US and Iran: Exceptionalism, not Imperialism, in Extraordinary Times

Sixty years after the CIA-orchestrated coup d'état that replaced democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh with a military government that effectively allowed Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi to rule as the absolute monarch until the United States could not prevent his overthrow in 1979, a 15-minute phone call broke the 34-year freeze in relations between two very influential players on the global stage. On Friday, September 27, 2013, US President Barack Hussein Obama's call to newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani marks a momentous occasion that, in concert with the dramatic saga that brought about the UN resolution on the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons program, should assuage any doubts that Obama is, indeed, creating the change in US foreign policy that the world had expected from him.

Exceptionalism

In his address the UN General Assembly, Obama asserted US exceptionalism – and in a sense, he's right.

By virtue of its military superiority, its economic power, and its cultural influence, it can't be denied that the United States is exceptional. The world has looked to the United States for inspiration and leadership since its constitution became the benchmark for all codified constitutions established by every free republic to come. In 1886, the people of France presented the Statue of Liberty to the United States to celebrate not only freedom as a republican value but also the promise of the expansion of freedom that Lincoln's victory in the Civil War represented. During the two world wars, the Allies in Europe called upon the United States to help them stand up against imperialist expansion. Today, the cultural reach is global, as billions of people throughout the world enjoy the music, entertainment, and technology generated by the United States.

Of course, the idea of exceptionalism is cringe-worthy when used with a sense of arrogance and entitlement; and of course, outside of US borders, the people of the world are fond of neither the insidious way that the US government has used them as pawns in its global power plays nor the annoying way that people from the United States tend treat them dismissively.

But exceptionalism doesn't necessarily have to take on that connotation when simply alluding to the realities that the United States, like every great world power that has had its moment in history, has exceptional qualities that are what brought it to prominence on the world stage and that, since the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been the world's single superpower.

Because isolationism is not an option in today's globalized world, in its role as a world leader, the United States has certain obligations to the international community; and there is some merit to the argument that those obligations include taking on the responsibility of enforcing what Obama called at the UN "a prohibition whose origins are older than the United Nations itself." Of all the atrocities of war, the use of chemicals as weapons of war is the atrocity that has engendered the deepest abhorrence, and it has the longest legacy of societies coming together to prevent it. So, despite all other moral crimes ever committed by the United States, the president's decision to enforce the chemical weapons ban carries exactly the kind of moral authority that the president of the United States should be exhibiting. The wisdom of using bombs to do this is what is questionable, not the mandate for the leader of the international community to enforce its ban.

Thankfully, whether by shrewd plan or sheer serendipity, Obama has succeeded, without using military force, in ensuring that chemical weapons are now far less likely to be used by either the Syrian rebels or the Assad regime. The threat of force by the most powerful military in the universe, combined with dogged behind-the-scenes diplomacy, has brought the much-needed engagement of international actors, and this engagement could lead to real solutions for the people of Syria – a prospect that is all the more hopeful as the opening of relations with Iran brings that country into the process, as well.

Not imperialism

While embracing exceptionalism, Obama rejected the notion of US imperialism in his speech at the UN, at once acknowledging the past and stressing a change in direction when he mentioned "a hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries." He referred to the idea of "American empire" as "useful propaganda," which, he pointed out, "isn’t borne out by America’s current policy or by public opinion" – and again, to a large degree, he's right.

Public opinion in the United States has demanded a contraction of military intervention as well as far more accountability in everything from Obama's drone policy, to NSA spying, to the latest round of free trade agreement negotiations – all of which mark a decided turn away from support for the use of the nation's exceptional power to ensure its own interests whenever and wherever it can with impunity.

Still, the United States has a long ways to go to throw off the yoke of the imperialist bully, especially with the constant drip of NSA leaks inflaming passion against the US government both at home and abroad.

The Snowden Affair has made for good political theater in Latin America, although in reality, it changes little, as the trend away from US influence was already well established. Having failed to progress out of its paternalistic Cold War mentality toward the region, the United States has squandered the opportunity to build stronger economic relationships, leaving a void that other world powers – notably, China and Iran – have been quick to fill. And along with a sea change in attitudes toward drug policies sweeping the hemisphere, Mexico and Central America are beginning to rethink their militarized policing, which will bring a waning of the US' heavy hand in the name of security in the region. The age of US imperialism in Latin America has quietly slipped away.

Surprisingly, it is from the very heart of the Middle East, in the very midst of tumultuous times, in the very birthplace of CIA interventionism, that another sea change is occurring. On June 15, 2013, the Iranian people elected Hassan Rouhani as president with more than 72 percent of the vote. Having been the chief negotiator on Iran's nuclear program for 16 years before resigning under Ahmadinejad's hard-line presidency, he has wasted no time in setting a new course toward easing tensions in the region and opening up diplomacy with the West. At home and at events during his historic visit to New York, such as Rouhani's talk before the Council on Foreign Relations, he has continually stressed the danger of extremism, pledging to establish Iran as a stabilizing influence in the troubled region – particularly in regard to Syria and Afghanistan.

While pointing to the source of suspicion and mistrust that has haunted Iranians over the past 60 years – US imperialism at its worse – Rouhani, like Obama, has made it clear that he is determined to move forward. Like Obama, he faces great challenges from the opposition within his own country. But, with the will of the people solidly behind him, through his program of moderation and confidence building, these two world leaders now have the extraordinary chance to usher in a new age of international cooperation.

Javier Sicilia Speaks Poetry to Power

Mexican poet and founder of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity Javier Sicilia was in New York City on Friday, 7 September, where he made a short speech that's referencing of several other popular poets before getting to the inventors of peaceful revolution – King and Gandhi – or any mention of the movements that they inspired proves once again just how much the world needs our poets.

The speech is titled Let's give peace a chance, words that have been cached in cliché in a culture that refuses to take peace seriously, but which deserve much more than a knowing nod of nostalgic agreement. They are words that, when de-compartmentalized from that place in our brains where we store warm, fuzzy memories of grandma's cinnamon rolls and cozy family gatherings around the Christmas tree and our innocent first kisses the words to our favorite feel-good songs, hold the power of an idea unleashed from the confines of the ideal, a dove released from its bondage as a symbol of unattainable, perfect peace, freed to bring the reality of peace down to earth as a participant of an ecosystem where every creature innovates and creates its own niche.

In the individualist culture of the United States, the reality that many times, relationships are symbiotic in nature is washed over by the adrenalin rush of competition for resources. In the same way, the vision of an apocalyptic Mad Max future grabs the imagination, denying the chance for peace from being heard above the gripping din.

What this Mexican poet is seeking to do is what all poetry can do, if only we would let it. With the enduring strength of careful language, poetry serves as a connective force, connecting and reconnecting people, places, and ideas through past, present, and future, vanquishing the myth of separation with which those who hold so much power in our societies veil the truth of our ability to refuse to accept their version of the way things must be.

It was the words of Jim Morrison with which Javier Sicilia introduced the deeply Mexican notion that the dead can, by invitation, be with us in a meaningful way. After quoting that martyr of the culture wars, he began his speech in New York: 

For all the dead that this absurd war against drugs has left, but have come with us from far away; for the dead that this terrorist imbecility of the 11th of September left behind, and whom at the side of these victims of violence have been summoned here by the verses of Morrison to “anoint the earth”, “to announce the sadness” that overcomes us and to pray with John Lennon to “give peace a chance”, I ask for a minute of silence.

Every year, at the beginning of November, Mexicans summon their dead – to home altars and cemeteries – with such enticements as golden cempoalxochitl (Mexican marigolds), candles, pulque or tequila, sugar skulls, pan de muertos (sweet bread of the dead), and bowls of comforting atole.

