The Post-Trump World

Roger Cohen's piece "The Trump Possibility" in The New York Times articulated a list of why it is possible for the world's most powerful nation to elect

a fascist. These included fear, anxiety-multipliers, the crash of 2008 which rigged the global system and granted impunity to an elite, growing inequality, abandonment of the working class, and the perennial folly of blaming those who have the least power.

But is it because we are so impressed with media we cannot see how we are being manipulated into believing that we have elected this man rather than the system presenting the "winner" before the elections?

"We are on the wrong track if we imagine that ideas put forth by political leaders contain, or are intended to contain, some form of “truth”; that ideas correspond to some aspect of “external reality.” The coin of the realm in politics is fantasy: the leader’s ability to express his own fantasies, and to induce or seduce others to share those fantasies. The leader presents ideas that resonate with his audience. His utterances allow followers to externalize inner states of being." writes Richard Koenigsberg in his post Ideology as Shared Fantasy.

I do not know enough about how this works but those in communications and advertising may be familiar with it.  I have mostly felt we are being manipulated by institutions and business who have learned how to work on the most cynical levels of human nature. 

George Orwell's 1984 is an allegory that takes place in the future but based on the horror of fascist societies in Europe, while its victims believed they were willingly driving the fight for freedom.  

Then the fifties and sixties flourished with consumer fashions and we thought we could express who we were with clothes, make-up and cars - the fantasy was about endless stuff.

Now that the economy is rigged to benefit only a few, most of us don't have that opportunity to spend our lives away. 

My current fantasy is that we shall find a way to preserve our water, the environment, and justice - so we won't need to carry placards on the streets forever. How to convince others? Many are already doing it.

The idea that our fantasy is wanting to find its way out is both intriguing and terrifying.

Delusions and Fantasies

 "And it's not a secret: Les Moonves, the Executive Chairman and CEO of CBS, said, as reported by the Hollywood Reporter about Trump's candidacy: "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." He added: “Donald's place in this election is a good thing. … Man, who would have expected the ride we're all having right now? ... The money's rolling in and this is fun... I've never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.” Thom Hartmann, AlterNet.

The trust in our civilization to represent truth and justice, to find balances, to protect us against the abuse of power, is a delusion.

A society is based on what individuals and groups contribute to it.

1. It depends on our level of education - a recycle of greatness propaganda, or the facts plus a humility to engage with them? 
2. It depends on the kind of vigilance we bring to raising a family, watching children grow and making sure we intervene with guidance and integrity when they appear to be heading down  a destructive path. We will have to care for the family of humankind as we have cared for our own family. 
3. We will need to apply the skills we have learned to build community to the rebuilding of our nation. This is not the nationalism of bragging violence, but a nationalism of concern.
4. We need to listen to others who express ideas we don't agree with and respond with respect to explain why we don't agree.
5. We will need to give up the demand that others see the world as we do.
6. To stretch our awareness and interrogation of our own interests as part of the dialogue. Give up the simplistic divisions and generalizations such as LEFT and RIGHT, MALE and FEMALE, WHITE and BLACK, to include all in our circle.
7. To accept that we are part of the animal kingdom who have evolved in amazing ways - creating music, art, stories, and ideologies. And while our exploration and behaviours have been far from perfect, we can learn from our errors.
8. To see that errors are not failures but signals to redirect our goals.
9. Particularly that economics is not just about profit and wealth for a few. Greed is not an inspiration to create more, it is a collapse of values that diminishes the organic journey to a forced and shallow end.
10. And finally, that the ultimate goal of our existence is not to kill, subdue, and conquer others for our egocentric interests, but to celebrate the mystery and reality of it with a level gaze.

Greatest Mental Disease of Our Time

The primary mental disease of our time exhibits many habits and symptoms, but two come to mind here: 

Entitlement. The idea that we have more because we earned it.

Power. The worship of force, power-over, that is dislocated from the life force it seeks to control.

Entitlement and Power are instruments of oppression developed over centuries. Each of these create systemic violence within constructs of established and new fantasies.

Village folk, having learned through generations of civilization, understand we would not survive beyond infancy without love and cooperation. Language, literature, and knowledge are the trinity of civilization. Now with imagination and technology we have created higher standards of living. But these are soon lost if we adhere to a propaganda that promotes selfishness exclusively. Our wealth and intelligence becomes more powerful when its shared with the whole Universe to sustain and protect our ecosystems.

Taxes are investments in the human future. Roads, hospitals and schools are vehicles to richer lives.  We take these vehicles of infrastructure for granted if we succumb to adolescent ideologies that worship the winners and express contempt for everyone else.

Entitlement blinds us to the centuries of socialization that has invested in our well being.  Who will benefit by this ideology? The arms industry?

