The Hidden Flaw

I have come to understand that there is a hidden flaw in humankind. It is “hidden” because I do not know what it is exactly; however, it is clearly there, doing its mischief in human affairs. It is when we take a sober look at what humans do and how they act that we understand the flaw’s existence and the danger that it poses.

Let’s look past all the sweet little stores about being God’s special creatures and take a realistic view of what actually happens in the world. First and foremost, creatures breathe oxygen in order to fuel their inner organic systems. [OK, fish don’t exactly “breathe” but they still extract oxygen out of water through their gills.] However, second most important, all creatures require “food” in order to build and maintain their bodies. What humans like to ignore is that “food” is actually us. Food is really just the whole collection of insects, plants, and animals. All living things get eaten by something. Perhaps humans do not get eaten very often nowadays but they were in the past and there still are animals higher in the food chain. The “food chain” . . . it’s like a comprehensive menu of who eats whom and what. Of special interest, and significance, is the lack of waste in this process. Killing is done for food and if the killer doesn’t want all of its prey, there is always someone else who will take the rest.

There is one animal that violates this law constantly, thoroughly, and grotesquely. That is the human; and that is where we begin to sense the existence of a flaw. Humans try to hide the nature of food by industrializing the process of killing animals and, in the process, they waste enormous amounts of food. But there is a much greater failed behavior of humankind and that is the killing of other humans. For the most part, humans do not even kill other humans for food (which is a legitimate reason in the animal world) but rather they kill other humans for sport, in revenge, out of hatred, and by command. The human dead are mutilated, burned, and buried. 

In my lifetime, I have witnessed the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the First Gulf War, the War in Afganistan, and the Second War in Iraq. Countless human civilians and military personnel died in these epic clashes and one can only ask why. But we never seriously ask why; instead, we invent mythic excuses that elevate democracy, freedom, defense in order to hide the money-making, profit-taking, economic ambitions, and political fantasies that really underly the command to kill. 

It is not clear to me where and when all of this began in the long history of humankind. What is clear today is that humans have worked science, technology, and invention to the point that this inner flaw can now do enormous damage to humankind as a whole as well as to all the rest of the world. The 21st Century is off to a terrible start, and if we do not get some insight into why we do these things, I fear the century’s end may bring humanity’s end as well. 

Cuba

Well, I never believed that it would happen in my lifetime but now Barak Obama has done it. I am very happy that we will now start being at peace with these people. We may not like their government, but we have held the people of Cuba hostage for way too long.

And for those who are angry about this, let's remember that the US had no problem supporting Fulgencio Batista for years-and-years. Batista was an evil and repressive dictator, but he was a friend of Capitalism. Led by Fidel Castro, the Cuban people rebelled against this repression, but Castro was a Communist. So there it all is --- America's age old hysteria about Communism vs. Capitalism. How many people have suffered on the horns of this dilemma?

When we listen to those Miami Cuban exiles rant about Obama making peace with the Castros, we need to remember that they are "Cuban exiles" because they were friends of Batista. Yes, he was a "great leader" --- a friend of mine in Berkeley in the late '50s left Cuba after the Batista regime mailed her brother's head in a box to his mother. That's the kind of guy we supported down there. But now we bawl and complain about Castro's human rights violations.

Some day I will figure out what America really is.

Police in America

Obviously this is a topic of concern today. However, it has been an issue in one way or another for well more than a century. Ask an early trade unionist about the police and you will get an ear full. 

Today, the obvious issue is using lethal force against young black men. But young brown men are scarcely better off. And recent history shows that you don’t necessarily have to be young. The problem? A) police use lethal force in cases where lethal force is not warranted, and B) they are never taken to task for their actions.

Now, it is clear that we need to have police in order to enforce our laws and protect our citizens. It is also clear that serving as a policeman is a dangerous and demanding task. It is also a sobering task. Young police officers see a very bad side of society. The problem, I think, is that police are trained to focus their attention on that “bad society” and they are not fully trained in the “protect and serve” motto that ought to embrace their relations with the whole community. Junior deputies in the Los Angeles Sheriff”s Department, for instance, are required to serve five years in the jails. That’s a great way of getting them involved in communities. No wonder the new officer on the street looks at everyone with suspicion. It’s like saying, as a part of training, “these are the guys we put in here; go find more.” Of course, since most of the young men in jail are either brown or black, it is easy to become a racist without even knowing it. 

