On Tuesday night, November 8th, I went to sleep on an overnight flight to Europe for a conference taking place later in the week. While I was on my way to Helsinki, I assumed that America was on its way to electing Hillary Clinton as president. When the plane touched down Wednesday morning and people began to turn on their smart phones to check messages and get the latest news, a murmuring spread through the passengers. I began to hear "Trump... Trump..." and soon learned the truth: The impossible had happened. The catastrophe had arrived. The arrogant, loudmouthed, ridiculously boastful celebrity businessman with hateful views toward migrants and minorities, who had been caught on tape talking about how he used his celebrity status to take sexual advantage of women, who had zero experience in government and offered little more than vague promises to "make America great again," had narrowly edged Mrs. Clinton to become the new president-in-waiting.
I had had an awful dream on the flight. I saw angry mobs, fires, violence. I woke thinking the dream probably represented my anxieties about the election, but when I found that Trump had been not vanquished but elevated by the election, I now feared the dream was if anything prophetic, a grim premonition of what may lay ahead for country run by an ignorant, erratic, thin-skinned and hot-tempered, right-wing billionaire bully fueled by resentment and egotism.
She had won the popular vote, by a margin that has now proven substantial, but since America awards the presidency through its complicated system of the "electoral college," Trump had prevailed by winning almost all of the rural and less populated states, white majority areas where Hillary Clinton's greater appeal to more diverse populations was not only not an advantage, but actually a disadvantage. Donald Trump had signaled in many ways that he was sympathetic to the far-right, racist, white supremacist wing of American politics, not least by appointing Stephen Bannon, a leading light in the dark universe of the so-called "Alt Right" movement through the "Breitbart" news web site, to a top position in his campaign. Trump's triumph may, I fear, represent a chilling turning away from the social progress that American had painfully achieved through the civil rights, anti-war, feminist and gay rights movements from the 1960s through 2016, and particularly the advances, limited though they were, of the Obama years.
Going, going, gone: an educated, thoughtful President who cares about minorities, women's rights, the environment.... Gone, a Justice Department that looks into the killing by police of unarmed black people.... Gone, any consideration for the rights of Muslim-Americans.... Gone, the protection from deportation that President Obama had extended to the children of undocumented migrants.... Gone, compassion.... Gone, intelligence.... Gone respect for diversity.... Hello, belligerence, intolerance, crassness and braggadocio, implicit support for racism and xenophobia....Hello government by kleptocracy, Donald and his friends and family grabbing up goodies and making deals to enrich themselves....Hello to America as not the leader of the world but a diminished, puzzling "rogue nation," an erratic kleptocracy....
As a Pagan who sees respect for nature as a core, perhaps THE core spiritual value, I am most pained by the potential damage that will be done to the earth by a new government that scorns the threat of global warming and may withdraw from international agreements like the Paris Climate Treaty.... I will be looking for opportunities to join arms with other like-minded Pagans who support policies of protection for the environment rather than opening the door to all-out exploitation of nature and unrestricted extraction of carbon fuels as seem to be favored by our new president. I wonder how many Pagans will stand up for nature, and how many will instead support Trump because they like his nationalistic, tribalistic tendencies?
I do believe that in a democracy, it is important to allow a newly elected leader and government some time to establish their policies and programs before passing judgment. I just do not have much hope for the next four, or eight, years, based on who Donald Trump has been in the past, his inflammatory and ignorant statements during the campaign, and the kind of extreme right-wing people he is surrounding himself with, from appointing the right-wing, "white nationalist" (translation: racist and white supremacist) Stephen Bannon for the nebulous, and thus potentially extremely powerful because invisible and undefined role of untitled presidential "adviser" to selecting the anti-Muslim, Iran-hating, Michael T. Flynn as National Security Adviser to offering the top job in the Justice Department, that of Attorney General, Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions, a throwback to racist politics of the Old South who has in past expressed more sympathy for the KKK than the American Civil Liberties Union or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the venerable civil rights group. I see growing evidence that Trump was not joking about wanting to undo many actions and policies of the Obama years.
Worse still, as I discuss election results with students and others, I am meeting more and more people who are belligerently pro-Trump and quickly turn to anger when this new American Fuhrer is subjected to any criticism or challenge. I have studied the rise of Fascism and Nazism, and I have to say Trump's supporters scare me, as they remind me of nothing so much as the kind of thugs and bullies that Mussolini and Hitler relied on to cement their grip in power. I fear that Trump is laying the groundwork for a new Fascism of the 21st century.
A train conductor on a route that I often use told me that he feels more hope for America now than he has in 16 years. When I told him that I pretty much felt the opposite, he told me that he knew Trump would win because "he harnessed the most powerful force in America...the pissed-off white guy vote!" When I complained that Trump had no government experience, which to me made it rather unlikely that he could work the miracles that his followers expected, he countered, "Well, what experience did Obama have...beside being black?" Though I would concede that Obama was not the most qualified candidate to ever run for President, he did have some important experience. Barack Obama had worked as a community organizer in poor sections of Chicago, had served as an Illinois State Senator and then a U.S. Senator, and had also taught constitutional law at the college level at one point. My trainman then said, "Maybe Obama did some good things for people on his side....I won't dispute that. But he did nothing for people like me." This despite the fact that Obama had rescued the country from the worst economic crisis in 70 years.
The reaction of this trainman and others that I have spoken to in my largely white, conservative area of New York State, including in my classes, suggest to me that there is a substantial white population in this country who are simmering with rage and varying degrees of animosity toward Muslims, immigrants, blacks, and anyone they see as different from themselves, and who are bursting with energy that Trump will give them a government that will celebrate their identity and uphold their priorities and proclivities, and also their prejudices, racial, religious or of other sorts. My made-in-the 1960s heart that beat proudly for the election of Obama as the necessary and positive breaking of a barrier that I thought would open the way for a country more able to handle racial, ethnic, cultural and religious diversity is now pounding with fear and anxiety about what America is going to be like in the 2010s and 2020s if Trump's backward-looking rhetoric about "making America great again," emphasis on AGAIN, means a rebirth of flagrant racism and white supremacy, as if George Wallace had risen from the grave and won the election. I am truly afraid that he has....
I feel myself a foreigner in this version of America. I actually take some small measure of cold comfort in that, remembering that when I came back to America after living abroad in the past, I always felt some strangeness in returning to "my" country, as being away had broadened me and changed me, and coming "home" did not always feel like "home." I saw myself then and see myself now as somewhat of a foreigner in America, among so many countrymen with such a radically different view of what a healthy and sane society is or should be. With my growing international connections to the Baltic States and elsewhere, I will now keep one eye on the possibility of relocating abroad if the situation here goes from bad to worse, from simmering to burning, from quasi-Fascist rhetoric to brutality in practice, presided over by an erratic, intellectually incoherent, ethically questionable, orange-headed celebrity-buffoon who has indeed accomplished an amazing thing, to convert a country that eight years ago seemed to be heading for a new more inclusive future into a country where a considerable number of people are calling for the building of walls to keep out foreigners, the use of prisons to torture suspected terrorists, and the rounding up of Muslims into 21st century concentration camps. I hope that each of these awful items that I just mentioned never comes to pass....but all of those ideas have been voiced by members or supporters of the Trump team.
I am afraid for my country....and do not think I will live along enough to see the damage likely to be done by this new president undone. I hope I am wrong.
Showing posts with label Global Warming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Global Warming. Show all posts
Sunday, November 20, 2016
Saturday, May 3, 2014
The Rites of Spring, Then and Now
Sacrifice and Revolution...are these the Rites of Spring?
I was listening tonight to a radio program featuring a discussion of Stravinsky's composition "The Rites of Spring," a ballet inspired by Slavic Paganism and the notion of human sacrifice. The music and dancing in "The Rites" were so radical, so jarring, so unlike anything that had gone before in European classical music that this ballet actually caused riots in Paris when it was first performed in 1913. The discussion I listened to was on Chris Lydon's Boston NPR program "Open Source," which replayed a discussion of Stravinsky from the year 2000 on "The Connection," the program Lydon hosted on WBUR at that time. You can hear it at http://radioopensource.org/rite-of-spring-revival .
I am moved to reflect upon sacrifice, spring and revolution. We are just a few days in from May Day, once a worldwide day of tribute to workers and socialism, and more recently, a date on the calendar when modern-day Pagans often celebrate Beltane or other "rites of spring." In Stravinsky's vision, the Rites of Spring means the selection of a young maiden to be offered in human sacrifice in order to bring on the life-giving renewal of spring. The maiden is then driven to dance until she dies, which the frantic, driving music of the composition renders both hypnotic and frightening. Stravinsky's, and not only Stravinsky's view of sacrifice is that it is a very basic spiritual mystery, a primal bargain in which death pays for life, in which something must be given, wasted, killed, destroyed--sacrificed--by one, or by some, so that new abundance can be obtained for the many, or even for all of us. There is a similar logic in Christ's crucifixion and in Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac in the Old Testament.
In Norse myth, the world itself is created by the sacrificial killing and dismemberment of the primal being Ymir, and wisdom, poetry, writing and more are made possible for mankind by Odin's agonizing self-sacrifice on the world tree Yggdrasil. The apocalyptic vision of the end of the world in the poem Voluspa is also in a sense a story of sacrifice, as the destruction of the existing world is the prelude to the revitalization and re-creation of the world, rising up from the depths of the ocean, "fresh and green."
