Us and Them

There are some billionaire hedge fund owners and multinational CEOs who donate to divide civil society by investing in sites like Breitbart and hate media outlets like Fox News.  CommonDreams.org 

"Investigative journalist Jane Mayer wrote a book about their efforts titled Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

“In April of 2016, the SPLC documented Breitbart’s embrace of extremist ideas and racist tropes such as black-on-white crime and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. Further analyses showed how under executive chair Stephen Bannon, Breitbart’s comment section became a safe space for anti-Semitic language.”

Anti-Union groups like Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, CATO Institute, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research have been funded in the millions.

What makes social justice and equality such a threat towards these elites that they  fund parties who are willing to take babies away from their mothers, incarcerate African Americans, support anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, denigrate indigenous people and support pornographic misogynist rape culture?

Since Canada follows US trends we can expect that right wing political parties are also supported by Corporate capitalist elites. Even CBC news has been tainted by right wing apathetic tones.

The spike in "public" support or acceptance of right wing attitudes came suddenly after Donald Trump got elected.  Our Prime Minister changed his tone from holding up indigenous rights to cheering for pipelines.

In a nutshell, the white supremacists have revealed to my imagination this Orwellian animal farm scenario:

People who are brown, Islamic, Jewish, female, intellectually curious, LGBTQ and poor - are the enemy.  Who else is left?  The ruling elite along with those who can be manipulated by propaganda.

So what is next if this hierarchy remains and rules?  A planetary playground for billionaires and their servants. One way or another - all life that cannot be exploited will be removed. Which takes us back to the Nazis who imprisoned and killed anyone who didn't subscribe to their goal of world domination.

In some states Christianity has been hijacked and changed to an evangelical cult to not only accept the brutality of Trump's campaign but to make him a God. Forget the centuries of Christian teachings of Jesus. The second coming is Money. It can change everything that invests in its supremacy as long as humanity has been emptied of conscience and compassion.  It is built on contempt for all natural life.  It is power without flesh. The worship of the monster revealed as greed, which will bring suffering to everything that is beautiful and worth living for.

Addiction, drugs and pollution will be the weapons of those who cannot tolerate any other kind of power beyond their own. If the land is flooded and the forests on fire, they will purchase land where it is not.

It won't be capitalism or communism or fascism - it will simply be the dark hole of power, the mindless, heartless machine. There will be no conscience to reveal the suffering of ourselves or others. Language will dissolve into clicks.  Knowledge will be erased. Whatever beauty can be found in nature will be a desert.

So if we do not voice our shared or diverse views, if we are irritated by people who have different experiences, people who have different faiths and wear different clothes, and you look forward to a time where everyone is just like you, and everything is what you like - you are helping the silencing of humanity.

Love Resists Hate Groups

A large American Christian charity  “has donated $56.1 million on behalf of its clients to 23 nonprofits identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups.” Ilana Novick - Truthdig.

These include anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim, anti-Immigrant groups. 

However there are many Christians and other religious groups who work on the premise of Love Resists.

Here is their message:

As people committed to building inclusive communities of love and justice, our hearts are heavy with the recent news of the murders of Muslim worshipers in Christchurch, New Zealand. When members of our global communities and families are harmed, we know we must recommit to caring for one another; to being the balm, the comfort, and the fire for justice.  We recommit to understanding Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence as part of a growing movement of white Christian nationalism that traces its roots to the United States and conflates racial resentment with religiosity.  We recommit to interrogating our own complicity in Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence. We recommit to growing the skills we need to practice community safety and to not perform safety that so often increases criminalization by involving the harms of policing and militarization. We recommit to learning about policies and practices that create a climate of violence and how to resist them, whether on the national level like the"Muslim Ban" or on the local level, like surveillance programs such as Countering Violent Extremism.  If you are Muslim or a target of Islamophobia or anti-Muslim violence, may you recommit to abiding, fierce self-love and love for your community. Love Resists is with you in loving solidarity. We affirm and echo the wordsof UUA President Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray:  "This attack is part of a global trend of unapologetic nationalism and white supremacist violence that we cannot ignore. We must call it out. We must condemn it. We must also interrogate our own hearts for the disease of bigotry and work to eradicate it." Resources for recommitting to learning and healing: Coping With Community Trauma, from the Muslim Wellness Foundation Deescalation and Interventions, a resource from Side With Love Unpacking and Resisting State-Sponsored Islamophobia, from the UU College of Social Justice What is "Countering Violent Extremism"? (CVE), from the Muslim Justice League More ways to support our Muslim siblings, from the Muslim Justice League In faith and solidarity, The Love Resists Team

Love Resists is a joint campaign by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

www.loveresists.org

Climate Strike around the world

Scenes of Climate Strike around the world shown in RollingStone Magazine - go to this link  here.