But another aspect of police training is at fault here, I believe. Police are trained to draw their guns under almost any circumstance. In contrast, in the military, troops are trained that a gun is drawn and pointed at someone only if their is a real intention to shoot and kill. I once walked into a gasoline station and found myself standing next to a policeman just inside the door with his automatic pistol aimed straight at a young Mexican man who was standing at the counter. The man had no weapon; there was no body lying about; he was, in fact, quite docile. There is no way that he had committed a crime requiring a death sentence, but he was facing deadly force.

Even if Michael Brown was not a very nice kid and bullied his way out of a store with a fist full of cigarillos, he had done nothing that would deserve a death sentence. But he died of multiple gun shot wounds from an officer’s weapon. What brought that about? Unfortunately, we will probably never know unless there is a Federal prosecution. The officer claims that Brown attacked him. But it is also easy to imagine the officer pulling up and shouting some racist thing — like, “Hey Ni…rs get your asses up on the sidewalk” to set up the dynamic. The fact is that the county prosecutor used the Grand Jury as a way of trying Brown without a defense by putting all of his own “evidence” before them and never allowing cross-examination. And this is how police are protected in the system. Police need protection sometimes, but not when they have done bad things. 

I am glad to see the protests all over our country. It’s about time people got fired up enough about something to get out into the streets. Obviously, I am not glad to see a small minority of others jumping into the action and doing violence. All that does is reinforce the police vision of what people are like. I hope that the protests will produce change, but I have to admit that I doubt they will. The police are way too set in their ways to change.

Perhaps the next issue to bring people into the streets will be the complete breakdown of democracy in America. If we don't start reacting to that, it will become a permanent state of affairs.

November 5, 2014

How do the Republicans, who operate in the interests of about 1% of the people, succeed in convincing 55% of the people to vote for them? How stupid can Americans be!

The Liberal Spirit

We have been watching the Ken Burns documentary on the Roosevelts during the last few weeks. I've learned a lot about Theodore Roosevelt that I never knew and it has been fun to watch Franklin and Eleanor develop. Actually, I don't think that I ever realized Franklin, Eleanor, and Teddy were all relatives. 

Anyway, the documentary is a good way to understand the rise of liberalism in American politics because it shows us the state of affairs in American life when business and wealth are all powerful. This is the condition of life into which we will soon fall if Conservatives (so-called) have their way. It is ironic and impossible to understand why we are collapsing into this mire, given the fact that it is contrary to the well being of 80 or 90% of Americans. But we are.

Mind you, there is nothing wrong with business or with wealth as such. The issue lies in a moral relationship of the people. When the wealthy are interested only in their wealth and when business is interested only in making more money, then the lives of the majority of people are in jeopardy. We need business and business organizers to create products that we will want to consume and thereby to create job opportunities for other people. But it is a moral fact that these products would not appear if it were not for the people who fill the jobs and do the work. Business organizers would be mere fools if they did not have people to do the work. So here is their moral obligation; that is, they must treat their employees with due consideration for their important part in production. The moral problem of Capitalism is the tendency to treat workers in quite the other way, as expendable units of productivity who can be replaced always by someone who is hungrier. 

The fascinating thing about the Roosevelts is that they were very wealthy but, nevertheless, were raised in the belief that wealth must be used in the defense of people who are less fortunate. Teddy and Franklin were in opposing parties but both worked for the benefit of ordinary people. 

When did we get this winner-take-all mentality in the US? Well, what the documentary shows us, painfully, is that that attitude has always been with us. Teddy, Franklin, and Eleanor were constantly attacked by Conservatives for their liberal beliefs and political actions. Very little has actually changed. The moral attitude of these Conservatives is simply the hope that the poor people will just die quietly so as not to be a disturbance. 