With our retrospective knowledge of what would happen in Europe and Russia in the years immediately following the debut of the "Rites of Spring," Stravinsky's ballet now seems not only a powerful reflection on sacrifice and death, but an artistic prophecy of the huge changes about to occur in Europe through WW I and the Russian Revolution. I find its message still entirely relevant, still full of jarring, even frightening resonance, in our own time. Our society has become dominated by a corporate and economic elite as corrupt, self-serving and unresponsive to human needs and aspirations as was the Tsarist regime of Stravinsky's time. Are we perhaps building up to the point when a revolution--a massive, horrific, collective sacrifice--is again required to make this society a more promising place for all of its citizens, not just a privileged elite? Will we need to rise up and accept the necessity of risk, loss, ruin, danger, and even death, to break the death-grip of the corporate oligarchy that now controls the parameters of our lives?
It is a tired refrain of American political thought that in a democracy such as ours, we must work through the political system, with all its flaws and contradictions, to achieve improvements in society, and that we should accept the reality that change comes slowly, and may take many generations. There is no need for drastic action, so this thinking goes, no reason to imagine anything as violent and radical as a revolution. America had a revolution once, it is true, but that was long ago, and we now have a constitutional democracy designed to accommodate public demands and to foster change and adjustments in our society, however slowly. All things in good time, you see.
Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring" reminds us of other, darker chords that can be played on the strings of the collective social orchestra. We are not in a time of social and political progress. The system is not working, or if it is, it is only working for those with massive financial power to bring about the results that they desire. Thus, when we have a financial Ragnarok as in 2008, it is only the oligarchic elite that gets much help from the government that is supposed to be "by the people, of the people, and for the people." Thus, when the world is threatened by massive climate disruption, when the icecaps are melting and increasingly violent storms and droughts rock one country after another, the carbon fuel industry is able to manipulate the media and cloud the public discourse in the United States to such a degree that most people doubt the need for any decisive action, and the profits of the carbon companies go up and up and up, just like the earth's temperature, with all the great danger that entails. Whatever happens in our world now is assimilated, adapted and repackaged by the forces of international finance and corporate power into a way for them to gather greater wealth and influence. What chance do the rest of us have?
In our world of dazzling, digital distractions, where our concerns about pressing social and political issues and our desires for real and meaningful change can be so easily dissipated, neutered and anesthetized by ever-proliferating forms of mind-crippling entertainment, it is hard to imagine a massive uprising such as the French, Russian or American revolutions. Furthermore, in a world where the economy has been transformed into an ever-more competitive, ever-less supportive, ever-more frightening zone of total insecurity for the vast majority of wage-earners, more and more of whom fear that at any moment they might be replaced by the latest "labor-saving" technology, which offers vast profits to the corporate and financial elite and the prospect of unemployment or progressively lower-wage work to many, most people are rightfully terrified to embark on any course of action that could endanger what little economic and occupational security they have managed to hold onto against the powerful techno-capital forces rumbling in the background like Tyrannosaurus Rex monsters looking to devour any and every creature that they can force into their perpetually ravenous mouths.
And yet... and yet, the brutal lesson of history, and of the "Rites of Spring," is that there can be no real spring, no true renewal, no large-scale social progress, without sacrifice and loss. The time may come when people will rise up to demand this, and be willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the welfare of future generations. It is my hope that as the threat of such uprising and revolution begins to take on shape and form and momentum, as began to happen with the "Occupy Wall Street" protests of 2011 and 2012, that the people with great power in government and the corporate and financial sectors will finally realize t the need for a thorough renegotiation of the basic social contract, and then our society can be renewed on a better basis for all. But if they are unable or unwilling to accept the need for such change... if they are so blinded by their own narcissism and the delusional belief that they have a right to perpetuate the order that is of such service to them and such disservice to others... then all bets are off, and the "Rites of Spring" may again need to be performed.
I was listening tonight to a radio program featuring a discussion of Stravinsky's composition "The Rites of Spring," a ballet inspired by Slavic Paganism and the notion of human sacrifice. The music and dancing in "The Rites" were so radical, so jarring, so unlike anything that had gone before in European classical music that this ballet actually caused riots in Paris when it was first performed in 1913. The discussion I listened to was on Chris Lydon's Boston NPR program "Open Source," which replayed a discussion of Stravinsky from the year 2000 on "The Connection," the program Lydon hosted on WBUR at that time. You can hear it at http://radioopensource.org/rite-of-spring-revival .
I am moved to reflect upon sacrifice, spring and revolution. We are just a few days in from May Day, once a worldwide day of tribute to workers and socialism, and more recently, a date on the calendar when modern-day Pagans often celebrate Beltane or other "rites of spring." In Stravinsky's vision, the Rites of Spring means the selection of a young maiden to be offered in human sacrifice in order to bring on the life-giving renewal of spring. The maiden is then driven to dance until she dies, which the frantic, driving music of the composition renders both hypnotic and frightening. Stravinsky's, and not only Stravinsky's view of sacrifice is that it is a very basic spiritual mystery, a primal bargain in which death pays for life, in which something must be given, wasted, killed, destroyed--sacrificed--by one, or by some, so that new abundance can be obtained for the many, or even for all of us. There is a similar logic in Christ's crucifixion and in Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac in the Old Testament.
In Norse myth, the world itself is created by the sacrificial killing and dismemberment of the primal being Ymir, and wisdom, poetry, writing and more are made possible for mankind by Odin's agonizing self-sacrifice on the world tree Yggdrasil. The apocalyptic vision of the end of the world in the poem Voluspa is also in a sense a story of sacrifice, as the destruction of the existing world is the prelude to the revitalization and re-creation of the world, rising up from the depths of the ocean, "fresh and green."
With our retrospective knowledge of what would happen in Europe and Russia in the years immediately following the debut of the "Rites of Spring," Stravinsky's ballet now seems not only a powerful reflection on sacrifice and death, but an artistic prophecy of the huge changes about to occur in Europe through WW I and the Russian Revolution. I find its message still entirely relevant, still full of jarring, even frightening resonance, in our own time. Our society has become dominated by a corporate and economic elite as corrupt, self-serving and unresponsive to human needs and aspirations as was the Tsarist regime of Stravinsky's time. Are we perhaps building up to the point when a revolution--a massive, horrific, collective sacrifice--is again required to make this society a more promising place for all of its citizens, not just a privileged elite? Will we need to rise up and accept the necessity of risk, loss, ruin, danger, and even death, to break the death-grip of the corporate oligarchy that now controls the parameters of our lives?
It is a tired refrain of American political thought that in a democracy such as ours, we must work through the political system, with all its flaws and contradictions, to achieve improvements in society, and that we should accept the reality that change comes slowly, and may take many generations. There is no need for drastic action, so this thinking goes, no reason to imagine anything as violent and radical as a revolution. America had a revolution once, it is true, but that was long ago, and we now have a constitutional democracy designed to accommodate public demands and to foster change and adjustments in our society, however slowly. All things in good time, you see.
Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring" reminds us of other, darker chords that can be played on the strings of the collective social orchestra. We are not in a time of social and political progress. The system is not working, or if it is, it is only working for those with massive financial power to bring about the results that they desire. Thus, when we have a financial Ragnarok as in 2008, it is only the oligarchic elite that gets much help from the government that is supposed to be "by the people, of the people, and for the people." Thus, when the world is threatened by massive climate disruption, when the icecaps are melting and increasingly violent storms and droughts rock one country after another, the carbon fuel industry is able to manipulate the media and cloud the public discourse in the United States to such a degree that most people doubt the need for any decisive action, and the profits of the carbon companies go up and up and up, just like the earth's temperature, with all the great danger that entails. Whatever happens in our world now is assimilated, adapted and repackaged by the forces of international finance and corporate power into a way for them to gather greater wealth and influence. What chance do the rest of us have?
In our world of dazzling, digital distractions, where our concerns about pressing social and political issues and our desires for real and meaningful change can be so easily dissipated, neutered and anesthetized by ever-proliferating forms of mind-crippling entertainment, it is hard to imagine a massive uprising such as the French, Russian or American revolutions. Furthermore, in a world where the economy has been transformed into an ever-more competitive, ever-less supportive, ever-more frightening zone of total insecurity for the vast majority of wage-earners, more and more of whom fear that at any moment they might be replaced by the latest "labor-saving" technology, which offers vast profits to the corporate and financial elite and the prospect of unemployment or progressively lower-wage work to many, most people are rightfully terrified to embark on any course of action that could endanger what little economic and occupational security they have managed to hold onto against the powerful techno-capital forces rumbling in the background like Tyrannosaurus Rex monsters looking to devour any and every creature that they can force into their perpetually ravenous mouths.
And yet... and yet, the brutal lesson of history, and of the "Rites of Spring," is that there can be no real spring, no true renewal, no large-scale social progress, without sacrifice and loss. The time may come when people will rise up to demand this, and be willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the welfare of future generations. It is my hope that as the threat of such uprising and revolution begins to take on shape and form and momentum, as began to happen with the "Occupy Wall Street" protests of 2011 and 2012, that the people with great power in government and the corporate and financial sectors will finally realize t the need for a thorough renegotiation of the basic social contract, and then our society can be renewed on a better basis for all. But if they are unable or unwilling to accept the need for such change... if they are so blinded by their own narcissism and the delusional belief that they have a right to perpetuate the order that is of such service to them and such disservice to others... then all bets are off, and the "Rites of Spring" may again need to be performed.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Death by Corporation
I have recently been thinking about how so many of the world's most serious problems today are either caused or made worse by the powerful business entities known as corporations. It is not just that large corporations engage in practices and sell products that may be harmful in various ways. It is also the case that such corporations are also able and willing to use their considerable economic power, media presence and political clout to block or confuse any efforts to address serious problems from global warming to childhood obesity to gun violence, to name just a few.
