Print by Leopoldo Mendéz
Here’s something I wrote in 2014, two years before Trump was
elected:
‘Suffering and Injustice - Whose Awe, Truth, and Hope Will
Prevail?'
Trump and what has now become his Republican Party epitomize
the very defiance of Humankind’s ‘cultural human nature’ I was writing about
five years ago.
But, as the saying goes, the band plays on. After all, who
reads, much less heeds, the run-on sentences of an agnostic-atheist
philosophical ethnographer? Much less one not affiliated with a major
university, think tank, or political party. An old retired guy who happily
spent most of his working life in Trump’s so-called ‘shithole’ countries. A
language blessed/cursed primate whose every thought and written word is not
peer-reviewed or influenced by a craving for academic tenure and book deals? An
unorthodox emotional guy, a sometimes loose cannon?
When politics in a society, that of the US in particular,
becomes as it is now, bent irretrievably to the will of those seeking racial
and religious supremacy, absolute power, and obscene wealth accumulation to
such a degree that the social system is legally and morally unaccountable and
unreformable, it may just be the time for unorthodoxy, emotion and letting
cannons roll on decks. Arrr! Avast and stand to shipmates, the cannons may at
times point at thee!
If such people as Trump and the current incarnation of the
GOP continue in power and the path Humankind is now on to capitalist and
ecological collapse remains irreversible, as many far more knowledgeable and
wiser than me believe it will, our descendants in the US are very likely to
live in a theocratic totalitarian society similar to that depicted in Hulu TV’s
take on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale novel, or worse.
There are good, evidence-supported arguments by eminent
academics and on many credible Internet sites saying that the US may very
likely be headed toward such a Gileadian society.
If you think that’s too far fetched try and recall the
certainty you felt in early-mid 2016 that Trump had no chance of winning the
presidency. Then, the numb disbelief, fear and dread you felt the day after his
victory, and have felt to a greater or lesser degree every day since. Those
feelings will be nothing compared to the hysteria, panic and criminality each
of us will see in others and experience ourselves if/when the global economy
and ecology collapse.
The 2020 US election will be a crucial turning point for the
US and likely, in turn, for all of Humankind - a survival-sustainability or
extinction-planet death fork in the evolutionary road of Homo sapiens and
Earth.
All humanistic and true freedom and justice-committed
Americans, regardless of their political and religious affiliations or
leanings, must resist, as a moral and ecological duty, efforts to take us
further down the road to catastrophe and totalitarianism we are currently on.
Resistance must begin now, simultaneously on at least four
fronts:
1) take nonviolent action to disrupt all actions of all
those, in the private and public sectors, who refuse to immediately and fully
address the current catastrophic economic and ecological threat to Humankind
and Earth;
2) take political action at all levels to oppose, not
nominate and electorally defeat all political facilitators of the current
emergency regardless of their party affiliation;
3) support all science, technology and governance efforts to
reverse all current harmful ecological and economic actions through a Green NewDeal;
4) support all media, activist organizations and education
efforts that are committed to 1-3 through financial support and/or active
participation.
As one Extinction Rebellion banner in Atlanta recently put
it: ‘We’re F***ed, Fight Anyway.’ I agree.
EXCERPT FROM ‘SUFFERING AND INJUSTICE’
“Imagine the Earth populated by humans who cannot or will
not reason; whose knowledge is not informed by objective truth; and who have no
capacity for compassion beyond that for their own kind. All who eschew or misuse
reason, reject or misrepresent objective truth, restrict their compassion to
the like-minded, and lead or force others along this path, live in defiance of
Human Nature. When they do so in order to advance their privilege, power,
religion, ideology, or nation above that of all others, they subvert the
freedom of every member of Humankind to pursue an awe, truth, and hope
different from their own.”
...
“It is our ability to communicate about the consequences of
our behavior in the past and potential behavior in the future, and the
collective, protective covenant we entered into with each other at the dawn of
humanity hundreds of thousands of years ago, that still distinguish us and
represent, so far, our species’ greatest achievements. The core principle of
that covenant is acceptance of the need to agree and act upon standards related
to the avoidance and alleviation of suffering and those of fairness and
justice, writ large. This, in the face of threatening events in the
ever-challenging, ever-changing physical and social environments, is
indispensable to our humanity, to enlightened, civilized life.”