Sacred Masculine

Even though gender is a construct beyond 

the reproductive organs - I need to respect 

the hero, the sacred masculine

as it has been witnessed here.

The real man who goes out to the garden

to build a wooden box for tomato stakes

come summer.

The man who takes an afternoon nap

before he prepares supper

who knows when I am sick before I do

who keeps the TV volume down

when I take a nap.

Who held, fed and changed our first born 

while I went to the theatre,

who survived the highway-to-office battles

for fifty years, the endless sales calls, 

unmentionable skirmish in the belly, 

who had the insight to admit he couldn’t stay 

in the manager’s chair without slipping 

into that alcoholic night. Who realized

he never wanted to be a stranger to his children.

The sacred masculine holds the ability

to fix the gate or vacuum cleaner

look for the best hotel, weed the garden

coach kids how to kick a soccer ball into the net

listen to the troubles and achievements of friends,

buy birthday cards, potatoes or eggs

and allow the ‘other’ a seat on the subway

without spreading.

The sacred masculine adapts to the world 

as it is, his level gaze informing

the warrior of the weapons required

who will never win fame because

he didn't take a gun and kill something.

.

Invasion of the Anthro-Hyena

The narrative around civilization and how we ought to behave and live has many outlets.

There's the historical story - looking back at the different ages, the conquerors, the ruling family, the industrial revolution, the economy, the influence of inventions, the study of science, the development of education and social organization.

There's religion, its power over the people, and our values. There's literature, music and art. There is politics. There is media.

For most of us these influences are embedded in our own development. They influence our fathers and mothers, our teachers and neighbours. The way we see our worth is often an echo of our class and the way we are valued as part of our society.

Each family carries the values they have consciously or sub-consciously assumed is the truth. Whether we are liberal or conservative depends on how our parents saw the world and whether we were nurtured or suffered from those views, and how comfortable we are within the physical, social and economic system we live in.

Our society requires our cooperation, sustainability and ability to communicate. A healthy society requires empathy although it's rarely mentioned. The emphasis has been on control and punishment using the rule of law, physical threats and influence.

Influence is the largest part of social coherence - to make us believe that it's in our best interests to cooperate with leaders and the system.

Classrooms inadvertently teach children that being popular is what we all want and if we can't be top of the class then we must strive to be normal. Yes schools teach math, english, history, geography and sports. Schools also teach us how to get along, to be kind and considerate too but these measures don't show up on grading charts.

For all of this to work there must be other foundations too. For example we are emotional and spiritual beings as well as intellectual and physical.

You have probably heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs created in 1943. First are the physiological needs, then above that safety, then social belonging, self-esteem, self actualization and ultimately transcendence - but each one of these depends on the one before being met. If you don't have food and shelter then you can't have safety, and if you don't feel safe you don't feel you belong, and so on.

Our health and well being require wisdom from humans who are civilized and functional. However the current obsessions have ignored these. Our governments and economy have dismissed the physiological needs of the homeless and the hungry, and so they are shunned, trashed, outlawed.

How did we give up the wisdom, love and esteem earned from centuries where we accept that the things we create are worth as much but not more than the life we live?

The transitions were minor but led to the next stage ready for the next ideology, and we can look at certain people who had power and wealth who manipulated nations then continents.

The most powerful nations have governments that glorify rulers, but show little concern or even outright contempt for the marginalized and the poor.

Colonialism destroyed the first nations and indigenous peoples along with their language, rituals and wisdom. In place of the reverence for life were oppressive doctrines from those who had learned how to divide and conquer.

"We must answer their call. Our Mother Earth, militarized, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated, demands that we take action. Let us build societies that are able to coexist in a dignified way, in a way that protects life. Let us come together and remain hopeful as we defend and care for the blood of the Earth and of its spirits.”

– Berta Caceres, Indigenous rights and environmental activist of the Lenca people, murdered in Honduras in 2016. (CounterPunch, Kenn Orphan)

But what is lost - is not just culture, it is gratitude for life on this planet which has been replaced with the worship of power over everything, rituals of everlasting war, misanthropy and misogyny. A cynical cruel sneer of anything that is beautiful for beauty's sake.

The Anthro-Hyena is the god of the psychopath, the teacher of greed, the prince of spite, and the worship of death. The Anthro-Hyena can't see the world, it only sees the charts of how to rule, the next strategy, the stock of weapons, the size of the boots, the walls of the prisons. The Anthro-Hyena will not accept any conversation that nurtures, helps, heals or loves.

The Anthro-Hyena rules the largest and richest institutions, big business, government, the market - and the Anthro-hyena exists only in ideology, not in the sentient womb.