Category Archives: Social Justice

Improper Ideology and Treasuring Ignorance

Death of Truth, Social Justice, The War on Smart, Woke, Woke

 

Donald Trump is indeed a master turning accusations against his accusers.

 

One of the best recent examples of this technique, was when Trump issued an executive order called “RESTORING TRUTH AND SANITY TO AMERICAN HISTORY.” Trump stated that “over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”

 

As we all know this is precisely what Trump has done over and over again. As John Biewen said in his podcast, “Orwell could not have said it better himself. Because of course Trump is doing precisely what he accuses his opponents of doing: replacing facts with ideology.”

 

 

As a result of this order, the internationally respected Smithsonian Museum must in the future ensure that they do not employ “improper ideology.”   Any exhibits that “divide Americans based on race” by creating the wildly improbably claim that white Americans treated African-Americans shamefully would run afoul of this rule. This rule was particularly offended by a prior exhibit while Biden was in power called “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” because it pointed out that “[s]ocieties including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.”

 

Such an exhibit, no matter how much history supports the conclusion cannot be true because American conservatives are uncomfortable at the thought that it might be true.

 

At the same time any suggestions that American men have used their power to dominate women is again out of bounds. American men would never do that. The museum should only celebrate the achievements of women.

 

As Orwell said, slavery is freedom. War is peace.

 

John Biewen said,

 

“The author of Trump’s executive order doesn’t explain what’s wrong with these historically and scientifically uncontroversial statements. The administration apparently assumes that everyone – in the intended audience, anyway, the MAGA base – will nod in agreement that this is typical woke nonsense.”

 

Trump and his cohorts were also saddened that in some places statues of Christopher Columbus on pedestals had been taken down. As Shannon Speed, a Chickasaw Nation member and director of UCLA’s American Indian Studies Center, explained to Public Radio, “the explorer’s legacy, besides “discovering” the “New World,” also includes “pillaging, raping and generally setting in motion a genocide of the people who were already here.” These really are not controversial statements at all, but Trump and his happy Trumpsters don’t like to be reminded of these uncomfortable facts.

 

 

As always, Trump made no attempt to disprove any claims by museums or scholars. He just says all the criticism is “nothing but woke.” As John Biewen said,

 

“Trump and his henchpersons want to return men like Columbus to their pedestals for obvious reasons. If they can re-establish Columbus as an untarnished hero – along with America’s slaveholding founders – maybe that will stop all this bothersome talk about injustices done to oppressed groups, both past and present, and discredit any efforts at redress and repair. Only a “Radical Left Lunatic” would want to dwell on the racist, sexist, homophobic or economic abuses carried out by historical figures – or by the current regime. Enough with all that.”

 

 

David Joy is a novelist who weighed in on this issue before the North Carolina commission investigating the issue as a result of a Confederate memorial. Joy is a descendant of enslavers and pointed out to the commission  that he had grown up with such memorials and how his people in the south  revered the slave state. These were his people. He had grown up with them and loved them. “And then,” he said, “I grew up. And I read books.” That’s it. He learned the truth and that was not quite as rosy as the previous generation had made it out to be. He did not let his discomfort over that truth impair him. As he said to the commission, “Yes, millions of Americans still treasure their ignorance and will do their best to defend it. But a whole lot of us feel differently.”

 

I hope he’s right.

 

The School of Rush Limbaugh

Right-wing Extremism, Social Justice, Woke

 

In the film The Brain Washing of MY Dad, Jen Senko first noticed radical changes in her father when she took the bus from New York to visit her family and her father told her how upset he was to the reaction to women with their breasts hanging out at Hooters. How could the Feminazis object to that? This shocked Senko. He had never made such comments before. When she said the feminists might have a point, her father threatened to pull the car over and send her right back to New York.

 

Her father had started listening to Rush Limbaugh on American talk radio.  That was like university for a lot of American working people who listened to the radio a lot. Limbaugh taught them a lot about women. Especially, “Feminazis”, as he called them. He taught that “feminazis tried to make women more like men. Look like us. Dress like us. Have power like us. Have careers like us.” Feminism was clearly heresy. Now people might criticize them as woke.

Senko’s father’s position was simple. He  said, “Limbaugh is one of my heroes.”