Javiar Sicilia brought this stubborn Mexican refusal to deny the sadness of memory on a caravan of care that passed along the U.S.-Mexican border from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, then headed up through the heart of Texas, over to New Orleans, on through Jackson, Miss., Montgomery, Ala., Atlanta and Fort Benning, Ga., and then up to Chicago and over to New York City, to end up in Washington, D.C.

The Caravan for Peace with Dignity and Justice has sought to expose the roots of drug violence in Mexico, raise awareness about the devastating effects of the War on Drugs particularly upon communities of color in the United States, and to inspire civil society to demand changes in the priorities of the most powerful democracy on earth.

To expose, raise awareness, and inspire – this is what poets and other thought-provokers do, and it is through words that the legacy of an individual's actions, which can only take place at one moment in time and in one location at a time, can be shared through space and time. The Caravan certainly made its enduring marks on the lives of many people who had the good fortune of being in each place and time that the pilgrims of peace stopped to expose, raise awareness, and inspire.

Now is when poetry can serve as a mnemonic device for our consciences to remember to move forward and take action rather than allowing ourselves to revert to our more comfortable, compartmentalized, disconnected, and forgetful cultural habits.

Ojalá podamos merecer que nos llamen locos, como han sido llamadas locas las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, por cometer la locura de negarnos a olvidar en los tiempos de la amnesia obligatoria.

If only we could merit being called crazy, as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have been called crazy, for committing the insanity of neglecting to forget in times of obligatory amnesia.

Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, in his poem, los caminos del viento, The Ways of the Wind, reminds us that to forget our past is to allow others reshape our reality. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo are the women who have been gathering in front of the Presidential Palace in Buenos Aires every Thursday for decades, ever since their children were abducted and "disappeared" by their government during Argentina's disgraceful Dirty War.

Eduardo Galeano's ode to the courage of hope ends with the words, 

no tienen fronteras los mapas del alma ni del tiempo,

neither maps of the soul nor of time have frontiers.

With these words, he connects souls across space and time, just as Javier Sicilia's caravan journey maps connections between souls across space and time. Along the U.S.-Mexican border, the fates of the citizens of two nations are inextricably tied together. And their fates are strung together with those of Indigenous Americans in New Mexico and African Americans in the agricultural South and the soldiers from throughout Latin America who have come to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, Ga., to learn how to wage war against the illegality of drugs and uphold the illusion of security in their countries and more African Americans and Mexican Americans and so many more people from less developed countries who have come without official sanction to the industrial North to try to forge a better life.

In New York City, Javier Sicilia spoke, as he did in each place where he spoke, in the language of the place. To introduce his Caravan to people in the United States, he began his essay for the Huffington Post by quoting Bob Dylan. In Atlanta, he summoned collective memories of Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Maya Angelou. In Chicago, he invoked the image of Al Capone as a reminder of prohibition's failures. For New Yorkers, John Lennon's words struck the chord that blends together all of the irrational ironies of violence that the Movement for Peace is all about.

And just as Javier Sicilia speak through the voices of others, so did John Lennon voice idea of imagining peace expressed by Swedish writer Stig Dagerman, who understood that life is little more than how we choose to face our fears. His poem, En dag om året, Just Once a Year, begins: 

En dag om året borde alla låtsas,    

att döden vilar i ett vitt schatull.

Inga stora illusioner krossas

och inge skjuts för fyra dollar skull.

Why don't we make believe just once a year

that Death has drowned beneath the deep blue sea!

No one's life is undermined by fear,

and no one shoots his neighbor for a fee.

The Mirror of History

The story about medical experimentation in Guatemala is a harrowing reminder of our past, yet our reaction to this story is itself a snapshot of where our society is today, and I see a welcome image of hope for Progressives, in this time when disillusionment and disappointment seem to be almost overwhelming.

Amy Goodman's October 5 interview with Susan Reverby, the medical historian who recently brought to light the unpublished documentation of the project, puts the incident in perspective. As an authority on the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, she is very familiar with the social attitudes of those decades when the lives of some were simply and plainly not considered to be as worthy of respect as the lives of others. In the case of Tuskegee, poor black sharecroppers in Georgia who were found to already have syphilis were studied, without being told that it was syphilis that they suffered from, they were lied to about the nature of their medical treatment, and they were never treated for their disease, even after penicillin was found to be an effective cure.

The study in Guatemala is even more egregious due to the fact that individuals who were institutionalized in a prison and in an insane asylum, as well as some army soldiers, were actually infected with syphilis, surely without their knowledge, although what they were told was a detail that had been left out of these newly discovered physician's notes. And even in the atmosphere that allowed for the Tuskegee experiment to go on for forty years, from 1932 to 1972, Susan Reverby points to a comment in a letter referring to a statement by the surgeon general himself, showing that he knew that it would not be ethically acceptable in the United States, as the most shocking aspect of her discovery.

On one hand, it is difficult to acknowledge the wrongs of our nation's past. Many would prefer not to think about them. When Glenn Beck spoke of “restoring honor” to the United States during his rally in Washington, for example, his statement rang of the personal experience of a man who seeks to put his own past behind him. He said,

“Let's be honest. If you look at history, America has been both terribly good and terribly bad. It has been both, but to concentrate on the bad instead of learning from the bad and repairing the bad and then looking to the good that is still out in front of us within our reach— We have a choice today. We can either let those scars crush us or redeem us.”

When Glenn Beck looks into the mirror of history, while acknowledging the bad, he cannot bear to dwell for long on those painful aspects. Assuming that what has worked for him in his own life will work for the nation, he turns toward the language of religious redemption, seeing those shameful instances as a part of a necessary spiritual path, as all-too-human lapses, their lessons being those of faith rather than of seeking deeper self-awareness. And whenever Progressives are characterized as the “blame America first” crowd, this abject refusal to look in the mirror and take responsibility for our collective actions, particularly in the “America” that stretches all the way to Tierra del Fuego, the colossal societal disconnect is strengthened.

On the other hand is the hope that surrounds this story. I perceive this moment to be a brief flash of the hope that Barack Obama campaigned upon, the hope that progress brings. That we find this story to be so horrifying, that the president's immediate apology to the nation of Guatemala is seen nearly universally as the appropriate response, shows that the rate of progress is, like the growth of a child, slow and nearly imperceptible to those who are witness to it day in and day out, yet society is moving forward.

Furthermore, by facing up to the attitudes that decided that it was acceptable to do in Guatemala what was not acceptable to do in the United States, the story links us to other past actions that our nation has taken in the Americas that merit attention, if we want to find realistic answers to problems such as illegal immigration or improve our relations within the rest of America. Rather than fearing that our scars will crush us, or refusing to accept blame beyond doing so in seeking redemption, we must study our image in that mirror in order to link our past actions to issues that continue to affect us today.

Walt Long's novel, The Travelers, achieves this goal. It is a story about the smuggling of illegal immigrants through a community in southern New Mexico that not only humanizes all of the factions involved, but also makes the link between the social realities that so many of the travelers are escaping in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, and the part that the United States has played in helping to create those situations. This novel evenhandedly depicts the complexities of a vexing issue, offering not answers, but respect for the fact that it is as complex as the human character is.

Similarly, the past year's unveiling of classified State Department documents from the Nixon era merit close examination, as they go a long way in explaining how the brutal dictatorships that gripped the Southern Cone region of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay were the results of a concentrated effort by the United States to weaken social movements that were becoming legitimized through democratic processes, thus threatening the veracity of the neo-liberal narrative.

