Personal Life back in the Bible Belt for Will Braun

Extremism, Polarization

 

Our facilitator for the course Christiane and I took at Canadian Mennonite University, as part of their outreach to old people, was Will Braun. He gave us his opinions of to live a modern life in a fractured and polarized society. And he encouraged us to make our own thoughts on the subject.

A few years ago he and his young family moved into the southern Manitoba Bible Belt where he really felt in some ways out of place, even though he grew up there.

 

 

Braun moved back to his old home town and wanted to live in the country a little bit off the grid. They wanted to do a little bit of farming. Alternative living, grow your own food and live a simple life. The rural dream. He thought it was difficult because he believed he and his family did not really fit in. Most people had different values than he and his family had. He said, “it was hard not to feel judgmental and somewhat isolated.”

 

They had worked hard building up their barn that became the centre piece of their new rural life. Then one day, that barn caught fire and to him it felt their “ethical high ground went up in smoke.” He knew the smoke going up was a high dose of greenhouse gas emissions. And they were left with a big pile of toxic garbage. Their life reduced to rubble. It tore Brown apart and it was a low point of his life.

 

But then one day, his neighbours showed up. He had “considerable difficulty” with some of those neighbours, but here they were with their equipment prepared to help. “They didn’t even want a thank you.”  It’s just what neighbours do, particularly in the country. One guy he had trouble with brought him bales, without being asked. Braun began to see these people were not one sided. They were rounded, full, and complex. Not need for treating them like card board cutouts. Polarization had not place here. They were good people, even if not perfect. It did not matter that they have very conservative views. It was good.

 

Here was the arrival of contradiction, as O’Donoghue called it. Braun thought he had some things figured out, and these people were not part of that answer. Yet here they were. He still thinks these people had some things wrong, that he had right. This is a strongly held viewpoint. But he could not dismiss these people or write them off or think that somehow he was better than that. That was not possible.

 

Here Will Braun was feeling low, and vulnerable, and beat up, and he had to deal with big contradiction. This was the fundamental contradiction: People are good and bad at the same time. Just like me. It was no more complicated than that. And as well, Braun had to understand what O’Donoghue said, “It is sometimes in the most unusual places that you discover the gift of the beautiful.” For Braun, the arrival of contradiction was a precious arrival, just as O’Donoghue said it was.

The Gentle Revolution.

Extremism, Moral Humility, Rebel, Revolution

 

Will Braun always meandered towards the gentle. That, largely, is what I liked so much about the talks he facilitated with us at Canadian Mennonite University. He avoided the extremes. He was a gentle man. And he did it largely without preaching.  He reminded me of what I knew about Vaclav Havel and his velvet revolution. I always admired Havel too.

 

Havel was part of the amazing revolution in Czechoslovakia that brought down the mighty Soviet Empire that seemed invincible and it seemed it would last forever. Then for 11 days from November17 to 28 1989 the people in Czechoslovakia resisted that immense one-party government. The one party was of course the Communist Party that was backed by the Communist party in Russia. In 11 days the 41-year single party government collapsed largely without bloodshed. How was that possible?

 

The 1989 event triggered a series of anti-Communist demonstrations.  The people had basically never demonstrated against communist rule.  The government was just too powerful.  At least until it wasn’t.  On November the group of protesters swelled from 200,000 the previous day to 500,000. People feared the worst, but did not relent.  On November 24, 1989 the entire group of communist leadership resigned.  On November 27, 1989 a two-hour general strike was held. It involved nearly all working people in Czechoslovakia.

It was a remarkable non-violent revolution. It came to be called the Velvet Revolution. In those 11 days The world saw (and soon forgot) how powerful a non-violent revolution could be. The communist party gave up its monopoly on power. The barbed wire fences at the borders with West Germany and Austria came down. An interim government was appointed and actually resigned after elections were held in 1990. Czechoslovakia peacefully split into 2 countries the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic when the 2 major ethnicities did not get along well. But they negotiated it. Warfare was not necessary. In part that was because they had strong leaders. Havel was a strong leader, not like so many of our current leaders who  boast about being  strong leaders but have no idea how to be one.

Václav Havel was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992. He really did not want to be a political leader. He wanted to be a writer more. He agreed to be a leader  for only a few years. He was a true statesman.

