GreenMan Substack Podcast

I come back to speaking on psychological visibility more and more.  I keep experiencing how important it is in our relationships and on the world stage.  I often talk about how we need to see and be seen.  We go out, we make friends, we have dates, we join civic organizations.  Sometimes we just people-watch or just go about our night, dressed to kill. Most of us do so for various reasons.  People want to be seen, to be liked, to be understood.  Some need to feel that they’re not the only one that has certain political views or environmental concerns.  Most want to feel a sense of community.  And with friends and lovers we need to feel a sense of affinity, like our people get us, to see past the surface, maybe even past the flaws, to reveal our essence.  And we want the benefit of the doubt, to be taken at our word.  Otherwise, what’s the point?

Some people seem to be able to see facets of us at times.  It can be a great feeling.  But other times they may typecast us.  They may lump us in with others in our age group, gender, political affiliation, sexual orientation or religion. They may misinterpret our words and our meaning because our words or deeds may trigger old traumas, seen or unseen.  However this happens, it’s not always easy to sense when we are not being seen, but usually the mood feels different to me.

I feel uneasy in my gut.  I often feel anger, like my words are not being taken as I intend them.  If in a debate or disagreement, the person may not argue in good faith.  This can spiral into a fight or a breakup.  The misunderstanding can be mutual or one-sided.  We can talk past each other.  We can then reject or seek the approval of the other.  

The stance I’ve taken lately is to better honor myself.  I have decided to not associate with people who don’t see me or won’t see me or can’t see me.  Sometimes they just can’t see us.  They are too busy, too angry, hurt, self-involved or just not interested in seeing past their blinders or our presentation.  When they won’t see us, they may need to blame us in order to avoid seeing something unpleasant about themselves.  When they can only see us as a member of one of those categories, they won’t humanize us.  

This, to me, is the core problem: the universal human flaw of dehumanizing others.  I posit that we dehumanize others in order to protect our traumas.  And ironically, our traumas are most often the result of being dehumanized by others.  Not seen, not valued, not honored, not protected.  Used, violated, beaten, manipulated.  And as a result, we protect ourselves with pattern recognition.  If a dog bites us, we develop a phobia.  This is natural.  The body and the neurology are just trying to protect us any way they can.  It’s a blunt instrument.  And perhaps there was a time when this worked for us as a species.

Now, sadly, I see this working against all of us.  Not the vigilance or the boundaries, but the subtle dehumanizing of those who remind our reptilian brain of those who caused us such anguish, such terror.  All humans are suffering from PTSD on some level.  This is the human condition.  And I have my own traumas, blind spots and triggers.  But some have faced situations I can only imagine.  So it’s not with judgment or cynicism that I speak of my dissatisfaction with not being seen.

I even realize that I can and do and feed the narrative of myself as a caricature of maleness, of whiteness, of boorishness, condescension and so on.  Sometimes, in my ignorance and lack of awareness, I exhibit these behaviors in the moment.  But this is not my essence.  Other times I buy into a generalized narrative about myself.  I don’t see my essence myself.  Or I buy into the categorical assumptions and generalizations about men, white people, Americans, realtors, business owners, people of my age group or heterosexuals or any combination thereof.

And so we can’t always blame others for falling into the traps of dehumanizing us when our own behaviors may cue them unwittingly.  Furthermore, overgeneralizing can be a shortcut, a way to check out of a situation and/or a way to maintain denial. This feels maddening to me. The person levies a judgment, an opinion that doesn’t seem to be based on deep inquiry and presence, but a surface appraisal of the situation. It’s this kind of common sense blah blah blah that makes me feel unseen, unheard and misunderstood. I feel typecast, like I’m seen as a mere collection of my apparent categories, not a human.

Whatever it is, I’m finding myself saying No to these situations.  I don’t have to generalize in response, even if I see some general cultural trends that may be at work on the individuals I encounter.  There is no value in reflecting the essentialism that can be at the core of not-seeing.  Essentialism is false and a tool for dehumanization.

But I can move forward acting as if some percentage of certain groups may act certain ways because of being pandered to.  I can be especially vigilant against this trend.  And I can reject the behavior instead of the human embodying them..  I can move to a safer and more comfortable distance instead of blaming or rejecting those who can’t/won’t/don’t see me.

Because at its essence, many of us are often under what amounts to a spell.  People can’t find perspective in a situation, often because of the aforementioned traumas, preconceptions and cultural messages. The constant propaganda being beamed at us from those that stand to gain from division are plentiful and alluring.  Perennial outgroups that are suddenly ingroups being flattered and humored and pandered to can be unsure how to wield newfound power and yet still be deeply affected by the righteous indignation of intense experiential traumas.

