It’s already starting to happen. The healing. The power to love one another. The excitement of a shared commitment. The sense of wholeness when we know we belong to something larger than ourselves.  It’s been a long time coming, but the blossoms are opening. No one can take this from us now.

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York keeps telling us we are going to defeat the “beast” of this virus epidemic and come out the other end better and stronger. It’s tragic that it has taken such a scourge to wake us up to the damage we’ve done to ourselves and our planet, but better late than never.

How we got here

This is one very short version of how we got to the point of electing a con man as president:     During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, American leaders turned to the ideas of British economist John Maynard Keynes. He taught that the best way to stimulate a moribund economy was to increase government spending and lower taxes. The Roosevelt administration developed dozens and then, eventually, hundreds of different programs to help individual citizens succeed and prosper. Basic necessities were subsidized. Unions built a comfortable life for workers.  A sense of community flourished on the local level. And “Happy Days are Here Again” became the national theme song, at least for European Americans.

Post-World War II became “the American century,” partly because most of the other powerful nations had been laid low by the war. With basic necessities such as food and shelter being met for most citizens, the need for more progress became apparent, and we entered the age of Aquarius.  Giving birth is never easy, but the heroes of the civil rights, women’s rights, Native American rights struggles helped us keep our eyes on the prize of equality and opportunity for everyone.  We had time to study the environment and recognize the damage we were doing to Mother Earth.

So, what happened to Camelot?  How did we get from loving our planet and each other to a hundred thousand of us dying from an unseen virus?

In short, some very smart people wanted to become even richer than they already were and financed a plan to tap into the less humanitarian parts of our human nature. They turned to economists like Milton Friedman who preached the philosophy of limited government, personal freedom and winner takes all. Using emotionally charged issues, they cornered the market on voter turnout.

Over time, our more advanced sense of humanitarianism and cooperative behavior began to fade, and folks became downright suspicious of government and each other. We became more interested in stroking our own egos, living the good life, and filling the void in our lives with compulsive consumerism.

And while we were looking forward to weekends and partying, we didn’t notice that very few of us were accumulating a larger and larger share of the wealth we were all creating.

The rich got richer and the poor got poorer over the last few decades. No one can deny that. Automation, globalization and the dismantling of our common bonds brought us to a dark place where murder and suicide now outnumber deaths from some of the major diseases. As the virus spreads across the country, people are buying guns, and domestic violence is a major issue. In short, we are a sick society.

How we rebuild our communities

But the pandemic has also given us time to examine our lives, our culture and our future.  Despite the damage being done by a tiny virus, we’ve re-imagined a society based on cooperation, sacrifice and love. We are rewriting our common story without even being aware of it. “We are all in this together.”

We’ve seen many examples of shared community on TV:

1. An incredible outpouring of affection and support for “frontline” workers during this crisis. (Too many examples to list here.)
2. Amazing use of intellect and ingenuity by thousands of Americans:

…using 3 D printers to make face masks

…organizing virtual meetings, family gatherings, church services

…adapting to online learning, expanding broadband

…turning face mask sewing into an artistic competition

…adjusting to working from home and saving on gas

3. Innovative expressions of the need for social connectedness:

…individual singers and instrumentalists combining their talents online (How do they do that?

…New ways of celebrating traditional events such as birthdays and graduations

…Neighborhood parties with social distancing, drive in theaters for live concerts

…Eager participation in local outreach efforts such as food drives, checking on neighbors, delivering food and medicine to senior citizens

What we’ve learned and what needs fixing

The epidemic has also brought to our attention issues that have been simmering behind the scenes for a long time. The good news is that we are now more open to solving some of those problems.

Gov. Cuomo has filled the role of moral leader left vacant by the White House during this national tragedy. One issue he is addressing head on is the disproportionate effect of this virus on communities of color. Working with church leaders in the hardest hit neighborhoods, the NYC public health department has set up testing sites in those churches to track the virus. The plan is to go well beyond serving those communities during the epidemic. What they learn and accomplish can be replicated in other parts of the country.

The pandemic has brought our attention also to the appalling conditions in some Native American communities. “Navajo Nation,” in the Southwest, has one of the highest rates of disease and death caused by COVID-19. The question is:  How is it possible that people living in the richest country in the world don’t have immediate access to potable water?  The governor of Arizona is doing all she can with state resources, but the Indian Health Service (part of HHS) is AWOL.  This can and will be fixed with a Democratic president in the White House.

Pollution is bad in most of our country but much worse in cities. Now is the time to address urban health issues, especially those affecting children. We’ve known for decades about the rates of asthma in big cities and how children have to miss school on “orange alert” days. Decades ago, when we were, as a society, sincerely interested in making life better for everyone, a big campaign forced paint companies to remove lead from their products because it causes damage to children’s brains. Now imagine a campaign like that directed at fossil fuel companies and other polluters.

We see on TV the before and after photos of polluted cities. When people work from    home and don’t drive or use public transit, the air is cleaner and healthier. Now is the perfect time to revive the enthusiasm for saving the environment that began in the 1970’s.  For starters, our new president must rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and begin repairing our relationships around the world.  Environmental groups have been stigmatized by the big polluters, but we can gradually change that with our support of those organizations. Imagine the creativity of our younger generations and how much they can accomplish in a short time.

“Going to prison shouldn’t be a death sentence.”  Sadly, it took a deadly virus to bring prison reform front and center for discussion. The prison industrial complex, aided and abetted by businesses looking for cheap labor, must be thoroughly examined. There is nothing “correctional” about a system that traps people during a pandemic.

Just as shockingly, we’ve been forced to learn about the inhumane treatment of immigrant laborers, especially in meat packing plants. This is the time for Congress to finally face the need for comprehensive immigration reform and for us to elect a president who will inspire that effort.  And, yes, it’s time to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Health care…. It’s time to detach health insurance from employment. This issue received plenty of attention during the Democratic debates, but the loss of work due to the pandemic now demonstrates why we need guaranteed medical care for everyone.