Global warming. It is a serious threat to humanity's future. Warmer temperatures are causing more and more extreme weather with damaging, even lethal consequences, with the "superstorm" Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast of the USA in October of 2012 and the raging fires caused by excessive heat and drought in the New South Wales region of Australia in January of 2013 as two recent examples of the environmental juggernaut that is bearing down on us. In the judgment of most scientific authorities, we have to alter our patterns of energy consumption, in particular our dependence on carbon-based fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas, in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that are building up in the atmosphere and triggering a warming of the climate that is in turn warming the ocean waters, that in turn cause more warmth and moisture to rise into the atmosphere and produce the storms, droughts and other weather effects causing increasing damage to life, land and property. However, the carbon fuel industries have poured money into an intensive media campaign, particularly prominent on right-wing news outlets like FOX News but also finding its way to other media channels as well, to discredit the very idea of global warming or climate change, convincing a good many Americans, and no doubt others elsewhere, that either global warming is a kind of scientific hoax, or, that there is no clear proof that it is the result of human activity,and no proof that human activity can halt it. Therefore, it would be foolish to undertake actions such as reducing the burning of fossil fuels, since such actions would be disruptive to the world economy without any certain environmental benefit. This has confused many people into a state of apathy. The Victors: corporations that profit from fossil fuel production and consumption. The Losers: all of us who want the planet to remain livable. The reason: the incredible hunger for profit that blots out all other concerns and values is proving capable of drowning out the world's scientists and visionary leaders concerned about the future.
Childhood obesity. This is an increasingly common condition in the USA and is growing in the UK and elsewhere too. It is not just that young people are becoming more massive in their size. They are also manifesting diseases such as diabetes that threaten their health and longevity. Scientists are not clear on all the causes for this situation, and there may well be many from lack of exercise due to more sedentary lifestyles and pastimes to the ingestion of growth hormones given to farm animals and ending up in American food to overeating of "junk food" filled with fat, carbohydrates, salt, sugar and/or corn syrup, and chemicals that add appealing color and addictive taste. No one objects to the government encouraging young people to exercise more, such as First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, but when Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of NYC, made an effort to restrict the bottle and/or serving size of sugary drinks such as soda, there was a huge outcry from the soda and beverage industry,and a media campaign accusing the mayor of robbing Americans of their "freedom," presumably the all-important freedom to eat and drink non-nutritious foods and beverages and develop heart disease and diabetes. Once again, corporate greed attempts to override human interests.
Gun violence. As I have addressed this recently, I will not rehash the whole discussion, but just focus on the corporate profit dimension. Guns and gun-related paraphernalia are big business in the USA, highly profitable indeed. The main pro-gun lobbying organization, the NRA, is largely funded by gun manufacturers. With so much money at stake, the purveyors and manufacturers of guns are definitely not going to let a mere public outcry by the majority of the people of the nation over problems of gun violence get in the way of the profits that their stockholders feast upon. And once again, we find a sophisticated media campaign funded by gun manufacturers and amplified by right-wing media that any reduction or restriction of guns in America is an assault on fundamental freedoms and evidence of a totalitarian government in the making that is best resisted by --you guessed it-- guns. So go out now, all you freedom-loving folk, and prepare for war against the big bad government that thinks of nothing else but how to oppress and enslave you. I keep wondering when someone will start championing the right to bear nuclear arms. If possessing personal weapons without restriction of ANY sort is so important, then why not allow patriotic Americans to have their own nuclear bombs and missile launch systems? Wouldn't that be the ultimate demonstration of the most important American "freedom?"
The defense of the "right" to eat and drink unhealthy foods and the "right" to own and use a limitless number of guns is almost identical to the way that tobacco companies used to champion the "right" to smoke. The skillful effort to confuse and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming/climate change is a planet-threatening problem RIGHT NOW is also reminiscent of how the tobacco companies argued for decades that there was no good scientific evidence that smoking was harmful to human health, even though the companies themselves had done their own research proving that point!
We cannot trust corporations to watch out for our health or the future well-being of our planet. Corporations just want us to buy buy buy whatever crap they are producing, no matter what the cost to health, to society, to the environment,and they will do everything in their power to prevent anyone from interfering with their business activities. As a college teacher, I am sad to see how many of my students seem to believe that the American style corporate economy, the so-called "free enterprise/free market" system, is not only the best economic system, but indeed the ONLY one that is possible. This is the result of the past 30 years of American politics in which the Reaganite vision of government-BAD, businessmen-GOOD; regulations-BAD, profits-GOOD; compassion for others-STUPID, selfishness and individualism-SMART has been dominant. For the sake of the planet and ourselves, I pray that this paradigm is now losing its allure and that we will be able to have a different kind of conversation about such issues as mentioned above. One thing is for sure, every step of the way, powerful corporations will fight like hell to prevent any changes that might deprive them of their all-important profits. They do not care about the future, so we are going to have to care twice as hard.
In Snorri Sturluson's version of the myth of Baldur, his death causes widespread sadness, and his mother lets it be known that if all beings will weep for him and show their love, he will be returned to life. The whole range of living beings are ready to cooperate, but only one creature refuses, a female giant that is actually the mischievous god Loki in disguise. She says, "Let Hel (death) keep what she has...I will not weep for Odin's son!" This is the kind of hard-heartedness that we can expect from the giant corporations of our day. When we tell them the children are being killed by an oversupply of dangerous weapons and unhealthy food, that the oceans are rising and destructive storms are washing away our shores and threatening our cities, and when we urge them that we have to change the way they do business so that future generations can walk on the earth in safety and enjoy the light of the sun, the blue of the sky and the greenness of the earth, they are not going to want to listen. We have to keep at it until they do. Today's corporations are caught in a web of evil that they have spun for themselves, but the corporations are at bottom human institutions, and we must strive to reawaken that glimmer of humanity that still exists somewhere inside the armies of lawyers, the billion dollar marketing teams, the disinformation campaigns, the corporate boardrooms obsessed with financial figures.
Above all, we have to reject the idea that profits are all that matter. People are more important than profits. Nature is more important than profits. The well-being of us all and our planet is more important than profits. We need new economic arrangements that honor our deepest, most sustaining and inspiring values and reject the false idols of narrow-minded greed and profit. We need to revisit the very idea of what corporations are for, who they should serve, and whether they should bear more responsibility to society and nature in a broader sense, and not just be answerable to their shareholders and the stock market.
As a Pagan, I can easily relate this to the Pagan love of nature, but there is in fact no religion I know of that tells people they should seek to destroy each other and all in nature for the sake of gold and greed.
Global warming. It is a serious threat to humanity's future. Warmer temperatures are causing more and more extreme weather with damaging, even lethal consequences, with the "superstorm" Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast of the USA in October of 2012 and the raging fires caused by excessive heat and drought in the New South Wales region of Australia in January of 2013 as two recent examples of the environmental juggernaut that is bearing down on us. In the judgment of most scientific authorities, we have to alter our patterns of energy consumption, in particular our dependence on carbon-based fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas, in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that are building up in the atmosphere and triggering a warming of the climate that is in turn warming the ocean waters, that in turn cause more warmth and moisture to rise into the atmosphere and produce the storms, droughts and other weather effects causing increasing damage to life, land and property. However, the carbon fuel industries have poured money into an intensive media campaign, particularly prominent on right-wing news outlets like FOX News but also finding its way to other media channels as well, to discredit the very idea of global warming or climate change, convincing a good many Americans, and no doubt others elsewhere, that either global warming is a kind of scientific hoax, or, that there is no clear proof that it is the result of human activity,and no proof that human activity can halt it. Therefore, it would be foolish to undertake actions such as reducing the burning of fossil fuels, since such actions would be disruptive to the world economy without any certain environmental benefit. This has confused many people into a state of apathy. The Victors: corporations that profit from fossil fuel production and consumption. The Losers: all of us who want the planet to remain livable. The reason: the incredible hunger for profit that blots out all other concerns and values is proving capable of drowning out the world's scientists and visionary leaders concerned about the future.
Childhood obesity. This is an increasingly common condition in the USA and is growing in the UK and elsewhere too. It is not just that young people are becoming more massive in their size. They are also manifesting diseases such as diabetes that threaten their health and longevity. Scientists are not clear on all the causes for this situation, and there may well be many from lack of exercise due to more sedentary lifestyles and pastimes to the ingestion of growth hormones given to farm animals and ending up in American food to overeating of "junk food" filled with fat, carbohydrates, salt, sugar and/or corn syrup, and chemicals that add appealing color and addictive taste. No one objects to the government encouraging young people to exercise more, such as First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, but when Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of NYC, made an effort to restrict the bottle and/or serving size of sugary drinks such as soda, there was a huge outcry from the soda and beverage industry,and a media campaign accusing the mayor of robbing Americans of their "freedom," presumably the all-important freedom to eat and drink non-nutritious foods and beverages and develop heart disease and diabetes. Once again, corporate greed attempts to override human interests.
Gun violence. As I have addressed this recently, I will not rehash the whole discussion, but just focus on the corporate profit dimension. Guns and gun-related paraphernalia are big business in the USA, highly profitable indeed. The main pro-gun lobbying organization, the NRA, is largely funded by gun manufacturers. With so much money at stake, the purveyors and manufacturers of guns are definitely not going to let a mere public outcry by the majority of the people of the nation over problems of gun violence get in the way of the profits that their stockholders feast upon. And once again, we find a sophisticated media campaign funded by gun manufacturers and amplified by right-wing media that any reduction or restriction of guns in America is an assault on fundamental freedoms and evidence of a totalitarian government in the making that is best resisted by --you guessed it-- guns. So go out now, all you freedom-loving folk, and prepare for war against the big bad government that thinks of nothing else but how to oppress and enslave you. I keep wondering when someone will start championing the right to bear nuclear arms. If possessing personal weapons without restriction of ANY sort is so important, then why not allow patriotic Americans to have their own nuclear bombs and missile launch systems? Wouldn't that be the ultimate demonstration of the most important American "freedom?"