It’s a perplexing dilemma, to be sure and we can see it on the world stage too, but that is for another post.

I obviously enjoy discussing politics.  My views are clear—or are they?  It's easy to pigeonhole people into categories that don't necessarily add clarity.

I grew up in a reasonably political home.  My parents didn't agree on politics.  We had TV so we saw politics on the news.  I was born at the end of the Ford Administration, was a young child through 4 years of Carter, and then Ronald Reagan was President when I began to understand what that meant.

He was a good starting point: an actor, a liberal who became a conservative.  The OG Neocon.  I liked his presentation as President.  He seemed genuine and caring, but I was a child.  I remember Iran/Contra and his overuse of the phrase, "I don't recall."  And then recently I saw him on Johnny Carson from the late 70s and heard him talk so much demagoguery that I was kinda grossed out.

And you could do a doctoral dissertation on Reagan's policies (and everyone before and since).  I remember blindly getting some Ollie North t-shirt but I didn't know why.  I was going along with the crowd.  As an adult I look back on him and them as criminals.

So politics can certainly be entered into blindly, ignorantly.  We can follow certain characters like a sports team or a famous musician.  The cult of personality is a powerful attractor and distorter of reality.  See our surreal current events for example.

But are we what people call us?  A liberal.  A leftist.  A Reagan Republican.  Tea Party.  Maga.  Maybe the names aren't a fair representation.  Maybe they're shorthand but with what context?  But then another question comes up and then another.  More unpacking is needed.  What trends are happening in politics?  What are the main powers/parties in politics where most people gravitate? Have these words ever changed meanings?

I argue that there has been a basic rightward trend in politics since the Civil Rights era and legislation.  Some would say since the Civil War.  The current conservative movement has been trying to take back the gains that were legislated after President Kennedy's death. See recent Supreme Court decisions concerning reproductive freedom, voting rights, Citizens United.

So, starting with Bill Clinton, the left has gone more centrist to try and go with the flow.  For me to be called a liberal is true, but it's a moving target.  To be a Clinton/Obama/Biden liberal is not to be a Franklin Delano Roosevelt liberal.  Not by a long shot.  But, these are the guys who made it through the primaries and won.  These are the guys that business supported enough to be elected.

These were the shiny objects, the guys who told us what we wanted to hear and sometimes delivered.

The parties, as well, are what they are.  I'm more liberal than the aforementioned democrats in lots of ways.  And yet, I'm open to solutions from wherever they may come.  If the GOP has a great idea, then let's give it a shot.  I'm a pragmatist too. 

However, I tend to believe that liberalism is trying to expand freedom, access to the economy and stewardship of the planet.  This belief has been borne out in the policies I’ve read about over my lifetime, especially the New Deal and the Great Society legislation which took place well before I was born.  Shorter work days/weeks, child labor laws, safety laws etc.

But the Democratic Party has not always been a great champion of its stated goals, to put it lightly.  They, like their GOP counterparts, have been largely co-opted by the big businesses that bribe/donate to their campaigns.

I will only speak of the modern party because the names and affiliations have flipped over the course of decades in the 20th century.  The Republicans were the party of Lincoln and emancipation.  They are no more. 

The Democratic Party was the KKK party of Southern Dixiecrats.  They are no more.

These parties morph along many fault lines like national defense posture, interventionism vs isolationism, tax policy, social issues, entitlements and so much more.  The GOP used to be the more interventionist party, more focused on a strong defense and helping our allies. They are no more.

The GOP has stood for reducing government programs, lowering taxes.  They've been the rich guy party, in my view.  But they manage to co-opt the poor into believing the GOP supports them and their freedom.  The idea that Laizzes-Faire Capitalism will support the poor doesn’t make sense to me.  They also use wedge issues and culture wars to distract voters and divide voters, since their policies, or lack thereof, make the GOP a minority party that needs division and low voter turnout to win.

So call me a liberal or leftist but the question isn't what tribe do we belong to, but why?  And what's the nature of that tribe?  Is the affiliation zealous or grudging?  Have we changed or softened?  Have we learned?  Has politics changed around us?

I'm not liberal because of rigidity, but because I tended towards it as a young man and as I learn more, I keep coming back to it.  As I see the politics shift to the right, I naturally want to stand with the left.  Not out of mere defiance, not in every situation, and not with dogma.  It appears the border needs a reckoning.  My liberal heart would say to let everyone in because their nations of origin were destabilized by our foreign policy carelessness.  I would be right about the causes, but naive, perhaps about the consequences of open borders.

