In the wake of Donald Trump's ill-gotten capture of the Presidency, it has been mildly interesting to see mainstream television entertainers pleading with Americans to give Donald a chance. I guess it's only fitting that among his flying monkeys should be people who make a living by acting silly or by pretending to be what they are not. The Donald fits right in with them, as the former star of a cheesy "reality" TV series. Those who study dysfunctional family dynamics will also recognize the parallels between the people begging us to give the Donald a chance and those members of dysfunctional families who cover and make excuses for those members of their own families who are the actual cause of family dysfunction.
The problem is that ever since it was announced that the Donald "won" the Electoral College (with only 25 percent of all people in America of voting age supporting him!), he has had chance after chance to show that he is capable of sane, moral, just and fair leadership. And every day he has failed the test in one way or another. Asking the majority of people of voting age in this country to give him a chance sounds a bit like a violent and/or substance-abusing husband asking his wife to give him another chance even when there is no evidence that the husband has begun to do the hard work of repentance. Those of us who are being asked to "give him a chance" are therefore being asked to ignore the lessons of pattern recognition, to ignore the data points supplied by the trajectory of Donald's life from way back in the day up to the present, to expect that a man who has enthusiastically pursued a course of selfishness and petty evil and has shown no sign of changing his course will suddenly be a different person tomorrow.
Those of us who have to live in this country under a Trump presidency would do well to avoid having any hopeful illusions about him. I think it would be reasonable to assume that the Donald will try to do just about everything he threatened to do during his campaign. (The leaders of some of the countries which the Donald threatened during his campaign are assuming that very thing, and have begun to issue warnings that if the new administration revokes certain treaties and agreements, or re-imposes certain sanctions, there will be consequences.) I think it is also reasonable to assume that many of the more objectionable types who have latched onto Trump and to whom he pandered during his campaign are an accurate reflection of his character. This means that a large number of us will be targeted for suffering, repression, denial of equal protection, false imprisonment, economic discrimination and threat of physical violence by these types.
Therefore, it will be necessary for us to resist. Resistance, moreover, is not optional. If we don't resist, we will suffer for sure. If we do resist, we may still suffer - but we might also win.
Moreover, the resistance must be nonviolent. There are ethical and moral reasons for this, especially for those of us who are Christians. (No, this is not the time for so-called "Christian patriots" to bust out their hardware and their ammo. If you're in that crowd, grab a clue from Luke 3:14. By the way, the translation I quoted renders this verse exactly as it is written in the Greek, so don't try to weasel out of it.)
But there are also very pragmatic reasons why the resistance must be entirely nonviolent. A number of those reasons have been captured in the work of Maria J. Stephan of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and by and Erica Chenoweth of Wesleyan University. In a 2008 paper titled, "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict," Chenoweth and Stephan examined a large number of nonviolent resistance efforts which took place over the last hundred years or so, and discovered the shocking fact that nonviolent resistance movements had a success rate of over 50 percent. Violent resistance movements, on the other hand, had a success rate of only 26 percent. In addition, societies which experienced successful nonviolent resistance tended to be much more stable and peaceful afterward than those societies which experienced violent revolution or civil war. Chenoweth and Stephan have expanded their findings and published them in a book, and there are other researchers who have confirmed their findings as well.
The goal of nonviolent resistance is not necessarily to persuade an oppressive, powerful and violent opponent to "listen to its better angels." After all, it may not have any "better angels!" Rather, the goal is to deprive the opponent of its ability to continue its oppression by removing the sources of power of that oppression.
As for the strategy and tactics of nonviolent resistance, there are a number of sources. (See this and this, for instance.) One source I have been enjoying over the last few days is How Nonviolent Struggle Works, by Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institution. How Nonviolent Struggle Works is a short, easy-to-read condensation of a much longer book by Mr. Sharp, who has written several lengthy books on the subject. If you see yourself as a resister in these days, and you're wondering what to do, Mr. Sharp's short book would be a good place to start.