“History does not refer merely […] to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it, the past, with us. And we’re ‘unconsciously controlled’ in so many ways, that history, the past, is present now in all we do.” - James Baldwin

Small Change

The small steps that lead to giant leaps for humankind are often not recognized as such when they are being taken. They may require some time for discovery, or processing, or convincing. They may be small occurrences that pass by, hardly noticed, or big events that are celebrated, but for small reasons. Despite the deep-seated fears that are being played upon by forces that have a vested interest in preventing humanity's progress toward creating a more tolerant and just society, and despite the woeful cries of those who bemoan the slow pace of such progress, I believe that this health care reform represents one of these unrecognized small steps.

This is Rosa Parks, refusing to sit at the back of the bus - an unremarkable event, at the time it was occurring, that followed several other such acts of resistance to racial segregation, except that Ms. Parks was already part of a larger movement that was peacefully pushing for progressive change. The other persons on the bus that day could not have known of the potential that her small act of tired defiance held. But Rosa Parks did.

She intuitively felt the spark that lit the fire that was the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which inspired U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. to call for a movement of "Massive Resistance," which was met by the Southern Manifesto, which was followed by Browder v. Gayle, the civil action law suit that outlawed racial segregation on buses in each state under the Fourteenth Amendmen's "equal protection of the laws," which lead to the sniping and bombings of Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders' homes and churches and the formation of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, and on and on, back and forth, with the Freedom Riders testing the law on buses, lunch counter sit-ins, and other non-violent demonstrations against bigotry in the South, which were opposed by more lynchings, bombings, and defiance against the federal government, until the unified dignity of the civil rights movement won out over horrific images of police brutality and the news of little girls dying in their church finally ushered in a era of equal rights legislation and Supreme Court decisions that insisted upon the wholeness of racial integration.

The health care reform is being celebrate as a political victory for President Obama and for the Democrats. It is possibly the most controversial issue the nation has faced in recent history, with opponents on the right furious that it has gone too far, while progressives are angry that it didn't go far enough. But despite all of the vicious politics surrounding it, the passage of this legislation is about something much bigger than all of that. At the same time, despite the monumental effort it took the Democrats to finally pass it, and the emotional fervor stirred up by the Republicans and their backers in the insurance industry in opposition to it, it is really rather less than all of that. This is only a small step forward, a tiny spark that helps to keep the flame of human progress alive. But its potential to set a new fire aglow must be properly understood, if it is to spread to something far greater than the people on the proverbial bus could ever imagine.

This potential lies in a serene place, away from all the rabble of misplaced anger and repressed entitlement on the one hand and disillusionment mixed with sadness about being so demonized on the other. It is the promise of patient, yet persistent, change, the same promise that the election of this president represented. And it is a part of the same march forward that the civil rights movement was a part of, and the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the women's rights movement, and all other human rights movements that continue to push for the social evolution of our species.

This change requires an elegant kind of thought process that is somewhat foreign to the either/or, absolutist mentality that seems to be encouraged by the culture of the United States today. This thinking tolerates the coexistence of what, on the surface, might appear to be conflicting ideas, so that ideology will give way to the flexibility that is necessary to get things done in society. It is the kind of thinking that is necessary for social change to take place, because its flexibility allows those who are trying to introduce new ideas to do so in a way that assuages the fears of those who are resistant to change. It is incumbent upon progressives to be careful in our push for change, to show that we are not a threat to others in our quest to reform an unjust system. While we must stand by our ideals, we must also be able to recognize the limits of society's willingness to change and find creative ways to nudge at those boundaries. In the face of exasperating misinformation and mis-characterizations of our intentions, we must be content to take baby steps and let time be the messenger of the good news that social cooperation is actually less costly than separation and divisiveness.

Such maturity of thought can recognize that individual liberty and social responsibility are interrelated; that democratic principles and social welfare policies are not mutually exclusive; that ownership of property and wealth is not equivalent to freedom; that tyranny and hidden taxes can be imposed by private institutions as well as by governments; that giving can be receiving and big can be small and patriotism can be other than the uncritical acceptance of a self-serving narrative.

Such thinking makes sense out of the actions of a man who campaigned on the promise of "change," who was supported by progressives because he seemed to have come out of left field and was seen to be uncorrupted by the political process. He spoke of the civil rights struggle and the "end of small politics,"constantly drilling at his message of "change," which spoke to progressives as a change from the Right to the Left. It was a brilliant campaign slogan, a nebulous, open promise that could mean almost anything. And when things came down to the wire, voters who were offered two images of "change" chose the one that looked and sounded and acted the most like real change. But this change turned out to be less dramatic, less obvious, less palpable than we would have liked to see, and many progressives soon gave up on the new president, expressing the kind of dismay that Frank Rich and Micheal Moore and many other disillusioned supporters have expressed.

But perhaps the president's apparent timidity to make big changes is not due to weakness, nor inexperience, nor naivety, nor crass political maneuvering, but instead comes from an insight that is difficult for all but those few who have faced the struggle to succeed in a covertly racist society can immediately comprehend. The man has spent his whole life honing his ability to convince others to overlook the color of his skin, his unconventional upbringing, and his unusual name to give him a chance to show what he is really made of. It has not only been his persuasiveness that has been most crucial to Barack Obama's success, but his ability to follow it through with action and intelligence, and by asserting himself in a measured and non-threatening way. This is a kind of progress that connects individual achievement with social responsibility, that works from the inside while never forgetting all those who remain on the outside, that understands that one must sometimes tack in one direction to create the headwind that will move them in another direction, that utilizes subtle, patient, and even controversial techniques to slowly soften hard-edged thought structures and create small but significant change.

When we see the health care reform from a larger historic perspective, we can begin to understand how President Obama's actions mirror those of the man that he admires so much, Abraham Lincoln, and how the current situation mirrors the abolition of slavery. Lincoln ran for office as a vociferous opponent of slavery in the United States, and as soon as it became clear that he would soon become the president of the United States of America, the secessionists began to form the Confederacy. The attempts to find a compromise by President-elect Lincoln and outgoing President Buchanan that would convince the southern states to remain part of the Union could not go far, because the stance that one class of people had the right to enslave other human beings in the names of "heritage" and "freedom" and "states' rights" had become entrenched and non-negotiable. Lincoln pointed out during his inaugural address that the stated purpose of the U.S. Constitution was "to form a more perfect union" and offered up the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution that would have protected slavery in those states where it already existed, in order to ensure that new territories would not become slave states. He was criticized by the Copperheads for not giving in on the issue of slavery and thus taking the nation into civil war, criticized by the abolitionists who felt that he was not doing enough to end slavery, and deeply despised by those who put their own desires above their allegiance to the principle of democracy as social progress toward becoming a better and stronger union. Lincoln could not prevent the Confederacy from being formed, but he refused to negotiate with Confederate agents and thus legitimize the Confederacy, and both the Union and the Confederacy danced around the issue of who would be the aggressor in the ensuing civil war, until Confederates in South Carolina, with the aim of claiming U.S. federal property, could not contain themselves any longer.

Now, as then, it is not the proponents of progressive change who are causing the divisiveness that is tearing at the heart of the nation. Rather, it is those who refuse to let go of an ideology that is, at its core, a claim of entitlement of the "haves" at the expense of the "have nots," the clamoring for the rights of corporations to enslave individuals in the names of "heritage" and "freedom" and "states' rights," that is dividing the nation.