Liberal woke-ism can become absurd, but I'd rather be on the woke side with all its blindspots than on the Insurrectionist side.  One you can come back from.  The other is treason.  That path puts us all at risk of losing our actual freedom that we clearly take for granted.

And lastly, political talks should be a place where ideas are shared and tested.  I think liberalism bears out over the last (almost) 100 years since the New Deal.  Almost all the best decisions that were made on issues that face real people were done from a liberal stance.  And I've posted them all before.

But bring me conservative ideas that will help our nation and our people thrive.  Who among us doesn't want that outcome?

Does calling oneself conservative mean Pro-Trump by default?  I was speaking to a conservative friend who does not support Trump by a long shot.  I’m sure there are plenty like him.  But the right has terms it uses or used that are deserving of inquiry.  MAGA, Make America Great Again, is a phrase that lots of US Presidents have used in their campaigns.  Bill Clinton did so.  But few have emphasized it and used it for demagogic purposes like Trump has.  Calling oneself A Regan Republican is and was popular too.  But it would appear that Trump has stolen the mantel from Reagan as the standard bearer for conservatism.  That causes me much consternation.

I sense something about the mood and feel of our culture right now.  Righteousness is the preferred state for lots of folks.  Whether it's the indignant or the absolute sureness variety, people like things to be simple, even when they're not.  They like there to be a victim and a perpetrator, even if those labels don't stick or even apply.  And you can guess which character everyone enjoys embodying.

Choosing sides, gearing up for battle, no room for nuance, no time for reflection.  These are the hallmarks of the amygdala, the reptilian brain.  These are survival instincts.  These instincts are being plucked like guitar strings by certain characters and media outlets.

And yet, in a modern civilization, these instincts don't foster survival.  They foster war, division and mistrust.  And we know that war seldom benefits the citizenry.  Wars are championed and led by strong men.  So if you look around and see any strong men talking tough, you can bet that they're one of the few beneficiaries of an internal/civil war.  They gain or cling to power in times of confusion.  Most everyone else has something to lose.

So we either fight the usurper and risk his/her wrath, or we jockey for position to fawn and speak praise.  The jockeys do so under the guise of the victim or the proud patriot, or the lover of law and order.  A return to tradition, simpler times.  States rights.  These are all window-dressing: the stories willingly lapped up by lambs being led to slaughter.

The greatest foible I see being manipulated is weak-mindedness.  The ultimate battle is for one's capacity to perceive.  The tension, the cognitive dissonance can be crazy-making. To give in to the fantasy, however false and destructive, is easier than fighting a pitched battle for one’s sanity. Beware those who would flatter you for they offer the scaffolding upon which your self-deception will be built.  So many who fancy themselves intellectuals have long since capitulated to obvious lies and fallacious thought.  I see folks falling for (among many other traps) a bandwagon fallacy coupled with peer pressure.  I have found my unwillingness to play along to result in social isolation in certain circles.

It's so sad how ease and freedom lull us to sleep.  We can so easily believe that it couldn’t happen here, that our institutions will always hold because they seemingly always have.  But our nation and our experiment in self-government is so young and our bulwarks against usurpers are not foolproof.  Our capacity to make sense is not impervious either.   Beware the stories you hear in your head.  For many of us, they are manufactured and self-limiting.

Perhaps the way such movements indoctrinate is to flatter us in ways that counter our internal stories of lack: like the cigarette commercials of old. Find the weakness, flatter the recipient and, presto!, you have a willing follower. I am finding the need to let go of the boring stories I have about myself.  Stories of desperation, lack, age, poor me, arguing for my limitations and such.  As well, I want to relinquish all the boring and needy agendas that come from these limiting stories.  I don't even know where they originated.  Maybe some from family, some from cultural institutions like schools and religious endeavors.  TV, internet, social media.  Who knows.  But they have been like shackles.  And this life is so fleeting.

Drop the stories, drop the agendas and dramas.  These agendas can involve getting stuff, making people like/respect/envy/love us, feeling or looking younger, seeming accomplished and on and on.

Let’s root out the small thinking and talking and believing.  And not because we have to be positive all the time, but because it's just plain boring and soul-sucking to believe everything your mind says.  And because it's just not true.  Don't believe the hype.  Break through any way you can.  Not only to lead a better life in the micro, but to galvanize oneself against the onslaught on the macro level from those who would enlist us into their agendas.