Power that continues to rape and pillage - physically, spiritually and emotionally is a power that eats life - through forced labour, racism, misogyny, poverty and pollution of the planet. This leaves the conscience and consciousness feeling powerless.

Driven in this way, we destroy nature, the planet, our families and friends, and our own future. We destroy our nation just as the Nazi's destroyed the country they claimed to love. The routine torture and murder of unarmed imprisoned people is the result of this madness. Power is as stupid as it is brutal.

Because we allow ourselves to be oppressed by the devices we created to prove we are entitled to have power over others,  we have made our own lives contemptible.

Suzuki: humanity's collision course - a warning

What can we do?

1. “We must bring environmentally damaging activities under control to restore and protect the integrity of the earth’s systems we depend on.” It specifically mentions reducing greenhouse gas emissions and air and water pollution. It also highlights the need to address deforestation, degradation and loss of agricultural soils and extinction of plant and animal species.
2. “We must manage resources crucial to human welfare more effectively.” This one is obvious. Finite resources must be exploited much more efficiently or we’ll run out.
3. “We must stabilize population. This will be possible only if all nations recognize that it requires improved social and economic conditions, and the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning.”
4. “We must reduce and eventually eliminate poverty.”
5. “We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions.”

This comes from the guardian spirit of intelligent self interest and science, thanks to the Suzuki Foundation.

Why Hate is Not a Way Out

Antony Gormley was quoted in an article (by Hannah Ellis-Petersen, printed in the Guardian July 6 ) with a warning - we live in dangerous times. “Yet we are all sleepwalking through it...aware the centre cannot hold, that 250 years of industrial activity has undermined and fundamentally disturbed our world – yet we feel somehow not responsible.” 

Worse is the seeming efficiency with which movements are able to destroy civil society all across the globe with very little analysis among comrades or from the mainstream media.

So while hatred has been whipped up towards immigrants, or more likely people who are not white, and while hatred has done so much damage to struggling countries everywhere - we seem to have learned nothing.

But there are recurring elements we must remember before we slip into civil wars, terrorism or xenophobic attacks.

1. The white race has for centuries invaded all continents and brutally destroyed the social systems of aboriginal people they encountered.

2. Outrage at the "problems" caused by immigrants usually comes from the white race who felt entitled to invade, rape and pillage wherever they landed without question. The harm done by colonialism has yet to be fully examined by Europeans who now feel threatened by mass migrations. 

3. The military-industrial complex has been very effective in flaming hatred where they stand to profit from the wars that result from it. However we don't remember the interests who help to fund campaigns such as the Nazis in WWII, military coups in Central America, or the Middle East.

4. We don't pay attention to the really powerful lobbies and their ideologies. It's as though we accept their reptilian appetites as business-as-usual without blame.

5. We forget that the front line hooligans, thugs and suicide bombers are often the poorest most desperate groups who have very little choice, and who are hungry for a future that includes dignity and meaning.  We readily turn away from their condition and their despair when it is obvious they are in need, and then are shocked when they become radicalized.

6. We forget that the masses are dismissed until they are exploited and manipulated to cause the conditions for a profitable invasion from a foreign elite so powerful, their presence is rarely reported in the mainstream.

7. We forget that every generation experiences the disregard for humanity, until their suffering becomes a useful means for profit for the very few. 

In spite of all this, we quickly blame without reflection, those who have the least power to change things. There seems to be an inability to see our part in this recurring drama which ultimately harms us all. 

But also we need to realize that it is the system that breeds contempt for life with its surgical strategies that further divide us and make life miserable.

If we don't wake up soon, our beloved will suffer the torture and violence that spreads like a deadly virus as though it is the only solution, when in reality, it simply breeds the trauma that keep us fearful and afraid of one another. And therefore powerless cannon fodder for the strategists planning their next windfall.

Class Background, Unitarian Universalism's Hidden Diversity

“As the national polarization gets ever more bitter, we must work all the harder not to stereotype those who disagree with us according to their race, class, income, or other demographic category, no matter how closely such traits may correlate with ideas we oppose. The more tempted we are to write people off without a hearing, the harder we should be working to understand them.”

Doug Muder (contributing editor and columnist for UU World. 

What I really want is dignity, to be respected as a whole yet flawed individual who is trying with all she has to make life kinder to those she meets, and I suspect that others also feel like this. That we get scared, get angry, get defeated, and tired at times, and say things we regret, is part of our nature.

However we also have the capacity to bring back to the fold, our compassionate reason, and to acknowledge those who do difficult work. Fire fighters, police officers, ministers, parents, sons, daughters, social workers and teachers are tested every minute of every day - to do the best they can under the circumstances.

Going forward we anticipate that mistakes will be made. As the organism we know as society, we can appreciate the trained and innate skills of others and learn from their experiences.

At times when this society is in crisis I can look to those learned skills for some answers along with my own awareness and observations.  This is where much of our wealth lies.