The passing of the health care reform legislation by the Democrats and the vow by the Republicans to use the dwindling resources of the states to fight against it is a huge political deal, as what will surely be torrid midterm elections approach, but it will only be a small chapter in the nation's history. Whatever increase in the level of anger and, as many are worried about, violence on the part of those on the Right who see this as a major threat to their idea of what the nation is supposed to be about, will reveal the deeper core of this issue, that sense of entitlement that manifests itself as racism and sexism and homophobia and religious- or class-based exceptionalism when the veneer of civility is worn thin by fundamentalist populism, and it will all lead back to the 2008 elections that brought the Democrats into power in Congress and an unusual black man into the White House. But as the civil rights leaders who were brutally attacked by the police in Selma, Alabama, know from experience, these kinds of outbreaks open up those people's eyes who want their nation to be a shining example of humanity's best character, who were previously unaware of the deep level of contempt for universal human dignity as well as for the federal government that underlies conservative ideology.

The images pile on: Representative John Lewis, a longtime veteran of the civil rights struggle, and others on their way to vote for the legislation being spat upon; reports of death threats and brick throwing; Sarah Palin's goading of violence by presenting individuals in the cross hairs of a gun; President Bush wiping his hand on President Clinton's shirtsleeve after shaking a Haitian person's hand... These images speak far louder than any denials of reality can. And they present conservatives with the dilemma of looking at their own contradictions, because they can't have it both ways. They cannot label William Ayers as a terrorist and a traitor to the nation and at the same time hold up those who are willing to commit acts of violence against members of the government as patriots for a cause. I believe that most sympathizers of what William Ayers did thirty years ago have matured and now see the enormous error of trying to further a just cause through the instigation of violence. (To those who disagree with this conclusion, I would point out the fact that the radical elements of the anti-war movement in Berkeley were the original cause of the Reagan backlash against liberal ideologies that has persisted throughout these thirty years and remains as a bedrock of conservative thought structures today.) If it is democracy that is at stake, then the violent overthrow of democracy cannot be the answer. If nationalism is the calling, then states' rights cannot trump federal law. If government is the problem, then making the government less effective cannot be the solution.

Perhaps this rise in anger is a direction that President Obama foresaw and chose to take on in order to force the nation to deal with the polarization that has been increasing in recent years. Perhaps he knew that the level of contempt that so many would hold toward him is deeply rooted in our society, yet it is no match for the will for humanity to progress, with the weight of all of history behind it. Perhaps he understood the larger significance of his presidency and saw the opportunity to use his skills as a real "uniter," taking on the dual role of president of all of the people of the United States and at the same time gently, patiently, through persuasion and follow-through, inching the nation forward in its quest to become a more perfect union. And perhaps this is the answer to his non-involvement in the political struggles of the legislature on an issue that is so important to his presidency, as he was attempting to set the example of how a president should be everyone's president and not simply be the leader of one party. That the Democrats could not see the forest for the trees, having wasted an entire year being, themselves, too timid to come together and get this task completed, was painful to observe. It took the president's final stepping in, convincing such actors on the far left as Dennis Kucinich that there was a larger cause at stake, then conceding to the anti-abortion contingency on the right in a big way, thus providing the political party leadership that the Democrats are so desperately lacking.

Of course, many concessions were made, from the very beginning, in order to get this legislation passed. That is why this is really just a small step forward. But the fact of its passage, no matter how watered down or what was necessary to secure it, is the spark that could lead to the fire that brings the United States to face its inner demons. The political victory is just a small reason to celebrate. The spark that has been lit lies in the potential to change the politics, themselves.

President Obama will have learned from this experience, during which many have labeled his leadership as weak, wobbly, foggy, uninspiring... But he seems to have come to the realization that the nation was not ready for his attempt to be a national leader by distancing himself from the political circus ring or refusing to be a bully. He has been faced with the classic progressive dilemma of how to be ahead of the curve, yet be able to relate to the bulk of those who are following behind in a way that makes sense to them. Real leadership means that someone is ahead of the pack, leading the way, setting an example, not that someone is powerful because they are the most forceful or they have hung around the longest, having amassed their power, essentially, by default. But the president may have just learned the difficult lesson that the entrenched political system in the United States only understands the language of force, and that changing this system will be a much longer-term project that will have to remain secondary to the project of ensuring that the Democrats can address the current economic situation in demonstrably effective ways while at the same time defending themselves with honor and finesse against the vengeance of the party that knows how to raise a rabble and manipulate the fears and emotions of their constituency to gain support for their causes.

For their part, the Democrats could muster some finesse by looking at the larger significance of the health care reform not as a victory so much as the continuity of a long struggle for human rights. It follows the constitutional mandate "to promote the general Welfare and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" by limiting the tyranny of the insurance companies that separates society into those who can afford health care and the astounding number of those who cannot, which weakens the nation's work force, and which imposes hidden costs on employers.

Let us fan the flames of what has been sparked, that is, a movement that is willing to stand before the clamor of the fearful and the misguided, just as Martin Luther King Jr. and so many others bravely did, and insist that the country come together to reclaim our government so that it will work for the people instead of for the corporate financiers of all of the politicians. The next political battle will be over the ideology of deregulation, but to get at that issue we will need to force our representatives to take a long, hard look at the way that government works, focus on why it is so frustratingly inept and wasteful, and figure out how to limit the corrupting influences of lobbying and campaign financing as a better fix than simply dismantling it. Today, health care - tomorrow, returning our democracy to its most basic principle of "government by the people." Now that would be one giant leap for humankind.

Shoeless in Cairo

I began this blog back in September of 2008 by posting an inspiring letter written by Jeff Halper of the Free Gaza Movement, which described his obsevations after his experence an Isreali jail. Now, I post again a letter from a Gaza Freedom activist, because the world cannot forget the plight of the Palestinians and the complicity of the world's most powerful forces to keep these people under a barbaric and siege.


Written by Mary Hughes-Thompson, part of the GFM (Gaza Freedom March) convoy that has been trying to
get into Gaza.

In about an hour the Gaza Freedom Marchers in Cairo will be meeting in Tahrir
Square to celebrate the beginning of 2010. January 1st will be the fifth day
of my hunger strike.

It was an eventful and exhilarating day for all of us here in Cairo. This
morning we began to arrive in small groups at a couple of locations in downtown
Cairo, intending to join and up and begin a solidarity march to Gaza. We
didn't expect to get far before being stopped, so we took what things we had
that would make it easier to spend the night in the street. As soon as we got
out of our taxi near the Museum, Hedy and I and Hedy's two friends from St
Louis were immediately surrounded by security police who tried to lead us away
from the area.

All around us we saw other small groups receiving the same reception. After
sitting on a bench in front of the Nile Hilton for half an hour, with half a
dozen police standing close and trying to persuade us to continue walking away,
we suddenly saw a surge of people crossing the street a few yards from us, and
we quickly rushed to join them. Free Gaza signs appeared, chants of "Free
Gaza" were heard. Passengers in cars and buses gave us a wave and a smile. We
were immediately encircled by several hundred policemen who placed barriers
around us and began to push us more tightly together. We tried to keep space
around Hedy, as we were pushed and squeezed. I feared my ribs would be
crushed as I was squeezed tighter and closer to people around me. A few people
fell or tried to sit in the middle of the circle and the police went after
them.

Suddenly I was pushed to the ground and fell flat on my face. As people around
me were pushed more tightly to the center, I feared I would be trampled.
Perhaps the police thought I had been sitting, because they grabbed my arms and
began to drag me along the ground. I felt my one shoe fall off, then the other
I tried to hang onto my things as some French people came to my rescue,
reaching out to help lift me to my feet, then leading me away next to the wall
and away from the police.

My shoes and my cane were swallowed up and could not be located amid the mass
of people. We stayed together for many hours, held tightly in our circle by
the police. It was very warm, but as always spirits were high, some enormous
signs were raised by young men who climbed the only tree we had in our
enclosure. It was a laurel tree, and many people raised branches above their
heads as we called for peace and freedom for Gaza. At the moment we knew the
march was taking place inside Gaza we chanted again: Free Gaza, Free Gaza.
Someone began to play an accordian, and I was pulled, shoeless, into a circle
of women, including Hedy, as we danced in a circle while people around us
cheered.