I spoke to an esteemed friend recently about the state of affairs and our nation's history.  This person is more involved and invested than I.   We share many beliefs but have had dramatically different perspectives based on our experiences.  She is female and Native American and I am male and white.  It was the kind of conversation that I relish and tend to walk away from with new ideas.

One key question that came up was to ask what is at hand when humans are inhuman to others?  We spoke of how our economy can lead people astray with profit motives and exploitation.  We touched on how our laws can and have kept marginalized groups marginalized.  We pondered whether it was in the nature of humans to be inhuman to each other.

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I see that last statement as true.  However, how is it that certain nations, groups, cultures have been more violent.  The friend gave context by reminding me that community creates safety, boundaries, meaning and shared struggle.  And thus, conversely, a lack of community and a direct connection to one's heritage is perhaps what's at hand when we see so much destruction, exploitation, violence and hoarding of resources.  A society unmoored and rudderless. 

And I believe that what is missing from Western Culture is the connection to its roots.  Unlike aboriginal cultures, modern western culture has been disconnected from its aboriginal roots, its ancient traditions and its sense of community.  It is more than coincidence that this culture has been behind so much political upheaval, environmental destruction, war, consumerism and a kind of mindless yearning for distraction.

How do we reclaim that birthright of community, tradition and yet still embrace the new and the modern?  There are lots of ways.  Some friends of mine are involved in Permaculture and natural building seminars.  Others learn and teach about herbs and forestry.  I hope we can find a synthesis of the old and the new.

One way I've envisioned healing that fabric of a spiritual link to our ancestors is via shamanic practice.  Almost every tribe across the planet has systems to divine spiritual information.  Usually it's some version of journeying.  And most commonly they use drumming or sonic driving to attain a light trance and journey to get spiritual information, power and soul fragments.  Certain groups use psychedelics and/or drumming and/orr songs.

This system has served indigenous cultures for 10s of thousands of years.  I think the tribe and its customs are sorely missing in Western Culture.  Shamanism offers direct revelation instead of dogmas handed down through books and intermediaries.

I believe direct spiritual experience would imbue more lives with more meaning, more purpose, more clarity and more of a sense of groundedness and connection to something greater than ourselves. 

And I am all for people practicing organized religions or being atheists or curious or anywhere in between.  Being free to choose is the common denominator.  Religions can offer solace and guidance and yet can be distorted into a tool of oppression and genocide.

When we look around at our political state of affairs, the fragile and burning condition of our biosphere, the sickness of our culture's racial and sexual violence we must sadly come to the conclusion that our civilization is only so in name.  It shudders and lurches towards unknown destinations in a sea of disinformation and polarization.  The skirmishes across the world intimate war.

We don't have time or the resources to waste on war if we want to save earth's habitability.  This is not a test.  It's not hyperbole to say that the next election could be our last.  As I see it, we are at the precipice of the most consequential election ever in any country.  Beyond this, the moment is the turning point for our planet.  Do we fall into the black hole of a fascist death cult and thus forego even attempting to save our fragile biosphere?  Or do we begin to wake up from Civil World War 3?

Each nation has a choice.  Each individual does too.  I don't know what it will take.  But I sense that disconnecting from whatever this (social media)  is and whatever it does to me and you is a foundational first step. Even for a day, a week or whatever it takes to make the conscious choice to reconnect with the intranet within and the worldwide web of life.  And I see journeying among other behaviors like meditation as a means to accomplish this revival.

But we first must see that we have choice and believe that achieving these lofty goals is possible.  What's the other option again?

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I'm always mulling over a next Facebook post. Usually I'm trying to find something that connects the macro and the micro. What's going on in the world at large that is similar or connects to our everyday lives. I take comments, edit and then post on Substack.

What we see on the macro level is war, despotism and division. In the middle, we see a populace divided politically and the use of disinformation to gain or maintain power.

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On the micro, I see everyone being on edge. You can trace this back to any event or group of events: Sept 11th, Covid, Jan 6th etc. These are important seminal moments in the history of a young nation. More and more, we are so hyper-connected to other nations and a 24 hour news cycle, that we know what's going on in every part of the world. This is overwhelming.

And yet, we don't necessarily 'see' those people across the planet. They may appear more as a subject than an object. Something from a news article: seemingly 2-dimensional, but just like us, they are real people.

And just like the real people across the planet who are suffering some environmental catastrophe or dying in war, the people in our nation and in our town can seem less than real or human. Especially when we keep receiving and retweeting messages of dehumanization and blame.

