21st Century Progressivism

Author: Sheila Marler

  • Political Zionism is an Anachronism

    Reading Time: 7 minutes
    Political Zionism is an Anachronism
    Political Zionism

    Morris Jastrow1 wrote in 1919 that Israel is a ‘glorified ghetto’. When you think about it, the conditions of Jewish life before the Enlightenment have been perfectly reproduced in Palestine. It’s no wonder the Israelis and their allies are cracking up. Political Zionism is an anachronism.

    Many Israeli leaders have claimed religious sanction for their treatment of the Palestinians. At the center of the current bombardment of Gaza is Benjamin Netanyahu, who claims to be following the admonition of Moses (Deut. 25:12–19) that “The Eternal will be at war against Amalek throughout the ages.” 

    This implies that Israel is commanded to wage a holy war of extermination against Amalek (Deut. 25:12–19), for in the early days “the wars of Israel” and the “wars of the Lord” were synonymous expressions (cf., e.g., Judg. 5:23).

    But, unfortunately for Netanyahu, even his supporters did not buy his analogy. His supporters don’t necessarily object to the carnage, just the rhetoric. They worry that announcing a holy war is not a good look for him. But his use of a story from ancient Israel to justify his war reveals the central mistake of the Zionists.

    Zionism does not understand the Hebrew Prophets or Jesus

    The use of the Old Testament in this way reveals that Zionism is a movement out of place and time. According to Morris Jastrow, this movement ignores what was accomplished by the Hebrew Prophets and Jesus. Jastrow calls Jesus the successor of the Prophets.

    Political Zionism is an anachronism

    Jastrow had sympathy for religious and economic Zionism. But as a political measure, Zionism was an anachronism. However, the political aspect has dominated since 1897. (p. 31) The only way the Zionists could have pulled this off is by ignoring or denying the religious aspect.

    The Prophets: From Ancient Israel to Judaism

    If Christians and Jews understood how the Old and New Testament fit together they would reject Zionism immediately. But instead, they are led by dramatic verses taken out of context, such as the story of Amalek. In fact, the Zionist movement itself is out of context.

    The Zionists seem unaware that the Prophets made major changes in the religion of ancient Israel. These changes are recorded in the Old Testament. The central concept that resulted from their teachings had to do with nationality and citizenship.

    Antiquity interpreted religion in terms of nationality. The basis of nationality and citizenship was a nation’s language and gods. This influenced the organization of religion, including the ancient Hebrew religion.

    The Hebrews had a national deity, whom they called Yahweh. He was their protector within the boundaries of their own territory. Within those borders, they were the chosen people of Yahweh. The groups around them were no different. They had been chosen by some other god.

    What was the message of the Prophets?

    However, for the Hebrews the ancient concept of religion changed with the rise of the Prophets. The Prophets taught that Yahweh is unlike other gods. His concern is conditioned on the obedience of his followers to certain principles. These principles involved ethical distinctions between right and wrong.

    But, this was not a theoretical lesson on ethics. The Prophets announced that Yahweh had rejected his people because of the oppression of the poor by the rich, the injustice in the courts of justice, and rampant crime. They said Yahweh would punish the people for their sins unless they would mend their ways.

    The Prophet Amos was the first to preach this message. He was followed by Hosea, who made the same prophecy. Then came Isaiah. Isaiah emphasized that sacrifices and tribute are an abomination to Yahweh, and that he does not want his worshippers to defile his holy place by coming there with unclean hands.

    These teachings represented a new (religious) language. Their significance lay in the emphasis on the conduct of the individual as the test of religion. From this point onward, the group was considered to represent an entity composed of individuals.

    In this process, the national Yahweh was transformed into a universal Jehovah. In other words, Judaism made its first appearance at that time. Judaism is a religion based on a monotheistic conception of divine government, which makes the conduct of the individual the test of religious life. But this transformation would soon be tested.

    The effect of the Babylonian exile

    Hebrew nationalism was made extinct after a Babylonian monarch, Nebuchadnezzar, destroyed the Jewish state. As a result, the Hebrew religion changed. It came to worship a God who was no longer tribal and confined to a specific territory. It worshipped a God who was universal, a God who was concerned for all mankind. The experience of exile and the new understanding of God that accompanied the exiles cut the bond between religion and nationality. The transformation into Judaism was complete.

    It is a fact of the utmost significance that the great contribution of the Jews to the world’s spiritual treasure was made not while the national life was flourishing, but as it was ebbing away. The Prophets with their revolutionary doctrines made their appearance when the northern Kingdom was beginning to show symptoms of decline, and the movement reached its height after this kingdom had disappeared and the national existence of the southern Kingdom was threatened. The religion of the Prophets is the swan song of ancient Hebraism, and the example of a people flourishing without a national background had to be furnished to the world in order to bring the new conception of religion to fruition, which divorced religion from nationality and made it solely the expression of the individual’s aspiration for the higher life and for communion with the source of all being. The ancient Hebrews disappeared. It was the Jews, as we should call the people after the Babylonian Exile, who survived, and they survived despite the fact that they never recovered their national independence in the full sense of the word.

    Jastrow, p. 38

    The theocratic state

    Judaism changed the people from a political to a religious unit. However, this process proved to be too much for the masses and they yearned to go back to their nationalistic ways. Jastrow defines what they were going through as the ‘wrenching of the political from the religious life’. He thought the strange phenomenon of a Prophet who is also a Priest was a response to this difficulty. But it was a step backward.

    The Prophet-Priest Ezra created a new code. Ezra’s code was combined with the two earlier codes in Exodus and the Book of Deuteronomy. This framework of early traditions and tribal experiences became the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch served as the basis of religious life. It also recognized the solidarity of the Jews as a political unit. The result was that Israel was so dominated by the priestly ideal that a theocratic state came to be.

    The ministry of Jesus

    Second Isaiah and the other ‘writing’ Prophets after the Babylonian exile opposed this development because the theocratic state led the Jews to focus on national aspirations.

    Beginning with Amos, the Prophets before the exile had envisioned a time when the Jewish people would set an example for the world to worship the ‘supreme Author of all being‘. But the theocratic state reattached the religion to what remained of the national life. This was the situation Jesus confronted in his lifetime.

    The universal Jehovah had not entirely put aside the rule of the tribal Yahweh. Yahweh was still viewed as the special protector of His chosen people by the side of His traits as the God of universal scope. The crisis came in the days of Jesus, who, as the successor of the Hebrew Prophets, drew the logical conclusion from their premises and substituted for the national ideal that of the ‘Kingdom of God…Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s’. By such a single saying Jesus broke definitely with all nationalistic aims, which even during the period of Roman control, strict and complete as it was, the Jews did not entirely abandon.

    Jastrow, pp. 41-42

    According to Jastrow, it is an error to suppose that the Jews rejected the religious teachings of Jesus. They could not have rejected his teachings. Jesus taught in the same spirit as their own Prophets. What they rejected was Jesus’s uncompromising insistence that religion was a matter between the individual and his conscience. They were prevented from accepting this idea both by their own traditions and attitudes and by the religious concepts that surrounded them.

    When St. Paul came to give the doctrinal setting to the teachings of Jesus, and to interpret the meaning of his life with its tragic end, he laid the chief emphasis on the salvation of the individual through the acceptance of the belief in Jesus. The sins of the world were washed away through the blood of Jesus as a vicarious offering for mankind. Every individual was offered the opportunity of securing salvation for his soul by accepting Jesus as his saviour…

    Jastrow p. 45
    Did something similar happen to Christianity?