Many of us shook our heads watching tens of thousands of pounds of food being plowed under for lack of markets. Milk had to be dumped too. This was happening as people out of work were lining up at food banks. It’s time for some federal agency to work out a plan for transportation and distribution of food, not just in case of another pandemic, but also for the next wave of climate induced weather disasters.

Then and now

We need a new story to tell ourselves what we expect our “new normal” to look like. It’s pretty obvious we are never going back to the America of 2019. And that’s a good thing because we have the opportunity now to rewrite our vision of the future. What have we learned from the worst disaster to hit our country since the Great Depression?  In a way, we are seeing many of the same problems… hunger, homelessness, high unemployment, a fractured political system that plagued us back then.

As described above, we, the people, have risen to the challenge of facing this epidemic head on. When hospital workers needed us, we rushed in to help. When leadership at the national level failed us, we organized and did amazing things in our own communities. This new spirit of togetherness and service to others has rekindled the love of community that was stolen from us in recent decades.

Now we can build on those local connections/

Suggestions:

…Get to know someone new and different…. There is a wonderful example in St. Louis each Christmas Day when Jewish and Muslim neighbors work together on hundreds of local projects while giving Christians a day to celebrate their holiday. The best way to reduce our fear of others or discomfort with people we are not used to being with is to work together on some local project of mutual interest. Local elected officials can facilitate these connections.

…Promote the arts…. As President Kennedy said, “When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgement.”   Those who want to control us work constantly to confuse us with “alternative facts,” emotional distractions and ways to tempt out that lower part of human nature. Why else would they be promoting competitive and increasingly violent forms entertainment as “sports”?  Why do they insist on cutting funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio and Public Television?  Why is it, when school budgets come under the knife, it’s always the arts that go first?  Think about it.  Remember the Maslow hierarchy of needs?  Once we are fed and housed, we yearn for something psychologically and spiritually satisfying.

…Offer people a chance to be part of the decision-making process locally and nationally. We need to work on expanding voter participation starting with teaching some form of civics (and not just a “course” in it) to children and teenagers. Given the natural desire to join forces to help one another shown during the pandemic, this should be an obvious next step. Maybe we can reimagine how local government works to bring more citizens into the decision-making process. How do we include non-citizens who are essential members of our community and who pay taxes?

…Finally and most importantly, we need to rewrite the story we live by. George Monbiot, writer for the London Guardian, has written about this extensively. He describes the toxic ideology of extreme competition and individualism that has come to dominate the world that must change if we are to build a healthier society. What is needed now is the same “story” people needed in past centuries after a cataclysmic disaster laid them low. Monbiot calls it the “restoration story.”  We obviously need to restore the foundation of a healthy economy that meets people’s basic needs. But, more than that, we need to listen to those better angels of our human nature Lincoln spoke about and create a new politics of belonging. The Biden campaign slogan has already been written:  We are all in this together.

The post We’re all in this together. Where we are, where we need to go. appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I have to share some thoughts about how we are being manipulated into repeating the falsehood that our military men and women are “fighting to protect our freedom.” Everywhere you look, we are forced to see and hear this over and over… at ballgames, big ads in the paper, fundraisers for military families, etc. The fact is that humans have been fighting for power and over resources since the first caveman hit his neighbor over the head with a club in order to steal his food.

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My experience recently at the “Lift Every Voice” concert at Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis was much different than it would have been if I hadn’t just read Isabel Wilkerson’s amazing book —The Warmth of Other Suns — about what came to be called the Great Migration, the movement of over six million African Americans from southern states to points north and west between 1915 and 1970. Wilkerson interviewed over 1200 individuals and used the stories of three of them to illustrate in painstaking detail what life was like during the Jim Crow era for Americans who happened to be born with black or brown skin.

Most American history text books used in high school and for introductory college classes briefly mention the Jim Crow laws and might show a few photos of separate water fountains, rest rooms, etc. In fairness, textbooks that cover “Civil War to Present” as most do, must skim over a lot of material out of necessity.

I would like to think that our understanding of race relations in America would be much improved if Americans who did not experience the degradation of the Jim Crow South would read Wilkerson’s book. That may be naïve of me, but I know there must be millions of Americans like myself whose hearts are open to feeling the painful experiences of others.

I had to force myself to read some of the gruesome details related by the people Wilkerson interviewed. One story, about two young boys listening to a man being whipped to death in the woods, will haunt me the rest of my life. The man was screaming and begged his killers to let him pray before he died. They gave him one minute and then continued the whipping. The final words the boys overheard were “The sonabitch is dead.”

That was a story related to Wilkerson by Robert Joseph Pershing Foster who grew up in Louisiana. I will expand on his story, but the stories of Ida Mae Gladney of Mississippi and George Starling of Florida are equally compelling.

Monroe, Louisiana, 1933

Pershing Foster, son of the principal and a teacher at Monroe Colored High School, describes how he would escape the limitations of his world on the wrong side of the tracks by going to the movies. He remembers climbing the back stairs two, three, four, flights up and smell of urine surrounding him. The one toilet that blacks could use was usually out of order and was not a priority for the theater owner.

At the end of the school year, his father would borrow a pickup truck, take a few strong boys with him and drive to the high school for the white kids and load up whatever books, supplies, etc., that school was discarding. That’s how they got their educational materials.

Pershing described how he made a game of jumping the puddles that gathered after a heavy rain in the dirt roads on his side of town. Of course the whites had paved roads by the 1930’s, but there was never enough money to improve the roads the blacks had to use.  The boy blames those roads and lack of sidewalks for the fact he never had the chance to learn to roller skate. He told Wilkerson, “We could buy skates, but we couldn’t buy sidewalks.”

His father was paid half of what the principal at the white high school was paid despite having the same education and credentials. Salaries of public employees like teachers and principals were published without apology in the local paper. Never having more than barely enough to feed and clothe a family made it impossible for Pershing’s father to pass an inheritance on to his children.