 

Things are not likely to be perfect in a Silo

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Capitalism, Decline of the west, Social democracy, Social Justice

 

How can you live in a former missile silo?

One problem is how to get away with the absence of windows. Can you imagine it? According to Osnos,

“The condo walls are fitted with L.E.D. “windows” that show a live video of the prairie above the silo. Owners can opt instead for pine forests or other vistas. One prospective resident from New York City wanted video of Central Park. “All four seasons, day and night,” Menosky said. “She wanted the sounds, the taxis and the honking horns.”

 

To me this sounds like virtual reality–with an emphasis on virtual. Will this be life behind these walls?  Hall has given some thought to how people will live there, but I wonder if he has given enough thought. It is ironic that these vistas are all part of the commons. I thought that was what they wanted to get away from. These are things the super-rich should have helped sustain, but many preferred to enhance their own private wealth instead. Now they want them?

According to Osnos,

“Hall [the developer of the missile silo] said the hardest part of the project was sustaining life underground. He studied how to avoid depression (add more lights), prevent cliques (rotate chores), and simulate life aboveground.”

Frankly I would not be satisfied with simulated life. Would you?  Or is even death preferable? This is particularly poignant when you consider that most (all?) life might outside the bunkers might perish.

Some survivalists have mocked Hall’s plan. They say they won’t pay. They will just attack when the time comes. Hall claimed that he and his “guards” could repel all forces. And if necessary, the guards would return fire. What will Hall to secure the loyalty of the guards. After the apocalypse won’t things start over? What will money be worth? Why won’t the guards switch sides? Who would persuade the hired armed guards to stick with supporting the rich people hunkered down?  Why would they stick with the rich? How long could people survive a siege?

Things are not likely to be perfect in a former missile silo. I know I am deeply skeptical.

 

Over valuing private goods and undervaluing public goods

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Capitalism, Decline of the west, Social democracy, Social Justice

 

 

For a long time, it has been my opinion that people under value pubic goods and over value private goods. For example, good schools, hospitals, libraries, parks and many others are really important and valuable.  One of the problems with some rich people, like those who bought condos in the missile silos of Salina Kansas, was that most of these privileged people no longer recognize the benefits–the mutual benefits–provided by the commons. They have either forgotten how important they are or they never realized it.  They really believe only private goods count. Only private goods are really good. Public goods are irrelevant.  Robert Johnson who Osnos interviewed for his  New Yorker article realized  this was not the case. He said,

“If we had a more equal distribution of income, and much more money and energy going into public school systems, parks and recreation, the arts, and health care, it could take an awful lot of sting out of society. We’ve largely dismantled those things.”

 

It is difficult to discern why the privileged are so fearful. What do these ultra-wealthy people have to fear? If money does not buy happiness, surely it buys security. If one thought that, one would be wrong. As Osnos reported,

“As public institutions deteriorate, élite anxiety has emerged as a gauge of our national predicament. “Why do people who are envied for being so powerful appear to be so afraid?” Johnson asked. “What does that really tell us about our system?” He added, “It’s a very odd thing. You’re basically seeing that the people who’ve been the best at reading the tea leaves—the ones with the most resources, because that’s how they made their money—are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord and jump out of the plane.”

In other words if people valued the common good as much as they valued their own private good, there might be a lot less anxiety.  When the über rich are so fearful it really make you wonder about the stability of the system. Do they know something the rest of us don’t know? Or it that guilt poisons their perception? Or do they just not understand what is important?

Sometimes the most. important things we have are the things that we share.

 

 

A Deeper Crisis

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Capitalism, Decline of the west, Social democracy, Social Justice

It is also interesting how the privileged classes have selected things to worry about.  As Evan Osnos reported in his New Yorker article:

 

“Élite anxiety cuts across political lines. Even financiers who supported Trump for President, hoping that he would cut taxes and regulations, have been unnerved at the ways his insurgent campaign seems to have hastened a collapse of respect for established institutions. Dugger said, “The media is under attack now. They wonder, Is the court system next? Do we go from ‘fake news’ to ‘fake evidence’? For people whose existence depends on enforceable contracts, this is life or death.”