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
The Seventy-Five Percent
Well, well. The last few weeks have been quite a headache indeed, or to say it in Spanish, dolor de cabeza. I hope that snatch of foreign language managed to burst a few blood vessels in some of the redneck types who voted for Trump. What is interesting is that many media mouthpieces (including a number in the alt-media who should know better) are painting Trump's capture of the White House as some sort of populist phenomenon. Such spewings are typical of people who can't do basic math and who find facts to be inconvenient. If you find yourself in that crowd, let me help you out tonight. I'm going to give you a few straight-up numbers.
First, the number of people of voting age in the United States was 247,773,709 in July 2015, according to the Federal Register. Of this number, 62,210,612 popular votes so far went to Trump. That means that Trump is the choice of only 25.1 percent of all people of voting age. Secondly, Hillary Clinton leads Trump in the popular vote by over 2 million persons. Third, there are widespread reports of voter suppression in many of the states which Trump "won." (See this, this, this, this and this for instance.) Note also the huge contradiction between exit polls and "official" vote tallies in the first source cited in the parentheses. This means that if the election had actually been a fair and accurate representation of the will of the people of the United States, Hillary Clinton would likely have won by a decisive margin. Trump is not particularly popular; therefore his capture of the White House is not a populist phenomenon, but a sign that the arch-narcissist Trump and his backers have taken a dump on the electoral process. Goodbye, democracy. It was a nice illusion while it lasted.
Now comes the reckoning for the mess these people have begun to make. And I already have some idea of the kind of mess they are likely to make. I am thinking particularly of a parable from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 18, namely, the parable of the unrighteous judge, who is described thus: "In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man." It is interesting to note these two characteristics of the judge: first, that he refused to acknowledge any moral restraint higher than himself to which he was answerable ("a judge...who did not fear God..."); and secondly, that he refused to acknowledge any relational restraint by which he might be bound in his dealings with others ("a judge...who did not respect man..."). The characteristic of many people who are like this judge is that although they don't acknowledge moral or relational restraints, they do at first recognize and acknowledge what I call "technical" restraints - that is, the restraints imposed on them by physical reality itself. But as they continue in their career of evil, they cease to recognize even these restraints. That process has already begun in Trump and company, ever eager to emphasize their feelings over actual facts.
A day may come, however, when they come to appreciate the following lines from Tolkien: "I wish I had known all this before," said Pippin. "I had no notion of what I was doing." "Oh yes, you had," said Gandalf. "You knew you were behaving wrongly and foolishly; and you told yourself so, though you did not listen. I did not tell you all this before, because it is only by musing on all that has happened that I have at last understood, even as we ride together. But if I had spoken sooner, it would not have lessened your desire, or made it easier to resist. On the contrary! No, the burned hand teaches best. After that advice about fire goes to the heart." Or, to put it another way, the outworkings of damnation do eventually catch up with every soul or nation that insists on being damnable.
Meanwhile, I ought to explain my absence from blogging over the last few months. It has been partly because of busy-ness, partly because after finishing grad school, the thought of sitting in front of a computer has been mildly distasteful. But the biggest reason has been that as I have watched the unfolding of events in the United States over the last few months, it has seemed that the best use I could make of my time was to devote myself to prayer. I still feel that way. However, I may also blog some more in the next few months - particularly about some concrete steps I will be taking to help disadvantaged people who must live in the age of Trump. One thing I won't be doing is buying anything for Christmas. Feel free to join me in a year-end shopping boycott if you'd like. You'll save yourself quite a bit of holiday stress!
I also intend to practice as much non-violent, passive resistance as possible. Maybe I'll make a bumper sticker which reads, "I BELONG TO THE 75%." Feel free to join me in passive resistance, if you feel so led.