Eventually, after several hours, some members of American Veterans for Peace
who had been watching over Hedy persuaded her it would be safer if she left.
They felt the police were getting more threatening and were worried they
wouldn't be able to keep her safe if we were rushed and attacked. Hedy
reluctantly agreed to go outside the circle to talk to some press who wanted to
interview her, so Hedy, Sandra, J'Ann and I were, after some negotiations,
escorted outside where Hedy was greeted by reporters.

So here I stay in Cairo, grateful to be merely shoeless, somewhat bruised and
only slightly battered, still strong and determined, proud and humbled to be a
part of this amazing family that has come together from around the world to
stand in solidarity with Gaza, Palestine and to remember what happened in Gaza
a year ago. We may not get to Gaza this time, but we believe we have made a
joyful noise in Cairo.

Happy New Year everybody. Free Gaza. Free Palestine.

PS: One of my shoes was later found.

Visit http://www.freegaza.org/

Seven Twenty-First Century Social Sins

In honor of International Human Rights Day, The Seven Twenty-First Century Social Sins

1.Power without Wisdom
2.Pleasure without Awareness
3.Science without Humanity
4.Knowledge without Understanding
5.Politics without Accountability
6.Commerce without Conscience
7.Spirituality without Connection

I believe in a progressive philosophy of examining ideas from the past, processing them to find what about them is useful and not so useful in the present, and reworking them so that they can help us to move society forward - to progress. In this way, beautiful customs that have passed on through time can be respected and continued, notions that may have been the product of ignorance or that have become obsolete can be discarded, and new customs and traditions can be woven from those most durable threads of tradition, being reinforced in the process.

In keeping with this philosophy, here is my updated version of the list that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi laid out in 1925 in the journal, "Young India." His list of social behaviors to avoid was, of course, the product of his place and time, which was Colonial India struggling for self-determination and social justice. Gandhi's Indian revolution was truly innovative as a widespread social movement in its rejection of the use of violence, and his ideas, manifested by his actions, have been an inspiration to all who have advocated for social change through peaceful resistance – from figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Cesar Chavez, Lech Walesa, Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, Howard Zinn, Wangari Maathai in Africa, Ramzi Kysia of the Free Gaza Movement, to artists and musicians such as John Lennon, Bob Marley, and many, many more, from around the globe, representing all walks of life.

Although Gandhi's potent demonstration of the power of non-violent insistence upon change is timeless wisdom, this updated version of Gandhi's Seven Social Sins is necessary because the original applied to a world that has changed significantly since that time. In 1925, the idea of Communism was gaining ground, the European Empires were experiencing their final decline, oil dependency was on the rise, geopolitics were undergoing tectonic shifts, and Free Market Capitalism had yet to become the weapon of choice to be wielded by the United States in order to maintain its total dominance upon the world stage of today. In those years between the two World Wars, workers and poorer people of the world were demanding inclusion in the new kinds of governments that were replacing the waning monarchies, while those who had benefited from the monarchical structures and their hierarchical social constructs sought to hold on to their power and wealth. This was only one chapter in the eternal class struggle that stretches throughout the story of human civilization, but at no other time in history was the notion that the lesser classes might become enfolded into the structures of governance more energized, as the dismantling of old regimes gave way to new opportunities.

It was this wave of opportunity that opened the door to new ideas about how societies should structure themselves, and what pitfalls they should avoid, that Gandhi was boldly walking through when he presented his Seven Social Sins to the subcontinent of India and to the world. Here is his original list:

1.Wealth without Work
2.Pleasure without Conscience
3.Science without Humanity
4.Knowledge without Character
5.Politics without Principle
6.Commerce without Morality
7.Worship without Sacrifice

The differences between the two lists reflect very different attitudes that have arisen with time. Gandhi's version was just like his dress - simple, basic, unadorned. The list appeared, with no discussion whatsoever, for his followers to contemplate as they struggled to recreate an independent India. I have recycled Gandhi's list, demonstrating my philosophy of examining, processing, progressing, and have adorned it with a few new ideas of my own. As the people of the world seek ways to demand social justice in the face of the current economic uncertainty, a cohesive foundation for how to challenge social policies and philosophies that have failed to live up to their promises will be of the utmost importance. It must be stressed that this is a matter of basic human rights, not one of capital flow or market readjustments. Gandhi framed the struggle of the poorest classes of India as being the same struggle as the entire society's right to self-determination against British colonialism. This lesson that various social struggles are not fragmented, but rather, are all one and the same - struggles against wildly unequal distribution of wealth, against the hoarding of power, against the undermining of democratic principles, against environmental destruction - are all connected.

1. Wealth without Work - Power without Wisdom

The idea of, “no wealth without work” has its origins in the ethical argument against usury, or the charging of interest on loans, long seen as a social evil as well as a weakness of character. This idea appeared in the form of "just price theory," from the economic thought of the Middle Ages, and later, in Adam Smith's "Labor Theory of Value," both connecting a product's value to the labor used to produce it, which was further connected to the greater social good by its promotion of industriousness in individuals. As the Industrial Revolution dramatically raised the level of the world's commerce to new heights, economic theory leap towards new understandings, and capitalism based on credit and investment banking did away with the ethical frown upon what was once called "usury." In response to new imbalances that arose along with these changes, socialist philosophy took up the old slogan anew, as laborers felt the need to stand up for themselves, striving to once again recognize the value and dignity of work, to instil pride in each individual's role in society, to raise the status of the worker from that of the mere commodity belonging to the wealthy owners of the corporations that were steadily building their own empires.

Although the ideals behind "no wealth without work" may be noble and just, I feel that this phrase no longer resonates in today's world, where investment strategies and the use of credit have become acceptable means of obtaining wealth that offer some level of greater social good in society. The caveat here is that these means not be taken to excess, which is the hard-learned lesson of the economic collapse of recent years. There is a point of balance between being too dependent on borrowing and not borrowing at all. In a system that thrives on the flow of capital, more than anything else, it is of the greatest import to make sure that not only those who already have large amounts of capital to invest have access to credit. And, despite that tough lesson about handing out credit as if it were Halloween candy (indeed, on college campuses, credit card applications were literally handed out along with candy bars), there are some positive signs that "usury," when carefully initiated and vigorously regulated, can offer a greater good to society, as evidenced by the growing movement of "micro loans" to the world's poorest citizens. These people, often women who have come together to form small cooperatives in impoverished regions, do not need much to help them improve themselves and their communities.

My idea is to look at financing of any sort, in any amount, not simply as a means of trade for goods and services, but as a source of power. Money is power. Many things offer power, including social status, physical strength, pure numbers, access to government representatives, charisma, the secret to nuclear fusion, etcetera. As the lesson about depending too strongly on credit has taught us, so, too, does any kind of power require moderation. This moderation is a kind of Wisdom. Therefore, Power Requires Wisdom.

No power without wisdom. No mere marketing of ideas without digging into the basis of those ideas, who is paying for the marketing of them, how they benefit certain individuals more than they offer any greater good, and how their very veracity might be in question. No unfettered freedom of access to government officials without some show of how the policies that one is pushing for would actually offer some greater good for society. No governmental position of power without strict mediation of how that power can and cannot be used. No trusting that those in power are there because they somehow deserve to be there, without any proof that they are capable or to be trusted with their power. No monarchy or dynasty. No impunity. No lack of oversight and regulation.