Wilkerson explained that “The layers of accumulated assets built up by the better-paid dominant caste, generation after generation, would factor into a wealth disparity of white Americans having an average net worth ten times that of black Americans by the turn of the twenty-first century, dampening the economic prospects of the children and grandchildren of both Jim Crow and the Great Migration before they were even born.” P. 85

The colored school, where Pershing’s mother taught seventh grade, was a small brick building with 1,139 pupils and a teacher for each grade kindergarten through eleventh. When a fire broke out in the basement of the school and destroyed all the furniture and equipment they had, the city refused even to replace what was lost. The city leaders said they needed the money for the new building being constructed for the white students.

Pershing’s father had to raise the money among the students’ families to replace what he could. He didn’t want to dwell on the situation because “…it would have done them no good, but their very existence, their personal aspirations, and the purpose of their days were in direct opposition to white ruling-class policy on colored education—that is, that colored people needed no education to fulfill their God-given role in the South.” P. 86

As one southern woman told journalist Ray Stannard Baker,  “If these Negroes become doctors and merchants or buy their own farms, what shall we do for servants?”

Fortunately for Pershing, his parents were able to scrape up enough money to send him to Morehouse College in Atlanta where he graduated in spring of 1939 with a major in math and minor in biology. Despite his strong desire to leave the South, Pershing entered Meharry Medical College in Nashville after his mother’s earnest pleading.

Over time, he began using his first name and became a very successful medical doctor in Los Angeles, even becoming the personal physician to Ray Charles. Wilkerson interviewed him at his LA home which she described as a “grand home where he threw exuberant parties.”   But Robert Foster, MD, never felt he was accepted as an equal by the medical community.

I can’t help but include a personal story here. From 1966 to 1968, I lived at Grand Forks AFB in North Dakota where my husband served as a medical doctor. One of the dozen or so MD’s on base was an African American from Tennessee. He told us at a party one night about how he had gone into the City of Grand Forks to buy take-out chicken dinners for his family and had been treated very badly. At first, the employees wouldn’t wait on him at all. Finally they relented just to get him out of the store. When he got home, he opened the food buckets and found only scraps and bones. Some of us who heard that story were furious and wanted to picket the store in town. But the good doctor didn’t want to cause any more trouble for the Air Force since the base was fairly new and there was a lot of resentment about black service members coming to town.  To this day, I can still get my hackles up when I think of how our friend was treated just because of the color of his skin.

As I said, after reading The Warmth of Other Suns ,  my experience at the “Lift Every Voice” concert was much different than it would have been otherwise. Although everyone obviously thoroughly enjoyed the amazing IN UNISON chorus and the always extraordinary St. Louis Symphony, I had to wonder how different the experience must have been for those whose family members lived through the period of southern apartheid.  Do they feel, as Robert Foster MD did in Los Angeles, that they will never be fully accepted as equal in status by white America?  I don’t know.

I do know that there will be a program on PBS tomorrow night called “The Talk—Race in America.”  Previews describe how black parents have to warn their children, especially their sons, how to obey to a point of subservience any law enforcement officers who approach them.  Of course, ALL parents warn their teenagers about safe driving habits, etc., but I don’t remember having to tell my children when they were learning to drive that, if stopped by a police officer, to be sure to keep their hands on the steering wheel in plain sight.

When I look closely at the Americans who roar approval at Donald Trump’s rallies,  I see more than just anger and frustration about the lack of economic progress being made by working class families over the past few decades. We should all be angry about the huge gap between the majority of Americans and the tiny minority who control most of the wealth in our country. But I also see in the faces of those Trump supporters an anger and bitterness that has less to do with income levels and more to do with the need to have a class of people to look down on. For a further understanding of the history of the American caste system, I highly recommend  White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg.

For my part, this search for understanding of race relations in America will continue through reading, talking to others, spending more time with my African American friends and watching educational programs on television.  I always thought the problems of race relations had nothing to do with me because I am second generation immigrant on my father’s side and third generation on my mother’s side. None of my ancestors owned slaves, so I must be exempt from caring about the plight of the blacks in my country. MY country?  That reveals a sense of ownership, doesn’t it.  I wonder how my African American friends feel about their place in our society?  Dare I ask?

My grandfather emigrated from England and walked into a good job at a textile mill in central New York State… a mill where blacks couldn’t even apply for work. That’s “white privilege” and I have to own that.  When I hear “Black Lives Matter” now, I think I understand just a little bit more than I did a month ago.

Never too old to learn.

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As I watch the disastrous choices DT is making for important positions in the federal government, I am more and more convinced the tea party, Free Market Republicans in Congress have made a deal that will help both them and Trump accomplish their goals, most of which they have worked on for decades.

Trump has no interest in actually governing. He’s not even bothering to attend national security briefings or meetings with the State Department that are offered to every incoming president to bring them up to speed on what’s happening in the world. That should be the first clue that he is not going to be directly involved in running the executive department. If he isn’t all that interested in learning about our basic safety and security, that means he probably doesn’t give a damn about any domestic plans or programs either.

But the Free Market Republicans who don’t believe it’s government’s job to help people directly really DO care about those domestic programs, especially those we call the social safety net. It has taken half a century to build up programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, voting rights, veterans’ benefits, disability programs, environmental standards, etc.

The “no new taxes” pledge has been used effectively to replace reasonable (i.e., moderate/liberal) Republican members of Congress with right wing zealots as far back as the first Bush administration. The goal has been to shrink government at all levels down to a size where they can “drown it in a bathtub.”

Look at Trump’s appointments. A climate change denier to head the EPA. Ben Carson, a doctor with no experience managing a large department, as HUD chair. Betsy DeVos, of Amway fame, and who has worked for decades to siphon funds from public education to private (usually Christian) schools, in charge of the Ed Dept. Some woman who made millions from Worldwide Wrestling or whatever it’s called will be in the cabinet in some position. Egad. And don’t even get me started on the possibility of the chairman of ExxonMobil becoming Sec. of State. He and Putin have great plans for drilling in the sea north of Siberia (And probably everywhere else they want.)

