Changing the Climate in this Country and World: Stopping the Malignant Madness

It’s raining this morning, but it doesn’t feel like a “normal” rain. The sky is so dark and ominous, and the rain hits the roof and windows like stones, like pellets. It grabs my attention so deeply it doesn’t feel like any other rain. It can’t be ignored. It falls like fear, like power. Like life itself.

 

The thunder and lightning shake my home. They shake the earth and seem to split open the sky. I hope it won’t split open my roof.

 

And the rain and thunder are not over there someplace; they’re not at any distance. They’re right here, speaking in words the size of the universe.

 

It’s raining as I think of Nepal. The flood that we now know killed over 1,114 people, that sent over 4,000 missing; and the pets, animals, all killed, homes, gardens destroyed, washed away, except for memories, except for the grief of loved ones. That flood was right out of my nightmares. Did you see the videos of it? When I was younger, I used to have nightmares of floods and of being totally overwhelmed. Of forces way beyond me.

 

And then there’s the flood in the Grand Canyon that killed 2, 1 still missing. 80 needing evacuation. Nothing like Nepal but so much closer to home. Floods all over the world this year. And to think we had a part in it? That climate change, human caused climate change played a big part in it? And that our present government and leader are actively pursuing policies that make the situation worse, that make such floods more likely and intense, deadly? That hurts.

 

And the rain and thunder send images of other sorts of rain and thunder to my mind. Like the thunder and lightning of the wars in Iran, Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, Israel, etc., etc. According to the Peace Research Institute Oslo, over the last ten years interstate conflicts have increased sharply. They show the world right now is facing more violent conflicts than any time since World War II. And although no one nation or leader is responsible, but rather a whole shift in international relations, our president is greatly contributing to the violence and undermining efforts to reduce it.

 

He’s ended what some have called the “Pax Americana,” undermined our diplomatic and “soft power,” which used to be one of our primary ways to exercise influence in the world. He’s done this by drastically cutting our diplomatic corps, our foreign aid, Voice of America, etc.

 

He’s done this by his clueless negotiation strategies. His “art of the deal,” or his “calculated unpredictability,” his public appearance as a “Mad King” crazy or greedy enough to do anything, might have worked at some point in his personal business operations to get what he wanted. But it’s not working now with international relations. As Andrew Roth wrote for the Guardian, his vague and contradictory comments, claims, and actions have failed to bring peace. His foreign policy has “fully passed through the looking glass.” He’s risked undermining the world economy and the lives of millions on a whim.

 

And he’s totally clueless about how to end what he’s begun. According to Congressman Adam Smith, his rhetoric has strengthened the hardliners in Iran and is designed to drive our allies away. What he’s succeeded in doing is increasingly isolating us and undermining our credibility in the world.

 

According to columnist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, “[DT]’s mind has gone.” Maybe his “Mad King Strategy” is not a strategy at all but a description of the reality of his mind….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project:

It’s Not When, But If: Will 2025 Be the Last Memorial Day Honoring and Mourning Those Who Died Fighting for Democracy?

This past week I wondered: will this be the last Memorial Day? With all the assaults on democracy by DT and his authoritarian party, will this be the last year the holiday is commemorated to remember and honor those who gave their lives defending democracy?

 

When he first won the election less than one year or one eternity ago, DT controlled all 3 branches of government. And many of us who opposed him said “wait until the midterms. We’ll win control of the House and maybe Senate and resurrect democracy.” But few who’re looking realistically now at recent events are still saying that. Many realize our time to act is not in a year, but now. DT is doing all he can to destroy the possibility of meaningful midterm elections. As the song says, “It’s now or [possibly] never.”

 

For example, I’ve been reading about the hidden contents of the House Reconciliation bill, or what DT calls “a big beautiful bill” and others call the Big Ugly. DT calls it “beautiful” because it gives him what no law should ever give a president in a democracy. It gives him not only more economic means to rule unopposed, to be the boss, King, Dictator, the absolute word on everything by gifting him tax cuts on the rich. And as it’s clearly developed in Project 2025, it also gives him the political power to make his dreams come true.

 

On May 22, Robert Reich wrote an article revealing details of what is hidden from most news discussions. He describes how DT has been working for years to neuter the courts. For example, several lower court justices and then the Supreme Court told  him to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of this country, illegally deported to a cruel prison in El Salvador. But DT wouldn’t comply with the orders. A federal judge ruled that the DT regime willfully disregarded a court order restraining them from such deportations. He also tries to intimidate judges with attacks on them and their families in language that could and has led to violence.

 

Courts have only one power to make their orders stick—to hold a politician or anyone in contempt. But the Big Ugly Bill has a hidden agenda. There’s a provision which says, “No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction was issued…” Translation: this provision would stop courts from enforcing contempt citations and end any power they had over DT.

