perhaps the best example of this is Hungary.  It was a long-time vassal state of the Soviet Union. Then for a very short time it was a genuine democracy. Yet it seems to be sliding back into fascism and some even suggest it has already gone all the way back. What happened and why?

 

After I got back to Canada without solving the problem on the trip, I heard an interview by Fareed Zakaria with a very interesting Bulgarian born political scientist, Ivan Krastev. Zakaria was interested in the same question as I was.  He put the question this way: “One of the biggest threats to liberal democracy these days comes from a region that was once considered its brightest horizon, Eastern Europe.” He, like me, was particularly interested in Hungary because of its sharp turn towards autocracy after Viktor Orbán was re-elected after losing his Parliamentary majority after the first election.

 

Krastev started said this:

 

“This is very interesting about the liberal revolutions. After every revolution, people were leaving the country. But normally this is the defeated party. This is the white Russians who left after the Bolshevik Revolution. After the liberal revolution of 1989, the first to leave with the liberals because they went immediately to study, to work, to live abroad. And suddenly the idea was that what they should do is to imitate the West.”

 

Every expected them to follow the west. The people who were left in Poland after Communism collapsed, just as in Hungary as well, were resentful that they were told by the political elites that were left, that they ought to copy the west. They were left out, just like non-college educated people in the United States, have felt left out by the liberal elites. And, as Friedrich Nietzsche knew, resentment is a very powerful emotion. Resentment is dynamite.

 

If they were expected to be like Germany, for example, then why not rather just go to Germany. No one likes to slavish follow someone else. They felt like losers. And as the American Democrats have learned the hard way, no one likes that.

 

Added to that, if the west won the war so conclusively, as it seemed, why did the “winners,” from the west leave the country? That is highly unusual, yet in so many of the former satellite countries, the liberals left the country, leaving a mess behind.

 

According to Krastev, after the fall of communism when the liberals were gone, the people were expected to imitate the west who won the cold war, but none of them wanted to do that. As Krastev said,

“But you know what? Imitation is not a fun business. If I’m imitating you, it means that I recognize that you are better than me. And then, if I’m imitating you, what about me? So, this resentment against imitation, in my view, was the reason why in eastern Europe, much earlier than in other parts, you have this kind of populist resentment saying, OK, you are not better than us.”

 

The pride of the people left out was hurt. Many of the people felt like they were looked down upon by the west and very much resented that.

Added to that, as Krastev  Orbán was a “very gifted politician”  who  could manipulate the system in Hungary so that the rules of the game would be rigged to ensure his election. For example, he made sure all of the media supported him. If they didn’t’ they lost their licences.  Trump has been threatening the same thing in the US and the threats have worked. As a result of all of this, the former Russian satellites became  more like Russia and eastern Europe than America, even though Russia lost the Cold War. And they are transforming the west to be more like Russia! And as if that is not weird enough, the American right-wing is making America more like Russia too. The world is topsy-turvy. Led in part—a large part—by Donald Trump.

 

Orbán could cleverly navigate that world so his victory would be ensured. That was more important to him than democracy. Trump was pretty good at that too

 

+2 + 2 = 5

American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Death of Truth, Fascism, Populism, Tyranny and Fascism

 

I had a surreal experience yesterday. First, I went for a walk in our new Events Centre in Steinbach. While I walked on the track, I listened to a podcast  on the topic of George Orwell and a film made about him by Raol Peck. who was interviewed on the podcast.

The podcast was very interesting, because George Orwell was very interesting. Orwell was a brilliant thinker and critic of totalitarianisms of both the left and the right. Peck had recently made a film about George Orwell and he called it 2 + 2 = 5. The title of the podcast is based on a scene where Winston was asked questions by his interrogator.  He was asked ‘what is 2 + 2 equal to?”  Winston replied, ‘4.”  The interrogator then asked what if the Big Boss says 2 + 2 =5? What would say? I would say ‘2 +2=4.’ Then he was promptly zapped with an electric shock. He was zapped often enough that he begged to say, 2 + 2 = 5.  That is how totalitarianism works. You believe what you are told to believe. At least, you profess to believe. The more absurd the belief you are persuaded to believe, the better. The Bigger the lie the better, as Adolf Hitler pointed out.

 

When I got home after my walk, I sat down and watched CNN news on TV  about a male  nurse being shot and killed in Minneapolis.  I was pooped and thought I was not hearing things right. I was hearing things right.

 

I.C.E. officers in Minneapolis in search presumably of dangerous illegal immigrants,  shot and killed a young man who was an American citizen and not an illegal immigrant. He was not the worst of the worst as Trump said they were after. He was a nurse in a Vet’s hospital.

 

The  male nurse had watched as I.C.E. officers were assaulting a woman and he, unwisely, but bravely, stepped in to help the woman. There were a large number of witnesses watching what happened. Many taped in on their phones. The I.C.E. agents repeatedly pushed the woman  and man back and then down to the ground. Presumably they were interfering with the officers arresting someone. Perhaps they just did not like being taped at work.

When the nurse, by the name of Pretti, stepped in the I.C.E. officers immediately transferred their attention to Pretti. Pretti was repeatedly shoved to the ground. The officers were extremely rough and belligerent. The men piled on top of Pretti. Really there was nothing that he could do. The agents were on top of him and he was pinned down. One of the agents then could be seen leaving the edge of the melee with what was clearly a gun in his hand. They had relieved Pretti of his gun.

 

Later I.C.E. officials claimed he had walked towards the agents with a gun. technically, that was true. He did have a loaded gun in his back pocket or pants but he never pulled it out. The only thing he waved around was his phone/camera.  Later we learned Pretti had a permit for the gun so was carrying it legally, and, as members of the American right-wing constantly remind us it is lawful for citizens to do so, even to protect themselves from government law enforcement official such as the I.C.E agents.

 

There was no sign of belligerence on the part of Pretti; only on the part of the officers.  About  one second later, after the gun was removed by the agent, a shot could be heard. It turned out one of the agents  shot Pretti while he was unarmed and pinned to the ground surrounded by burly masked I.C.E. agents. Pretti was already disarmed of his lawful weapon, when someone shot him.

As if that was not enough, within seconds there was a barrage of more shots by I.C.E. agents. CNN counted 9 further shots. All 10 shots were fired  after I.C.E. agents  had removed Pretti’s gun and there was no risk of harm to them. There was no need to shoot him once. Let alone 10 times. He was already totally disarmed.

 

All of this was highly disconcerting, but what happened next was even more disconcerting. Within hours Kristi Noem, the Secretary of  Homeland Security, the top position in the department, made a rushed statement saying Pretti had walked up to the agents aggressively with a gun.  In no time at all she figured out it was all his fault. Shortly after that, a few other senior members of the department quickly made other statements assuring us that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” who intended to harm the I.C.E. agents. No evidence of this was offered. We were told by department officials that he was a terrorist and the I.C.E agents who shot Pretti did so as a “defensive shooting.”

 

In other words, just as George Orwell had predicted 75 years ago, we were being told that “2 + 2 = 5”.

 

Here is what people learn when they are not allowed to believe that 2 + 2 =4: “War is Peace.”  “Freedom is slavery.” “Ignorance is strength.”

 

Orwell taught us about it 75 years ago and we did not listen. We did not think it was possible. Well now we know. It is not just possible. It is here and now.

As Orwell also said,

 

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful. And murder respectable ”

We don’t have to fear it. It is here staring us in the face Right now. From the TV set you and I have been watching. Here and Now. 2 + 2 = 5.