One of our greatest needs is psychological visibility. We want to see and be seen. We may people-watch or go to the gym or to a play. We call friends and go on dates or take our kids to birthday parties where we feel community.

We feel part of something through these activities. But it's hard to feel that when others dehumanize us and when we return the favor. And this is being engineered for a reason by a specific person who has dominated our public imagination for most of the last 10 years. You all know exactly who I mean.

So this political division we experience has real consequences. I have argued ad nauseum that said political movement is coarsening our culture and dividing our society. What I'm experiencing as a member of this society, is that the psychological visibility that I cherish as a sensitive person can very easily be ripped away. When this happens, it can be alarming and traumatizing. But it's not just that the person doesn't 'see' you or me anymore. It's that they attempt to tell you who you really are and it's not kind. You're the villain. Even if no actual villainy has occurred. So falling off that pedestal into the gutter happens instantaneously.

So people now use this psychological visibility need as a cudgel. Our need for approval, belonging, togetherness are weaponized. And it’s rarely one-sided. I believe we all have been coarsened and shown how to dehumanize those we disagree with.

I guess gas-lighting is the best term for it. But it's really just one device we use to enact psychological warfare.

As above, so below. And above us on the state, national and world level, we are at war. Seeing friendly situations devolve into a micro-war at the snap of a finger is always startling and yet I keep encountering it.

Boundaries and straightforward communication seem quaint. Negotiating terms, and hashing out accountability seem like dying arts. Perhaps it's just been the luck of the draw for me of late. But I'm saddened to see my theory coming true so very often and with such destructive results.

It's as if everyone's amygdala is swelling and taking over. The slide towards war feels inevitable. We are all easily traumatized and tend to traumatize others as a result. I was watching an interview of David Brooks that was fascinating. He was talking about how he went from being a stuffy intellectual, stuck in his head, to being a feeling person, leading with his heart.

He lamented that his heart was opening as he saw the world's closing. That's how I feel. I have been opening my heart intentionally for years. Often as a result of the befuddlement that comes from loss and pain. And I know it's just a feeling. It's not always an accurate assessment of the whole planet or the whole nation or my whole town. But it's a sad feeling that can bring about a sense of dread. I wonder if we are a lost cause.

And yet, just when we need them, information and scenarios pop up that offer solace, wisdom, perspective, community and kindness. These can forever alter the course of our lives.

And specific people come into our lives that can wow us, enchant us and make us feel seen and heard like never before. We can lose ourselves in the moments and anxiously await the next. And we remember who we are again. And that's all we can ask for sometimes.

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I woke up today musing about our interdependence.  Society offers messages that tell us to be fiercely independent.  Don't ask for anything.  Don't need anything from anyone.  That is the hallmark of adulthood in a kind of libertarian fantasy.  And that's a part of America's enduring founding myth: rugged individualism.

And we talk of our need for each other in terms that are pejorative like codependence.  And we could get in the weeds and discuss the difference between interdependence and codependence.  We must always account for nuance and context.

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But I argue that we, via lots of mechanisms of modernity and chance and happenstance, have become so insular as to tell ourselves we don't need what we clearly need and might want if we let ourselves.  And that is togetherness.

We may not even think we want togetherness, touch, approval, time spent together etc, but we are not mere spirits floating around.  We are in an earth-suit and it is the 10,000BC tribal model.  We have existed until very recently in tribes with families and shared spaces and shared duties.  Rites of passage, hunting, gathering and community gathering were typical the world over.  Those that still live like this have a high quality of life. Our bodies need this and I think our spirits do too.

There are lots of ways to get community.  We can have a lover and not be married with kids.  We can find community online or at work or at a bar watching a sporting event.

But we still are what we are.  Human animals, seemingly with a spirit inside, but that's up for debate.  I have no inside information here.  But I know it's ok to need who and what we need.  It's ok to long and it's better when we quench those longings, even if they don't feel like our longings, but artifacts of our earth-suit itself.

All the world's a stage and perhaps we are actors playing the role of a human in a strange time of conflict and division.  A time of undue disconnect and ultimate connection.  A time where we can traverse the planet with ease, and yet the planet and its inhabitants are unsure of what's to come or what to do about the elephant in the room.

We may never unlock the mysteries of our existence, but I say why not treat this life like a play and join our troupe.  Practice learning the lines but ad-lib as needed.

And if it's a game, then give the spirit inhabiting the earth suit what it needs to survive and go on to the next adventure.  Find every potion, every shield and every ally.  If this is a game, then let's play.