    However, Jastrow also identifies a continuing tendency to connect religion and nationality among Christians. He blames this on the Church’s ‘Zionistic temptation’ to become allied with Rome. I hesitate to bring this up because of the fear that some denominations will feel justified in their criticism of Catholicism. But it’s important to remember that many Protestant denominations built forts around their own theology. If I’m not misunderstanding Jastrow, I think this Zionistic tendency can be interpreted differently.

    It could be argued that it was the Roman emperors who first legalized Christianity and then made it the official religion of the Roman Empire. If the Church fathers agreed to this, perhaps they mistook it as a universalistic alliance. Jastrow does say (p. 45) that this alliance appeared in a form that at first appeared international.

    Conclusion

    This article demonstrates that political Zionism is anachronistic. Christian and Jewish Zionists are trying to carry out a scenario that no longer exists, and can’t be defended in the scriptures. In fact, they are going in the opposite direction to what their own Prophets intended. If we look again at Netanyahu’s use of the story of Amalek as justification for bombing Gaza, it becomes clear that a tribal Israel ruled by a nationalistic God is a thing of the past. The wars of Israel and the wars of the Lord are no longer synonymous. Israel’s God became a universal God when the Israelite nation was destroyed and the people were carried away to Babylon. Then Jesus, as the successor to the Prophets, reinforced the Prophetic teachings.

    Christianity, as we have seen, broke at its foundation with Jewish nationalism. It definitely cut the thread that bound religion to the limitations inherent in associating religion with the group.

    Jastrow p. 44

    Next it will be necessary to understand the difference between the religious practice of Christian Zionists, orthodox Christians and Jews.

    1. Morris Jastrow Jr. Ph.D, LL.D, Zionism and the future of Palestine: the Fallacies and Dangers of Political Zionism, The Macmillan Company, NY, 1999 ↩︎

  • Rosicrucians and Fallen Angels in American Politics

    Reading Time: 4 minutes
    Rosicrucians, Fallen Angels, American Politics
    Fallen Angels

    Is magic a left-wing thing?

    Accusations of leftist magic leveled by right-wing members of Congress led me to research the question, is magic a left-wing thing? The closest connection I was aware of was the association of the drug culture of the 1960s with shamanism. It seems to me the right-wing is more magical-minded. It turns out the story of magical politics in 2016 begins by blaming the left for the whole phenomenon. Bothsidism is apparently the handmaid of American politics, even its weirdest manifestations. This is the story of Rosicrucians and Fallen Angels in American politics.

    The magical theory of politics

    Egil Asprem’s article about the magical theory of politics came up first in search results. The article indicates that the magic war is currently serving a right-wing agenda. The left is included in the discussion because it’s such a perfect target.

    Three camps of belligerents in the magic war

    Asprem distinguishes three camps of ‘belligerents’ in the magic war over Donald Trump: The Cult of Kek; the Magic Resistance; and the Magic Reaction. The Magic Resistance is where the left comes in. Asprem cites an article published on Medium by Michael M. Hughes, a left-leaning author and lecturer. Published on February 16, 2017, it was entitled A Spell to Bind Donald Trump and All Those Who Abet Him. Hughes suggested that a ritual be performed at midnight on every crescent moon until Trump is removed from office.

    The magic resistance and the media

    We can’t tell from Hughes’s own comments how serious he intended this effort to be. Asprem defines it as “a social media-coordinated protest movement leveraging the trappings of magic and witchcraft to mobilize resistance against the incumbent United States president and his administration.” It was the media coverage that made the magical resistance hard to ignore. The first event took place on February 24, 2017. The ‘movement’ was given coverage on social media and in magazines such as Elle, Dazed, Vanity Fair, and Vox. It’s not clear how many people actually participated in the initial event, and the numbers quickly diminished. But the movement earned equal billing with the right in the magical drama. This event supposedly inspired the Magical Reaction.

    QAnon, the Cult of Kek and Donald Trump

    In my opinion, the most disturbing discovery in Asprem’s article is a date that connects Donald Trump’s nomination as GOP presidential candidate, with 4chan’s /pol/ board. There was an unlikely coincidence involving the Cult of Kek, 4chan, 8chan, and QAnon. Since it predicted Trump’s victory in the presidential race, the question arises whether this association had help. This was the magical reaction.

    According to Asprem, there is “a particular form of playful superstition on 4chan”.

    Posts on 4chan are consecutively given an identifying number (currently nine digits, reflecting the fact that the total number of posts number in the billions). Due to the very high posting frequency (over one million a day, in 2018), it is impossible for a user to predict exactly what the last few digits will be when posting. This has given rise to a phenomenon where certain numbers, patterns, and repetitions of numbers–especially repeating digits, labeled “dubs,” “trips,” “quads,” and so on–are considered particularly auspicious. This phenomenon is related to a wider practice known as GET, by which posters on an image board would attempt to score certain integer sequences considered “special” (e.g. posts number 123456789, 1000000, or 555555555). Themes, memes, or users that frequently “GET,” or that just score many dubs and trebs, are considered special, allowing for hidden patterns and connections to emerge in the minds of users. During the primaries and the presidential campaign, a perception formed on /pol/ that Trump and Pepe memes were doing just this. For example, on 19 June 2016, a post on 4chan’s /p/ board with the text “Trump will win” achieved the remarkable GET 77777777. A web of significance was gradually spun, in the usual post-ironic way, in which Trump was divinely selected, the god selecting him was Kek, and the Pepe meme was one of the god’s many manifestations.

    The Fallen Angel Azazel and Republican Resistance to Trump’s nomination

    July 19, 2016 also connects the Rosicrucians to the current political turmoil.  That is the date when the fallen angel Azazel was supposed to rise from his earthly imprisonment.

    All things considered, this coincidence might have something to do with the scene that took place at the Republican National Convention after Trump’s nomination.

    Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions put Trump’s name up for the nomination shortly before 6 p.m. ET. The nomination was seconded by New York Rep. Chris Collins, the first member of Congress to endorse him.

    “Donald Trump is the singular leader that can get this country back on track,” Sessions said while nominating Trump.

    (It is likely Jeff Sessions is a 33rd Degree Freemason.)

    Particularly outraged was the Washington, D.C., delegation, which held its convention in March and attempted to award 10 votes to Marco Rubio and nine to John Kasich. But convention officials announced the rules merit Trump be award all 19 delegates from the nation’s capital.

    “This is an outrage, and this is a reason the Republican Party is turning off a lot of voters,” a Kasich delegate from D.C. said on MSNBC.

    After Trump had clinched the nomination, the Alaskan delegation contested how its vote total was recorded. They originally requested 12 votes go to Ted Cruz, 11 to Trump and 5 to Rubio, but the RNC recorded all 28 votes to Trump. However, the appeal was unsuccessful because, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said, all the votes went to Trump because Rubio and Cruz suspended their campaigns…

    The official nomination came on the second day of what has been a rocky start to the convention. An effort Monday to protest Trump’s candidacy on the convention floor fell short, but not before images of chaos unseen in recent conventions played out on live television.