If the right wing Republicans were given the job of choosing cabinet members, they couldn’t have done better to accomplish their goals than Trump has done.

And what does the man with narcissistic personality disorder get from this deal with Congress?  The prestige of an office that will help him expand his empire worldwide.

Many years ago, Trump was asked why he wanted a certain piece of land in Manhattan when others were trying to protect it as open space along a river. He replied that it was just a challenge to him. He said he knew he didn’t need the money, but he just wanted to do it to show that he could. And he did.

This man has no limits. He can make any deal he wants with foreign governments or corporations knowing the Republican Congress won’t blink an eye. No hearings, no “recommendations” for restraint, NADA !

Anyone who has watched Free Market Republicans (e.g., ALEC, Heritage Foundation, Free Enterprise Institute, etc.) over the last 30 years could see this coming. Why Democrats haven’t explained this in terms voters can understand is beyond me.

Working and middle class voters have been getting the short end of the stick for over 20 years. Wealth has been rising to the top of the income scale for at least that long too. But, when Trump told them all those lies, they lapped it up.

Whose fault is that?

“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars…..”

This quote from Shakespeare is popping up in many of the articles trying to explain why Hillary Clinton did not win enough electoral votes to win the White House. (For the record, the tally of her popular votes is now over 2 million more than Trump got, yet he’s claiming a landslide.)  Yikes.

But in all the articles grasping for an explanation why Dems lost big time both nationally and on the state level, no one (as far as I’ve seen) has mentioned the well-executed strategy the Free Market Republicans initiated 30 years ago.

Think about how Reagan fired the air traffic controllers and called women who needed federal assistance to survive “Welfare Queens.”  That was the beginning of the shift from a “Stronger Together,” “a rising tide lifts all boats” mentality to one of “I’ve got mine and to hell with you.” It didn’t happen overnight. It’s been a long, slow process.

Thomas Wolfe wrote in the 1930’s that selfishness and greed would bring an end to the American experiment in democracy. Neil Postman wrote in the 1980’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Policy in the Age of Show Business.”  We’ve had plenty of warning, but Democrats have been loathe to lift the rock and show voters how dangerous that snake on the tea party flag really is.

We Democrats get points for politeness and for taking the high road. But that and a buck and a half with buy a cup of coffee at BreadCo, and that’s about all.

It’s not just the white working class males who are to blame for being duped by Trump. Yes, they have their reasons for being angry. But there is plenty of fault to go around and the first place Democrats should look is in the mirror.

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Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite writers, and she has to tour with a bodyguard because she dares to speak out about environmental degradation in our country. Here’s something she wrote about how those of us who voted for the candidate who won the most votes MUST protest.

The article in The Guardian is called, “Trump Changed Everything: Now Everything Counts.”

We have to protest despite being raised to respect and accept political change. We did that with George W when Gore really won, and what did it get us? A firestorm of wars in the Middle East. It’s too late to play nice. Everything that holds us together is at risk.

The post Kingsolver: It’s too late to play nice appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Should I recommend Michael Moore’s 2016 movie,” Where to Invade Next”? On the plus side, there are some really good jokes.  The biggest laugh came when Moore asked someone whose alphabet does not include the letter “W” if they dropped the letter during the last Bush administration.

No doubt Moore is really good at a certain kind of humor.  The movie is also worth watching just to see parts of other countries we probably wouldn’t normally get to visit.  For example, a prison on an island in Denmark.  Or the office of the president of Slovenia.  Or the balcony of an Italian couple overlooking a lovely village.

The downside of the experience is the shock of realizing how brutal our American culture is compared to more evolved societies.

Moore visited a young Italian couple to find out what kind of vacation time Italian workers enjoy.  He is a police officer.  She is a buyer for a women’s clothing firm.  They described their summer vacation, their December holiday getaway, and the extra pay they receive in December to enjoy their time off work.  The reasoning is that the workers have to spend the money they earn all year on living expenses which doesn’t leave them anything to pay for a holiday vacation.

Seriously.  I’m not making this up.  By law, all Italian workers receive several weeks of paid vacation each year because they need time to nurture their minds, bodies and family connections.  Healthier workers are more productive, and families that enjoy relaxed time together are much less likely to fall apart.

This same attitude toward the importance of a healthy lifestyle was evident in two other countries Moore visited.  He wanted to see the inside of a factory and talk to the CEO’s.  At noon, a whistle blows and the workers go home for a two hour lunch with family.  Again, it’s the family connections that are so important.  The workers return to work refreshed and, usually, in a good mood.

Workers are appreciated and given benefits even beyond what is required by law.  Moore interviewed the CEO’s of a factory that makes motorbikes.  The man and his two sisters own and run the company.  They think of the workers as their friends, and  because everyone wants the company to succeed, workers feel free to offer suggestions if they think of a better or faster way to get the job done.

Moore asked why the owners don’t pay themselves more like the CEO’s in America.   One of the women answered:  “What’s the point of being richer?”   She said keeping too much wealth for themselves would put a barrier between them and the workers who are their friends.

In one of the countries, it is mandated that half of the seats on company boards must be held by workers.  Not just a token seat, but half.  And they are listened to and respected.   Workers who have a vested interest in the success of a company will be more productive and enjoy better health in the long run.

Focusing on well-being

In all of the interviews Moore conducted, the main goal in each case seems to be the health and well-being of the people.

And it starts with babies and children.  In one country, Moore discovered that women who give birth receive five months paid leave to bond with their babies.  One new mother asked Moore how women in America can bond with their babies if they are not with them for those first important months.  He didn’t have an answer.

When those babies are old enough to go to school, they will be fed nutritious food and given plenty of time to build relationships with other children.

Of course France was the highlight of the school lunchroom tours.  Children have plenty of time for lunch and are served at round tables on real china with real silverware.  No Styrofoam plates or plastic forks and spoons.