 

It is also interesting how the privileged classes have selected things to worry about.  As Osnos reported

 

“Robert A. Johnson was another person that Osnos interviewed.  He saw the fear of his peers as “the symptom of a deeper crisis.”[2]  I agree with that. I too see the fear as a manifestation of fundamental unease about their place in modern society. They are unmoored and their wealth, which often is extreme wealth, is not able to fill the void. Johnson was the manager of a hedge fund. He was also the head of a think tank. He called himself “an accidental student of civic anxiety.”From my own career, I would just talk to people. More and more were saying, ‘you’ve got to have a private plane. You have to assure that the pilot’s family will be taken care of, too. They have to be on the plane.’ ”

 Johnson saw the fear of his peers as “the symptom of a deeper crisis.”  I agree with that. I too see the fear experienced by the über wealthy as a manifestation of fundamental unease about their place in modern society like those who bought condos in a concrete missile silo in Kansa. They are unmoored and their wealth, which these days often is extreme wealth, is not able to fill the void. Johnson was the manager of a hedge fund. He was also the head of a think tank. He called himself “an accidental student of civic anxiety. More and more wealthy people were telling. him, ‘you’ve got to have a private plane. You have to assure that the pilot’s family will be taken care of, too. They have to be on the plane.’ ” Escaping the apocalypse is not easy.

Osnos analyzed this situation this way,

“By January, 2015, Johnson was sounding the alarm: the tensions produced by acute income inequality were becoming so pronounced that some of the world’s wealthiest people were taking steps to protect themselves. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Johnson told the audience, “I know hedge-fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.”

Johnson is like some other wealthy people that have not entirely lost their sense of empathy or their sense of justice. Osnos described their situation this way,

“Johnson wishes that the wealthy would adopt a greater “spirit of stewardship,” an openness to policy change that could include, for instance, a more aggressive tax on inheritance. “Twenty-five hedge-fund managers make more money than all of the kindergarten teachers in America combined,” he said. “Being one of those twenty-five doesn’t feel good. I think they’ve developed a heightened sensitivity.” The gap is widening further. In December, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a new analysis, by the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, which found that half of American adults have been “completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s.” Approximately a hundred and seventeen million people earn, on average, the same income that they did in 1980, while the typical income for the top one per cent has nearly tripled. That gap is comparable to the gap between average incomes in the U.S. and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the authors wrote.”

If you are the fortunate beneficiary of such largesse, it is difficult to believe that that such extreme inequality is justified. It takes a special kind hubris. Or perhaps blindness. The result is fear that some day that injustice might be rectified.

The Chocolate Side of life

criminal Justice, Religious Quest in the Modern Age, Social Justice

 

The first time I heard Cornel West speak was at the University of Winnipeg in 2015. He pulled no punches in describing the American system of criminal justice “racist.” “I got too much white supremacy inside of me. I got too much homophobia inside of me.”

West pointed out that in America 65% of convictions are against blacks who make up about 20% of the population. Is that not very similar to the situation of indigenous people in this  country. How is it possible to deny that such a criminal justice system is racist? “If you don’t speak out against such injustice the rocks are going to cry out,” West said. He saw that speaking out against such injustice is part of the prophetic system of which he is a part.

When West at the university, he said that every 28 hours for the last 7 years (since 2015) a black or brown man, woman, or child in America was murdered by the police or private security guard services. That is based on a devaluing of black life in America. He pointed out that is true even though we have a black President in the United States with a black Attorney General. During that time not one policeman was sent to jail. Not one. Is that justice?

He said he made that statement because he wants to be an honest man. Of course, Canada, and in particular Manitoba, is much worse than that with its indigenous population.

When I heard him speak in Arizona a few years later, West said, “I have been subtly shaped by the chocolate side of life.” That point of view coloured his speaking out in the prophetic tradition which he gleaned from the Old Testament.  All that was part of his religious quest.

Speaking out against injustice can be a vital part of a religious quest; keeping silent not so much.

Learning how to Die

Philosophy/Ideas, Religious Quest in the Modern Age, Social Justice

 

Cornel West is also a University  Professor. He teaches religion and philosophy.  He says he tells his students the first day of each year that he is there to teach them how to die. Can you imagine a professor saying that?  I would have been blown away.