To tie power with wisdom is also to re-assert the relationship of those who hold power with those who allow them to hold that power. It is a reminder that in society, the many give tacit consent to their rulers when they do not voice their opposition to this relationship. If the many would understand that they, too, hold power - of numbers, of denial of services, of the ability to stop commerce, in entirely peaceful ways, especially when they can become organized and act in unison - then the powerful would be wise to look after the well-being of the larger community instead of only their own self-interests. And wisdom is, further, a connective and expansive force. It sees in terms of interaction rather than competition, relationships rather than enmities, community rather than self.

I feel that this framing of the issue, of no power without wisdom, without oversight or moderation, without connection, without a larger scope of vision addresses the ills of the modern world more than the framing of the issue as no wealth without work, as the former can be seen as a divisive point that can only degenerate into class struggle, in which the lower classes are viewed as committing one of the biblical seven cardinal sins - envy - while the upper classes are viewed as committing another - gluttony. The real sin here is that of generalization, which feeds the perception that the extremes of a situation are the norm, and that the actions of some represents the sentiments of all. The issues involved in class struggle are not simple. Rather, they are infinitely complicated, easily misunderstood by oversimplification, and inherently divisive. So, by replacing the reference to class struggle, as well as to the outdated connection of wealth to physical labor, with a very different characterization of wealth as a form of power, I hope to take a positive step forward toward the goal of reformulating how societies understand the problems presented by inequities of wealth and other types of power.

2. Pleasure without Conscience - Pleasure without Awareness

Mahatma Gandhi was devoted to a life of simple living, weaving his own clothing out of cotton, and minimizing pleasure and extravagances for the sake of spiritual purity. In this context, pleasure itself was to be avoided, and the having of pleasure was, if not sinful, then connected with guilt. I reject the idea of guilt trips that religious codes tend to impose, so I have substituted "awareness" for "conscience," and I believe that this admonition fits in with modern attitudes about how pleasure enhances our lives, which we should not constantly feel conscientious or riddled with guilt about. I feel that the 1960's cultural revolution - of progressive rock music, personal and sexual freedom, use of mind-altering drugs - ushered in a new understanding of how pleasure can actually enhance one's awareness in surprising ways, and is not always an act of pure hedonism, when that expanded awareness is a connective force instead of an isolating one. It is possible to have keen awareness while experiencing pleasure, if we put our minds to it, as opposed to closing ourselves off to the wider world and pretending that we are in some other reality. Celebrations such as Christmas and Thanksgiving are other examples of how we can enjoy ourselves while at the same time being thankful for the source of our joy. As long as we do not take things to extremes, do not celebrate for the sake of the pleasure itself, and make sure to remain aware of and connected to the larger situations around us, pleasure does not have to bring on pangs of conscience. Pleasure with awareness has the power to heal and re-energizing us to face larger realities with renewed vitality.

3. Science without Humanity

Einstein reiterated this idea with his famous quote, "It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity." What Gandhi warned the world against, Einstein commiserated had happened. Einstein spoke of atomic weapons, but his observation goes well beyond that in today's world of i-phones and c-scans and gm-foods. The degree to which we do not understand how our gadgets work, let alone the consequences of their manufacture, distribution, and use, has lagged farther and farther behind the level at which we are enamored with them. And from this level of comfort with not understanding derives a tremendous disconnect, a fatal attraction to having no interest in understanding the world around us which leaves us dangerously vulnerable to campaigns of misinformation - the ultimate paradox of the "information age." So society becomes fractionalized, compartmentalized, separated into clusters of special interest groups, digesting information in small bits, sound bites, disambiguated twitters, and our ability to comprehend what it all means for our society, and what it says about us as human beings, gets lost in the onslaught of fragmentized info-porn. This is the nightmare that science fiction writers could not have dreamed up. The computers have not become frighteningly human-like, rather, the humans have become like machines. We must work to regain our humanity in the face of this advanced dependence upon technology.

4. Knowledge without Character - Knowledge without Understanding

Gandhi's idea of "no knowledge without character" carries the implicit meaning that it is "moral" character that must not be lacking. It seems to me that this kind of language was the norm in Gandhi's day, when speaking of how persons were to act in society, with all of the religious connotations included, whether those be Hindu or Muslim or Christian or any other. However, being a proponent of the idea that religion and "morality" are not necessary to motivate people to be upstanding and kind and generous, I want to get away from moralizing. The idea of "no knowledge without understanding," does just that - it takes knowledge out of the realm of a gift that must be paid for with morality and places it in the realm of a kind of power that requires a moderator.

To moderate knowledge with understanding seeks to take knowledge further than the mere collection of information. It ensures that the human element will be present, so that we will not be machines, nor will machines that collect information be anything like humans. To actually understand something is connective. It looks beyond the information and tries to make sense of it, using capabilities that only the human mind possesses. This is, in large part, what makes us human - to understand past, present, and future; to understand that when I do a certain thing, a predictable outcome will occur; to understand that symbolic sounds can be developed into language...

But "no knowledge without understanding" pushes us further, to keep learning new things, to strive to make sense out of what we know so far, to ask "why" after we know "what" and "where" and "how." It goads us toward the wisdom that, to paraphrase Socrates, a wise man understands how little he knows. And it entreats us to continuously connect all of the tidbits of information together into a larger understanding.

5. Politics without Principle - Politics without Accountability

Gandhi hoped that politics could be principled, that the political arena would be self-regulating, in a way similar to how the world of business was supposed to be mediated by such economic theories as the "invisible hand." Politics that lacked principle would be unacceptable to the citizens of a democracy. However, it seems that the opposite has come to pass, that politicians who choose to be principled cannot compete against those who are willing to market themselves insincerely, and worse, spend much of their energy attempting to demonize their political opponents - a process that continues on far past the political campaigns to infect governance itself. The result is that truths become buried under infinite levels of rhetoric, all constructive conversation on issues gets left by the wayside, and citizens become either polarized or cynical about the process, a situation that can only lead to a crisis of confidence in government. So the foundations of democracy - government by the people - begin to crack.

While one would reasonably expect politics to be principled, in its absence, what is needed is accountability. When individuals are found to be in blatant disregard of facts in their politicking, they need to be expelled from being involved in any way from the political process. Accountability would literally apply to accounting in terms of how much money is being spent on campaigns, and limits need to be placed, so that the process is not infected by its insipid undermining of the democratic process. And accountability would also apply in regard to openness of government, with fair access of all to their representatives, and a tracking of how much time and resources are being spent on the actual work of governance, along with further limits on how much precious time and resources can be spent politicking. Forcing the agents of government to account for their actions in a much more immediate and transparent way would go far to reign in the unprincipled politics that have caused so much confusion, polarization, and cynicism in today's political arena, and would begin to repair the foundation of democracy upon which the nation stands.

6. Commerce without Morality - Commerce without Conscience

While Gandhi spoke in terms of morality, I wish to move away from such terminology, for the reason that I have already stated, and also because of the danger of moral relativism. Morality is not universal.
It is dependent on society's mores, understandings, and distinct viewpoints. Not only does morality differ from society to society, but from individual to individual, as each one of us is free to develop our own belief systems within pluralistic societies that include many different religions and philosophies. Yet, some sort of code of conduct, some moderator, some set of principles, must apply to everyone in society, where we must all treat each other with a certain amount of respect, regardless of our personal moralities. A different framing of this concept would be to turn to "conscience," instead.

In this context, "conscience" does not imply guilt so much as empathy and compassion. When we are considering how to treat others in society, conscience can be our guide, as this goes beyond any religious moral code or belief system. The logic of "do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is as universal as any principle gets, having been present in systems of thought from Confucianism to Buddhism to Judeo-Christian-Muslim traditions to New Age philosophies to any thoughtful consideration of how to be a conscientious person. Similarly, when we have conscience about how our actions will effect the different strata of society and the environment, those larger entities within which we all operate, we connect ourselves with our surroundings and thus have a vested interest in doing those things that will help to keep those bodies vibrant and healthy.