The defense of the "right" to eat and drink unhealthy foods and the "right" to own and use a limitless number of guns is almost identical to the way that tobacco companies used to champion the "right" to smoke. The skillful effort to confuse and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming/climate change is a planet-threatening problem RIGHT NOW is also reminiscent of how the tobacco companies argued for decades that there was no good scientific evidence that smoking was harmful to human health, even though the companies themselves had done their own research proving that point!
We cannot trust corporations to watch out for our health or the future well-being of our planet. Corporations just want us to buy buy buy whatever crap they are producing, no matter what the cost to health, to society, to the environment,and they will do everything in their power to prevent anyone from interfering with their business activities. As a college teacher, I am sad to see how many of my students seem to believe that the American style corporate economy, the so-called "free enterprise/free market" system, is not only the best economic system, but indeed the ONLY one that is possible. This is the result of the past 30 years of American politics in which the Reaganite vision of government-BAD, businessmen-GOOD; regulations-BAD, profits-GOOD; compassion for others-STUPID, selfishness and individualism-SMART has been dominant. For the sake of the planet and ourselves, I pray that this paradigm is now losing its allure and that we will be able to have a different kind of conversation about such issues as mentioned above. One thing is for sure, every step of the way, powerful corporations will fight like hell to prevent any changes that might deprive them of their all-important profits. They do not care about the future, so we are going to have to care twice as hard.
In Snorri Sturluson's version of the myth of Baldur, his death causes widespread sadness, and his mother lets it be known that if all beings will weep for him and show their love, he will be returned to life. The whole range of living beings are ready to cooperate, but only one creature refuses, a female giant that is actually the mischievous god Loki in disguise. She says, "Let Hel (death) keep what she has...I will not weep for Odin's son!" This is the kind of hard-heartedness that we can expect from the giant corporations of our day. When we tell them the children are being killed by an oversupply of dangerous weapons and unhealthy food, that the oceans are rising and destructive storms are washing away our shores and threatening our cities, and when we urge them that we have to change the way they do business so that future generations can walk on the earth in safety and enjoy the light of the sun, the blue of the sky and the greenness of the earth, they are not going to want to listen. We have to keep at it until they do. Today's corporations are caught in a web of evil that they have spun for themselves, but the corporations are at bottom human institutions, and we must strive to reawaken that glimmer of humanity that still exists somewhere inside the armies of lawyers, the billion dollar marketing teams, the disinformation campaigns, the corporate boardrooms obsessed with financial figures.
Above all, we have to reject the idea that profits are all that matter. People are more important than profits. Nature is more important than profits. The well-being of us all and our planet is more important than profits. We need new economic arrangements that honor our deepest, most sustaining and inspiring values and reject the false idols of narrow-minded greed and profit. We need to revisit the very idea of what corporations are for, who they should serve, and whether they should bear more responsibility to society and nature in a broader sense, and not just be answerable to their shareholders and the stock market.
As a Pagan, I can easily relate this to the Pagan love of nature, but there is in fact no religion I know of that tells people they should seek to destroy each other and all in nature for the sake of gold and greed.
Monday, October 29, 2012
The Election and the Environment
Another autumn, another horrible storm bearing down on the USA, and just a week away from our 2012 presidential election. We are experiencing these destructive mega-storms with ever-increasing frequency. Just last year on almost the same date, a hurricane that came after many weeks of heavy rain did massive damage, including turning a street near by me into a river when the underground sewer exploded from an excess of water pounding through the pipes. The weather event unfolding today and expected to continue to howl and rage all this week, is truly a monster, called "Frankenstorm" by some, as it combines a hurricane with a couple of other weather fronts to create a huge storm system nearly 1000 miles wide, which means it will move very slowly through the region before it finally dissipates, and subject most of the US East Coast as well as areas well inland to a sustained beating by rain and wind that is sure to cause many people to lose electricity, if not their lives, and many homes, buildings, road and other structures to be severely damaged or even destroyed. Low-lying parts of New York City are already being evacuated, and if the water surge around coastal areas is as expected, major damage could be done to the NYC train and subway system, which could soon be sitting underwater.
This kind of extreme weather is exactly what all the scientific research about global warming has been predicting: more killer storms, ever more frequent, ever more immense, and ever more destructive. The storm bearing down on us today is much larger than the horrendous Katrina storm of 2005, which shows, I suppose, some kind of progress on the climate change issue, but progress in the wrong direction, in that we have succeeded in paving the way for even more destructive weather.
If the storm is half as devastating as some are predicting, one would hope--and pray--that this would be the wake-up call that America has been needing to begin taking serious measures to change our patterns of energy usage and production, in order to at least slow down our descent into a future of hellishly calamitous weather, if not begin to reverse it, but I am not confident that my country has the wisdom, judgment, collective will or long-term vision to step up to the task.
Looking at our ongoing presidential election campaign, I see little cause for confidence. Both candidates are refusing to raise the difficult questions that need to be raised about carbon-based fuels and our need to make a rapid transition to other forms of energy. How fast can we make a transition to cleaner energy sources? How much will it cost? What new structures will have to be created? Instead of speaking to any such concerns, both President Obama and his challenger, Governor Romney, are peddling the same moronic pablum about the need to pursue an "all of the above" energy strategy, meaning continuing to drill for oil and gas, including expanding the controversial, environmentally dubious practice of hydrofracture gas drilling which has been previously addressed on this blog; continuing to extract coal by all means possible, including blowing up mountaintops for coal, ruining the surrounding rivers and streams and kissing goodbye to some of our most cherished landscapes; continuing to press for new nuclear power plants, even after the hard lessons of the Fukushima meltdown of a year and a half ago, not to mention Chernobyl 1996; and also, last and perhaps least in the two candidates' schemes of things, continuing to develop newer, more sustainable energy sources, such as wind, solar and geothermal.
The main area of contention between the two has been over who is more supportive of the coal industry. That's right, COAL: the dirtiest, most polluting carbon-based fuel of all. To listen to Obama and Romney go at each other on this issue, each pointing out how the other has in the past taken measures to limit or turn away from coal production, you might think that the two men were running for King of Coal, not President of the United States. Both keep going on about "clean coal," which does not exist outside of coal industry propaganda. Coal is a dirty, polluting fuel, period, and its extraction wreaks havoc on the environment wherever it is done. The sooner we are done with coal, the better.
Obama is better than Romney on the environmental front, but not by much. Obama's administration did provide funding for weatherization, solar power and other "Green Energy" type businesses, as part of the 2009-10 "Stimulus" program, but has not done much in this area since, caving in to vociferous opposition by conservative Republicans who mock the very concepts of climate change and green energy. He has however advanced higher fuel economy standards for cars and put in place other environmental regulations. Rommey has followed his party in attacking Obama for supporting some green energy businesses that went under, such as the Solyndra, solar power panel company, but continues to claim that he is pro-green, arguing that what was wrong with Solyndra was putting public, taxpayer money at risk when all such new investment should be left to private investment companies.
A major problem with the Romney private investment approach is that it leaves our long-term energy and environmental future to the whims of short-term oriented capitalists and investment brokers, who are not concerned with the fate of the planet in 2100 and 3100, but only the profits to be made in the next few months or years. Romney also talks of rolling back environmental legislation that he characterizes, in official Republican party-line jargon, as "job-killing," painting the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, as a kind of demonic, cannibalistic force that must be stopped. Ironically, it was President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican, who created the EPA in the first place. That was back when Republicans were still capable of caring about the environment and did not yet view environmentalism as an anti-American conspiracy that they could profit from denouncing.
Sadly, both candidates were in the past far more environmentally aware and far more supportive of government action to combat climate change and global warming than they are today. While governor of Massachusetts, Romney made an appearance in front of a coal-burning power plant and stated the forthright position that he was in favor of shutting down the plant because "it kills" by virtue of the negative health effects of burning coal. Romney now completely rejects this stance. In a similarly breathtaking display of political expediency and environmental hypocrisy, the same Barack Obama who once spoke eloquently about the need to combat climate change and turn toward cleaner forms of energy now hardly ever mentions the word climate change, but has a lot of kind words for coal and hydrofracking.
Obama's betrayal is especially grievous because he was in a position, coming into office after the carbon-fuel based Bush-Cheney administration, to really chart a different energy and environmental course. He has, as noted, put in place regulations that will help create a cleaner environment over time, but Obama has displayed his characteristic timidity and political cowardice in failing to make a strong, loud, public case in favor of clean energy and a greener future. He has been too worried about reelection and so failed to use the presidency as a teaching-tool to educate the population and shape public opinion for the long-term struggles ahead. He took the coward's way out, and now fewer Americans believe that global warming is a real and pressing issue than did when Obama took office. By pursuing a kind of "stealth strategy" on environmental issues, quietly pushing regulations behind closed doors while for the most part keeping silent on the public stage, Obama has ceded ground to the anti-environmental, pro-carbon fuel forces that have swamped the media universe with pro-coal, pro-fracking propaganda, and cast doubt on the need for rapid and decisive action on energy and environmental issues.