 

In America our life is based on a sentimental denial of death. So many Americans (and of course Canadians are just as guilty) are unable to face uncomfortable truths.  Whether it is race or oppression people don’t want to know the uncomfortable truths. And it is exactly the uncomfortable truths that we need the most West said,

“I teach students how to die. The first time students come to my class I tell them you are here to learn how to die. Plato talks about philosophy as wisdom being learning how to die. When you have dogma there is no growth—that is death. There is no shift in your attention from the superficial to the substantial without death. Only that way can you avoid the mainstream which suffers from so much spiritual malnutrition. In the mainstream you end up well adjusted to injustice. No matter how many toys you have. No matter how big your house you end up well adapted to indifference.”

 

 

According to West, the essence of wisdom speaking is having the courage to know how to die by questioning your presuppositions. Every time you let a presupposition go that is a form of death because it allows you to be reborn. It allows you to grow. It allows you to develop. It allows you to mature.

 

West says that there are many ways to die.

 

“One is what he calls civic death—being part of a civil society but not its public life. That is what happened to blacks with Jim and Jane Crow. You can work for us, you can entertain us, you can titillate us, but you cannot be part of the civic body.

Or it could be psychic death as when our sisters are subject to male domination or gays and lesbians are subject to tyranny: dehumanized, dishonoured and devalued. The same is for the working classes. They are also dehumanized. Reduced to costs and calculations as your job goes to China. Who cares about your humanity? You are only useful to the degree to which you can make us money.

And then there is spiritual death where you just give up. Make your way to the crack house. Or sell your soul for a mess of porridge.”

 

According to West, trying to live a safe life can be one way to die. West argues like Martin Heidegger did:

“Human” comes from “Humando” which means burial. We are beings-toward-death. The journey from Mama’s womb to tomb is fast.  The question is what sort of human being will you be in that short time from Mama’s womb to tomb in a predatory capitalism civilization …that gives titillation and instant gratification as opposed to deep caring and nurturing…people want to live in some safe and secure suburb instead of what Samuel Beckett called “the mess” which is life.”

 

 

West asks us to consider this: What are they going to say about that person in the coffin? What will they say about you when you are in that coffin?  That is what it means to be human. Blacks in America have learned to look unflinchingly at death, he says. 242 years of social death without any social standing will do that. Just like the American constitution which refers to aboriginal people as “savages,” in order for the mainstream to feel good about itself. That is a form of social death too. “You don’t come to any intimate terms with what it means to be human unless you are on intimate terms with death.”

You have to wrestle with it the way Jacob wrestled with the angel of death.”  to learn to die you have to learn to deal with such questions West claims. For him the religious quest is a quest for death, or perhaps, a quest for the good death.

Deep Joy: Loving  and Loving Out Loud

expansive religion, Philosophy/Ideas, Religious Quest in the Modern Age, Social Justice

 

Cornel West made living part of his religious quest in the modern age. How did he do that?

In his is autobiography which  he called   Loving and Living Out Loud   Brother West tried  to advocate for living with deep joy, even though as I have said earlier, he always starts with suffering. A source of deep joy for him, as I have said earlier,  was music. Particularly the blues and jazz. He is a big fan of Jazz musician John Coltrane, as am I. He says he finds in that music a deep well spring of joy.

On the other hand, like a true Old Testament Prophet he find much to criticize in contemporary culture that he find shallow. As he said,

“You have to have something that sustains you and so much of contemporary culture is a joyless quest for pleasure. The pleasures are insatiable and you never have enough of them, but you never have any deep joy. If you got to the pre-K program and look into the eyes of those precious children and that sustains you that is deep joy. That is to me a sacred calling. I find joy in the writing and lecturing and speaking like Coltrane found it in blowing his horn.”

 

West says that “we are deliberate and joyful misfits, to use the language of the great Arthur Miller.”  We are maladjusted to injustice. We are maladjusted to indifference. We are maladjusted to people in denial.”  He also said: “Justice is the way love looks in public and tenderness is what love feels like in private.” I also personally heard him deliver various versions of that claim. Again this reminds of those Prophets.

West also warns about the dangers of anger. Sometimes anger is called for. As when the powerful oppress the weak. West always opposes that. Yet West also said he learned from Audrey Lord, that  anger is a form of love, engagement and truth telling. But—and this is key—according to West, “You don’t stay with the anger; it is a medium. But you find joy in being of service to others.”

You have to move beyond anger and resentment back to joy. The deep joy that he looks for not shallow joyless pleasures that take up so much time for so many of us. Like me.