This connective principle applies to all aspects of our lives, extending into how we conduct the commerce that is required in modern society to obtain most if not all of our vital needs. The idea that commerce is not a part of the human experience, that the same codes of conduct do not apply to the businesses that we create, participate in, and interact with, because these entities are not actual human beings, makes no sense, whatsoever. The strongest moderator of them all, beyond principle, beyond meek attempts at accountability that consist of fines which are simply worked into the cost of doing business, beyond awareness, which informs, but does not motivate to act conscientiously - conscience must be the moderator of commerce, as it is not something separate, but something that is at the very heart of the human experience and what society is all about.

Economic understandings that separate the "market" out from our daily lives and assume that scientific theories and numeric formulas hold all the answers to how money flows through society have been called into question again and again. Their failures to describe, let alone predict, economic realities might be remedied if they were to be reunited with human considerations, such as defining costs in terms of loss of productivity due to workers' health issues and attitudes, and with even more expansive evaluations of cost, such as the costs to the ecosystem imposed by pollution and environmental destruction. This expansive view of cost analysis might just find that there is a correlation between conscience and the well-being of our businesses in the same way that individuals find themselves to be happier when they are conscientious members of society.

7. Worship without Sacrifice - Spirituality without Connection

The name of "Mahatma" meaning "Great Soul," was given to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi while he was agitating for improvements in the desperate living conditions of poor workers in 1918, against largely British landlords, their militias, and their government supporters. He was arrested for his "agitating," which consisted of making detailed studies of the atrocious living conditions, leading clean-up campaigns, helping village leadership to initiate new school and hospital building, and advocating for the rights of the untouchables. He practiced Hinduism all his life, insisting that all religions were equal, their main purposes being to encourage compassion and brotherhood, while also all having their weaknesses to hypocrisy and dogma. As the title of his autobiography indicates, "The Story of My Experiments with Truth," he was dedicated to the search for Satya, or Truth. And he sought purity, simplicity, and self-sufficiency, practicing spiritual as well as politically-motivated fasting.

Mahatmas Gandhi was, of course, an extraordinary man, and his radical simplicity would be unacceptable in today's world, where appearances are all-important and we are bombarded by commercial messaging from all sides. Jimmy Carter was laughed out of office when he suggested that we all turn down our thermostats in the winter and wear sweaters instead. When the mantra of a whole society is "consumerism," because going without is pessimistic, unsupportive, and unpatriotic, it is extremely difficult to change attitudes and habits that seem to be rights rather than privileges. I can't help but note that Micheal Moore, who certainly isn't one for spending big on fancy wardrobes or expensive haircuts, is the closest thing to a modern-day Gandhi as we are likely to have, as he has been advocating an action plan that combines going without in order to get our personal finances back under control after such over-dependence on credit, involvement in the processes of government, and a program of person health as a microcosm of public health. In his most recent film, Micheal Moore, like Gandhi before him, has tied economic justice with religious-based ethics. Certainly, such concepts can
be seen as a kind of "sacrifice" that can be practical as well as spiritual.

Although this is a holistic approach to social ethics that seeks spiritual guidance, expressed as "worship" by Gandhi, once again, my concern about resonance in a society that emphasizes materialism over spirituality drives me to seek some other way of framing the issue that he was getting at that does not tie worship and spirituality to sacrifice. The idea is to find an approach that nurtures the whole person, so that however we each see ourselves, some sort of a spiritual dimension would be present in our attempts to find a social code that makes sense. My feelings on how this spiritual dimension can be interpreted in the most wide range of possibilities, by adherents to many different religions, or to no religion at all, is to advocate for spirituality as connection.

This connection would be with what we each understand to be "God," and with each other, and with nature. Any sacrifice that would come from the seeking of spirituality would be generated by the desire to connect, and therefore to give something of oneself, to look beyond personal gain, to purify ourselves with the aim of achieving deeper connections through such practices as meditation or prayer or ritual or song and dance or simply taking a moment to be in awe of the universe around us. At the heart of what it means to be a human being is to connect, in mirror of the synapses in our brains. Connecting is conscience, is accountability, is understanding, is humanity, is awareness, is wisdom. The connective principle is what I believe God to be, a higher purpose than the individual, that which we all seek in the form of love, comfort, community, one-ness of being.

This kind of spirituality does the opposite of separating us into different religions and sects. It manifests the idea that Gandhi expressed about the purpose of all religions being to instill compassion and brotherhood. Tragically, he was not successful at convincing the Hindus and the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent that their religions were of this nature, instead of allowing distrust and enmity to cause the division into what is today India and Pakistan. Gandhi was, in fact, murdered because of this rivalry, which he was trying to mediate, and today, these nations are still plagued with ethnic and religious violence.

Nonetheless, I believe in the will of the people to work together to bring an end suffering, to put a stop to violence that only leads to more violence, to push our societies toward progressive change by challenging the status quo and insisting, non-violently, that society must re-order itself so that all will enjoy the benefits of peace and more equitable prosperity. As for the current situation in the United States, the biggest hurdle that must be overcome is the influence of lobbyists and campaign donations on the political process. There needs to be a concerted, focused campaign toward reforming this system, led by a massive citizen's movement, because the politicians are not going to do it on their own. But behind this focused campaign, let there be a set of guiding principles. These are a start, a push toward the process of innovation to come up with new kinds of ideas that might resonate even more strongly. For if we consider the huge success of freeing India from British ownership that Gandhi did achieve through years of influential writing and speaking about his new ideas, acting positively, and sacrificing his freedom as he languished in jail for years, only to come out fighting once again, and then go on to look at all those who he inspired who have also been successful at instituting changes large and small, then our tasks will also appear to have achievable solutions.

Peace is a State of Mind

President Obama's success depends upon the bravery of trust in the process of creating peaceful change.

I recognized the power of his motivations early on, and I have supported him despite several faltering steps that he made at the beginning of his presidency. It was only when I learned that President Obama had made a deal with the pharmaceutical companies to help pass his health care reform that my support had wavered, as I wondered just how far President Obama would go in playing this kind of politics, after winning the presidency on the strength of his inspiring speech titled, The End of Small Politics. But, when he won the Nobel Peace Prize, my trust in the bigger process prevailed.

I had allowed myself to wander, briefly, away from my own arguments about why President Obama deserves our trust and support, even though many of his actions seemed contrary to his message of “change.” I had seen in his visage a figure who did have big plans to end small politics, but who was a practical visionary, who understood that he had to work carefully within the system as it exists. I saw a man with ideas that were more expansive than most people could even comprehend, a longer-term plan that involved patiently negotiating the change that he had promised, and a keen intelligence about how to face the world's colossal complexities. I had seen great promise in his cross-racial identity. And I had hoped that I was right and everybody else was simply wrong who immediately jumped to the conclusion that, because everything was so complicated and his actions were confusing, he had been a fraud during the election, that there never was any “change we can believe in.” By taking this attitude, they have joined the ranks of those who had always disliked and mistrusted Barack Obama, for whatever reasons were in their hearts, and are thus failing to provide the support that he told us that he was going to need to enact that change. As I wrote on my blog, “Change We Can Believe In” is not a spectator sport.

For those of us who believe that this could and should be a less violent world, that nations could solve their differences through peaceful negotiation instead of through war, that a great nation does not need the greatest show of military might to sustain its greatness, it seems that our ideas are always being brushed aside as naive, as politically unfeasible, as unrealistic idealism. And now, we who see in President Barack Hussein Obama a truly transformative figure, because we understand the stupendous scope of his vision and see the alert shine of competence in his eyes, are again and again being sidelined by so many skeptics who do not believe that President Obama is interested in creating peace in the world, and that the Nobel Peace Prize was just so much wishful thinking.