    See also: Neocons Erased George Kennan

  • Defeating Zionism

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    I recently wrote about Morris Jastrow‘s 1919 book about Zionism. In the last century, events have transpired with no relation to the understanding he tried to convey. The result is that in spite of his efforts, Zionism has prospered. But, as I read his words, I am certain that his voice still matters. Jastrow’s book is an important source for defeating Zionism.

    Relgious belief or geopolitical maneuvering?

    Readers may think Jastrow’s approach is too simple, that it merely deals with mistaken notions which led Jews to accept Zionism. Some prefer to focus on manipulation by Western imperialists. In my opinion, geopolitical maneuvering is important, but it should not be the first priority. I suspect changes in Jewish religious beliefs are central to the success of Zionism.

    I’m not implying that we should be led by Jastrow alone. But his experience and education provide important information about the changes that took place in European and American Judaism in the late nineteenth and early 20th century. This is important because we may be seeing the effects of these changes today.

    However, an important misunderstanding about his religious views might distract from his usefulness. Therefore, before I talk about Jastrow’s book I will share my understanding of where he stood in relation to changes taking place in Judaism in his lifetime. I’m not an expert on this period of Jewish history, so I’m using an article that explains this relationship. I encourage the reader to check the article for accuracy.

    Did Jastrow repudiate traditional Judaism?

    A key aspect of Jastrow’s development, his relationship to Judaism, was misunderstood in his lifetime. According to Wikipedia, Jastrow repudiated traditional Judaism in 1886. But the The New York Times article cited by Wikipedia might be misleading, especially for gentile readers.

    The two most important factors in Morris’s experience were rising anti-Semitism in Russia, the U.S., and Germany, and the situation of liberal Judaism in America. Jastrow took issue with the influences on his religion during this period. Both Morris Jastrow, Jr. and his father, Marcus Jastrow, held similar opinions on this. Marcus, who had a PhD from Halle and was the rabbi of Philadelphia’s Rodef Shalom congregation, defended Judaism from both uncritical adherence to tradition, and extreme radicalism. Therefore, the NYT article is misleading when it says Morris Jastrow Jr. repudiated traditional Judaism.

    Morris Jastrow’s education and professional background

    In 1881, Jastrow earned a baccalaureate from the University of Pennsylvania. Then he sailed for Breslau to attend its Jewish theological seminary. His plan was to return to the United States after completing his education. Then he would prepare to take the place of his father.

    When Morris returned to Philadelphia, he began a rabbinical apprenticeship, but it only lasted for a year. One Sabbath, he gave the final sermon to his congregation. This is the speech mentioned by the NYT. According to this account, it was a long and pessimistic speech.

    He did not say in the speech what he would do next. But it turned out he had already accepted a professorship in Semitics at the University of Pennsylvania.

    This would not have been a surprise to his father. His reasons had to do with the forces he had encountered in Europe and America, and the role of Jews and Jewish learning in the late 19th century university.

    Jastrow’s response to secularization

    The process of secularization influenced several Jewish scholars in Jastrow’s generation. Some moved away from liberal Judaism, but for Jastrow, religious considerations were central in his choices. Leaving the rabbinate did not mean he would disengage with religion.

    Careful parental nurturing, a combination of an American and a European education, an apprenticeship under their father’s supervision, all helped cultivate a generation which would complete the evolution of an alternative to Orthodoxy and indifference.

    Wechsler, Harold S. “Pulpit or Professoriate: The Case of Morris Jastrow.” American Jewish History, vol. 74, no. 4, 1985, pp. 338–55. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23882681. Accessed 3 Dec. 2023.
    Jewish life in the late 19th century

    During the late 19th century, Western institutions of education did not admit Jews. Applicants were required to be members of a denomination. In addition, religious instruction was limited to dogma. But in Jastrow’s lifetime, these institutions were undergoing a process of liberalization. Many Jews were being offered academic positions in this period.

    This was a critical time in world Jewry. But there were differences between American and European liberalization. In America, Jewish life was congregational. In Europe it was communal. This meant that America was more open to liberal Judaism than Europe.

    The political situation

    The political situation also influenced Judaism. Increasing nationalism was one of Jastrow’s concerns. On the one hand, he couldn’t understand how people could give up their right to popular government or recognize anyone as superior due to birth position. He could not identify at all with the German brand of nationalism. At the same time, he thought nationalism was a healthy corrective for German materialism.

    Jastrow also had a conflicting interpretation of Treitschke’s claim that the ‘Jews are our misfortune’. Jastrow himself blamed the German Jews for a type of materialism that he observed during his stay in Europe. Therefore, he attributed Treitschke’s criticism to a lack of patriotism and idealism among German Jews. However, he also disagreed with the German idealists who identified German Jewry with Judaism. In his opinion, there was a drastic contrast between the Jewish Religion and the Jews in Germany.

    Jastrow also disapproved of the Jewish pursuit of the professions for the purpose of material gains, honor, influence and power. His own conception of idealism was that the only legitimate rewards for the professional are the benefits to mankind.

    Due to his experiences and observations in Europe, Jastrow concluded ‘that Germany will not be the land whence Jewish thought and Jewish enthusiasm for and attachment to the Jewish religion will spring‘. For a while, he was more optimistic about America. It all depended on the quality of Jewish leadership.

    But during his years in Europe this outlook changed. He was especially concerned about the rise in America of Isaac Mayer Wise. When Wise finally ‘cast his lot’ with the organized Reform movement and assumed its leadership, Reform’s universalism became the outlook of one faction, and American Jewry was permanently divided. Unity became impossible.

    The competing influence of Isaac Mayer Wise

    Before Jastrow left for Europe, Isaac Mayer Wise organized a domestic seminary for the education of American rabbis. Jastrow’s father had criticized Wise’s extreme liberalism and considered his personality inappropriate for leading America’s only seminary. It was partly due to Wise’s influence in America that Jastrow’s father sent him abroad for his education.

    When Jastrow Jr. returned home, he volunteered his services as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. This gave him a year to think about his future. By the end of the year, he had decided to leave the rabbinate. In the speech reported by the NYT, he shared with his congregation his observations about the rising generation of American Jews.

  • Laudato Si’ and Progressivism

    Reading Time: 3 minutes
    Laudato Si' and Progressivism
    Our Season of Creation

    Our environmental problems are the result of 200 years of industrialization. The philosophical and technological developments that enabled the Industrial Revolution were made possible by the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was not only independent of the Catholic Church, it opposed the authority of the Church.  Therefore, the Church is in a unique position to  publish a document like Laudato Si’. Environmental areas of concern form a natural connection between Laudato Si’ and Progressivism.  We should build on this connection.

    Who are progressives?

    But who are progressives?  The 21st century progressive movement is being shaped by environmental concerns, especially concerns about Agricultural Policy and Food Security. Social justice is also a concern of progressives. But it is impossible to separate social justice from environmental concerns. Progressives also oppose war. This opposition is due to the unjust character of war and its destruction of the environment.

    The Enlightenment: Science and progress versus the environment

    Supporters of Enlightenment ideals believed that progress and improvement of the human condition were more important than traditional institutions, and that these institutions could be discarded if necessary.  The French Revolution was one result of this belief, while the Industrial Revolution was the result of the Enlightenment’s scientific advances. The belief in progress has been discredited many times in the last 200 years. Climate change is the final nail in the coffin of this ideology.