So who's a liberal, environmentalist American Pagan to vote for, given this choice between two candidates who have each proven so craven and hypocritical on environmental issues? Well, taking into account other issues like women's health care, abortion rights, ending tax policy that favors the rich, reducing the size of our obese and bloated military, the future composition of the Supreme Court, and preservation of social programs that help the underprivileged, Obama is definitely the better choice, and is still marginally better than Romney on the environmental front, as he has, as stated, supported regulations that will be helpful in the long run. But either way, we will not yet have a President who clearly, boldly, publicly and forthrightly supports a new direction in energy policy for the USA, who is capable of turning away decisively from carbon-based fuels to aggressively promote less polluting energy forms like solar, wind and geothermal in order to preserve the health and well-being of the natural world for the sake of future generations. Voting day this year will be a sad day for environmentalists, regardless of who wins.
There is however another choice: the Green Party candidate Jill Stein for President. She has no chance of actually winning the election, but if the Greens make a stronger showing this year than in years past, it will put pressure on the other political parties to be more pro-environmental, and will also help the Green Party obtain government funding for future election campaigns. I therefore advise liberal, environmentalist Pagans to consider voting for Jill Stein as an alternative to President Obama. However, as the worst result by far would be for Romney to become President, as he is clearly beholden to the extreme right wing of his party, I would advise voters who share my concerns to look at the situation in the following manner.
If you are in a state where Obama is sure to win, such as New York, Massachusetts or California, then consider voting for Jill Stein. Obama will still win the state, but your vote will help promote the only political party currently offering a boldly pro-environmental direction. However, if you are in a state where the election is very close, such as Ohio, Florida or Nevada, I would suggest supporting Obama, not with great enthusiasm, but simply as the necessary expedient to prevent a total right-wing takeover of our system of government. Romney's foreign policy statements and advisers suggest he might well drag us into another Middle Eastern War, and this must absolutely be avoided.
So, if you are a liberal, a Pagan and concerned about the environment, I urge you to consider, depending on where you are, either voting Green or Democrat.
Beyond the election, I hope to see Pagans getting more involved in political causes, especially as regards the environment. As far as I know, reverence for the environment and the sacredness of nature is one of the unifying themes of ALL Paganism from Asatru to Romuva to Wicca. Hopefully we can all make more effort to protect this earth that we all love and value.
This kind of extreme weather is exactly what all the scientific research about global warming has been predicting: more killer storms, ever more frequent, ever more immense, and ever more destructive. The storm bearing down on us today is much larger than the horrendous Katrina storm of 2005, which shows, I suppose, some kind of progress on the climate change issue, but progress in the wrong direction, in that we have succeeded in paving the way for even more destructive weather.
If the storm is half as devastating as some are predicting, one would hope--and pray--that this would be the wake-up call that America has been needing to begin taking serious measures to change our patterns of energy usage and production, in order to at least slow down our descent into a future of hellishly calamitous weather, if not begin to reverse it, but I am not confident that my country has the wisdom, judgment, collective will or long-term vision to step up to the task.
Looking at our ongoing presidential election campaign, I see little cause for confidence. Both candidates are refusing to raise the difficult questions that need to be raised about carbon-based fuels and our need to make a rapid transition to other forms of energy. How fast can we make a transition to cleaner energy sources? How much will it cost? What new structures will have to be created? Instead of speaking to any such concerns, both President Obama and his challenger, Governor Romney, are peddling the same moronic pablum about the need to pursue an "all of the above" energy strategy, meaning continuing to drill for oil and gas, including expanding the controversial, environmentally dubious practice of hydrofracture gas drilling which has been previously addressed on this blog; continuing to extract coal by all means possible, including blowing up mountaintops for coal, ruining the surrounding rivers and streams and kissing goodbye to some of our most cherished landscapes; continuing to press for new nuclear power plants, even after the hard lessons of the Fukushima meltdown of a year and a half ago, not to mention Chernobyl 1996; and also, last and perhaps least in the two candidates' schemes of things, continuing to develop newer, more sustainable energy sources, such as wind, solar and geothermal.
The main area of contention between the two has been over who is more supportive of the coal industry. That's right, COAL: the dirtiest, most polluting carbon-based fuel of all. To listen to Obama and Romney go at each other on this issue, each pointing out how the other has in the past taken measures to limit or turn away from coal production, you might think that the two men were running for King of Coal, not President of the United States. Both keep going on about "clean coal," which does not exist outside of coal industry propaganda. Coal is a dirty, polluting fuel, period, and its extraction wreaks havoc on the environment wherever it is done. The sooner we are done with coal, the better.
Obama is better than Romney on the environmental front, but not by much. Obama's administration did provide funding for weatherization, solar power and other "Green Energy" type businesses, as part of the 2009-10 "Stimulus" program, but has not done much in this area since, caving in to vociferous opposition by conservative Republicans who mock the very concepts of climate change and green energy. He has however advanced higher fuel economy standards for cars and put in place other environmental regulations. Rommey has followed his party in attacking Obama for supporting some green energy businesses that went under, such as the Solyndra, solar power panel company, but continues to claim that he is pro-green, arguing that what was wrong with Solyndra was putting public, taxpayer money at risk when all such new investment should be left to private investment companies.
A major problem with the Romney private investment approach is that it leaves our long-term energy and environmental future to the whims of short-term oriented capitalists and investment brokers, who are not concerned with the fate of the planet in 2100 and 3100, but only the profits to be made in the next few months or years. Romney also talks of rolling back environmental legislation that he characterizes, in official Republican party-line jargon, as "job-killing," painting the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, as a kind of demonic, cannibalistic force that must be stopped. Ironically, it was President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican, who created the EPA in the first place. That was back when Republicans were still capable of caring about the environment and did not yet view environmentalism as an anti-American conspiracy that they could profit from denouncing.
Sadly, both candidates were in the past far more environmentally aware and far more supportive of government action to combat climate change and global warming than they are today. While governor of Massachusetts, Romney made an appearance in front of a coal-burning power plant and stated the forthright position that he was in favor of shutting down the plant because "it kills" by virtue of the negative health effects of burning coal. Romney now completely rejects this stance. In a similarly breathtaking display of political expediency and environmental hypocrisy, the same Barack Obama who once spoke eloquently about the need to combat climate change and turn toward cleaner forms of energy now hardly ever mentions the word climate change, but has a lot of kind words for coal and hydrofracking.
Obama's betrayal is especially grievous because he was in a position, coming into office after the carbon-fuel based Bush-Cheney administration, to really chart a different energy and environmental course. He has, as noted, put in place regulations that will help create a cleaner environment over time, but Obama has displayed his characteristic timidity and political cowardice in failing to make a strong, loud, public case in favor of clean energy and a greener future. He has been too worried about reelection and so failed to use the presidency as a teaching-tool to educate the population and shape public opinion for the long-term struggles ahead. He took the coward's way out, and now fewer Americans believe that global warming is a real and pressing issue than did when Obama took office. By pursuing a kind of "stealth strategy" on environmental issues, quietly pushing regulations behind closed doors while for the most part keeping silent on the public stage, Obama has ceded ground to the anti-environmental, pro-carbon fuel forces that have swamped the media universe with pro-coal, pro-fracking propaganda, and cast doubt on the need for rapid and decisive action on energy and environmental issues.
So who's a liberal, environmentalist American Pagan to vote for, given this choice between two candidates who have each proven so craven and hypocritical on environmental issues? Well, taking into account other issues like women's health care, abortion rights, ending tax policy that favors the rich, reducing the size of our obese and bloated military, the future composition of the Supreme Court, and preservation of social programs that help the underprivileged, Obama is definitely the better choice, and is still marginally better than Romney on the environmental front, as he has, as stated, supported regulations that will be helpful in the long run. But either way, we will not yet have a President who clearly, boldly, publicly and forthrightly supports a new direction in energy policy for the USA, who is capable of turning away decisively from carbon-based fuels to aggressively promote less polluting energy forms like solar, wind and geothermal in order to preserve the health and well-being of the natural world for the sake of future generations. Voting day this year will be a sad day for environmentalists, regardless of who wins.
There is however another choice: the Green Party candidate Jill Stein for President. She has no chance of actually winning the election, but if the Greens make a stronger showing this year than in years past, it will put pressure on the other political parties to be more pro-environmental, and will also help the Green Party obtain government funding for future election campaigns. I therefore advise liberal, environmentalist Pagans to consider voting for Jill Stein as an alternative to President Obama. However, as the worst result by far would be for Romney to become President, as he is clearly beholden to the extreme right wing of his party, I would advise voters who share my concerns to look at the situation in the following manner.
If you are in a state where Obama is sure to win, such as New York, Massachusetts or California, then consider voting for Jill Stein. Obama will still win the state, but your vote will help promote the only political party currently offering a boldly pro-environmental direction. However, if you are in a state where the election is very close, such as Ohio, Florida or Nevada, I would suggest supporting Obama, not with great enthusiasm, but simply as the necessary expedient to prevent a total right-wing takeover of our system of government. Romney's foreign policy statements and advisers suggest he might well drag us into another Middle Eastern War, and this must absolutely be avoided.
So, if you are a liberal, a Pagan and concerned about the environment, I urge you to consider, depending on where you are, either voting Green or Democrat.
Beyond the election, I hope to see Pagans getting more involved in political causes, especially as regards the environment. As far as I know, reverence for the environment and the sacredness of nature is one of the unifying themes of ALL Paganism from Asatru to Romuva to Wicca. Hopefully we can all make more effort to protect this earth that we all love and value.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
An Alternative to Endless War
In the weeks since the previous blog entry, my fears about the USA or Israel, or most likely, first Israel then the USA, undertaking military action against Iran have only been confirmed by the course of events. President Obama seems to be trying to moderate and minimize the rush to war, but he does not seem willing or able to clearly speak out against it. Politically, this is understandable, as he does not want to appear "weak on defense," which these days seems to essentially mean "weak on attacking Muslim nations." It is however another indication of the man's cowardice and calculation. Obama is no moral beacon for our time, but just another politician willing to allow the slaughter of innocents for the sake of political advantage.
