Infinite Power

I know the news moves on quickly, but I am still back, as I expect some of you are also, with what occurred in the US Supreme Court a few days ago. I am sharing with you all an essay that I couldn't not write after Dr. Blasey Ford's testimony. Trigger warning for some of what I write. Feel free to share with whomever you wish. And thanks to those who have read earlier versions. You know who you are. 

Continuing from Dr. Blasey Ford’s Testimony, the Truths I Know 

I watched closely the Supreme Court events in the US and found myself becoming increasingly sad, angry and churned up with the process and the ultimate outcome. Spoiler alert. Yes, I clearly side with Dr. Ford and I will over the course of this essay endeavour to show you why. 

I am not myself a survivor of sexual assault or abuse. But at this historic moment I am reminded of all the brave women who I was honoured to treat in my capacity as a clinical psychologist and Assistant Clinical Professor within the Dept. of Psyc…

Billionaires anticipating the collapse of democracy and the nation state?  Mark O'Connell writes in a Guardian article (Why Silicon Billionaires are Prepping for the Apocalypse in New Zealand).

O'Connell quotes from a book called The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age.  The title looks harmless enough, but inside it contains the recipe for what feels to me, a kind of nihilism. It preaches:

"1) The democratic nation-state basically operates like a criminal cartel, forcing honest citizens to surrender large portions of their wealth to pay for stuff like roads and hospitals and schools. 2) The rise of the internet, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, will make it impossible for governments to intervene in private transactions and to tax incomes, thereby liberating individuals from the political protection racket of democracy. 3) The state will consequently become obsolete as a political entity. 
4) Out of this wreckage will emerge a new globa…

Love everyone Hate no-one Move to the edge
Happy Thanksgiving

We are being formed and re-formed by who? The personality of cult seems to be so effective at confusing and misdirecting our beliefs and energies, that it seems intentional, planned by cunning architects.  The issue that drives all other issues is well described by George Monbiot in his recent blog - Personality Cult which you will find here https://www.monbiot.com/2018/10/05/personality-cult/ 

In reading Common Dreams article on Arundhati Roy's take on the free market, I have imagined the following poem.


The Market
Reading the common dreams of any day I see an image of a man, naked starved, his skin almost transparent his bones protruding through and then the chair of the committee who, needing to justify his salary wonders what use a starving man can be?
Might the cup of rice, twenty beans  and litre of water he consumes  be better spent in a bank account  somewhere  in Switzerland or London?
If every man, woman and child was blown to dust in a global war except for the employable 10% who serve their masters
might that put an end to poverty?
And might the chair take his idea to the board who would then advise not to tell anyone  not a word, a hint or question for a hundred years would he do as he is told?
Or would he see that starving man every night (before he falls asleep) for the rest of his life?

How politics disposes of some people so that others follow feeling numbed if not privileged, Giroux responds to the trial against victims of rape in the Brett Kavanaugh case. 

"I mean, I think that when any group or any element of the population is seen as so disposable, is treated with such almost visceral violence, we begin to get a whiff of something that is at work here that really isn’t being talked about, and that is a kind of fascist politics that absolutely hates democracy, hates the truth, hates public participation and is doing everything it can to hide, would seem to me, any visible element of what it might mean to take this woman’s narrative seriously and to talk, basically, about the crimes that are built into the system in ways that have to be addressed." The Real News Network. Interview with Henri Giroux by DHARNA NOOR