Food is prepared by a chef with the help of several cooks.  A food committee meets once a month to plan the next month’s menus. The goal is fresh, healthy food, plenty of water, and time for the children to develop relationships with each other.  Lunch time is considered to be another class where students learn to eat right and share food family style.  Sharing and bonding with others seems to be at the heart of most of what Michael Moore saw in Europe.

Moore showed the French children photos of what American children are served as school lunches, and the kids were confused.  They didn’t recognize what they saw as food.  One child asked if American children really had to eat what they saw in those photos.  The general feeling was sympathy if not shock.

Finland is recognized worldwide as offering the best opportunity for children to learn and grow into healthy, well-adjusted adults.  It wasn’t always that way.  When Finnish educators reworked their public education system, they  focused on creating happy, healthy productive adults.  Students attend classes only twenty hours a week, but the time is spent productively with the kids choosing how they want to learn.  There are no standardized tests.  In fact, when Moore asked the teachers what they would change about American education, they were adamant about getting rid of standardized tests.  They said children don’t really learn anything by memorizing facts that they will forget immediately because they have no connection to the students’ lives.  Learning experiences are actual experiences that leave an imprint on the brain.

Moore visited classrooms where students were building things, learning to cook, and playing games.  Yes, “playing” is considered part of the curriculum.  Again, the emphasis is on developing relationships and learning to care about others.  Admittedly, this is much easier in a country with a smaller, fairly homogenous population.  But what a great concept…… producing happy, healthy adults with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed personally and contribute something to society.

In Slovenia, Moore visited a university where tuition is free with open admissions and the classes are taught in English.  Students from the U.S. are finding out about this free education and transferring there.  One American young woman said she couldn’t even afford to go to community college in the U.S.  Another American student said he already had $9,000 in debt and didn’t want to add to that.  Moore asked the Slovenian students what kind of debt they had, and the students had to ask someone to explain the word “debt” to them.

Prisons

First off, there is no death penalty in European countries, and they asked what we think we accomplish by executing people.  In Denmark, there is one prison that is on an island and every inmate has a job to keep the operation running.  Their “cells” are small rooms such as we would see in an old-fashioned college dormitory complete with private shower and flat-screen TV.  Each resident has the only key to his room.  There is enough space for shelves where they can keep their books and other personal belongings.  The longest sentence in Denmark is 21 years.

Moore visited the father of one of the teenagers who was murdered a few years ago in that horrible killing spree at a youth camp on an island.  Moore asked the grieving parent if he would want the killer of his son to be executed.  The man immediately said no.  Moore asked if he didn’t want to kill the man himself.  He answered that he wouldn’t want to “go down that ladder” and become like that murderer.  He respected himself too much to want to kill someone, even the man who murdered his son.   That murderer received the harshest penalty of 21 years in prison with 10 of those in solitary confinement.  What that means in Denmark is probably not what we picture as solitary confinement in the U.S.  The Danes feel that keeping someone from their family and even from other prisoners is punishment enough.

The Portuguese decriminalized all drugs and provide readily available mental health services for addicts wishing to quit.  There are no drug gangs because there is no profit to be made by selling illegal drugs.

The only country outside of Europe that Moore visited was Tunisia in northern Africa. The Tunisian women were instrumental in overthrowing the last dictator and establishing a representative government. In a Muslim country, the Islamic political leaders stepped down voluntarily when they saw the people were serious about wanting more power over their lives.

Financial systems

Moore’s final stop was in Iceland which suffered the collapse of most of its biggest banks in the 2008-2009 meltdown.  The men who ran those banks into the ground and lost millions of other people’s money were tried, convicted and sent to prison.  What a concept !  The only bank that didn’t collapse was one run by three women.  Moore interviewed those women and asked why their bank was immune.

The answer will probably not be surprising to female readers of this little movie review.  The female bankers did not feel the pressure to outsmart each other in order to achieve “top dog” status.  They said that men are too concerned with power and their “rank” among their male peers.  Women don’t have the hormonal drive to be the richest, most important “king of the hill.”  They value and want to achieve success, of course, but not necessarily at the expense of their customers or clients.  Banking and investing is not a game to them.

When the movie ended, we were asked if we had any comments.  There was so much to think about that we needed time to digest what we had seen.

Some noted that we definitely need more women in positions of authority.   Others said what most of us were thinking.  The United States of America has not evolved as much as some countries have in terms of reaching a more just, humane, and nurturing society.

Michael Moore showed scenes from some American jails where men, mostly black men, were being treated worse than most of us would treat a wild animal.   I couldn’t help turning away from those scenes.  Why have we allowed the “law enforcement” and “correctional” systems to become so dehumanizing?

Moore believes that white, privileged Americans with the power to do it, reacted to the civil rights protests and, particularly, to the militant Black Power groups, with the purposeful objective of  destroying black families with illegal drugs.  The vehicle?  Crack cocaine.  I vaguely remember something about the CIA bringing drugs back from Central America, selling it and buying weapons for the Nicaraguan Contras.  How much of that is true, I don’t know.  But, if someone wanted to tear apart a community, encouraging gang wars would certainly be a good place to start.

And was it just a coincidence that, when women were pushing to add an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the reproductive rights issue surfaced?  Roe v Wade was in 1973.  The ERA fell short of ratification by three states.  The anti-abortion issue has been front and center ever since. I doubt that most men in positions of power back then cared one way or another about abortion, but they realized they could use that issue to convince voters to send them to Congress and state legislatures where they could push their free market, anti-tax agenda.

What’s the matter with America?

Thomas Frank spelled this out in “What’s the Matter with Kansas” years ago.  People will vote against their own interest and that of their families when they are stirred up emotionally about a particular issue.

We’ve been electing anyone who promises to lower our taxes which ultimately means weaker and weaker bonds that hold us together.  While we are arguing over having to pay too much for governmental services and screaming about “big government” taking away our freedoms, our lives are becoming meaner and less secure.