When the President of the United States already has a record of working on nuclear disarmament, and this President had immediately, upon taking office, moved to show his commitment to changing policies of the previous president that were offensive to the ideas of democracy and world citizenship by signing the statement about closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay and then stressing the importance of the State Department in creating less militaristic, much more negotiation-oriented foreign policy, and furthermore, when this President reaches out to the Muslim world with a truly inspiring speech in Cairo, then backs off of an aggressive and destabilizing plan to place missiles in Eastern Europe, and actually takes action to engage with repressive regimes in Iran, Burma, and the Sudan in order to apply this nation's power peacefully, I say that this is major change toward a more stable and peaceful world that is more than worthy of a prize.

President Obama is making huge strides in several important areas in the world already, yet I find that people focus only on the difficult domestic situation wherein the military, as well as other organizations that operate in the murky, secret realm of “national defense,” such as the CIA, are made up of career operators who have other ideas than creating peace in the world. President Obama faces the conundrum that he is expected to act militaristic, as the Commander in Chief of the world's largest military, so it is difficult for people in this society to see him as an agent of peace. I would go so far as to say that peace is, in fact, regarded in this society merely as an ideal that dreamers and artists dwell in, not a viable reality.

The question that we must ask ourselves is, why is the idea of peace so unthinkable? Could it be that our society is afraid of peace? In a society that is afraid to trust anyone, a society where violence is a social norm, born of the swagger of entitlement, there is a deep-seated fear of what might happen if everybody were to lay down their arms, as well as their cynicism. Therefore, we must tear down this wall of fear, and find in ourselves the strength of character to admit that it is war and state aggression that is not viable. It is not naive to realize that modern warfare is not a noble endeavor, as it invariably either devolves into an asymmetrical morass or an unthinkable nuclear confrontation. There are no longer any “good wars,” and I believe that President Obama does understand this.

The situation in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, is not a simple matter of drawing down troops and walking away from a disaster of our own making. Whatever solutions there are will involve patient unraveling and insistent determination. And while it is a long-term process, we must all not only support but actively work diligently to help enact a change toward greater stability, because ultimately, peace is a state of mind.

Felicidades, El Salvador – Viva la Democracia!

After decades of undue influence by the fascist corporatists in our government, starting with Ronald Reagan’s support for the Death Squads that terrorized the people who were fighting for social justice in the 1980’s, Democracy has finally prevailed in El Salvador, and the leftist FMLN party has won the presidency. Mauricio Funes was never one of the rebel fighters, but a strong philosophical supporter of the cause. He is reportedly a very smart man who had a popular talk show on TV, which represents a freedom of speech that only became possible after the FMNL negotiated peace accords with the ruling ARENA party, along with their ally, the United States, and he says that he wants to retain good relations with the United States, even after all the death and destruction our nation has caused there.

I believe that this is a direct result of Barack Obama becoming President of the United States of America, that the people of El Salvador were inspired and emboldened by his rise to that position, and they voted for the leftist candidate, despite threats from Congressmen Trent Franks of Arizona and Dan Burton of Indiana that El Salvadoran citizens would lose their immigration status here in the United States as well as their right to send remittances home, despite all the government propaganda by the ruling party, and despite the memories of violent U.S. backed suppression that haunt their recent history. Although he himself never came out with a strong statement of neutrality in these elections, the Obama administration did put out a quiet statement to that effect – as I keep pointing out, President Barack Hussein Obama is trying very hard not to appear too socialistical, to present his agenda of “change” as a matter of practicality, not as a radical social revolution.

As the Latin American movement toward true democracy creeps closer and closer to our southern border, this could be an opportunity to prove the point that socialism is not the enemy of the United States. Mexico is also beginning to move toward a rejection of financial tyranny by the United States, cleverly billed as “free trade,” but which has only repressed the vast majority of people of this hemisphere to the benefit of the corporatists here in the States and their wealthy allies in the governments to the south. Mexico has retaliated to the United States’ decision to end the policy of allowing their trucks on our highways, citing some kind of “danger” under protectionist pressure from the Teamsters, by imposing tariffs on items from the U.S. NAFTA has not been good for the people of Mexico, as their farmers could not compete with the corn that is subsidized by our Department of Agriculture and sold to Mexico at bulk prices, much of which is genetically altered, which is in turn ending up infecting what remains of their beautiful and diverse local varieties, developed over thousands of years to be best suited to their unique climates, and which, after the local farmers threw in the towel and sent their kids north to try to support their families, has been susceptible to rises in the price of oil for transporting it from far away, not to mention the further skyrocketing price of corn because the United States decided to divert food crops into our big, gas-guzzling, All-American trucks in a despicable corn ethanol greenwashing campaign.

Perhaps this marks the beginning of the end of the myth of “free trade” and the pretense that the subjugation of the people of the Americas by U.S. corporate powers is the spreading of democracy and freedom. Freedom does not march, it is passed from on human being to another, as shackles are removed, one by one, as ideas are spread, as families are reunited, as fears are dissipated, as participation is widened, as voices are heard, as human rights are respected, as illusions are dispelled, as dreams are realized. Trade is not “free” when one partner strong-arms another, forcing them to adhere to policies that the bully party did not itself adhere to when it was a developing power, that it insists on only now that it has the upper hand. And democracy is not defined by the absence of socialism. In fact, real democracy logically tends toward socialism, if the population is truly informed, the government is truly transparent, and everyone is truly allowed to participate. Doesn’t “government by the people, for the people” mean exactly that the government should work for the people?

Meanwhile, capitalism naturally tends toward fascism, as it seeks more and more money and power through influence of government policy, the spreading of propaganda, and the convincing of the population that they are furthering their own freedom and dignity when the reality is the exact opposite, that the workers have enslaved themselves through debt and the fear that they will not have access to health care; enslaved themselves to the illusion that the products that are pushed onto the marketplace are somehow magically inspired by their wants and needs, like big trucks and I-phones; enslaved themselves to a system that cannot sustain itself without massive consumption of resources; enslaved themselves to the double speak that capitalism is the noblest form of humanity, that it is all about individual rights and personal responsibility, when its dark underbelly is anti-democratic, duplicitous, murderous, insipid fascism, the true face of which appears in developing countries that are under the shadow of the United States and at the mercy of our IMS and World Bank.

Latin America has had no choice but to reject the United States – blow-back is a bitch, and the venom with which Salvadorans utter the words “Ronald Reagan” shows that his legacy lives on there. But the increasing tendency of governments in the western hemisphere to enact socialism, to nationalize their utilities and services so that everyone will have access to them, as a matter of human rights, and to turn away from unfair policies that only serve to delegate the masses to lives of despair and poverty does not mean that these nations are our enemies. In this nascent century, with this new kind of world leader, and with changing political atmospheres around the globe, there is much work to be done to convince the people of the United States of America that our faith in capitalism has led us astray, has been the downfall of the entire world financial system, and that only by joining together with other human beings, learning that the raising up of the weakest among us raises us all up, and ensuring that everyone understands that the benefits that people enjoy in the wealthier nations are intimately linked to how people are treated in the poorest nations - only by  these means will we build an international system that benefits everybody and represses none. That is the promise of socialism, linked with democracy, and it is fair-minded and egalitarian, not a scary monster to use as an excuse to kill and terrorize people in the name of corporate profits.

see:
Democracy Now! March 16, 2009 "Leftist FMLN Candidate Mauricio Funes Wins El Salvador Presidential Election, Ending Two Decades of Conservative Rule
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