    Political Classes and the Environment

    The liberal middle class benefited from the Industrial Revolution. The political left survived it.  Farmland was ‘enclosed’, and the former owners of that land were relocated to factory towns. They became workers. Workers became the political left in the process of surviving the Industrial Revolution. The environmental question never came up.

    What about the other political faction? Conservatives, have changed their character so many times they are no longer recognizable. However, they have never focused on the environment. Conservatives have a history of forming coalitions with the Catholic Church. The Church is a political entity as well as a religion. 

    However, liberals and the business class are also political entities. And they are determined to stay in control. This determination requires them to ignore or downplay the environmental crisis.

    With the publication of Laudato Si’, the Church demonstrates that it has an identity separate from political conservatism. Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ and his concern for the environment are not unexpected or surprising. What would be surprising is if an American liberal or conservative had written Laudato Si’.

    The following is from pages 6 and 7 of Laudato Si’.

    In 1963, Pope John XXIII addressed the nuclear threat in Pacem in Terris;

    Eight years later, in 1971, Pope Paul VI wrote about his ecological concerns and “the urgent need for a radical change in the conduct of humanity;”

    In 2001, John Paul II called for a “global ecological conversion;”

    In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI proposed “eliminating the structural causes of the dysfunctions of the world economy, and correcting models of growth which have proved incapable of ensuring respect for the environment.”

    …’the book of nature is one and indivisible,’ and includes the environment, life, sexuality, the family, social relations, and so forth.  It follows that ‘the deterioration of nature is closely connected to the culture which shaped human coexistence.’1

    For a leftist take on environmentalism see Alyssa Battistoni’s Review of Naomi Klein’s Book

    1. On Care for Our common Home – Laudato Si’, Pope Francis, pp. 6-7 [↩]

  • Agricultural Policy and Food Security

    Reading Time: 11 minutes

    I supported Bernie Sanders for president largely because of his support of family farms against the abuses of agribusiness.  I believe agricultural policy and food security should be at the center of our plan for the future. It should be an urgent priority because we have a large global population and dwindling resources. However, agricultural policy in the United States is not concerned with a quality life for farmers, promoting food security, or encouraging the responsible use of resources.  Therefore, we must find a way to end the abuses of agribusiness.

    To get a better idea of what this will involve, I want to discuss an article in the February 2016 issue of Harper’s. It’s entitled The Trouble With Iowa. The problems listed in the Harper’s article are not oversights. They are the result a deliberate effort by industrialists to end the political power of small farmers.  Today, although the abuses of agribusiness are obvious, the financial interests behind the abuses resist efforts to correct the problem

    Restore the Political Power of Family Farming

    Back in 2014  I imagined a new kind of community centered around family farms. I said that one of the priorities of this community would be to develop its own candidates for public office. Sadly, that wasn’t a new idea. That is what farm communities in the United States used to do. We’ve actually been moving away from that ideal.

    Today, agribusiness abuses are rampant.  Giant corporations have made the rivers run so thick with animal waste and synthetic fertilizer that everything the river touches dies.  Clearly food security is not the goal of such corporations. The plight of the family farm raises fundamental questions about what kind of society we want to have. We must restore the political power of family farming.

    Farmers and their enemies

    Farmers have been the vanguard of populism since the Civil War.  They have fought abuses by railroads, banks, grain merchants, and food processors, and government allies of agribusiness.  They’ve also fought the main culprits behind American financial crises–hedge funds. 

    Farmers led the populist uprisings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In that period, unfair economic policies threatened farm family livelihoods. In response, family farmers banded together to form organizations like the Grange, the Farm Alliance, and the National Farmers Union. They also ran candidates and joined with progressive allies in labor and social justice movements. But the result was not what they had hoped. Farmers were systematically run out of business.

    Today hedge funds have become the largest investors in food companies, farmland, and agricultural products. Hedge fund speculation in food commodity markets has contributed to price spikes in corn and soybeans. In addition, hedge funds have been proponents of grabbing land worldwide.  They do this to help their investors speculate on the effects of climate change on agriculture. 1 (Foodopoly, Page 11)  These interests have all worked together to decrease the number of family farms. Farming communities have been destroyed because they are the biggest obstacles to oligarchic pretensions.

    Ezra Taft Benson and the Committee for Economic Development (CED)

    If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard about this struggle, it’s because it’s been erased from history–especially the post-World War II part (Foodopoly, page 13).

    In 1955, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson moved to reduce crop prices. In response, farmers formed The National Farmers Organization (NFO). Benson was both a Mormon apostle and President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture at the same time. And he was determined to destroy the New Deal program for agriculture that ensured fair farm prices. As a representative of the ‘captains of industry’, he saw farmers as excess labor. So, he and his cabal organized the Committee for Economic Development (CED) in 1942. (Foodopoly, page 13)

    In the early 1960s the CED released a report stating its intentions for labor. It called for getting farm boys off the farm and into vocational training for industrial skills. Then this labor force would be relocated to where their labor was needed. But at that time, farmers still had the strength to fight back.

    Farmers Fight Back

    By the time of the August 1962 NFO convention in Des Moines, Iowa, farmers had a plan.  At this time the CED was headed by representatives of Ford Motor Company and Sears, so the NFO organized catalogue marches in seven cities.  Protesters dumped Sears catalogs in front of their stores and drove Ford cars and trucks in circles around Ford establishments in several cities. These protests caused the companies to reject the report. 

    The farmers won that battle. House agriculture committees and the U.S. Senate held hearings to discredit the report. (Foodopoly, page 15) Unfortunately, the oligarchs have plenty of time, connections and money. And they had been busy in those years between 1942 and 1962.

    During the CED’s first fifteen years of existence, thirty-eight of its trustees held public office and two served as presidents of the Federal Reserve Bank. The organization maintained strong relationships with the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations, helping to direct government research dollars as well as to provide funding for academic research. The strong ties to academia resulted in policy prescriptions shrouded in sophisticated economic rhetoric and focused on weakening the reform-liberalism of the New Deal. They couched their proclamations on shrinking the farm population as moving ‘labor and capital where they will be most productive.’

    The CED Influenced President Kennedy to Support a Massive Tax Cut

    In 1962 a CED report called for ‘a prompt, substantial and permanent reduction’ in taxes.  The CED helped organize the Business Committee for Tax Reduction. Kennedy endorsed this effort, and the committee actively lobbied Congress. The result was the passage of legislation in 1964 cutting individual tax rates by 20 percent across the board and reducing corporate tax rates.

    The propaganda arm of the CED aided in these efforts. The CED’s information committee included members of several advertising agencies. They included the editors of the Atlanta Constitution and Look, the publisher of the Washington Post, the head of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the board chairman of Curtis Publishing, and the presidents of Time-Life and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). The CED’s 1958 pamphlet, ‘Defense Against Inflation,’ was discussed in 354 papers and magazines, reaching 31 million people. Everything was done according to plan.  (Foodopoly, page 15)

    Immediately after its formation in 1942 the CED began creating a postwar program to expand chemical-intensive agriculture and to grant industrial and financial interests more control over it. It worked to create a postwar economy built on massive and profitable industrial growth in the North, which would require an enormous pool of cheap labor.

    Today the industrial cities that were so important to the oligarchs are gone. But family farms and food security are nowhere on the horizon.