Don't get me wrong, I will vote for the man considering that the alternative is even more frightening, but I do find his presidency quite disappointing, in this and other ways. I am even willing to concede that Obama may be the best that liberals and progressives can hope for at this time, considering the power of the oligarchic and militaristic forces arrayed against us, but that doesn't mean I have to like it or pretend that it is something more or better than it is. I am still proud that his election broke the race barrier in our country at the highest level, but the huge backlash against him that began almost IMMEDIATELY after he was elected, and has never let up ever since, has also sadly exposed how deeply racist America remains. However, even taking into account all of this, I believe that we who believe in liberal and progressive ideals like economic justice and environmental protection have to continue to speak up and demand MORE. That, after all, is how politics works: put on the pressure to advance your cause. God knows the other side is doing it x100.
I recently became aware of an initiative that in my view represents the most clear, principled, and elegant response to America's current syndrome of endless military engagement. This is a House Resolution authored by Keith Ellison, Congressman from Minnesota, that calls for a Global Marshall Plan. The intent is that we turn away from seeking to achieve our security by military domination of the troubled areas of the world to striving to provide a much higher level of aid than we have to this point to poor peoples and countries around the world, to help them develop in ways that meet their actual human needs, rather than going down the path of militarism and violence, as such groups as Al-Qaeda have done in the past. The reference to "Marshall Plan" refers back to the time in the late 1940s and early 1950s when the USA provided huge amounts of financial assistance to war-ravaged countries in Europe to enable them to rebuild, an effort almost universally hailed as a brilliant success that enabled modern western Europe to become generally peaceful and stable. The idea is to attempt the same with other regions and hope for the same kind of positive results. America does give aid to many countries, but the amount is puny compared to what we spend on our military. Ellison and others propose that we flip this equation: put less emphasis on military power and invest more in peaceful development projects. Some would say it is terribly idealistic, but I see little evidence that our current strategy is making the world a better place. Maybe it is time to try a little idealism and back down from trying to be the world's hegemonic bully.
I would note that when the USA provided aid to Muslim peoples in Indonesia and elsewhere in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami, opinion polls of the time showed our favorability rating among Muslims populations in the region of the disaster ticking upwards for the first time in years. Imagine that: helping and befriending Muslims rather than invading and attacking them. It can be done. Or, we can just stick with our current policy of invasion-occupation-threat-domination, attack and counterattack, for the next 50 years. That is possible too.
In Tikkun magazine and on the web site of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, this initiative is explained in simple terms as a contrast between a foreign policy of "domination" versus one of "generosity." I think this frames the issues in a clear and compelling manner, and is worth thinking about further. I know I will be doing that, and encourage my readers to do the same.
In Pagan terms, perhaps we could explain this as turning away from the war god to focus more on the gods of peace and plenty and fertility. We need them now, desperately.
Don't get me wrong, I will vote for the man considering that the alternative is even more frightening, but I do find his presidency quite disappointing, in this and other ways. I am even willing to concede that Obama may be the best that liberals and progressives can hope for at this time, considering the power of the oligarchic and militaristic forces arrayed against us, but that doesn't mean I have to like it or pretend that it is something more or better than it is. I am still proud that his election broke the race barrier in our country at the highest level, but the huge backlash against him that began almost IMMEDIATELY after he was elected, and has never let up ever since, has also sadly exposed how deeply racist America remains. However, even taking into account all of this, I believe that we who believe in liberal and progressive ideals like economic justice and environmental protection have to continue to speak up and demand MORE. That, after all, is how politics works: put on the pressure to advance your cause. God knows the other side is doing it x100.
I recently became aware of an initiative that in my view represents the most clear, principled, and elegant response to America's current syndrome of endless military engagement. This is a House Resolution authored by Keith Ellison, Congressman from Minnesota, that calls for a Global Marshall Plan. The intent is that we turn away from seeking to achieve our security by military domination of the troubled areas of the world to striving to provide a much higher level of aid than we have to this point to poor peoples and countries around the world, to help them develop in ways that meet their actual human needs, rather than going down the path of militarism and violence, as such groups as Al-Qaeda have done in the past. The reference to "Marshall Plan" refers back to the time in the late 1940s and early 1950s when the USA provided huge amounts of financial assistance to war-ravaged countries in Europe to enable them to rebuild, an effort almost universally hailed as a brilliant success that enabled modern western Europe to become generally peaceful and stable. The idea is to attempt the same with other regions and hope for the same kind of positive results. America does give aid to many countries, but the amount is puny compared to what we spend on our military. Ellison and others propose that we flip this equation: put less emphasis on military power and invest more in peaceful development projects. Some would say it is terribly idealistic, but I see little evidence that our current strategy is making the world a better place. Maybe it is time to try a little idealism and back down from trying to be the world's hegemonic bully.
I would note that when the USA provided aid to Muslim peoples in Indonesia and elsewhere in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami, opinion polls of the time showed our favorability rating among Muslims populations in the region of the disaster ticking upwards for the first time in years. Imagine that: helping and befriending Muslims rather than invading and attacking them. It can be done. Or, we can just stick with our current policy of invasion-occupation-threat-domination, attack and counterattack, for the next 50 years. That is possible too.
In Tikkun magazine and on the web site of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, this initiative is explained in simple terms as a contrast between a foreign policy of "domination" versus one of "generosity." I think this frames the issues in a clear and compelling manner, and is worth thinking about further. I know I will be doing that, and encourage my readers to do the same.
In Pagan terms, perhaps we could explain this as turning away from the war god to focus more on the gods of peace and plenty and fertility. We need them now, desperately.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Global Warring vs. Global Warming
The recent experience of destructive winds and catastrophic flooding brought by Hurricane Irene on her steady march up the Atlantic coast of the United States, which has washed away roads and bridges, crippled highways and rail lines across the region, and destroyed homes and businesses across the region, with New Jersey, New York and Vermont getting the worst of it and looking ahead to months, if not years, of recovery. This kind of massive flooding is exactly what has been predicted would occur as Global Warming sets in. Irene's unwelcome visit came two days after the six year anniversary of the Hurricane Katrine disaster, another extreme weather event which may be attributable to Global Warming, and about a week before the ten year anniversary of the 9/11/01 attacks, which launched America into two seemingly unending wars halfway around the world, with conflict now spreading to Pakistan and Yemen. Two different types of destructive events...which should we pay more heed to? Herein lies a tale of two perspectives, each of which carries with it different priorities and responsibilities.
The 9/11 attacks were a horrible shock to the national psyche, literally blowing away many Americans' sense of their country being a safe land far away from the roiling tensions in other parts of the world. About three thousand Americans died on the day of the attacks, and thousands more, including rescuers and bystanders, would die in months and years to come from illnesses brought about by exposure to toxic substances in the World Trade Center. A small portion of New York City was devastated and soon rebuilt, as was the section of the Pentagon damaged by the plane that headed for the capital, but the more lasting damage was to American psychology. Many people became terrified about the possibility of other terrorist attacks, and many remain in a state of hyper-vigilance, supportive of ANY measures that the government might take that promise to increase security. There was also an understandable desire for pure REVENGE.
The results have ranged from the curtailment of civil liberties in the USA, the acceptance of increased surveillance by our government against its own citizens in violation of time-honored American traditions of privacy and freedom from government interference, the acceptance of torture as a tool of military interrogation, in violation of international treaties, and the transformation of Guantanamo Bay into a prison camp outside of international law. The government of President Bush furthermore committed America to the invasion and occupation of first Afghanistan, then Iraq, with further use of military force in several other countries, the resulting death of thousands of our own soldiers and the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. The hunting down of terrorists like Osama bin Laden was the original focus of our international interventions, but it seems that the killing of bin Laden has brought no peace to the American psyche. As far as I can tell, people feel just as frightened as ever, and it seems that the so-called "War of Terror," which is already the longest war in American history, may become a perpetual process of continuing death and destruction--theirs or ours, either way, the show will go on, and the budget of the military will remain larger than that of any other nation on earth, giving vast profits to companies like Halliburton that provide services to the military and defense contractors that reap wonderful profits developing weapon systems. Americans may not feel safer, but the war will continue.
Will Americans ever feel safe again? There will obviously always be a threat of terrorist attacks, no matter what we do. Even top military brass like General Petraeus have conceded that military force alone can never provide complete security. There has to be a "winning of hearts and minds," to recycle the old Vietnam trope, to convince those ready to take up bombs against America that violence is not the best way to resolve their grievances. The American military and its NATO allies have tried to play the compassionate "good cop" (building roads, schools, hospitals)as well as the aggressive and punitive "bad cop" (blowing up buildings, killing those suspected of terrorist involvement, and terrorizing families and communities by breaking down doors in the the middle of night to search homes under suspicion and interrogate and intimidate the residents, sometimes brutalizing or killing those who dare to resist these searches and interrogations.) Many Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis are understandably resentful of our occupation of their countries and violation of their homes and communities, and that resentment could fuel a desire for revenge against the USA just as intense as Americans' rage on 9/11. There could well be an endless cycle of violence and attacks and counterattacks.