It’s not just about rebuilding our infrastructure although we are decades behind more developed countries in that regard.  And it’s not just about the good paying jobs that rebuilding creates.  It’s about whether we are a society that takes care of ourselves and our neighbors or not.  Do we really want an “every man for himself, dog eat dog” society?  Isn’t that what we supposedly left behind when we established a representative government with the goal of minding the “general welfare”?  Michael Moore told folks in Europe that “welfare” is a dirty word in the U. S.  They were shocked.

We could have the same level of civilized society as most European nations  if we paid more in taxes.  But we’ve trapped ourselves into believing we shouldn’t pay a penny more in taxes than we absolutely must.  And millionaires can stash their wealth in other countries without penalty.

The movie included a graphic showing the level of taxes we Americans pay and the much higher level that Europeans pay.  But then the costs we bear were added to the U.S. column, and it jumped to the top of the screen.  We don’t think about how much we pay for health care, education (especially post-secondary) or other things that are included in the European tax system.  If we paid our schools enough to offer healthy food and if women could stay home and bond with their babies and workers were given enough time off to take care of their health and happiness, what a different society we would have.

Americans are proud of the myth of “rugged individualism.”  We reward success and appreciate incredible talent.  That’s all well and good.  But we have also evolved to the point where we know that we are all better off when no one is left behind.  The Progressive Era in the early 1900’s was one of those periods.  We instituted the income tax and gave women the right to vote.  We gave government the responsibility of protecting our food supply.  We established the Federal Reserve System to avoid financial chaos.

The Great Depression showed us that we needed to take better care of our most vulnerable citizens including the elderly, orphans and the handicapped.   After another period of stepping back to digest the changes, we pushed ahead again in the 60’s and 70’s for more civil rights, a cleaner environment and subsidized health care for senior citizens.

We were due for the next progressive era in the 1980’s or 1990’s, but it didn’t come.  Why?  One reason was the well-organized and well-financed strategic plan by free market Republicans to infiltrate the various levels of political power and take the reins of government at the highest level.  I refer anyone who wants to read the outline of their plan to look up the Powell Memorandum online.

As we become more and more selfish as a society, we also increase the fear  that someone will take away what belongs to us.  As we become more afraid of each other, we become more prone to violence against others and ourselves.  The suicide rate among middle aged Americans increases every year.  These are people who used to be comfortably middle class, but the rug was pulled out from under them by the “Great Recession” and subsequent changes in the job market and economy.   We’ve always known that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but it’s not just a truism anymore.  It’s dangerous to the point of lethality.

Donald Trump is the grotesque end result of decades of well-organized, well-funded propaganda that has convinced us to take care of “number one” and to hell with everyone else.  We want and need scapegoats because we realize we can never make up what we’ve lost financially.  We feel helpless as the rich and powerful suck more and more life out of our sense of self-worth.

Climate change deniers control Congress while we suffer the consequences of the decades we’ve lost when we could have been building a healthier energy system. What happened to the 1970’s push to save Mother Earth?

What happened to “no more war”?  And the right of women to control their own bodies?  And the Montessori system of educating children as individuals instead of as cogs in a machine?   What happened to the movement to include the history of women, African-Americans and Native Americans in our textbooks?  Have we really ever come to grips with the sins of our fathers?  In Germany, children are taught about the Nazis, the Holocaust, the personal horror suffered by Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies and other targeted groups.  The names of those who died in concentration camps are embedded in the city sidewalks so they can never be dismissed or forgotten.

How have we allowed ourselves to be trapped in this tea party nightmare?  Some speculate that Trump will lose badly, the Democrats will gain control of Congress and our long national nightmare will be over.  Sen. Bernie Sanders and his legions of supporters have pushed the Democratic Party to include more progressive ideas in the party platform.  They plan on attending the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia to make sure their demands are met.  Is this the beginning of the next Progressive Era?  Does Bernie’s “revolution” start soon?  There are signs that the tide is turning (recent Supreme Court decisions, the “sit in” by House Democrats  for gun violence legislation, the anti-Trump coalition of different ethnic groups.)

The main editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on July 4, 2016 is about Thomas Jefferson’s belief that we all owe a “debt of service” to our nation.  This is something to think about as we celebrate on the 240^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.   We may never reach the level of concern for our fellow citizens that the Europeans have developed, but we certainly can make life safer and healthier for everyone living within our borders

The post “Where to Invade Next:” Notes and thoughts on Michael Moore’s movie appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I was a student at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY, when Fr. Daniel Berrigan taught there. Although I never had him for class, I remember sitting with other students gathered around him in the cafeteria asking questions and listening to his thoughts on topics of the day. As mentioned in the NY Times article after his death this week, he was very popular with the students.

At Le Moyne College in Syracuse, where he was a popular professor of New Testament studies from 1957 to 1963, Father Berrigan formed friendships with his students that other faculty members disapproved of, inculcating in them his ideas about pacifism and civil rights. (One student, David Miller, became the first draft-card burner to be convicted under a 1965 law.)

Our generation was criticized as being too complacent and out of touch with the menace of both communism and the American military adventures around the world. Ironically, it was on college campuses all over the country where the most vocal and violent protests would erupt just a few short years after my graduation in 196l.

I didn’t think much about Fr. Berrigan again until I opened a fundraising letter asking for donations for an orphanage in Vietnam a few years later. I was living on an Air Force Base where my husband was stationed. Recognizing Fr. Berrigan’s name on the list of those asking for aid, I donated to the cause. What I did not know was that the orphanage was for children in what was then called North Vietnam, our enemy in that conflict. I’m sure that, if there had been the kind of electronic spying on us that the NSA has today, my husband would have gotten in trouble for aiding the enemy. Luckily, that didn’t happen. Frankly, I didn’t have an opinion one way or the other about the war at that time. My husband was in the medical wing, and we just wanted to serve our time and get out.

Decades later, after studying international relations, US foreign policy and taking a peace studies class at Illinois State U, I received another request for a donation. This time it was to establish a Fr. Daniel Berrigan Peace Academy at Lemoyne College. I gladly donated to that cause.