Has the World Gone Crazy?

Thus far, the 21st Century has been pretty much of a disappointment. In 2000 George Bush was elected president. Only a half of a year after he took office, the World Trade Center in New York was destroyed. An angry Bush took us into war against al-qaeda in Afganistan and we are still there, thirteen years later. Meanwhile, Bush and his cronies decided that now was the time/excuse to go back into Iraq. One suspects that the younger Bush was eager to show his daddy that he could do a better job. And, of course, what he did was completely de-stabilize Iraq and the whole region. We've only recently gotten out of there, only to return as military "instructors." And now, an incredibly vicious group known as ISIS is taking hold of land in Syria and Iraq in the name of forming an Islamic State. Oh, and should we mention the Russian annexation of parts of Ukraine? Or Israel's devastation of Gaza?

The time frame for all of this is especially amazing when you contrast it with our involvement in World War II. Basically, we entered WWII right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The war ended in the summer of 1945, only four years later. Not only that, but we were really not ready for war in 1941 so it took a year or more of tremendous industrial production and military training to take the country to war. Now-a-days the US is ready for war on a moments notice. In fact, every time there is a disturbance in the world we find ourselves debating whether we should send in our military. 

A sad aspect of this situation is that our heavy investment in the military has transformed war. Back in the age of WWI and WWII the people as such had to go to war. Ordinary citizens had to volunteer or were drafted. The economy had to shift to make war instead of butter and bread. People's consumption was limited. In fact, every one sacrificed. In Bush's wars the design was to do the whole thing independent of the people --- no changes in industry, consumption, life as such. It's a volunteer military running on borrowed money. Of course, this ultimately created a major depression but people still ignored what had caused it. My feeling is that, when a nation wants to go to war, it should be something that the people as a whole support and make major sacrifices to conduct. That's the only thing that justifies the human losses. 

So now we come down to the "war" against ISIS. Obama is willing to send in our planes and drones but not our soldiers. That's "war" with very little sacrifice. Will it continue that way? I doubt it. What we have been dealing with, this century, is basically a religious war --- 18th Century Islamists versus the whole modern Western world. This is not just a crazed leader like Hitler trying to make up for Germany's humiliating loss of WWI. It is a whole religious movement that can spawn new radical leaders at the drop of a hat. If we had successfully dropped Hitler at some point in the '40s, the war would probably have ended right there. But the fact is we can blow up hundreds of radical Islamic leaders and more will spring from the earth. The sad and disturbing fact is that this war has no end.

Ferguson and Beyond

The situation in Ferguson, MO, is a lot like the situation in Gaza. If people are oppressed for a long enough time, they eventually go crazy and start fighting back. The odds are the same as well. Israel is affluent and well supplied with American arms. Ferguson and St. Louis police (and now the National Guard) come from an entirely different economic culture and are also very well armed. As a consequence, Israelis have suffered little damage and only a few lives while Gaza residents have suffered huge losses. The result will be similar in Ferguson. The fight is desperate but it is also hopeless.

It is impossible for most Americans to understand the hopelessness of life for young black men in American ghettos. They are treated like trash and, when they fight back, they are shot dead. The only hope for the entire situation is a huge investment in urban re-development, education, and job training. But that is not going to happen so long as the ultra-wealthy of this country have so tied up our Congress that there will be no new funds for any such program. The whole situation will continue to descend into chaos. I can only imagine that there will be many more Fergusons. But the ultra-wealthy will have no problem with that because they have well insulated themselves from the rest of the world and country and, indeed, can pay for their own security. 

One of the really spooky aspects of this discussion is that America's situation in the world as a whole has a lot of resemblance to Gaza and Ferguson. While Americans naively see themselves as "peace keepers," the underdogs of the world see us as the great oppressors. We can carry this just so far and then they will begin to fight back just like any other oppressed people. That has, of course, already begun and we call them "terrorists." But, at what point, will the rest of the world come to see America's passion for domination as a grave danger and what will they have to do in order to reign us in? The remainder of the 21st Century is not going to be a pleasant experience for Americans.