If you like, you could say that OUR attacks and invasions are reasonable and justifiable, and THEIR attacks are wrong and deserving of punishment and endless years of military occupation, but the thing is, after a point, if it all becomes a tit-for-tat situation of "get revenge at any cost," "stand up for your people and kill the other guy," what difference does it make? More importantly, how can it ever end? Will there ever be enough people who want to end it, if vindictive, violent passions are continually stirred up on both sides? I am not sure, but I think that at least part of the answer will involve America withdrawing its military forces from the countries we now occupy and making an effort to treat Muslim countries as equals, rather than insulting them by making it extremely clear that we see them as deranged lunatics that we have the right to kill at will and invade and occupy as often as we like.
I know that some of my more conservative, pro-military readers will find my reasoning ridiculous. They will, I imagine, yell something like, "You are a crazy bleeding heart liberal idiot! We cannot just back off now, retreat without having established absolute victory, let those countries do what they want. Our only hope of security is to maintain control by force, and if that means decades more of occupation, so be it."
As my counter-argument, I would point to the case of Vietnam. During our lengthy and costly involvement in that seemingly endless conflict, the pro-military folks often said, "We can't quit, can't back down. That would give the Communists an unforgivable victory. There would be a "domino effect" and the whole of Southeast Asia might go Red* (meaning, younger readers, Communist not Republican, back in the 1960s-70s.)" Well, we did quit that war. We fought many hard battles, won some, lost some, and then we withdrew. None of the doomsday scenarios transpired. A Communist regime took power in all Vietnam, but it was no worse than many other governments in the region, and over time, it even helped to get rid of a REALLY nasty and horrific regime in Cambodia, that of the psychotic Khmer Rouge. By the 1990s, American was signing trade deals with Communist Vietnam, and we now engage in billions of dollars in trade on an annual basis, with the Vietnamese appearing to hold no grudge for the thousands of pounds of bombs we dropped on them and all the people that we killed, not only in Vietnam but in adjoining countries, none of whom ever attacked or invaded us. It is still not anyone's ideal of a democratic paradise, but the VN regime does seem to be moderating over time. Domino-doomsday never took place.
I would argue that the same could happen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us withdraw in an orderly manner, give economic and technical support to the new governments that develop there, if our help is wanted, and we can hope to have better relations over time, just as with Vietnam.
It also seems to me that we have gotten our money's worth out of these wars, and there is no need to drag things out ad infinitum, unless the military has become the only kind of government-funded jobs program that Americans are willing to support. (I suspect this may be so.) Al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, attacked us on one day in 2001. ONE day. In return, we have invaded for ten years. TEN years. We have killed many thousands, disrupted life, brutalized and terrorized many. What more do we want? Isn't that enough revenge? Or do you still want more? And, at what cost? In money, we have spent more than a trillion, I believe, money that could have been put to so many uses back at home. In lives, more Americans have now died fighting in these wars than were killed on 9/11. Will causing more deaths on both sides really make our world a better place? I worry we may be getting dragged down into a nether realm of nationalistic psychopathology (*see Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) where we just want to use force against others because it makes us feel good, not because it accomplishes anything of positive value.
I believe it is time to step back from Global Warring and consider other needs and priorities,such as Global Warming. I accept the view of climatologists and other scientists that the extreme weather events of recent years are being driven by a gradual increase in world temperature produced by greenhouse gasses accumulating in the atmosphere. What weather events, you ask? They constitute a vast and continually growing catalogue ranging from agriculture-limiting droughts and dryness-triggered wild fires in places like Australia, Africa and various regions of America to heavier-than-usual snowfalls in winter, wetter-than-usual summers, and increasingly intense storms in both winter and summer, with tornadoes in the USA occurring with increasing frequency in places like Connecticut, Massachusetts and even the urban borough of Queens, New York that have rarely if ever experienced such events before. The economic cost from our new-fangled, 21st century weather is in the billions, but there is much more than money at stake. Decreased crop yields have led to riots and instability in countries from Somalia to the Philippines. Low-lying countries like Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar) are at risk of vanishing under rising sea levels. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS TREND. If it gets worse, we are really going to be in trouble. We are going to have spend increasing amounts of money, worldwide recession or no, on feeding starving people, rebuilding flood,fire and tornado damaged regions, and dealing with mass migrations of displaced people, to just mention a few of the most alarming effects, WHICH ARE ALREADY BEGINNING TO HAPPEN.
This has all been known for years. Former Vice President Al Gore did a fine job of publicizing the issue and educating the public with his film "An Inconvenient Truth." Critics have pointed to several inaccuracies in the documentary, but his overall message, that we need to start cutting back on carbon use and greenhouse gases or we will turn the world into an increasingly harsh and inhospitable planet, really cannot be disputed, and is in fact NOT disputed by the vast majority of professional scientists who deal with climate issues. Yes, there are a few dissidents who can be found casting doubt on FOX news and other anti-environmentalist, pro-corporate media outlets, but they are a tiny, tiny, tiny group, and their viewpoint is especially suspect in that they are often paid to promote their anti-Global Warming ideas by oil and coal companies.
So what is a bigger threat to human life, the Al-Qaeda-type terrorist threat as observed on 9/11, or the increasingly destructive weather patterns resulting from climate change? Should we be more concerned with Global Warring or Global Warming? I have no doubt that the bigger threat is Global Warming.
Though America was rudely awakened out of a sweet but false dream of perfect security and safety on the awful morning of 9/11, the fact is, terrorism has always been around in some form or other,and always will be. There are always people around fired up either by extreme devotion to a political or religious cause or psychological instability who are willing to use violence to advance their cause or actualize their fantasies. Police, psychiatrists and other professionals can intervene to reduce the possibility of such individuals or groups acting out on their violent ambitions, but there is no way you can ever achieve total security, a completely risk-free world, as much as some try to sell this notion to a fearful and often gullible public (think: Giuliani & Associates). Other parts of the world, with either more experience or longer memories or less manipulative politicians know this, and they do not flip out and seek to invade a half-dozen countries every time a bomb goes off or a nut goes on a rampage. They make moderate, targeted responses, as opposed to seeking world domination. We Americans could learn a lot from them, except that many Americans don't like to learn from other countries, it seems.
The possibility of our environment becoming ever more unstable and self-destructive is something we must start thinking about. Perhaps the destruction wrought by Hurricane Irene will be a needed wake-up call. It should be noted that much of the worst damage was not caused by Irene alone, but by the combination of a wet summer of higher-than-average rainfall in the northeast followed by the additional heavy rains of Irene. If, as climate scientists seem to agree,we are going to be seeing more, not less, of such extreme weather events, we should start demanding that our politicians and media begin paying more attention to this and seeking out means to lessen the impact and slow the rate of change, rather than obsessing about how many suspected terrorists we can kill in Pakistan with our nifty drone bombers. The consensus among scientists is that we MUST start turning away from carbon fuels, because the more we burn them, the more we are going to suffer floods, droughts and fires. Sadly, the supposedly pro-environmental administration of President Obama has taken the first steps toward approving a huge, new, potentially highly polluting pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the oil refineries of Texas. Supposedly, it was the non-Obama candidates in 2008 who were in favor of "Drill, Baby, Drill" as the solution to our energy needs, but it looks like Obama is not so different after all.
I am proud to be involved with Paganism when I reflect that Pagan religions, with their nature gods and metaphors and joyful sense of sacredness in nature, collectively provide one of the best platforms around for cultivating reverence for the natural world. I encourage all Pagans to speak out on these issues in the grand struggle to turn the great dumb and easily distracted beast that is the American public away from post-9/11 terror, war and security obsessions to an understanding of the need to address our collective carbon addiction and protect our environment as the #1 issue of our time.
To my warrior-oriented Pagan friends, Asatru or other, let me suggest this: even if you are the most super-bad-assed, head-to-toe tattooed, multiple-gun-toting, spear-throwing, axe-tossing, sword-bearing, military-loving, tough-guy Pagan or a super-dangerous, ultra-gorgeous, Xena-like, Amazon-crossed-with-Valkyrie warrior princess with daggers in your hair and a grenade in your handbag next to your mini-AK, consider this: no more planet, no more battles, no more war, no more warriors, no more glory! No planet, no nothin;' it will just be Ragnarok without the happy ending of a miraculous renewal. Whether you are a wimpoid left-wing peacenik like me or a rough-and-ready, battle-hardened military enthusiast, this should be something we can get together on.
Mission One is not killing terrorists; it is saving our planet.
The 9/11 attacks were a horrible shock to the national psyche, literally blowing away many Americans' sense of their country being a safe land far away from the roiling tensions in other parts of the world. About three thousand Americans died on the day of the attacks, and thousands more, including rescuers and bystanders, would die in months and years to come from illnesses brought about by exposure to toxic substances in the World Trade Center. A small portion of New York City was devastated and soon rebuilt, as was the section of the Pentagon damaged by the plane that headed for the capital, but the more lasting damage was to American psychology. Many people became terrified about the possibility of other terrorist attacks, and many remain in a state of hyper-vigilance, supportive of ANY measures that the government might take that promise to increase security. There was also an understandable desire for pure REVENGE.
The results have ranged from the curtailment of civil liberties in the USA, the acceptance of increased surveillance by our government against its own citizens in violation of time-honored American traditions of privacy and freedom from government interference, the acceptance of torture as a tool of military interrogation, in violation of international treaties, and the transformation of Guantanamo Bay into a prison camp outside of international law. The government of President Bush furthermore committed America to the invasion and occupation of first Afghanistan, then Iraq, with further use of military force in several other countries, the resulting death of thousands of our own soldiers and the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. The hunting down of terrorists like Osama bin Laden was the original focus of our international interventions, but it seems that the killing of bin Laden has brought no peace to the American psyche. As far as I can tell, people feel just as frightened as ever, and it seems that the so-called "War of Terror," which is already the longest war in American history, may become a perpetual process of continuing death and destruction--theirs or ours, either way, the show will go on, and the budget of the military will remain larger than that of any other nation on earth, giving vast profits to companies like Halliburton that provide services to the military and defense contractors that reap wonderful profits developing weapon systems. Americans may not feel safer, but the war will continue.