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I was a Junior in High School when OJ Simpson killed his wife, Nicole Brown-Simpson and her boyfriend, Ron Goldman, in a gruesome double stabbing. I remember the nation appropriately focused on the Rodney King Trial. It was no surprise that LA erupted into riots when the 4 police officers, on trial for excessive force for severely beating and taunting Rodney King were acquitted in an event that was caught on film.

But the OJ Simpson case and the public outcry against holding him accountable was mystifying to me. This was the first time that I saw what I considered a mass hysteria take over. I remember all the people supporting OJ with signs that had slogans like "Don't Squeeze the Juice."

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There are layers of complexity and context, given our nation's profoundly racist history and LA’s specific issues with race, policing and excessive force. I don’t intend to minimize this. In fact, I go on about my political views and this history in great detail, probably to the detriment of my business. But I argue that victims of racism, institutional and otherwise, are not honored or assisted when rich, privileged and famous people like OJ Simpson are allowed to get away with literal murder.

OJ was just so clearly guilty. So privileged, so rich. He was treated like a celebrity, like a white man. While he may have lived the black experience as a young man, that was no longer his reality. He was a movie star. He was a college and pro football legend. And he was treated as such. And he got away with abuse because of his status according to family and friends of his deceased wife.

In the LA of the early 1990s and in the greater US, dragging behind it the legacy of slavery and slave ships and Jim Crow and chain gangs and the KKK; supporting OJ seemed to be one of the forms black outcry against the system took. OJ was an unworthy recipient of this outcry, this blind eye, but such was the juxtaposition of events and the intensity of the collective inter-generational trauma.

It was clear that, like many famous people, OJ had a huge cult of personality. We all loved OJ from his college and pro career and from commercials. But he was a sportscaster too and recently had even begun to star in major movies like Naked Gun, a comedy classic and very successful movie. But believing OJ was innocent and being wrongly persecuted was a lie and an obvious one. Nor would OJ’s innocence make a practical difference to those who had truly been denied justice.

I look back and see obvious comparisons to the Senate Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who self-servingly invoked our horrid, racist past when he was accused of a sexual harassment by a female colleague. He called the accusations against him a 'high tech lynching' despite the fact that a black woman and fellow attorney was accusing him and that dozens of white men came to his side and attacked the character of the accuser, Anita Hill.

Both cases where these high profile men of questionable (or worse) character were able to capitalize on the loyalty of the crowd, to invoke our racist history to their benefit, and to insulate themselves from accountability. They both played the race card and won.

How strange that these two men of means walked free or attained new power while millions who looked like them languished in jails and prisons because of unfair drug laws, stop-and-frisk laws, and from police brutality. It was only recently, at the advent of smart phones, that we were able to hold more racist officers accountable. They are now regularly fired, prosecuted and are starting to get convicted.

Why did the nation and the black community settle for OJ and Clarence Thomas? Did we need a quick fix? These men were unfit avatars for the black experience and yet they were the beneficiaries of public support nonetheless.

And both men benefited from obvious lies. And that sounds like another b******t artist who sits atop an even more nefarious cult of personality: another unfit recipient of public trust who seeks power in order to escape accountability.

Looking back, it's easier to imagine, for me, OJ or Thomas being victims over a guy like Trump. But still many see him as a victim of the ‘deep state’ and the liberal media and of course, of a stolen election.

How is it that some people so easily fall into the trap? To focus that rage, that sense of injustice on the wrong guy, the wrong avatar?

With OJ, the results were 2 dead people and no justice for their families or the community.

With Thomas, a woman was character assassinated and vilified. But if we look at just how corrupt Thomas is, we realize that his confirmation is one of the worst and most destructive in our history. He is deeply corrupt and corrupted by the bribes of his bribing billionaires. But it goes deeper. Ginnie Thomas, his wife, works for companies with business before the Supreme Court but Thomas never recuses himself. And she was a full-throated supporter of President Trump and called Trump’s chief of staff to urge them to not count the vote in order to overturn the presidential election. These are traitors! This couldn’t be much more surreal.

The Thomas’s are actively trying to assist the former President regain power and avoid accountability, just like Thomas did all those years ago. What a disgusting mess.

I’m sure there are other destructive cults of personality like Jones Town we could discuss. But large swathes of the population didn’t buy into that cult. It was a fringe element. OJ, Thomas and Trump divided a nation along fault lines. These three men are and were the worst among us and have only brought death, cynicism and political destruction with them. Trump could himself bring the downfall of our free and fair elections, rendering us a dictatorship. Saying so feels surreal and yet that’s where we sit. When these men in power play the victim in order that they are above the law, we become a more cynical populace. Cynicism begets cynicism. I couldn’t imagine a more important election than 2024. A nation and a populace that won’t hold its leaders accountable may soon enough find itself without the power to do so.