 

An article in the Campaign Legal Center for Advancing Democracy Through Law news outlet, by Eric Kashdan not only gives more details on the provision described by Reich, but provides other hidden anti-democratic material in the 1000 page bill.

 

For example, in section 43201(c) is buried a provision imposing a ban of ten years on enforcing any state or local law that would regulate AI, including laws controlling its use in political campaigns and elections. This means its use to fabricate images and spread disinformation. It actually stops the enforcement of laws passed by any government bodies other than DT’s Congress, preventing any lawmakers outside Congress from protecting us, their constituents.

 

Kasdan spells out this could⎼ and would⎼ mean giving free reign to the spread of lies and disinformation that undermine our ability to make informed decisions. It would create an even more dangerous situation than what we have now, one that further debilitates any trust in the existence of truth or trust in our elections. It takes us right through the doors of the Ministry of Truth/Disinformation George Orwell described in his novel 1984.

 

This is only one part of the DT GOP assault on “we the people” of the U. S….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Recognize the Web of Life

 

I heard on the news of the deaths of 12 people in Paris, the cartoonists, editors and writers of the satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and I don’t know how to live with these deaths. Maybe if it were just this one incident, not the deaths and bombings that followed, not ISIL, not the deaths in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Israel, Palestine. Maybe if it were just this one time I could come up with a story to tell myself, of people who, perhaps, lived lives of such desperation and hopelessness that, in their eyes, they weren’t killing other people at all. They were defending an idea, they were creating hope. Or maybe they told themselves the cartoons hurt too much and they needed the pain to stop. Or maybe they told themselves their religion, their reality was threatened and they had to destroy the threat.

 

 

 

But the explanation doesn’t work. And for good reason. Nothing can justify or explain away their deaths. All over the world, there are too many such deaths, too much pain. For example, in the US there’s New York City. Not just 9/11, but Eric Garner. Deaths of African-Americans by police and deaths of police, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. To kill someone is not just emotion burning out of control. A story was needed to fuel that emotion and keep it hot.

 

 

 

Humans have lived for thousands of years by creating an in versus an out-group. We live with, cooperate with, love the in-group and often de-humanize the out-group.  We do this with stories or narratives we tell ourselves about us and them. We can’t afford to do this anymore. There are over 7 billion of us now and we’re growing exponentially. This leads to increasing complexity in human relations (and, of course, increasing stress on resources). We cannot continue to support a way of thinking and acting that deals with problems mainly by defining villains to defeat. Or deals with problems by thinking we can just cut ourselves from or discard millions or billions of other humans. We can no longer discard people with a story. Somehow, we must learn, I must learn, how to feel each killing that I hear about with a raw and unexplainable emotion.

 

 

 

Honestly, I don’t know if I can do this. I think it’s too much. It would be overwhelming. How could I work and play when I feel so openly? Even writing this blog is telling a story of sorts.  My work and play and loving can also get covered over or diluted by stories. But isn’t my heart bigger than my thinking? What if my family or friends worked at Charlie Hebdo? Or I lived in Syria, Iraq or my family was killed in New York or Israel? There is no explanation big enough for that pain.

 

 

 

The closest I can come is justice. I shudder to bring it up, as I don’t want to even appear to be diluting murder with economic analysis, but there needs to be justice for the slain, and justice for the conditions that might have contributed to the slaying. People are discarded, dehumanized through economic and political processes even more than by the gun. For one example, when wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, more and more people are ignored. In the US, real income for all but the top few has gone down since 1978-80. A few days ago, I was watching Robert Reich’s movie, “Inequality For All.” Today, 400 people in the US have more wealth than half of the rest of the population. This trend is worldwide. One billionaire means a million people barely getting by. One billionaire doesn’t buy what a million individuals could buy. Concentrating wealth doesn’t create jobs; it undermines the middle class and the whole economy. What are the implications of a collapse of the middle class and the swelling in size of the ranks of the poor? What happens to people living in poverty who get to see on television everyday the rich living in luxury?

 

 

 

Maybe, if we allow our hearts to feel the pain that others feel, and the pain that dehumanization brings, there would be fewer killings? I don’t know for sure, but it feels right. The only explanation that is viable and works for me to keep my heart alive, is that all of us—all humans, all species, all life—we’re all equally alive. There is no out-group. That’s myth, story. The reality is that we are all in this together. We are all interdependent. To borrow an image from ancient India, we are in a huge web (or net, as in Indra’s net). The world webs together. It’s not even that a tug in this section of the web is felt way over there. It’s the whole universe crawling, walking, screaming, dancing as one. And we need an education in web-being, or as the Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh put it, inter-being.