I wish I had just a tiny bit of Fr. Berrigan’s tenacity.  As recently as 2008, he joined the Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zucotti Park. From the Times article:

While he was known for his wry wit, there was a darkness in much of what Father Berrigan wrote and said, the burden of which was that one had to keep trying to do the right thing regardless of the near certainty that it would make no difference. In the withering of the pacifist movement and the country’s general support for the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, he saw proof that it was folly to expect lasting results.

What an exceptional human being. I’m glad he lived long enough to see a Jesuit become Pope, and not just any Jesuit, but one who preaches what Fr. Berrigan exemplified during his long trial here among us.

The post Remembering Fr. Daniel Berrigan appeared first on Occasional Planet.

As much as I admire economist Paul Krugman, I am disappointed that he has joined the camp of those who believe Americans are no longer capable of high-minded goals. In his January 22nd New York Times column, Krugman ridiculed Sen. Bernie Sanders for trying to “conjure up the better angels of America’s nature and persuade the broad public to support a radical overhaul of our institutions.”

It is precisely because of his appeal to our “better angels” that millions of American voters want Sanders to be our next president. The contrast with the other political party is painfully obvious. Their candidates appeal to the kind of animal instincts that human evolution should have left behind. Fear and selfishness may be necessary in a life and death situation, but they should not be the main drivers of decision making by intelligent members of a democratic republic.

Supporters of the Democratic presidential candidate who offers baby steps toward progressive goals have hammered into our heads that a President Sanders would be hamstrung in his goals by an obstructionist Republican Congress. Why are we assuming that Congress will always be controlled by corporate toadies and war hawks?

Imagine where we would be today if the American colonists believed they would never be able to defeat the British monarchy. Imagine if President Jefferson had thought it too expensive and difficult a task for Lewis and Clark to explore the land west of the Mississippi River.

Imagine how much longer women would have waited for the right to vote if Susan B. Anthony and other brave souls hadn’t sacrificed themselves for the cause.

There have been many comparisons of our economic situation today with that of the late 19th century “Gilded Age.” The similarities are striking. Massive wealth and power held by a few families and corporations. Desperate workers being mistreated by nameless, often foreign, company owners. Children growing up in poverty with no hope for a better future. That was the 1890’s, and who stepped up to bellow the need for reform? Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, the “trust buster.”

We need a trust buster today with the guts to call a spade a spade. Sadly, we don’t have muckraker journalists going after billionaire hedge fund managers today the way Ida Tarbell and others went after the oil and meat packing companies one hundred years ago.

Wall Street is off limits.The Walton and Koch families are off limits.The military-industrial complex is off limits.

Why is that? Look no further than how political campaigns are financed and how quickly our supposed “representatives” jump ship when offered a deal too good to pass up.
No wonder the power brokers hate and fear Bernie Sanders. He is forcing us to look behind the curtain and see who is pulling the levers that keep the majority of workers desperate for any crumbs that fall from the table of the filthy rich.

Americans traditionally set their sights on higher goals than “incremental improvements” or “minor adjustments” to existing programs. If previous generations could build massive projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority, the interstate highway system and the NASA space program, why can’t we?

Defeatism does not produce heroic leaders or great accomplishments. The choice is ours. What kind of future do we want for our children and grandchildren?

Think about that as you head to the voting booth this spring.

The post Bernie Sanders’ idealism is exactly what we need appeared first on Occasional Planet.

“A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn’t enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong.”
-Lewis H. Lapham, editor and writer (b. 8 Jan 1935)

Our friend John Whittier posted this quote today, and I’m pretty sure he was thinking of Donald Trump when he posted it.

That quote brought to mind something Trump said many years ago when he wanted to buy the only parcel of open/green space left in Manhattan. Someone asked him why, when he was already so wealthy and already owned so many properties, would he want to buy the only open space left along the river. He replied that he didn’t need the money and didn’t really have any plans for what to do with the property. He said it was all about the competition and winning when others wanted something. He said something to the effect that it was the thrill of victory that motivated him.

I suppose, in a way, people whose goal is to make as much money as possible or to own as much property as possible share the same kind of human desire to win as do athletes, politicians or chess masters. Men have gone to extremes to be the “first” at things like climbing the tallest mountain in the world.

It’s part of our nature to strive, to compete, to enjoy victory. Many times it’s about the money (e.g., the gold rush.) Sometimes it’s about breaking a glass ceiling. To my dismay, sometimes it’s women wanting to show they can maim and kill other human beings just as effectively as men can.

Many times when my husband is watching a college or professional football game, I can’t help wondering why supposedly sane men would stand out in the cold, bare chests painted the colors of their team, theater props on their heads, screaming like howler monkeys.

Or why hundreds of thousands of sports fans would spend inordinate amounts of money on clothing, blankets, and doo dads to publicly display their support for a certain team. This is especially puzzling when students who really can’t afford all that stuff feel they have to do it to “belong.”

Of course we Americans have always enjoyed competition. And I’m proud of the one tennis trophy I earned years ago. But it seems to me that the exaggerated attention given these days to sports and, especially, the way the public is being manipulated by team owners, can’t be just about the thrill of winning a game.

Let me go off the deep end here and toss out some ideas that may or may not help explain what’s going on in America today.

First, I think everyone has by now heard that the vast majority of Americans are not “winning” economically any more. In fact, incomes are not only stagnant, a lot of people took a direct hit during the “Great Recession.” (Who came up with that label?)

In a recent column in the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria mulled over why middle-aged Caucasian Americans are killing themselves at higher rates than previously. Why are so many people turning to alcohol, drugs and eventual suicide who probably wouldn’t have reached such a level of despair in the past?

True, globalization and technological change have made it more difficult for workers to advance financially. But there is more to it, according to Princeton anthropologist Carolyn Rouse whom Zakaria contacted for comments on this phenomenon.

It may be about expectations as much as actual events in the lives of our white working-class neighbors. Although they have never seen themselves as “elites,” they have always had an edge in terms of reaching their goals. They have always been a “superior” class because there was always someone they could point to as poorer than they were. I think it was Kris Kristofferson decades ago who sang, “Everybody needs somebody to look down on. Help yourself to me.”