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Conversations about recent terrorist attacks are all too common because such attacks have become normal and regular: both domestically and abroad. Those conversations usually involve self-congratulatory condemnations of the acts and the perpetrators. We wring our hands and share thoughts and prayers for the victims. Then we move on to the next news calamity. We don’t seem to wonder how that group was able to carry out such an attack. We don’t ask why they committed the act. We don’t follow that group’s funding, history and radicalization arc. There is too much to cover and our lives are too busy. Our attention span does not allow us to see the big picture of geo-politics against a historical backdrop.

We can’t imagine valuing our lives so little or believing so fervently that we’d commit suicide for a cause and/or that we’d take the life of another in pursuit of such a cause. We judge terrorists as sub-human as a result. But this, I argue, is only because we have so much to lose, not because we are more noble or humane. It’s because our property rights are honored. Our bodies are protected by laws and police. When we are wronged, we redress our grievances through legal channels. We Americans are children of civilization. Its systems channel our needs, wants, expecatations smoothly and efficiently. We have safe homes and cars and jobs and food and vacation and sick days. Retirements and savings. We travel. We tailgate at the football game. We go to the gym and jog in the neighborhood. Spirituality is a personal relationship with a God that we visit in Church on Sundays with our friends.

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We have it good. Even the poorest among us are comparably free and safe. In nations and regions where this isn’t the case, the calculus is quite different—as is the perception of the US and the West. This is true largely because areas like the Middle East and South America have dealt with the Imperial side of the US, Europe and the West. They have experienced drone strikes, CIA coups, and Iran-Contra.

They do not get a jury of their peers. They do not find their borders or sovereignty honored. Despite the US’ well-intended efforts to prevent Nuclear War, World War 3, and to contain Communism in the Cold War, since the 1950s the United States has destabilized much of the world: especially South America and the Middle East.

Much of the world’s terrorism has sprung up as a result of our election meddling, overthrow of popularly elected leaders and support of freedom fighters as proxies in our effort to control the USSR and other rogue nations. Some of these rogue nations are the direct results of blowback from similar policies. Iran is a great example. How did this iteration of Iran come about? Just google Mossadegh or the Shah. Look at how Iran exports and supports terrorism. They are a blow-back dandelion.

Look at every single terrorist group. Look at the genesis of al Qaeda, the Islamic State, Hamas and others. Where did they begin? Always as freedom fighters fighting off a colonial power. Often a pawn of the West, fighting their battles until they became disposable. Then they morph into Political Islam.

Why is Islam radicalized? US foreign policy over the past 75 years.

Who funded Hamas before it was even called that: Israel, that's who. In their fight against Arafat's Fatah party they enlisted Hamas to...do their dirty work. It's blowback. It's always blowback.

It doesn't mean the US wanted there to be an Islamic State or that Israel wanted Hamas to attack. Not at all. But they shortsightedly created their monsters nonetheless. Because of careless policies carried out by bureaucrats run amok like the Dulles Brothers. Look them up too.

But what we do is look at the terrorists and say, 'they're evil.' And we wash our hands. But that's not how terrorism happened. People don't randomly devalue life. It happens in a sick world where sickness and killing is exported. And it will keep happening. We keep destabilizing the world, region by region and expecting different results.

Terrorism and terrorists are the results of terrible and inhumane policy. A void is filled. A need to counter imperial power is met. Let's stop creating the void to be filled. Let's start enforcing policies that support life across the globe. Let's hold our allies accountable and make our support contingent on them honoring the lives of all humans.

If we do this, we remove the allure of terrorism.

When the economic, ecological, political, and social systems work for the people, we will know peace.

Put that in your stocking

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I watched Family Ties growing up and loved it. The humor, the heart, and the actors all made it a worthwhile viewing. All these years later, it's on a channel I watch and it hasn't lost a step for me, especially with the laughs. But it was political and topical and that was a risk the writers took. Every character was fair game: the hippie parents, the daughters, and capitalistic Alex. Everyone was teased for the shortcomings of their world-view.

Jennifer was writing a book report on Huck Finn and the teacher and principal were censoring her because it was not on the acceptable books list. I found this parallel to now to be fitting and food for thought. Her book report started by describing the book and how it was a book about our nation facing its ills and growing up.