First, the number of people of voting age in the United States was 247,773,709 in July 2015, according to the Federal Register. Of this number, 62,210,612 popular votes so far went to Trump. That means that Trump is the choice of only 25.1 percent of all people of voting age. Secondly, Hillary Clinton leads Trump in the popular vote by over 2 million persons. Third, there are widespread reports of voter suppression in many of the states which Trump "won." (See this, this, this, this and this for instance.) Note also the huge contradiction between exit polls and "official" vote tallies in the first source cited in the parentheses. This means that if the election had actually been a fair and accurate representation of the will of the people of the United States, Hillary Clinton would likely have won by a decisive margin. Trump is not particularly popular; therefore his capture of the White House is not a populist phenomenon, but a sign that the arch-narcissist Trump and his backers have taken a dump on the electoral process. Goodbye, democracy. It was a nice illusion while it lasted.
Now comes the reckoning for the mess these people have begun to make. And I already have some idea of the kind of mess they are likely to make. I am thinking particularly of a parable from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 18, namely, the parable of the unrighteous judge, who is described thus: "In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man." It is interesting to note these two characteristics of the judge: first, that he refused to acknowledge any moral restraint higher than himself to which he was answerable ("a judge...who did not fear God..."); and secondly, that he refused to acknowledge any relational restraint by which he might be bound in his dealings with others ("a judge...who did not respect man..."). The characteristic of many people who are like this judge is that although they don't acknowledge moral or relational restraints, they do at first recognize and acknowledge what I call "technical" restraints - that is, the restraints imposed on them by physical reality itself. But as they continue in their career of evil, they cease to recognize even these restraints. That process has already begun in Trump and company, ever eager to emphasize their feelings over actual facts.
A day may come, however, when they come to appreciate the following lines from Tolkien: "I wish I had known all this before," said Pippin. "I had no notion of what I was doing." "Oh yes, you had," said Gandalf. "You knew you were behaving wrongly and foolishly; and you told yourself so, though you did not listen. I did not tell you all this before, because it is only by musing on all that has happened that I have at last understood, even as we ride together. But if I had spoken sooner, it would not have lessened your desire, or made it easier to resist. On the contrary! No, the burned hand teaches best. After that advice about fire goes to the heart." Or, to put it another way, the outworkings of damnation do eventually catch up with every soul or nation that insists on being damnable.
Meanwhile, I ought to explain my absence from blogging over the last few months. It has been partly because of busy-ness, partly because after finishing grad school, the thought of sitting in front of a computer has been mildly distasteful. But the biggest reason has been that as I have watched the unfolding of events in the United States over the last few months, it has seemed that the best use I could make of my time was to devote myself to prayer. I still feel that way. However, I may also blog some more in the next few months - particularly about some concrete steps I will be taking to help disadvantaged people who must live in the age of Trump. One thing I won't be doing is buying anything for Christmas. Feel free to join me in a year-end shopping boycott if you'd like. You'll save yourself quite a bit of holiday stress!
I also intend to practice as much non-violent, passive resistance as possible. Maybe I'll make a bumper sticker which reads, "I BELONG TO THE 75%." Feel free to join me in passive resistance, if you feel so led.
Sunday, September 25, 2016
A Wolf's Fear Of The Future
As I think about this present time, I am reminded of special days which I have grown to dislike over the years. One of those special days is, oddly enough, Christmas. Don't get me wrong - I am all for people taking time out of the year to celebrate the birth of Christ. What I choke on is being barraged by holiday music and holiday shopping advertisements from the day after Halloween until the day after New Year's. Another holiday I am not too fond of is Halloween (although I make sure to dress as a grown-up every year).
But the day which I have come to despise most of all in the United States is Election Day. Indeed, one of the most annoying aspects of life in the USA just now is the fact that we seem to be in a never-ending election season designed to produce maximal angst and fear among those who have to live through it. A particularly vexing element of this is having to cut through the games played by wolves who want to bury their real agenda behind a bunch of non-issues. Today's post will attempt to clarify the real issues at stake in the national elections, at least, as I see them.