On New Years Day, in 1991 he gave a wonderful short speech in which he expressed a few very interesting ideas. He said wanted a new type of politics—one based on morality. What a crazy idea? He said his country would have to learn that new type of politics. He said,

“politics does not have to be the art of the possible, especially if this means the art of speculating, calculating, intrigues, secret agreements, and pragmatic maneuvering, but that it also can be the art of the impossible, that is the art of making both ourselves and the world better.”

 

In that speech he also considered what his country had most to fear. He said, “Our worst enemy today is our own bad qualities—indifference to public affairs, conceit, ambition, selfishness, the pursuit of personal advancement, and rivalry—and that is the main struggle we are faced with.”  He then concluded his remarks by telling his countrymen about the upcoming free election which he referred to as a battle,  and urged  his people like this: “Let us not allow that battle to sully the still clean face of our gentle revolution….”

 He did not want a battle of the extremes. He wanted a gentle revolution. He was a man of humility. He knew how powerful the powerless could be a called it The Power of the Powerless.

We need more leaders like that. We don’t need those who are filled with bombast.

Taylor Sheridan: The Wolf

Movies

 

 

 

Taylor Sheridan is a great writer.  He has written many very successful films and TV series. Probably his most well-known is the series Yellowstone. But he written many.  They are all interesting.

 

Sheridan likes to play with ideas in his art. I like such stories. I find ideas very exciting. I think many people feel that way, although many of them don’t realize it. They think they like action, and they do, but they also like action spiced with ideas.  Ideas is part of what attracts people to the films of Taylor Sheridan. Not just violence or action.

 

Sheridan’s earlies film which attracted fa lot of favourable attention was called Sicario.  It was an action film. I admit it; I loved it. In that film, Alejandro Gillick was played by Benicio del Toro. He was a very tough former Mexican prosecutor turned CIA assassin.

 

In the film he has a chilling conversation with  Kate Macer, an idealistic FBI officer played by Emily Blunt. Kate was an officer from Chandler Arizona, near where Christiane and I spent nearly a decade of winters a few years ago. That made it more chilling to me when I saw the film.

 

Alejandro tells Kate, “You should move to a small town near to where the rule of law still exists. You will not survive here. You are not a wolf. And this is the land of wolves now.”

 

Sheridan is full of ideas like that. I don’t agree with all of them. That’s for sure. I don’t agree that the rule of law exists only in small towns. Or that all morality which exists does so only in small towns. Such an idea is attractive to Sheridan. It is repeated many times in his films. His idea is repeated ad nauseum in one of his latest series The Madison. I don’t believe all the wolves are in the cities. That is an illusion. To some it is a comfortable illusion.

 

Actually, there are a lot of wolves out there. Sheridan also believes, that for good guys to fight the bad guys they have to become bad. Otherwise, their battle will be hopeless. I know I am naïve. I still don’t believe that even though Sheridan’s films sometimes make it seem obviously true. Kate also has trouble with the argument. But I must admit Sheridan makes his films exciting. Watching ideas like that play out can be entertaining.

 

I think there are a lot of wolves out there. I just don’t think they are scared to go into small towns.

 

 

Crises of Democracy are not Unprecedented

American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Fascism, Liberalism, Populism, Tyranny and Fascism

 

People should not be surprised when there is a crisis in democracy. People should be surprised when there is none. As the American political philosopher Robert Kagan said:

 

“The American Revolution did not just produce a new system of government dedicated to the protection of the rights of all individuals against government and community, the first of its kind in history. It also produced a reaction against those very liberal principles by slaveholders and their white supporters, by religious movements, by those many Americans who have sought to preserve ancient, traditional hierarchies of peoples and beliefs against the leveling force of liberalism.”

 

Many Canadians and Americans want to deny that this is part of their history. They do so at the peril of democracy, which cannot survive without constant support. As Robert Kagan showed, this tension between liberalism and illiberalism has dominated America, and it has likewise dominated Canada, and looking away from that reality is dangerously foolish. Democratic crises are part of our lifeblood. They are in our DNA.

 

Kagan called the notion that all Americans share a commitment to the founding principles of the country “a pleasant myth, or perhaps a noble lie.”