    Agribusiness Has Become Too Powerful

    The Harper’s article ends with these words:

    The standoff that results from all of this plays out across our continent. Those endeavors that produce food and energy need scale and landscape and are of necessity rural and are of necessity unspeakably destructive. The industries involved must be free to operate on their own terms in the landscape in the nation’s midsection, where the states are red and square. As Stowe Says, all they have to do is to protect the status quo. To do that, they don’t need to play to checkmate; stalemate and gridlock are success enough. Iowa’s caucuses, and for that matter the whole presidential ritual, will do nothing to change this.

    This quote is a statement by William Stowe, head of the Des Moines Water Works. Mr. Stowe has received death threats from the people he’s trying to serve. But not because of a decrease in water quality. People are upset with him because his department has sued county operators of drainage districts over the fertilizer and hog manure they are dumping into Iowa’s waterways and drinking water. If agribusiness can engender death threats for a public servant, it has become too powerful.

    Obama was not able to Rein in Agribusiness

    In the Fall of 2011 the Republican-controlled House of Representatives denied funding for enforcing regulations at the Departments of Agriculture and Justice. A similar fate befell the post-World War I effort by populists to abolish futures trading. Commodity speculation, one of agribusiness’s most destructive abuses, continued to plague farmers right up to the 1929 stock market crash.

    Today, populists face the same powerful forces. But they have a drastically reduced number of family farms. In addition, labor unions are in a state of dysfunction.  This makes it difficult for politicians to keep campaign promises once they take office. President Obama is one example. In 2008 Obama found he was not able to rein in agribusiness. One of his campaign promises was the reform of industrial agriculture.  That’s why he appointed Tom Vilsack as Agriculture Secretary. Vilsack’s appointment made sense. He had been governor of Iowa and a supporter of reform. But his appointment did not have the hoped-for effect.

    Tyson responded to his efforts by joining with Smithfield and other meat producers to mount a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign, complete with astroturf opposition and congressional arm-twisting. Big Ag outplayed Vilsack at nearly every turn, and he quickly backpedaled on the new rules. Finally, Congress killed the reform effort late in 2011. Two years later, with the fundamentals of its business plan intact, Smithfield sold itself to the Shuanghui Group, a Chinese company. What Smithfield sold to the Chinese was less its pork production than its control of Iowa’s politics and its landscape. The irony of some of the world’s last remaining Communists taking over from Iowa’s swine capitalists is outdone only by Donald Trump, who spends whatever time he isn’t using to bash immigrants in bashing the Chinese. He offers no hint of course, about how he might best the Shuanghui Group, which, through finely honed contracts, now controls the landscape of all that beautiful corn in the Midwest.

    Agribusiness abuses free enterprise

    So what exactly is this business plan passed on to the Chinese by Smithfield? It is modern-day serfdom.  For example, Iowans say their state has been chickenized. Richard Manning thinks it’s more accurate to say it has been Tysonized. Tyson describes the process as vertical integration.

    Thanks to its efforts over the last 30 years the company owns every step of the process, from producing and delivering feed and hatchlings to slaughter, processing and distribution. During that time, Tyson has even managed to redesign the chicken.  They genetically select for animals that will eat high-energy corn and soy while crammed in windowless, climate-controlled factories.

    The process depended on a networked system of growers and farmers, who became contractors. The network was organized as a tournament. Tyson delivered hatchlings, formulated and supplied the feed and antibiotics, and took away the birds when they were ready for slaughter…Growers in a given region were lumped in a pool and paid on the basis of a competitive scheme that ranked them according to the pounds of chicken produced per pound of feed. Everything was tightly monitored by a flow of data that measured corn and soy in, McNuggets out. A productivity gain of a few percentage points meant the difference between bankruptcy and a paycheck for many growers.

    Agribusiness abuses the environment

    So, Tyson not only reformulated chickens, it domesticated farmers. Naturally the pork processors wanted to get in on the deal. A large part of the pollution in Iowa comes from the manure produced by these operations. It is not regulated because unlike factory waste, farm waste is not considered pollution. Never mind that twenty-one million Hogs produce the waste of about 45 million people. (Iowa has a population of just 3 million.) The chickens likewise produce more manure than all the people in the state and almost none of it passes through a sewage treatment plant or septic tank. Most of it goes into the public waterways and drinking water.

    The financialization of food and farming has wreaked havoc on the natural world. The long list of the consequences of industrialized agriculture includes the polluting of lakes, rivers, streams, and marine ecosystems with agrochemicals, excess fertilizer, and animal waste (Foodopoly, page 11, cited below).

    Agribusiness Causes Obesity and Health Problems

    Meanwhile a diet of corn products and products from soybeans, a companion plant of corn, is changing America’s diet. Eighty-five percent of America’s arable cropland is planted in corn, soybeans, wheat and hay. In Iowa, 23 million of 24 million acres is planted in corn and soybeans. This translates into higher consumption of high-fructose corn syrup as well as products containing soybean oil. From 1909 to 1999 the consumption of soybean oil increased a thousand fold. Linoleic acid found in soybean oil is a culprit in the obesity epidemic, and since livestock feed contains soybeans it is even found in the chicken and pork we eat. It may even be responsible for decreased brain development in the population because it supplants omega-3s in our diets. An unhealthy diet is not food security.

    Parity is What Food Security Looks Like

    By contrast with today’s food system, agricultural policy in the United States fostered food security under FDR’s New Deal.  For example, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 was intended to achieve parity for farmers. This is how the Adjustment Act worked:

    The act provided for acreage reduction and land set-asides to reduce over-production. In addition, the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) established a price floor by making loans to farmers when the food processors or grain corporations refused to pay farmers a price that covered the cost of production. Farmers pledged their crops to the government as collateral against the loans.  This ensured that they were paid a fair price. The loan rate, set by the CCC and based on parity, acted as a price floor, because a farmer could sell to a national grain reserve that was established as a last-resort market (Foodopoly, page 15).

    The grain reserve was filled when crops were abundant and prices were low; grain was released when crops were scarce. In this way the reserve prevented crop prices from skyrocketing during times of drought or low production. Since this policy stopped products from reaching the market if the price was not fair, prices inevitably returned to a normal level, and farmers could pay off their loans. Together these policies helped keep overproduction in check and reduced commodity price volatility. This meant farmers could make a living without subsidies.

    The parity programs worked so well that there was real prosperity in rural areas during World War II and that postwar period. This was strikingly different from the post-World War I era when, without supply management, farm prices collapsed. The programs also worked for Main Street by reducing price volatility, and the grain reserve actually made a profit of $13 million over twenty years as the crops were sold on the commodity market.

    Food-Processing and grain industries prefer over-production to parity

    The food-processing and grain industries preferred overproduction because it led to cheap prices for the products they needed.  This fact still motivates their propaganda.

    Agribusiness is the anti-Joseph

    The story of the destruction of parity reminds me of the biblical story of Joseph whom his brothers sold into slavery. Joseph ended up in Egypt where he was given the job of telling Pharaoh the meaning of his dream. Joseph told the pharaoh his dream was a warning that a famine was coming. Egypt prepared for this famine by storing grain. When Joseph’s brothers traveled to Egypt for supplies they were saved by Joseph’s wise policies. Our situation is the reverse of the biblical story. Agribusiness is the anti-Joseph.  Agribusiness fights against food security and sound agricultural policy.

    Who Represents Agribusiness Today?