Many of those who are campaigning for Donald Trump claim that a Trump presidency would bring world peace by ending American neocon attempts to expand American power throughout the world. Some of these people seek to paint Hillary Clinton as some sort of war criminal, either because some American operatives died at Benghazi after the U.S. had overthrown the lawful government of Gaddafi, or because Ms. Clinton had a personal Gmail account while she was Secretary of State. (If having a personal email account is a crime, you may as well throw many of us in jail, because we too have personal email accounts in addition to our work accounts.) Indeed, there are many mouthpieces trying by every possible means to make Mr. Trump palatable enough to get enough votes to win the Presidency. (Some of these people have actually tried to use the angle that he is "the lesser of two evils." They forget that by saying this they are admitting that he is evil.)
But if we take Mr. Trump at face value - especially concerning the statements and speeches which won him the Republican nomination - we see the real motive behind the Trump candidacy, and behind the efforts of the American right wing over the last decades. These efforts are coming to a head now, in 2016. For the central issue is the survival of white supremacy and First World hegemony. Trump and his supporters (along with the Murdoch and Breitbart media empires and American evangelical media) believe that this supremacy and hegemony are in mortal danger of being swept away, especially in the United States. Thus the candidacy of Trump represents a last-ditch attempt to stop the clock, or better yet, to reverse the clock of world history and to bring the 1950's back as a permanent state of world and national affairs. The 1950's hold special appeal for these people because these were the days in which white America dominated the world and Americans oppressed whomever they wanted to, without any fear of consequences or resistance. Americans who enjoyed the privileges of the 1950's grew to believe that they would never have a need for politeness, compromise, consensus, respect of differences, or the need to work harmoniously with others. And they even remade God into their own image (or for a while, as it seemed), as the God who "gave us this great land and promised us that we should rule the world!"
This has been the real agenda of the Right for a long time. This is the real agenda of the Right at this present time. This is what is at stake in the current election. And on a certain level, this agenda is not only national, but international in scope, although on the international level, there are some differences. (How many of you know that the far-right movements now at work in Europe are partially financed by Russia? See this also. And Russia is financing Trump.) On the international level, the agenda morphs into an effort to maintain the hegemony of the First World over the rest of the earth, by attempting to arrive at a gentleman's agreement over who is allowed to exercise control over particular "spheres of influence". The gentleman's agreement is then paid for at the expense of the nonwhite majority world, who get to enjoy continuing to be carved up by First World "spheres of influence" while being excluded from the concentrations of wealth which the nations of the First World have amassed by robbing everyone else blind.
The trouble with establishing such an agenda is that the factors which would cause such an agenda to succeed are now changing very rapidly. As far as the United States, the most recent census data shows that by 2020, the majority of children in the United States will be nonwhite. From 2011 onward, the majority of births in the United States each year have been nonwhite. Moreover, many of these children are multiracial. And they do not have the same agenda as the media outlets whose mouthpieces constantly demonize them as "terrorists," "heathen," "criminals" or "savages." They don't care about Benghazi or emails. They (and their parents) just want to live their lives in peace. But because the current masters of American society continue to engage in conversations which the future majority population doesn't care about, the current masters of America risk becoming irrelevant in very short order. This translates to a loss of power, if by power one means the power to bully, to oppress, to rob, to dominate, to impose oneself and one's culture on others.
The same trends are at work in Europe, which is why many European far-right groups have arisen to try to stop this process. It could also be argued that this is a motivation for the Russian intervention in Syria. Don't get me wrong - I think that the attempt by the West to overthrow yet another country should have been stopped. However, based on things I have learned and sources I have read over the last several months, I don't believe the Russians intervened out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather, to stop the influx of people considered nonwhite into Europe (and potentially, into Russia).