 

As he could have said equally about Canadians, he pointed out that,

 

“We prefer to believe we all share the same fundamental goals and only disagree on the means of achieving them. But, in fact, large numbers of Americans have always rejected the founders’ claim that all men are created equal, with ‘unalienable’ rights to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and they have persistently struggled against the imposition of those liberal values on their lives. Great numbers of Americans, from the time of the Revolution onward, have wished to see America in ethnoreligious terms, as fundamentally a white, Protestant nation whose character is an outgrowth of white, Christian, European civilization. Their goal has been to preserve a white, Christian supremacy, contrary to the founders’ vision, and they have tolerated founders’ liberalism and the workings of the democratic system, only when it has not undermined that cause. When it has, they have repeatedly rebelled against it.”

 

That is why he called his book Rebellion. The rebellion he described and saw repeatedly, was an illiberal rebellion. It was a rebellion repeated over and over again by men—usually men—who wanted to preserve their privileges over those perceived as being “beneath” them. They never believed in equality. They believed in hierarchies with themselves and their kin and their fellow travelers at the top, in natural positions of dominance and privilege. This rebellion has repeatedly expressed itself as backlash. Over and over again every liberal step forward was followed by backlash, even when there was no over reach in the first place. These backlashes were not always corrections. That was always just a myth of the favoured minorities. And these myths must always be guarded against for they can hide the truth. And the truth must always be faced, no matter how uncomfortable.

 

The truth is that a lot of Americans, and Canadians, like their hierarchies, no matter how much they claim otherwise.

Liberal Myths

Authoritarianism, Death of Democracy, Fascism, Liberalism, Populism, Tyranny and Fascism

 

 

There are some American and Canadian political leaders who fail to understand that illiberalism is part of the American and Canadian traditions every bit as much the liberal tradition. We are not all sweetness and light to use the illuminating terms of Matthew Arnold.  If we don’t recognize this fact we will cease to be on the lookout for slippage into the darker sides of our nature.

 

That great American political thinker Robert Kagan got it right. We are both liberal and illiberal. He made the case clearly in his wonderful book, Rebellion: Donald Trump and the Anti-liberal Tradition in America. In fact, he opened that book with a quote from Patrick Henry who understand this fact back in June of 1778 when Virginia had its Convention ratifying the magnificent new American Constitution. That Constitution was magnificent, and Americans were right to be proud of it, but too many of them  have forgotten it was not perfect nor are they.  Canadians, also proud of their much later Constitution and Charter are subject to the same hubris and must always guard against it.  This is what Patrick Henry so wisely said: “Virtue will slumber. The wicked will be continually watching. Consequently you will be undone.” If we want to preserve the liberal institutions that protect our liberty we must be constantly on guard. Even if we constitutions. People can get around them if we let them.

 

Robert Kagan understood that “The institutions America’s founders created to safeguard liberal democratic government cannot survive when half the country does not believe in the core principles that undergird the American system of government.” And we know what happened in the presidential election of 2024.  More than half the Americans who voted, marked their ballots for a man, Donald Trump, who had clear autocratic tendencies, because they thought that was what America needed to avoid oppression by the liberals, and rejoiced at his efforts to curtail the liberal movement. In effect, they made clear at that time that they did not want the liberal democracy that was born out of the Revolution to continue. They voted no to liberal democracy and those Americans are every bit as real Americans as those who support liberal democracy. All who cherish liberal democracy, like me, whether Canadian or American, must realize that many of our fellow countryman do not share that love.

 

In fact, when you look at obviously undemocratic measures such as gerrymandering, where people decide it is acceptable for the political leaders to choose their electors rather than have the people choose their leaders, it also obvious that many Americans don’t really love democracy at all. That includes people who support both Republicans and liberals for both parties do it all the time.

 

Illiberalism is real and it is dangerous. If we don’t understand that, we don’t understand much. Before that 2024 presidential election Kagan said this: If he [Trump] wins, they will support whatever he does, including violating the Constitution to go after his enemies and political opponents, which he has promised to do.” And of course, he was right. That is exactly what Trump did after that election. And many Americans loved it. And still do.

 

Kagan predicted that democracy would fracture as a result. It did. It did not collapse, but it surely weakened, and as Kagan ominously added, “perhaps irrecoverably.” Joe Biden was seriously wrong when he said, “this is not who we are.” That is exactly who we are. And I refer to both Americans and Canadians when I say that.