    Today the representatives of agribusiness include the American Farm Bureau Federation, which works in concert with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In the twenties this group worked with members of Congress, ‘the farm bloc’, who feared the Progressive movement. The farm bloc was made up of farm-state legislators who wanted to appear to address the concerns of their constituents without changing the overall economic structure. The 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act passed in spite of their efforts to defeat it but it was poorly designed. Although it did manage to curb excesses through the 70s it has not been seriously enforced since the 80s.

    Can the Effects of Bad Agricultural Policy Be Undone?

    The effects of bad agricultural policy can be undone. But it requires political will. It is possible to remove nitrates from water, for example. The cost-effective way of solving the problem would be to run the drainage pipes into wetlands, plant some permanent pastures, apply less fertilizer and replace much of the corn with other crops. This would be the most effective solution. Unfortunately the government would have to stop subsidizing corn.

    A less effective approach would be to remove nitrates from drinking water. But at this concentration, Des Moines Water Works would need an equipment upgrade costing up to $180 million. And there are 260 cities and towns in Iowa with the same problem. Furthermore, even if they all removed the nutrients from their drinking water it would not help the life of the rivers. Or the ocean. Nitrates traveling from the corn-belt down the Mississippi River have killed ‘a Connecticut-size stretch of the Gulf of Mexico.’

    Hope

    Iowa’s extreme pollution only appeared in the last twenty years. It is getting worse day by day, but we no longer have a coalition that is able to deal with it.  We need a new way of approaching these problems. We need new organizational structures and new ways of thinking. 

    One of the places America went wrong the first time around was in not accepting help from the Native Americans.  We didn’t think we needed help.  Today we know better, and we’re not alone.  People all over the world have suddenly recognized a source of help in their indigenous people.  Who knows what might come of that?  Maybe we’ve been given a second chance. Unfortunately, the fight for indigenous rights faces its own roadblocks. But at least the recognition that indigenous people can offer advice in this matter indicates a change in thinking.

    A 21st century Progressive priority should be agricultural policy and food security.

    1. Wenonah Hauter, Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America, The New Press, 2015. ↩︎ ↩︎

  • Plato’s Influence on Our World

    Reading Time: 4 minutes
    Plato's Influence on Our World
    Rethinking Plato’s Influence on the Modern World

    Plato has ruled the world for 2500 years through his lasting influence on philosophy, politics, and religion. It’s time we paid attention to Plato’s influence on our world. He is considered an authority on politics, even though in his lifetime, his writings were not compatible with the politics of his home country, Athens. Some of the worst attitudes of the modern world can be traced to him. He proposed a so-called link between societal ‘decay’ and race. He was also a misogynist. And yet he can’t be easily discarded. He is too much a part of us. Instead, I believe Plato’s influence has to be explored, discussed, and evaluated for its usefulness to contemporary society.

    I am going to try to follow Karl Popper’s moderate approach to Plato. Popper admits there is some good in Plato’s works, but objects to specific ideas which have caused lasting damage. On page 517, for example, he talks about the mischief–a term used by Samuel Butler–done to mankind by our secondary schools and universities. These were virtually invented by Plato. In this article, I would like to discuss Plato’s emphasis on perfectionism.

    Plato’s Influence and Motives

    Plato took his cue from Hesiod and other early Greek philosophers, but especially Heraclitus. Heraclitus ‘discovered’, during a period of political turmoil, that every sensible thing changes constantly. He eventually became disillusioned about the changes he observed and argued against the belief that the existing social order would remain forever. But Heraclitus was not giving up on the existing social order. This fact becomes clear in another element of his philosophy with the potential for a new kind of turmoil. According to Popper, 1 the emphasis on change in Heraclitus’s philosophy was combined with a belief in an immutable law of destiny.

    After Heraclitus, philosophers including Parmenides, Democritus, Plato and Aristotle dedicated themselves to solving the problem of a changing world. Both Parmenides and Plato relegated this world world to a phantom-like existence. They theorized ‘that the changing world in which we live is an illusion and that there exists a more real world which does not change‘. (p. 127) In other words, the world we live in is just a copy of that perfect world. The world we can’t see is more real than the world we live in.

    The Capture of Western Thought

    One wonders how, in 2500 years, this has not been identified as blatant trickery. How odd that we never get around to questioning the relevance or theoretical usefulness of perfection itself. How strange that no one objects to their world being superseded by an ideal world in Plato’s head.

    It is true that Plato didn’t invent the idea of perfection. Previous to the ancient Greeks, Hinduism saw perfection as its primary spiritual goal. But in the Western world it was Plato’s realm of perfect things that influenced Christianity.

    Plato wrote that one had to transcend the imperfection of reality; Aristotle defined perfection as potential being fully realized and expressed; St. Thomas Aquinas concluded from Aristotle that perfection should be one of Christianity’s highest goals.

    Plato’s ideas have also mingled with Jewish and ancient Greek mystical cults to create the tradition of Western mysticism, including Hermeticism and Gnosticism, Theosophy, Freemasonry, and some forms of modern Paganism. In addition, Theosophy influenced the early Western perception of Tibetan Buddhism.

    Plato’s Influence on Education and Career Choices

    Fortunately, context is becoming more clear regarding the effect on individuals of perfectionist beliefs. In an article entitled The Illusion of Perfection, Robert Fritz acknowledges that perfectionism carries built-in assumptions that remain unquestioned. For example, he questions Richard Bach who said, “There is such a thing as perfection… and our purposes for living is to find that perfection and show it forth…”

    One common result of this belief is the responsibility it puts on people to strive for unreachable or undesirable goals. “It reminds me of what Lucy said to Charlie Brown when he told her that we are here to help others. ‘What are the others here for?’ She asked.” (as cited by Fritz)

    Fritz’s article follows perfectionist thinking to its cultural conclusion. “Schools give their students aptitude tests designed to measure their abilities. Then, guidance counselors sit down with these students, and give them advice. Their advice usually suggests pursuing a career based on their aptitude. If the student is good at math, become an engineer; if you are organized, become a manager...”

    In this way many end up in careers they never cared about because they thought they were obligated to develop their talents and abilities without regard to other possibilities.

    Another result of this approach is that many people believe they can’t learn and develop unless they already have gifts to develop. And if they do have gifts, their identity becomes tied to this purpose. They think they are defined by how well they develop their gifts. Since there is no way to reach the ideal of perfection, there is no way to win.

    Democratic Utopias

    If may be that the idea of perfection can be discarded without any great loss of culture or history, but we don’t know that yet. We haven’t explored it thoroughly enough. Democratic versions of utopianism also exist. For example, Sir Thomas More’s book, Utopia. In addition, American colonists created several utopian communities. They all emphasized spiritual perfection, although they differed in their beliefs. From the American example, we can see that the meaning of perfection differs from one group or individual to another, and also from one era to another.

    Today, it is assumed that ‘the American Dream’ is economic. However, that is not how it started out. “The concept of the ‘American Dream’ was created by Puritans in the early 18th Century American colonies. It was also based on the idea of perfectionism. Puritans viewed this New World as a fresh start from the old World of Great Britain and strived to create a society of elite people held under the highest standard of God.”

    The Link Between Puritanism and Transcendentalism

    It is time we paid attention to Plato’s influence on our world.