Will Americans ever feel safe again? There will obviously always be a threat of terrorist attacks, no matter what we do. Even top military brass like General Petraeus have conceded that military force alone can never provide complete security. There has to be a "winning of hearts and minds," to recycle the old Vietnam trope, to convince those ready to take up bombs against America that violence is not the best way to resolve their grievances. The American military and its NATO allies have tried to play the compassionate "good cop" (building roads, schools, hospitals)as well as the aggressive and punitive "bad cop" (blowing up buildings, killing those suspected of terrorist involvement, and terrorizing families and communities by breaking down doors in the the middle of night to search homes under suspicion and interrogate and intimidate the residents, sometimes brutalizing or killing those who dare to resist these searches and interrogations.) Many Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis are understandably resentful of our occupation of their countries and violation of their homes and communities, and that resentment could fuel a desire for revenge against the USA just as intense as Americans' rage on 9/11. There could well be an endless cycle of violence and attacks and counterattacks.
If you like, you could say that OUR attacks and invasions are reasonable and justifiable, and THEIR attacks are wrong and deserving of punishment and endless years of military occupation, but the thing is, after a point, if it all becomes a tit-for-tat situation of "get revenge at any cost," "stand up for your people and kill the other guy," what difference does it make? More importantly, how can it ever end? Will there ever be enough people who want to end it, if vindictive, violent passions are continually stirred up on both sides? I am not sure, but I think that at least part of the answer will involve America withdrawing its military forces from the countries we now occupy and making an effort to treat Muslim countries as equals, rather than insulting them by making it extremely clear that we see them as deranged lunatics that we have the right to kill at will and invade and occupy as often as we like.
I know that some of my more conservative, pro-military readers will find my reasoning ridiculous. They will, I imagine, yell something like, "You are a crazy bleeding heart liberal idiot! We cannot just back off now, retreat without having established absolute victory, let those countries do what they want. Our only hope of security is to maintain control by force, and if that means decades more of occupation, so be it."
As my counter-argument, I would point to the case of Vietnam. During our lengthy and costly involvement in that seemingly endless conflict, the pro-military folks often said, "We can't quit, can't back down. That would give the Communists an unforgivable victory. There would be a "domino effect" and the whole of Southeast Asia might go Red* (meaning, younger readers, Communist not Republican, back in the 1960s-70s.)" Well, we did quit that war. We fought many hard battles, won some, lost some, and then we withdrew. None of the doomsday scenarios transpired. A Communist regime took power in all Vietnam, but it was no worse than many other governments in the region, and over time, it even helped to get rid of a REALLY nasty and horrific regime in Cambodia, that of the psychotic Khmer Rouge. By the 1990s, American was signing trade deals with Communist Vietnam, and we now engage in billions of dollars in trade on an annual basis, with the Vietnamese appearing to hold no grudge for the thousands of pounds of bombs we dropped on them and all the people that we killed, not only in Vietnam but in adjoining countries, none of whom ever attacked or invaded us. It is still not anyone's ideal of a democratic paradise, but the VN regime does seem to be moderating over time. Domino-doomsday never took place.
I would argue that the same could happen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us withdraw in an orderly manner, give economic and technical support to the new governments that develop there, if our help is wanted, and we can hope to have better relations over time, just as with Vietnam.
It also seems to me that we have gotten our money's worth out of these wars, and there is no need to drag things out ad infinitum, unless the military has become the only kind of government-funded jobs program that Americans are willing to support. (I suspect this may be so.) Al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, attacked us on one day in 2001. ONE day. In return, we have invaded for ten years. TEN years. We have killed many thousands, disrupted life, brutalized and terrorized many. What more do we want? Isn't that enough revenge? Or do you still want more? And, at what cost? In money, we have spent more than a trillion, I believe, money that could have been put to so many uses back at home. In lives, more Americans have now died fighting in these wars than were killed on 9/11. Will causing more deaths on both sides really make our world a better place? I worry we may be getting dragged down into a nether realm of nationalistic psychopathology (*see Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) where we just want to use force against others because it makes us feel good, not because it accomplishes anything of positive value.
I believe it is time to step back from Global Warring and consider other needs and priorities,such as Global Warming. I accept the view of climatologists and other scientists that the extreme weather events of recent years are being driven by a gradual increase in world temperature produced by greenhouse gasses accumulating in the atmosphere. What weather events, you ask? They constitute a vast and continually growing catalogue ranging from agriculture-limiting droughts and dryness-triggered wild fires in places like Australia, Africa and various regions of America to heavier-than-usual snowfalls in winter, wetter-than-usual summers, and increasingly intense storms in both winter and summer, with tornadoes in the USA occurring with increasing frequency in places like Connecticut, Massachusetts and even the urban borough of Queens, New York that have rarely if ever experienced such events before. The economic cost from our new-fangled, 21st century weather is in the billions, but there is much more than money at stake. Decreased crop yields have led to riots and instability in countries from Somalia to the Philippines. Low-lying countries like Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar) are at risk of vanishing under rising sea levels. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS TREND. If it gets worse, we are really going to be in trouble. We are going to have spend increasing amounts of money, worldwide recession or no, on feeding starving people, rebuilding flood,fire and tornado damaged regions, and dealing with mass migrations of displaced people, to just mention a few of the most alarming effects, WHICH ARE ALREADY BEGINNING TO HAPPEN.
This has all been known for years. Former Vice President Al Gore did a fine job of publicizing the issue and educating the public with his film "An Inconvenient Truth." Critics have pointed to several inaccuracies in the documentary, but his overall message, that we need to start cutting back on carbon use and greenhouse gases or we will turn the world into an increasingly harsh and inhospitable planet, really cannot be disputed, and is in fact NOT disputed by the vast majority of professional scientists who deal with climate issues. Yes, there are a few dissidents who can be found casting doubt on FOX news and other anti-environmentalist, pro-corporate media outlets, but they are a tiny, tiny, tiny group, and their viewpoint is especially suspect in that they are often paid to promote their anti-Global Warming ideas by oil and coal companies.
So what is a bigger threat to human life, the Al-Qaeda-type terrorist threat as observed on 9/11, or the increasingly destructive weather patterns resulting from climate change? Should we be more concerned with Global Warring or Global Warming? I have no doubt that the bigger threat is Global Warming.
Though America was rudely awakened out of a sweet but false dream of perfect security and safety on the awful morning of 9/11, the fact is, terrorism has always been around in some form or other,and always will be. There are always people around fired up either by extreme devotion to a political or religious cause or psychological instability who are willing to use violence to advance their cause or actualize their fantasies. Police, psychiatrists and other professionals can intervene to reduce the possibility of such individuals or groups acting out on their violent ambitions, but there is no way you can ever achieve total security, a completely risk-free world, as much as some try to sell this notion to a fearful and often gullible public (think: Giuliani & Associates). Other parts of the world, with either more experience or longer memories or less manipulative politicians know this, and they do not flip out and seek to invade a half-dozen countries every time a bomb goes off or a nut goes on a rampage. They make moderate, targeted responses, as opposed to seeking world domination. We Americans could learn a lot from them, except that many Americans don't like to learn from other countries, it seems.
The possibility of our environment becoming ever more unstable and self-destructive is something we must start thinking about. Perhaps the destruction wrought by Hurricane Irene will be a needed wake-up call. It should be noted that much of the worst damage was not caused by Irene alone, but by the combination of a wet summer of higher-than-average rainfall in the northeast followed by the additional heavy rains of Irene. If, as climate scientists seem to agree,we are going to be seeing more, not less, of such extreme weather events, we should start demanding that our politicians and media begin paying more attention to this and seeking out means to lessen the impact and slow the rate of change, rather than obsessing about how many suspected terrorists we can kill in Pakistan with our nifty drone bombers. The consensus among scientists is that we MUST start turning away from carbon fuels, because the more we burn them, the more we are going to suffer floods, droughts and fires. Sadly, the supposedly pro-environmental administration of President Obama has taken the first steps toward approving a huge, new, potentially highly polluting pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the oil refineries of Texas. Supposedly, it was the non-Obama candidates in 2008 who were in favor of "Drill, Baby, Drill" as the solution to our energy needs, but it looks like Obama is not so different after all.
I am proud to be involved with Paganism when I reflect that Pagan religions, with their nature gods and metaphors and joyful sense of sacredness in nature, collectively provide one of the best platforms around for cultivating reverence for the natural world. I encourage all Pagans to speak out on these issues in the grand struggle to turn the great dumb and easily distracted beast that is the American public away from post-9/11 terror, war and security obsessions to an understanding of the need to address our collective carbon addiction and protect our environment as the #1 issue of our time.
To my warrior-oriented Pagan friends, Asatru or other, let me suggest this: even if you are the most super-bad-assed, head-to-toe tattooed, multiple-gun-toting, spear-throwing, axe-tossing, sword-bearing, military-loving, tough-guy Pagan or a super-dangerous, ultra-gorgeous, Xena-like, Amazon-crossed-with-Valkyrie warrior princess with daggers in your hair and a grenade in your handbag next to your mini-AK, consider this: no more planet, no more battles, no more war, no more warriors, no more glory! No planet, no nothin;' it will just be Ragnarok without the happy ending of a miraculous renewal. Whether you are a wimpoid left-wing peacenik like me or a rough-and-ready, battle-hardened military enthusiast, this should be something we can get together on.
Mission One is not killing terrorists; it is saving our planet.
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