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This question is at hand now in America but with astronomically higher stakes. Can we really look at our past? Can we be mature and face who we've been in order to become who we need to be for our constituents. And can we do this in time to stop the seemingly inexorable slip into fascism.

A very vocal minority is trying to infantilize its constituents and vilify its supposed enemies. By coddling their constituents they amass power.

They would limit access to books that 'offend' the sensibilities of these coddled citizens. Such humoring leads to a bubble of misunderstanding and an air of superiority among the coddled. Instilling a perennial sense of indignation and victimhood among those same citizens keeps them seeing enemies all around.

Somehow mythologizing the worst moments of our nation’s bloody history is a way to revivify and escape into the lost cause narrative itself . A place where everyone knew their place. That place worked well for white skinned people. Their money and laws gave them an unfair advantage over other groups. Who wouldn't want such an enterprise?

Everybody else, that's who.

So the extent to which people want to deny what happened seems to match the extent to which they want to go back there and make a fantasy world of antebellum aristocracy. This is of course, a child's fantasy. Lords and ladies and the Help. No inconvenient lgbtq people to confuse the children. No black men competing for jobs or women. A plantation that centered around pleasing the rich white family whose natural place was at the top of a pyramid of suffering and toil.

Racism is often hurled at the out-group and used to scare, beat, kill, and blame. But racism is the lie that we tell the children of privilege. It tells them why they're special, different, better, more holy. And it keeps them infantilized.

It's the lie we tell the poor have-nothings who resemble the rich aristocrats. "You may not have our money and prestige and power, but you are above your black and brown denizens." Racism is the swiss army knife of deceptions.

And it is an animating force in America life and politics as it has been since before we were a nation.

If people were forced to look at the results of racism in America, they would have to reconsider the fantasy of living in the unreal pageantry of the antebellum south. These fantasies are alluring, especially when they're being used by cynical forces to amass power.

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I have been stewing on this one for a while because I didn't know exactly what it was about Oliver North that really got me agitated.

But I figured it out.

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When I was a young teen, the Oliver North trial was televised and he did not disappoint. He was the handsome, charismatic, and defiant face of the Reagan Administration in terms of defending the Iran-Contra Affair. We watched, we cheered, we had shirts that said stuff like Ollie for President.

Day after day, North would answer questions with a self-righteous tone and sarcasm, draping himself in the flag. He was quick-witted and self-assured. A true believer. We viewed him as the ultimate patriot. I was too young to understand what was really at hand. I'm not anymore.

Iran-Contra was a convoluted scandal where the Reagan Administration got caught violating the Boland Amendment in order to support the Contra Rebels in Nicaragua against the Communist Sandanistas while simultaneously arming Iran, despite a weapons embargo signed by Congress. So we were arming Iran, who was in a bloody war with Iraq (who we were arming with chemical weapons) to try and free 7 hostages in Lebanon while simultaneously funding these narco-soldiers in Nicaragua.

So because Reagan and North and everyone else in the administration thought the 7 hostages were more important than our laws, they found a way to secretly do this work and North was the point man/fall guy. Reagan, you may remember, 'did not recall' anything when questioned. And we pretended to believe him or look the other way.

The first of his and their errors: the ends don't always justify the means. Just because we want these 7 hostages back, does not mean that we support the cocaine trade in Central America or the war of a dicatorship in the Middle East. The fallout from such events could have been and may have been far worse than the loss of 7 lives. And we all wanted the hostages back.

The conceit there is that American lives are worth more than other lives. They are not. It is honorable to try and free them. It is dishonorable to violate our laws and our ethics to do so.

One of the reasons that North was so proud of himself was that he was doing this for the 7 hostages. His self-righteousness blinded him to the actual effects of his behaviors. He could have caused the killing of untold innocent life because of the decisions he and they made.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, North was so proud to express again and again how he never disobeyed a direct order from a commanding officer. This sounds great until you consider that not every order is ethical. Not every commanding officer should be obeyed, especially when they offer an order that would cause a soldier to break multiple laws. These laws apply to every citizen. They were passed for good reasons. Reagan and North and all those cronies thought they knew better than the experts and the legislators. They were wrong.

I can relate to wanting to save the hostages and I can relate to the difficulty of choosing between our laws and direct orders from a commanding officer when on active duty in the military. But North disclosed no sense of conflict in following these orders. So I don’t see that as being pertinent here.

Members of Congress and the public were eating out of Ollie's hand. So was I. I was 12. And I didn't know anything. I know some things now. Oliver North was no hero. His arrogant tone and willful violation of our laws was an embarrassment. Lionizing him then and now (on Fox News) is gross.

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