    1. The Open Society and its Enemies, Routledge, London and New York, 1994 ↩︎

  • Popular Culture Manipulates the Public

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    A neoconservative attempt at self-perpetuation can be seen in two of the Star Trek series. According to David Greven, the Enterprise series is the first Trek series to openly break with Trek’s core liberal values. Regardless of whether this was intended to manipulate, this is just one influence driving American culture to the right. It’s likely that popular culture manipulates the public.

    “Enterprise appears to be a Trek series for those who felt Trek had undergone an appallingly ‘sensitive’ makeover in its incarnations of the late-80s and 1990s… “

    Restore America and Star Trek

    This break had a purpose. Greven cited Daniel Leonard Bernardi’s recognition of an effort called ‘Restore America’. However, Bernardi associated The Next Generation, which originally aired in 1987, with this ‘neoconservative moment’. In his opinion, racism, sexism, and heterosexism worked together to ‘roll back’ the political gains of the 1960s liberalism, such as civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights.

    Greven also cites Richard Chase, who thought Hermann Melville represented the ‘new liberalism’, as opposed to ‘Bad, ‘old’ liberalism. Neoconservatives preferred the new liberalism because it was ‘unequivocally’ opposed to totalitarianism. Suddenly these former liberals decided their old liberal goals of ‘progress,’ ‘history,’ and ‘the liberation of the masses’ was ironic. In other words, it was doubtful they could ever be realized.

    The effort to perpetuate this view in The Next Generation was apparently more successful than Enterprise. The Next Generation ran for seven years; Enterprise ran for less than 4. There was immediate resistance to beliefs expressed by the Enterprise crew. Viewers complained about the series’ direction, and stopped watching it. This led the writers to make hasty changes. However, according to Greven, Enterprise remained ‘a deeply misogynistic, reactionary Trek series.’ According to fans, the neoconservative fantasy expressed in Enterprise, was a ‘return to a time before progressive, politically correct new values ruined things for everybody and policed the expression of good, salty, enjoyable, essentialist, racist and sexist views.’

    Is Donald Trump part of the Restore America Agenda?

    Greven’s article makes me wonder if there have been ongoing neoconservative influences in American popular culture. If Donald Trump is the latest attempt at a course correction for liberal values, it stands to reason there have been continuous attempts since Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Enterprise. No wonder so many people are mesmerized by this agenda.

    Popular culture manipulates the public.

  • The Poetry of Democracy

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Harold Kaplan said ‘humanist aspirations’ are the dominant American intellectual tradition. 1 But an abstract notion of democratic humanism is only part of the story. Kaplan explains democratic humanism in the context of writers of the American classics: Emerson, Thoreau, Cooper, Poe, D. H. Lawrence, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Twain, and Henry James. They composed the American classics and the poetry of democracy, and in their works we see hints of the strange continent that confronted them. Kaplan deciphers their experience through the historical context, their own letters and the works of European sympathizers. Their response to this unique time and place was to create a body of literature recognized today as the American Classics.

    Humanism and America’s Citizen Poets

    “How does one define humanism then? In the American context the necessary assumptions were that man was both the first cause and the final end of his experiences and that he has in some unmentioned respect a dominance over his history, his present state, and his future.” (p. 3)

    Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman were citizen poets. But this is also true of Melville and Hawthorne, who had opposing temperaments. They were all critics of their civilization, but beneath the criticism was a deep allegiance. ‘If we have a moral tradition that supports democracy, it is largely their creation’. (p. ix)

    The Metaphor of the Frontier

    The Poetry of Democracy

    The ancestors of these authors had arrived on the American continent with their heads full of the old world. By the 18th century, they were finally ready to formulate a debate with that world and distinguish themselves from it. This might account for the way American culture developed on a parallel track with native culture. They wrote about the native inhabitants, but they were obsessed with the burden of creating a new, non-European culture.

    Kaplan says that in some respects, modernity came to America at the beginning of its history. ‘The frontier supplied the best historical metaphor for both crisis and inspiration in a world without sovereign moral authorities’. These American authors ‘faced the deep insecurity of a quarrel between man and his civilization’. They took the cultural initiative of defining the terms of their own freedom, and for that reason, they seem like an avant garde for the modern consciousness.

    The Poetry of Democracy in Debate With the Old World

    Democracy was part of the debate with the old world. And freedom. And morality. And it wasn’t confined to American writers. That’s also true today. Hannah Arendt, for example, interpreted Hermann Melville’s Billy Budd as a rebuke against the French Revolution. That may be what Melville intended. However it seems to me that when conservatives disapprove of the French Revolution, they are trying to erase it from history, and that is more troubling than the Revolution itself. And Arendt was a conservative.

    An important contributor to our conversation is Chris Hedges, who often quotes Hannah Arendt. Hedges often quotes Melville’s Moby Dick as well. This is fitting because Hedges is a Calvinist, as was Melville’s mentor, Nathaniel Hawthorne. In our conversation, we are fortunate to have Hedges’s view of the American Classics in addition to that of Harold Kaplan and others. We need all of these voices and literary sources together to orient ourselves and our democracy in this time and place.

    Billy Budd

    The following is Harold Kaplan’s commentary on Billy Budd. This is a spoiler alert. If you haven’t read Billy Budd, you might want to read it before continuing.

    “In fact the ability to appreciate him (the ‘Handsome Sailor’) is what marks the line between good and evil, faith and despair… It is clear, from such expressions, as well as the longer development in Billy Budd, that the ‘Handsome Sailor’ was a man who reflected for other men their best sense of themselves...

    “The effect is to say that the ‘Handsome Sailor’ is universal in his humanity, and superior at the same time. He is, significantly, a democratic hero in another sense. In his various embodiments he is associated with revolutionary action, with mutiny, and the over-throw of authorities… The tension between resistance and conformity dominates the long development of the theme, a point which fulfills expectations for a democratic hero. In the last complete incarnation, Billy Budd cheers for the ‘Rights of Man,’ but also dies affirming Captain Vere.” (p. 189)

    It may seem surprising that Hermann Melville is a model for our contemporary neoconservatives. They appreciate what they see as Melville’s superior resistance to authoritarianism. I hope we can look at these authors through our own eyes and decide for ourselves what they were trying to tell us about our world. Maybe we can also expand on their vision.

    Chris Hedges: The Miracle of Kindness

    1. Democratic Humanism and American Literature, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1972 ↩︎

  • Was the Enlightenment Democratic?

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Was the Enlightenment democratic? According to Harold Kaplan, Americans do not question the effects on the United States of the Reformation and the Enlightenment. He wrote:

    “We do not question that the twin roots of American national history were the religious revolution, which broke the Catholic hegemony, and the secular Enlightenment, which finally broke the traditional political structures, monarchical and hierarchical, of Europe…” (p. 14)

    ((Harold Kaplan, Democratic Humanism and American Literature, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1972, p. 14)) (T

    When I first started thinking about the social effects of America’s mythology, I questioned the religious basis of the Enlightenment. Now I’m questioning its democratic basis. There is no question that those events made the United States possible. But there have always been concerns about the Enlightenment. The question is, are we capable of talking about these concerns in the Enlightened United States?

    The short answer is, not necessarily. One faction of our enlightened forefathers, the federalists, wanted a continuation of Britain’s monarchy with a king-like president. Others wanted to create a new kind of government unlike Britain’s. Unfortunately, the new-government faction lost the debate. The best they could do was add the Bill of Rights to curb federal power.