Trump supporters have the misguided hope that perhaps he can reverse the loss of white supremacy in the U.S. - perhaps by a massive increase in police shootings of unarmed black Americans, or perhaps by wholesale, indiscriminate deportation of anyone who looks foreign or has a non-English last name, even if they were born in the U.S. (Such deportations have happened before in U.S. history, by the way.) But there is yet another trend at work which cannot be stopped by any political leader on earth. And that trend is the continued impoverishment and decline of the global industrial economy owned and controlled by the nations of the First World. For that decline is driven inexorably by the depletion of the resources needed to make that economy run. Global production of all petroleum products is now past peak. Coal production is about to peak, if it has not already. The same is true of many other resources. This also translates to a loss of power on the part of those who were formerly dominant. How will the formerly powerful respond to the impending loss of their power? Their response will show whether they have learned to become decent people or whether they are still wolves.
In closing, I will mention the church service I attended today. It was at a Vietnamese church which shares a church building with a Hispanic congregation and a Karen (Myanmar/Thai) congregation. This Vietnamese congregation held a joint Vacation Bible School with their Hispanic brethren this past summer. Their youth groups have also had joint worship services together. A couple of Christmases ago, I visited this church and heard some of the Vietnamese children singing Feliz Navidad. I have also seen some of the Mexican members of the Hispanic church attending the Vietnamese Nativity service. Today, the Vietnamese pastor was preaching out of Romans 12:6-8, and he was talking about how there is tremendous diversity in humanity. He also mentioned that in the Body of Christ, that diversity is part of a unity. (I was also able to see his sermon notes on a church member's iPad, and in his notes the pastor had alluded to the great evil of trying to persecute each other over our differences.) The pastor and his congregation are not terrorists or criminals, but they have learned how to get along with others and how to be a blessing to others. Why is it so hard for mainstream America to learn this lesson? Could it be that America is infected by a terminal case of narcissism?
But the day which I have come to despise most of all in the United States is Election Day. Indeed, one of the most annoying aspects of life in the USA just now is the fact that we seem to be in a never-ending election season designed to produce maximal angst and fear among those who have to live through it. A particularly vexing element of this is having to cut through the games played by wolves who want to bury their real agenda behind a bunch of non-issues. Today's post will attempt to clarify the real issues at stake in the national elections, at least, as I see them.
Many of those who are campaigning for Donald Trump claim that a Trump presidency would bring world peace by ending American neocon attempts to expand American power throughout the world. Some of these people seek to paint Hillary Clinton as some sort of war criminal, either because some American operatives died at Benghazi after the U.S. had overthrown the lawful government of Gaddafi, or because Ms. Clinton had a personal Gmail account while she was Secretary of State. (If having a personal email account is a crime, you may as well throw many of us in jail, because we too have personal email accounts in addition to our work accounts.) Indeed, there are many mouthpieces trying by every possible means to make Mr. Trump palatable enough to get enough votes to win the Presidency. (Some of these people have actually tried to use the angle that he is "the lesser of two evils." They forget that by saying this they are admitting that he is evil.)
But if we take Mr. Trump at face value - especially concerning the statements and speeches which won him the Republican nomination - we see the real motive behind the Trump candidacy, and behind the efforts of the American right wing over the last decades. These efforts are coming to a head now, in 2016. For the central issue is the survival of white supremacy and First World hegemony. Trump and his supporters (along with the Murdoch and Breitbart media empires and American evangelical media) believe that this supremacy and hegemony are in mortal danger of being swept away, especially in the United States. Thus the candidacy of Trump represents a last-ditch attempt to stop the clock, or better yet, to reverse the clock of world history and to bring the 1950's back as a permanent state of world and national affairs. The 1950's hold special appeal for these people because these were the days in which white America dominated the world and Americans oppressed whomever they wanted to, without any fear of consequences or resistance. Americans who enjoyed the privileges of the 1950's grew to believe that they would never have a need for politeness, compromise, consensus, respect of differences, or the need to work harmoniously with others. And they even remade God into their own image (or for a while, as it seemed), as the God who "gave us this great land and promised us that we should rule the world!"