People who have never expected much aren’t as affected by the changes in our economic situation. They may be hurting financially along with their white co-workers, but they may not feel they’ve lost a “leg up” in the competition because they never had one.

A personal note here. I grew up in a working class family. Neither parent finished high school. My father was a factory worker; my mother worked in retail. My father put cardboard in the bottom of his shoes that had worn through the soles. My mother sewed our clothes and exchanged hand-me-downs with our cousins. But we never thought of ourselves as poor because our church was always collecting something “for the poor” and because there were really poor migrant workers who came to town to buy supplies during the summer and fall harvest seasons. This was post World War II when the U.S. had no real global competition, and there were no limits on what we could accomplish with more schooling and a determination to succeed. My sisters and I all attained a professional level of education because it was expected of us.

I know I was a beneficiary of “white privilege” because my grandfather emigrated from England and walked right into a good factory job where blacks need not apply.

The Princeton anthropologist quoted in Zakaria’s column suggests that part of the reason African-Americans, Hispanics and others who were never part of the “privileged” group are not killing themselves at the same rate as whites is because they never felt the kind of superior status that whites did in the past.

Now we circle back to sports mania and Donald Trump. I think it’s obvious that middle-aged whites are the ones making the worst fools of themselves at sporting events. And there may be something going on with them about this whole Rams stadium fiasco. (How old are Governor Nixon and Mayor Slay???)

But the seriously disturbing phenomenon is the support for Donald Trump among middle-aged whites. I try to avoid watching anything about Trump on TV, but it’s getting more and more difficult because our media outlets seem to be obsessed with him. I wrote a few months ago that the American media will get Trump elected president just by pushing him in our faces constantly. Admit it… Americans love to jump on a bandwagon. Why else would they stand in line in the rain for hours to be the first to see a certain movie? Why are normally solidly sane people running out to buy powerball tickets?

Trump is not only in our face constantly, he is saying, according to one of his supporters in New Hampshire “what the rest of us are thinking but afraid to say out loud.”

Another supporter, who also happened to be a middle-aged white resident of New Hampshire, said something to the effect that “we” have lost so many of our freedoms and Trump is going to give them back to us. While any rational person knows that ‘s nonsense, maybe we should look more closely at what that woman meant.

My husband, like most other level-headed voters, said he doesn’t understand why Trump groupies don’t realize he can’t do all the things he is promising. My only explanation is that they really don’t want to know that. They feel they’ve been cheated and don’t know what to do about it. Along comes someone with a strong personality and a dash of charisma who promises to return us to the glory days of empire. Let’s not examine this savior too carefully. Cognitive dissonance? What’s that?

Another personal story: When I was finishing up my doctorate at Illinois State University in 1990, I told a neighbor I was moving to New Hampshire to take a job. She said I’d love New Hampshire because there weren’t any Mexicans there. I thought that was an odd thing to say, but now I think I know what she meant.

So what we may have in this presidential primary season is a combination of Trump’s need for self-aggrandizement and victory over competitors along with the need for middle-aged white working class folks for some kind of champion. Their fears are real, but they are looking for a miracle cure just as Dorothy, the lion, the tin man and the scarecrow were in the land of OZ. The man behind the curtain is a charlatan, but how do we get folks who think he has a miracle cure to realize this?

Obviously facts don’t matter. They didn’t matter when Hitler told despairing Germans that Jews were the source of all their troubles. Or maybe it was their Slavic neighbors. Or gypsies. Or homosexuals. When people want to believe someone is their savior, don’t get in the way because you’ll be run over by their contempt for your rational arguments.

When I was doing voter registration at a sliding-scale health clinic in rural Missouri, a woman with missing teeth, terrible skin problems and greasy hair came up and told me proudly that she was voting for Trump because “he’s made himself rich and can fix our country.” After she complained about her food stamps being cut, I told her that it is Republicans who are cutting food stamps. She glared at me indignantly and told me that “Trump won’t let them do that.” I rest my case.

Those of us who want to save our democratic republic from total ruin will have to figure out how to keep the man who would be king from seizing power. But how?

The post Trump: The man who would be king appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I record TV shows to watch when I want to “zone out” as the kids say. One that I like is NCIS (not the grisly parts but the problem solving parts.) Last night I watched an episode from 2011 which was about some people who do terrible things to other human beings in the name of what they call their religion. One woman was a teacher in an Afghan school working alongside some American female service members organizing a school for girls. The Afghan woman set an explosive device which allowed men from her group to kidnap the girls. Some of the girls died after being tortured.

Two of the girls and one female American service member were rescued by the NCIS team and Army rangers.

When the woman/teacher was questioned, along with her son who was part of the plot to destroy the school, she was asked why she did such horrible things, especially after gaining the trust and affection of those little girls. That’s a question no one seems to be asking seriously despite all the talk about terrorists, “radicalization” of otherwise law abiding American citizens, or what this “war on terror” actually is all about.

The woman and her son on the NCIS program offered the closest thing I’ve heard to an explanation from their point of view. They said they are defending their traditional culture from an invasion by foreigners who bring “radical” ideas and try to pervert their girls and women with filthy sexual materials. She mentioned the internet specifically.

That conversation in the interrogation room was only a few minutes, but it is the only time I’ve heard any kind of explanation for actions I find so despicable, inhumane and completely incomprehensible.

And that was a TV show from 2011.

It’s natural, I guess, for us to demonize whoever our enemy is at the time. I’m sure our enemies in previous wars did the same about us. We certainly were led to believe the Japanese were inherently evil during World War II. And the “North” Vietnamese were monsters in our eyes despite there not actually being a “North Vietnam” at all.

I don’t have any answers, but I need to try harder to learn why people do terrible things to other human beings. I don’t think it’s helpful to just keep saying “They hate our freedom.”

As with all wars, past and present, there’s more to the story than we can see at the time.

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