Dreaming of A New Movement

Sometimes, it’s hard to believe it really happened. I live in a hilly rural area in central New York. I look out my window. The sun is shining. The apple tree in front of my house still stands. Birds still fly. But somewhere, down the hill, maybe above the homes of neighbors I barely know, there is a cloud, a cloud I can only see out of the corners of my eyes. The cloud gets darker each time I listen to or read political news.

 

When I first moved here more than 40 years ago, my wife and I, and the group of people we moved here with, were the Hippie-radicals. We bought the land our neighbors and their gun club enjoyed as a hunting area. Maybe they thought we came here to deny them their freedom to hunt wherever they chose. There were tense moments when we had to escort armed hunters off our land. There was even a time we were threatened with being shot. Many people of color and LGBT people unfortunately know this threat much more intimately than I do.

 

But there was a movement then, a base of support. I would have been more frightened if I was alone. And there were increasingly good moments with the neighbors over the years. For example, once my wife and I got caught in a snowdrift and a woman down the road helped pull us out. And now, we know each other and are good neighbors if not friends. And this is what I hope can happen now, a movement of the majority of Americans. By majority I don’t just mean the 50% of the electorate who voted for Hillary, but those who would have voted for Bernie or just didn’t trust the system at all.

 

Mr. Trump uses his own form of terrorism, one we have seen too often in history. Acts of terror are carried out to spread fear through a populace and lead a country, especially a country claiming to be democratic, into a frightening double-bind. Anger and fear can lead a people to call for measures of revenge and protection: violent revenge not only against the specific people who carried out the attack but the religion, culture and anyone who even looks like the people who gave it life. Protection can include all kinds of measures to defend against further attacks. But as we learned from Edward Snowden and subsequent revelations, protection and revenge can lead to over-reaction and the destruction of the rights and liberties necessary to keep democracy alive. To protect democracy, we end democracy. That is terrorism’s goal. That might be Mr. Trump’s goal.

 

To eliminate the inhumanity that is ISIL requires studying and untangling the massively tangled web of beliefs, suffering and oppression that gave birth to it. To eliminate the threat that the new President represents requires the same. One aspect of ISIL is the absolute belief in the rightness of its ideology as well as its mission to destroy anyone who gets in its way or has different ideas. Mr. Trump calls for locking up or suing anyone who opposes him.

 

Spread enough fear and you can break the ties that bind us together. It can provoke people to hold on too tightly to their ideas of how things must be, degrade the value and examination of truth, and lose sight of the humanity of others. Society is held together by the most precarious of ties. It is not just buildings and institutions, but relationships, ideas, empathy and dreams. Mr. Trump spreads such fears.

 

Of course, his rhetoric has softened after the election. We don’t yet know exactly what he will do and must listen carefully to what he and other Republicans propose. But we also know that anyone who has spoken as he did in the election is not to be trusted. Even if, as some claim, his words were a tactic to gain power, such a means to power exposes, to some degree, his ends.

 

Fighting the ideas of Mr. Trump means not becoming who or what we oppose. To quote Gandhi: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” It is too tempting to yell and assign blame, to hold too righteously to anger as our identity, and thus become like Mr. Trump. As many people have said, those of us who abhor terror and the politics of fear must fight not only against hatred but for democracy, for the rights, equity, humanity, and compassion that should characterize a government and are our best weapons against the terrorist ideology of Mr. Trump—or ISIL, for that matter.

 

One strategy we might use is for each of us to create a small, caring group dedicated to deepening our own education, developing mental and emotional awareness, and committing ourselves to act when necessary—it would help us all to find balance and limit the reach of our fears. Such groups can take the work seriously and also support us in playing and finding beauty in the world. We need to think as clearly as we can, and the greatest aid to clear thinking is energetic commitment to a deep examination of issues, combined with kindness and joy in being together, in being alive. Much of the news is depressing but that doesn’t mean we need to deny our selves or our friends joy.

 

So, I hope we find a way to improve the way we care for, support and educate each other, and not let fear drive us apart.

 

*Also: For some hope, read this article on student responses to the election of Mr. Trump.

Stopping Terror

I had planned to write about something positive in education and to share a blog I read about a new “populism” in the democratic party, when I heard on Friday about the killings in Paris. That stopped me. My first response, like so many I heard on the news, was “no.” How can this be happening again? The pain this is causing—I felt fear and then anger and tried to imagine being in Paris or Syria. The situation is both simple and more complex than I can understand. Simple because people were murdered and others are in pain and this is just wrong. It is horrific. It is also complex; there is no easy answer to the situation in Paris today and in Syria and other places in the world, no matter how much I and others want there to be one.

 

Acts of terror are carried out to spread fear though a populace and lead a country, especially a country claiming to be democratic, into a frightening double-bind. Anger and fear can convince people to call for measures of revenge and protection: violent revenge not only against the people who carried out the attack but the belief system and political situation that gave it life. Protection can include all kinds of measures to defend against further attacks. But as we learned from Edward Snowden and subsequent revelations, protection and revenge can lead to over-reaction and the destruction of the rights and liberties necessary to keep democracy alive. To protect democracy, we end it. That is terrorism’s goal. As many people have said, all of us who abhor terror must fight not only against murder and destruction but for democracy, for the rights, equity, humanity that should characterize a government and are our best weapons against terrorist ideology.

 

Society is held together by the most precarious of ties. It is not just buildings and institutions, but relationships, ideas, empathy and dreams. Spread enough fear and you can break the ties that bind us together. Instead, we need to do the opposite. But how do you do that? All I know is that a commitment must be made to not create more harm through the actions taken to make us safer and the world less violent. To eliminate the inhumanity that is ISIL requires studying and untangling the massively tangled web of beliefs, suffering and oppression that gave birth to it. One aspect of ISIL is the absolute belief in the rightness of its ideas as well as its mission to destroy anyone that gets in its way or has different ideas. Fighting them requires not becoming them. It means recognizing that the ideas we hold dear need to be held with some humility and with an awareness of the limits of our powers to understand the world. For the U. S. it means, for one thing, to call for actions that support the French and undermine ISIL but not ones taken only to serve immediate political expediency and influence an election. It means improving the way we care for and support each other, instead of letting fear drive us further apart. (Check out this link.)

 

A report on Al Jazeera said that, instead of hiding, the people of France were out on the streets, in cafes, taking comfort in resisting fear together.  I hope that all of us, in France, the US and other countries will learn how to face evil without becoming evil, to strengthen democracy instead of undermining it.