 

We must always remember that the rule of autocracies is common. In fact, they are much more common than democracies. We must never assume democracy will prevail. Usually, it does not. If we love democracy, we always have to treasure it and protect it from harm. Or we will lose it.

 

The Spy

Movies

 

 

 

The Spy is a powerful , exciting, and thought-provoking Netflix limited series in which Sacha Baron Cohen appears in a serious role rather than his more common comic roles.  He plays the male lead in the series which purports to tell the true and tragic story of Eli Cohen, an astounding Israeli Mossad agent  under  deep cover in Syria in the 1960s. For example, it shows Osama bin Laden as a young boy helping his father.

 

Hadar Ratzon Rotem plays his intense wife, Nadia, and Noah Emmerich  his morally conflicted handler Dan Peleg.

 

This film asks some interesting and important questions about how far can a state go in asking one of its citizens to go, in making sacrifices for his or her country? How big must an ask be, before it is too big? Are there limits on what a country can ask, if the work of that individual is astonishing valuable to the country?

 

As well there is a corollary question, when is an individual wrong in sacrificing himself and his family for the benefit of their country? When is it legitimate for the citizen and family to say the limit of sacrifice has been reached. When must the country say, this is the limit and refrain from using him or her anymore because anything beyond this is intolerable?

 

Or are there no such limits? What can possibly be right and just?

 

Finally, what would it mean if there were no limits?

 

These are interesting and important questions handled with maturity rather than juvenile bravado unlike so many other films. Especially spy films and other thrillers. I think that is enough to make it worth your while to watch. Let me know if you disagree.

 

 

Always More Room for Hate

Extremism, Hate, Polarization

 

According to CBC News a group of white nationalists showed up to intimidate and frighten people on a first Nation territory in BC. They were dressed ominously in black pants, black long-sleeved sweaters, black hats and white pull up masks in a straight regimental style row. Strict ideological conformity was enforced. It also seemed cowardly. Why did they need masks?  The police said they were there “to intimidate, provoke fear, and sow division.” Apparently, they were members of the Second Sons Group as they moved through Kamloops and nearby by Tkʼemlúps te Secwépem Reserve.

 

They carried a banner which asked, “GOT BONES?” That was probably a disparaging reference to what happened at the nearby Residential Schools. The Canadian Anti-hate movement says White Nationalism is more present in Canada than it has ever been. In other words, hate is growing in Canada. It also says Second Sons is a part of that. They have shown up in many Canadian communities recently. Perhaps Steinbach is next. They advocate white men training to be able to protect the White Nationalist movement. They consider themselves white patriots who “remember when Quebec was white.”

 

It does seem to me that there is always more room for hate in Canada.  Where is all that hate coming from?

 

That’s what I have been trying to figure out, without much success.

Guns, Violence, and Crazy Laws

guns

 

The world of guns and laws in America is out of whack. Malcolm Blackwell has written an interesting book on the subject called The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic. I saw him interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN. Gladwell says both sides in the dispute are being dishonest.

 

This is what he said in his book:

 

“When either side pretends that something is consequential when is not. When either side avoids the right conclusion because it is difficult, or when either side blinds itself to the truth through laziness or indifference the American conversation about guns is rife with these kinds of dishonesties.”

 

In other words, he said both sides of the gun debate traffic in dishonesties.  This goes down to a fundamental problem. We can never solve any social problems unless we are prepared to be honest with others and ourselves.

 

For example, he asked the question ‘is America over policed?’ What do you think. I thought the answer was yes. According to Gladwell, I am wrong about that. He says most Americans believe, like I did, that they are over policed. But, he says the facts belie this myth. He says, “the opposite is true. Los Angles and Berlin are the same size. LA has 8,500 police officers, Berlin has 18,000.”  That is more than double. As Gladwell said, “when you are over manned you have to project force in a way that you have to be aggressive.”

 

Gladwell thinks this contributes to violence in America.  American police get more violent because, he says, they are out manned. He says this is typical. European cities typically have twice the police per capita as American cities.  This shocked me. Learn something every day. As a result, American police are more violent than their European counterparts. America has a violence problem is what Gladwell concludes. This I knew.

 

Gladwell concluded that America is under policed.  But it is also overly violent.  That is not really a good combination. That is a recipe for trouble.