"I just don't know who to call out anymore"

"I just don’t know who to call out anymore"

Jim Lassiter

May 13, 2021

The lament of the hunter-gatherer now inside the walls
Of the first city-state of Mesopotamia.
The face-to-face accountability of his former life
As a nomadic band member
Now only a mythic memory.

Personal accountability was now mediated
By the written laws and money
Invented and controlled by the elite.

He was now civilized but something primal
In his humanness had died.
His now lonely soul subconsciously stretched
Toward Bethlehem awaiting deliverance
And a return to fraternité.

But true salvation and restoration of his humanity
In the arms of his Abrahamic brothers and sisters
In their love of their one true God,
Never came.

After Rome, darkness fell.
But comfort did not come in the Renaissance,
Nor during the well-intentioned Age of Reason.

Mammon Modernity was the coup de grâce
Atop a slowly steaming mountain
Of consumer trash.

Now in the Information Age we are him.
Rootless, powerless in the gyre
Awaiting the next rough beast.

And darkness will fall again
And the tide shine blood red, again.

Our science, tools powerless,
The God mute.

From the toxic stench of global collapse
We will stagger forth and remember Buber.

And turn to our comrade,
Extend an open hand and once more,
As we did millennia ago within the dusty, sweaty band,
Softly ask: “We?”

Confronting Authoritarians at Home and Globally

 

How To Fight Authoritarianism

Wesley K. Clark

April/May/June 2021

Washington Monthly

The approach in the above article is good for the international aspects of authoritarianism. But the greatest threat is from homegrown authoritarians, here and abroad. 

Consumer capitalism’s affordable products and the patriotic drumbeats of our politicians touting nationalism have fueled our aggressive potential such that we can now only think nationally/tribally/racially.

We in the US and the rest of the West are blinded from our better humanitarian brotherly/sisterly nature by shiny stuff and the myths of social Darwinism and human and white exceptionalism.

We want our consumer comforts and privileges now and forever, and will fight and vote in authoritarians to help keep them. Freedom to remain within the comfort of our relative plenty is all that matters. Equality and brother-sisterhood, at home and overseas, are nowhere near as important to us. 

It will take much more than a treaty with the EU and UK to fix this illness that has now overtaken all of humankind. There may not be a reasoned persuasion cure. 

This disease may have to just run its course. That is, until the masses of the world achieve some level of middle class prosperity. A comfort level where the possibility of a better more humane way of being human emerges in their minds and hearts. A more reasonable, practical, and compassionate worldview that replaces the current dog-eat-dog capitalism, nationalism, tribalism, and racism mantra.

After all, it was not until middle class America reached a certain level of prosperity between 1942 and 1972 that we in the US would tolerate and listen to the Civil Rights and hippie movements‘ arguments for a more humane eco-friendly way of living. The persistence of Martin Luther King and warnings of Malcom X helped a lot. Even after that nearly half the people in the US still remain unpersuaded.

The beliefs and values in hearts and minds are hard to change. To reform them toward alignment with the moral arc of the universe toward justice is difficult. It takes reasoning humanistic leadership, hard work, persistence, and sometimes a fight. And time and some luck.