The Appalling Loss of Political Ethics

 

Well, the rats are finally and slowly beginning to leave the sinking ship.

Over the past almost 4 years we have seen a handful of ethical Republican leaders stand by the principles of honesty and accountability that we have a voted right to expect in all our public SERVANTS.

They braved the castrating effects of caustic, repulsive bullying, defamation, and personal attack from a verbal weapon-wielding presidential poser, his scathing rebuke and retribution, and held their ground.

During all of this, many of us have been wondering – where are the Republican leaders? Where have they been? Why are they silent in the face of this massive and preposterous attack on the Republic for Which They Stand? Their silence has been deafening, mystifying, horrifying and sad. Worse yet, the tacit support indicated by their silence has been frightening. Our hearts have been broken, our hopes deflated, our trust badly battered, and our sense of democracy threatened.

Now, as the skies darken over this administration, with no hope of pulling any publicly approved millions-of-voter hoax over the American people’s eyes congealing into undeniable fact, the hangers on, the coat-tailers, the helping-themselves-at-the-table satellites circling around the horn of plenty of handouts for those who flatter me, or at least shut up – because shutting up is complicity – are sensing the sinking of their golden goose ship of power and plenty and leaving the table. They are jumping off by disagreeing with an illogical, unfactual, unskilled, unmanageable, demagogic, presumptive, unqualified impostor. They are speaking the truth, facing the facts, and publicly acknowledging them to what may be left of their voters. Whew. Finally. Some real reality.

But may we watch and count and remember with our eyes open. These late-leavers are those who sold their political souls for personal gain. If they did it once, they will do it again. It is in the nature and grain of their political persona, hidden beneath the surface, showing in actions and screaming in silence. No personal gain at the political table, they leave and go looking for crumbs of approval from the voters who put them there in the first place. Did they do their job standing up for the welfare of those whom they were charged to serve as they gobbled at the table of Trump plenty of power for a few, maybe for you if you are loyal? You decide. You are the voter. But remember what they did not say, what they did not do, as they sat at the table with a wanna be dictator. Remember.

We can shine the light of the failure of political ethics clearly on Republicans in this instance, but in truth what is at stake here is political ethics in all arenas, in all parties, in all individuals seeking to take on the role of SERVING the people of this country. And one thing we may have lost in this muck is the personal ethics we bring to the process of choosing and voting for our servant leaders. If we can be led to vote for someone with no appropriate life experience and qualifications perhaps we are not as familiar with the qualifications of the job position that needs to be filled. Perhaps we are voting with unhealed emotions of anger, fear, pain and revenge. These origins will never lead us to healthy leadership. We, as a people, have personal healing and self-examination to do so that we have clear eyes minds and hearts to vote with. Ethics and self-honesty begins in each person and becomes a communal expression as we choose our leaders. Ethics begins with us, the voters, and ends in Washington DC.

Farewell

 

Well folks, the show is almost over.

After January 20^th people can go home and begin to watch the re-runs.

It’s been a good four-year season for a “reality” TV show packed with hype, hyperbole, and shockingly exciting autocracy. Featuring rip-roaring conflict, hidden drama, blatant manipulation, comedic conspiracies, subtle violence, unacknowledged repression, a demagogic main character, sad humor, and magnificent mismanagement, the longest running season of The Apprentice is over.

Trump has kept his audience well entertained, with exciting new episodes occurring almost weekly and daily twitter promotions that kept his followers on the edges of their chairs with delight.

We bid adieu to a fantasy run. The one where everyone wants to be in the seat of power and tell others what to do and where to get off. The private dreams of control and revenge acted out through a surrogate playing to his best accolades.

The show is over folks.

Go Home

Watch the re-runs.

Federal Government Terrorizes Protesters - A Study in White Fragility

An Op Ed Piece

Unlawfully unmarked Federal Troops have invaded the city of Portland Oregon to provide a show of Federal force with which to threaten and bully other cities in other states into suppressing protests supporting societal change for equality and justice for people of color in the United States. Now the tide of bullying extends to other states as well.

The true message of Portland and what is going on these days is one of white fragility in its most eloquently elevated condition. The greater the push for equality the greater the use of force to keep that change from taking place, once again reinforcing the underlying purpose of law enforcement in this country as being that of protecting the institutions and systems that keep white privilege in place. As the voices of change call out for equalization, those steeping in the security of white privilege feel threatened, become extremely alarmed and call for help to keep their institutions in place.  After all, says the white privileged person, we are all good people. We mean no one any harm. Please protect us from these irate and disturbed unhappy people. Please make them go away so everything can stay the comfortable same. Call in the military if needed! Do not let our way of life perish! Taking no responsibility for the systemic suppression they live in that directly harms huge portions of the population and therefore they are able to claim innocence and cry for protection. The use of force is then justified to protect their very white way of life and the systems they are comfortable with. 