This has been the real agenda of the Right for a long time. This is the real agenda of the Right at this present time. This is what is at stake in the current election. And on a certain level, this agenda is not only national, but international in scope, although on the international level, there are some differences. (How many of you know that the far-right movements now at work in Europe are partially financed by Russia? See this also. And Russia is financing Trump.) On the international level, the agenda morphs into an effort to maintain the hegemony of the First World over the rest of the earth, by attempting to arrive at a gentleman's agreement over who is allowed to exercise control over particular "spheres of influence". The gentleman's agreement is then paid for at the expense of the nonwhite majority world, who get to enjoy continuing to be carved up by First World "spheres of influence" while being excluded from the concentrations of wealth which the nations of the First World have amassed by robbing everyone else blind.
The trouble with establishing such an agenda is that the factors which would cause such an agenda to succeed are now changing very rapidly. As far as the United States, the most recent census data shows that by 2020, the majority of children in the United States will be nonwhite. From 2011 onward, the majority of births in the United States each year have been nonwhite. Moreover, many of these children are multiracial. And they do not have the same agenda as the media outlets whose mouthpieces constantly demonize them as "terrorists," "heathen," "criminals" or "savages." They don't care about Benghazi or emails. They (and their parents) just want to live their lives in peace. But because the current masters of American society continue to engage in conversations which the future majority population doesn't care about, the current masters of America risk becoming irrelevant in very short order. This translates to a loss of power, if by power one means the power to bully, to oppress, to rob, to dominate, to impose oneself and one's culture on others.
The same trends are at work in Europe, which is why many European far-right groups have arisen to try to stop this process. It could also be argued that this is a motivation for the Russian intervention in Syria. Don't get me wrong - I think that the attempt by the West to overthrow yet another country should have been stopped. However, based on things I have learned and sources I have read over the last several months, I don't believe the Russians intervened out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather, to stop the influx of people considered nonwhite into Europe (and potentially, into Russia).
Trump supporters have the misguided hope that perhaps he can reverse the loss of white supremacy in the U.S. - perhaps by a massive increase in police shootings of unarmed black Americans, or perhaps by wholesale, indiscriminate deportation of anyone who looks foreign or has a non-English last name, even if they were born in the U.S. (Such deportations have happened before in U.S. history, by the way.) But there is yet another trend at work which cannot be stopped by any political leader on earth. And that trend is the continued impoverishment and decline of the global industrial economy owned and controlled by the nations of the First World. For that decline is driven inexorably by the depletion of the resources needed to make that economy run. Global production of all petroleum products is now past peak. Coal production is about to peak, if it has not already. The same is true of many other resources. This also translates to a loss of power on the part of those who were formerly dominant. How will the formerly powerful respond to the impending loss of their power? Their response will show whether they have learned to become decent people or whether they are still wolves.
In closing, I will mention the church service I attended today. It was at a Vietnamese church which shares a church building with a Hispanic congregation and a Karen (Myanmar/Thai) congregation. This Vietnamese congregation held a joint Vacation Bible School with their Hispanic brethren this past summer. Their youth groups have also had joint worship services together. A couple of Christmases ago, I visited this church and heard some of the Vietnamese children singing Feliz Navidad. I have also seen some of the Mexican members of the Hispanic church attending the Vietnamese Nativity service. Today, the Vietnamese pastor was preaching out of Romans 12:6-8, and he was talking about how there is tremendous diversity in humanity. He also mentioned that in the Body of Christ, that diversity is part of a unity. (I was also able to see his sermon notes on a church member's iPad, and in his notes the pastor had alluded to the great evil of trying to persecute each other over our differences.) The pastor and his congregation are not terrorists or criminals, but they have learned how to get along with others and how to be a blessing to others. Why is it so hard for mainstream America to learn this lesson? Could it be that America is infected by a terminal case of narcissism?
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