Does this somehow not remind one of the French Revolution? The simple happy playing of the days by those with income, wealth and the means for a happy life that allowed the aristocracy to ignore their responsibility to the people upon whom their way of life depended until an uprising of what finally became utter hatred was spawned that brought them to their death and ushered in a military coup? Is this not the basis of white fragility? The heart-felt fear of loss of those with privilege? And is not that fear the basis of class war and revolution? Is it not the lesson of history – that those who ignore the cries of their brothers and sisters do so to their peril? That the innocently guilty cry innocent on their way to the guillotine? That a whole class of people is punished for its blind existence in and dependence upon the privileges it refused to acknowledge and felt entitled to?

Can we not learn anything from history? Must we repeat the blindness over and over again? Will we not listen – listen to the voices crying in our streets and take a second look at ourselves? True disaster will be heralded by the deaf and the blind. The very worst that they fear and fight to keep from happening will come upon us all collectively unless we begin to move toward change. Toward equality. Toward true freedom for all. The human spirit will not suffer constant suppression and oppression. The blood of our brothers and sisters killed through oppression, repression, and violence calls to us from the streets. The cries of those standing for them call to us from the streets. For all the Evangelicals out there – God is listening. Not to your prayers and cries for help, and remonstrances of innocence, but to the cries of the blood of the dead and their brothers and sisters calling to Him in the street. Wake Up.

Tell your dog to lay off. Quell his military trained private forces sent to defend and preserve your  way of life and your dominance and supremacy by attacking and suppressing "others",  and put your hearing aides on and listen. We are all hanging in the balance waiting for you to wake up. Sitting on the precipice of your disaster. This whole society with all its light and freedom will go down the slide into autocracy and military dominance with you, if you, the good white people, choose to stay deaf. The light of freedom will go out in America because of you. And you will think it is everyone else's fault. You will not even see it happening. It will feel like "the right thing" to you....until it is far too late. Wake UP. 

Christopher Columbus!

Well I did some looking around this morning and it seems there is a lot of controversy over the celebration of Columbus Day.

I am not a historian, nor have I studied both sides of this controversy in detail. I am painting with broad brushstrokes here.

There are of course two schools of thought – one says Columbus brought destruction, greed and death, domination and exploitation to the Americas. The other says he was a courageous explorer credited with opening up the Americas. 

Columbus’s dichotomy is a very human story. Five hundred years from now, how will our portraits hold up against the standards of time? Will they be a type of Dorian Gray composition, a dubious life painted over with the bright hopeful colors of what we wished to be, or perhaps the other way, painted as ogre-ish and ugly on the outside by others with no seeing or understanding of the softer truths of the heart inside? We tend to paint a picture of Columbus as evil villain or heroic explorer. Take your pick. Which Columbus would you like for your personal own? And will the real Columbus please stand up? 

The Columbus question can be argued ad nauseum:  his voyages to the Americas resulted in opening up and putting the continent on the map as a place of global interaction. A new set of nations and countries were brought into recorded history and entered the world stage as recognized players.

And in the course of that discovery there is the pure human horror of “man’s inhumanity to man” played out in the ugliness of the cruel exploitation and extermination of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

This story, our story, the story of the Americas, is not an uncommon or unrepeated one throughout history. But we have highlighted this part of history in our home hemisphere for special treatment and attention. And rightly so. It is our side of the world, our responsibility to look at and learn from. Perhaps our heightening sense of awareness and social consciousness is fomenting the need to take a closer look at our societal behaviors and beginnings.  Countries, peoples and races have been overtaking other countries, peoples and races for all of our known human history. Brutal expungements of entire populations and species have been our unwitting trail of development in the huge panoply of the struggle for survival. Even before recorded history the archeology of a region reveals displacement and usurpment of another’s territory and right to live. Every single human is responsible for every single act, and every single human is part of a larger, societal mindset and force that operates through each of its members to preserve itself. 

Is Columbus a hero or a demon? Or both? Even if he was completely motivated by the lust for gain – remember he was funded to produce that for Spain – somewhere at his heart he had a big vision. And he worked desperately hard to bring it to pass. Winning the support of the monarchy in Spain was his huge break. Everything he had dreamed of and wished for suddenly had financial legs to stand on and wings to fly with. What a word to us who have big dreams, ones that in the depths of our hearts seem lustrous and noble, about the judgment of time and the incalculable effects of momentum and expansion upon a kernel of creative thought when released into the stream of the societal consciousness present at its day. 

Are we responsible for that very societal consciousness? You bet we are. Every tiny kernel of it is a thought, belief or action played out across millions of interactions every day. We are building it all the time, you and I – not our leaders, not our religions, not our economies – us, just us. We are the microcosm of the whole, like the atoms and molecules and cells in a body that determine its health, strength and direction. The whole is a reflection of the individual one. And so it does come down to

Christopher Columbus

Had a dream

All did not come out

As well, it seems

As the dreamer dreamed the dream.

And so we go

Along each day

Thinking we have no power

To sway

The direction of others,

Unknowing along the way

That we have sown the seeds

Of tomorrow today