    Although we might wish the anti-federalists had been successful, they were part of the same class as the federalists. One result of their class outlook was that they did not see a problem with inequality, slavery in particular.

    American Politics versus Enlightenment Governance

    Was the Enlightenment Democratic?
    Was the Enlightenment Democratic?

    As stated above, America’s government is an Enlightenment creation. In this light, it was interesting to discover that during the 2016 presidential election that we are not allowed to elect our chosen presidential candidate. After loudly objecting to our defeat, most of us accepted our limitations, unlike the Trump faction. That is who we are.

    Trump

    Trump’s base apparently missed that demonstration of how democracy works. He used our act of good will to promote himself. Now we are observing billionaires and Freemasons trying to claw back democracy, while Trump’s supporters don’t bat an eye.

    You could say the aftermath of the 2020 election has been a Free-masonic temper tantrum. And it’s not going away. Freemasonry is part of our political history. The important lesson here is that our system offered no protections against a candidate like Donald Trump.

    Biden

    On a positive note, the Biden Administration has responded to many of our demands. It’s not what we envisioned in 2016. We thought a complete change of direction was needed to address climate change and the shortage of resources. But the truth is, no politician, including Bernie Sanders, can run a campaign on a platform of lower living standards and personal sacrifice. And this is what we need. If some mythical self-sacrifice candidate were to win anyway, the markets would remove him in short order.

    However, Biden’s political situation has been complicated by events in Palestine. As a recipient of AIPAC money, he supports Israel’s attack on Gaza. In addition, AIPAC is threatening to primary any political candidate who criticizes Israel’s bombing campaign. And our government does not object to this tactic. Perhaps the most worrying part of this is that it is taking place over the objections of people all over the world. This is yet another lesson about American politics.

    Class Structure in America

    America has always had distinct social classes but no one bothers to explain how this came about. Immigration, of course. Groups immigrating to the colonies included Puritans (religious fundamentalists), Quakers (religious liberals), and Borderers. This last group wanted personal liberty without interference from society or government, a demand that is familiar to us today. However, the largest group of English immigrants to the United States arrived between the years 1642 to 1675. They consisted of 45,000 Cavaliers of King Charles I, and their indentured servants. They had lost their former status in England because they were on the losing side in the English Civil War. However, they remained royalist, Anglican and Aristocratic.

    Some say they wanted to re-create in Virginia the hierarchal, farming society they had left behind. When their servants began to die, the Cavaliers’ descendants imported African slaves. Cavalier immigrants included ancestors of George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, and other first families of Virginia.

    The descendants of the Cavaliers only stopped supporting the Stuart kings during the reign of Charles II. They turned against King Charles because he appointed his own people to offices in Virginia and gave cultivated land to his favorites, among other perceived injustices.

    Summary

    Was the Enlightenment a democratic movement? Not as much as it could have been. It seems Ben Franklin was not quite honest when he said democracy is ours if we can keep it. In my opinion, it is reasonable to question our form of government and the Enlightenment ideals that made it possible.

  • Erdogan Defends Gaza

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    When Recep Tayyip Erdogan defends Gaza, he is one of the few leaders in the Middle East to openly criticize Benjamin Netanyahu for his callous bombing campaign. In addition to providing hope for Gaza in her ongoing trial, Erdogan also reminds us that the Levant has seen better times. Palestine was under Turkish rule for four hundred years prior to the days of the British Mandate of Palestine. Apparently, Erdogan has not forgotten this long-lost child of the Ottoman Empire. On November 29, after Netanyahu continued to spew his vile threats at Gaza, Erdogan called Netanyahu the ‘butcher of Gaza‘.

    During his time as president of Turkey, Erdogan has helped the Palestinians in many ways. His humanitarian relief to Gaza is probably his most important effort. This relief has been desperately important during Israel’s continuing blockade of food, water, medicine and electricity. Without his help and the help of the United Nations, the population of Gaza would have starved to death long ago.

    It is shocking that Netanyahu’s blockade remains in place even during his bombing spree. Erdogan’s courage is all the more admirable because his criticism may have cost him politically and monetarily. He is tied up, with the rest of the world, by the manipulations of dying energy markets. In fact, an energy war surrounds the upcoming climate summit.

    COP28

    It has been reported that the COP28 president secretly used his climate summit role to push oil trade with foreign government officials. The COP28 president is Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of the national oil company ADNOC and the Chairman of MASDAR, the United Arab Emirates fossil fuel and renewable energy companies. In this article by Rachel Donald of Planet: Critical, she explains that much of the behavior we see in the oil markets is due to the fact that oil is no longer a good investment. The costs are too high for profitability.

    However, gas is another matter. But this only refers to the lower cost of gas compared to oil production. Renewable energy is the obvious way of the future. However, the West is determined that renewables will not prevail. The West claims gas is a transition fossil fuel that will move the world toward renewable energy. But that’s not at all what gas represents.

    The fight to end fossil fuel use threatens the political world order

    The market for both oil and gas have decreased, but gas is still relatively inexpensive to produce. This motivates producers to artificially increase the demand.

    The sheer size of gas reserves would enable another 125 years of burning fossil fuels. For rational people, continuing to use gas in stead of renewables makes no sense as a policy. The motivation for its continued use is that the transition to renewable energy will diminish the power of Western nations.

    Due the high costs of constructing the international infrastructure, developing nations are forced into partnerships with Western countries to exploit these natural resources. Renewables, on the other hand, are within the reach of developing countries. Renewables would give them energy independence from Western countries. But this threatens the political world order. And it is this fact that is missing from the climate energy conversation.

    China has cornered the renewable energy industry, but…

    The energy war is the Global North’s biggest investment. But while the U.S. and its allies have been focused on fossil fuels, China was busy gaining access to precious minerals needed for renewable energy. China has also been expanding supply chains. Under the right circumstances this would assure China’s power over the West. Unfortunately, China still needs energy to supply the world with renewable power.

    China is the biggest customer of ADNOC. If China’s gas supply were cut off for some reason, it would cause an oil crisis for China. But the crisis would spread. In retaliation, China would stop its exports of materials to the allies’ industries. By the time the markets sent their lobbyists to Washington, it would already be too late. The economies of both superpowers would be in free-fall.

    Erdogan’s courage in context

    Turkey had just renewed relations with Israel after a decade-long rupture. The two countries had been discussing developing closer trade relations and working on new energy projects that could have helped build longer-term trust. But as mediators were trying to extend the truce between Israel and Hamas, Netanyahu kept insisting he would eradicate Hamas. Erdogan accused Netanyahu of complicating the process. After Erdogan called him the ‘butcher of Gaza’, Netanyahu recalled all diplomatic staff from Turkey and other regional countries. And Turkey has withdrawn its Tel Aviv envoy. This is an example of the price paid when Erdogan defends Gaza.

    How should the world gage the threat of Benjamin Netanyahu?

    Those of us who can only watch it happen are suffering too. My own opinion is that Netanyahu is more than a threat to Gaza. He seems to take pleasure in broadcasting threats and administering public cruelty to the Palestinians. He has no problem with horrifying observers all over the world. And this is in spite of world-wide calls for a cease-fire. Benjamin Netanyahu is not exhibiting the behavior of a rational person, let alone a prime minister.

    In addition, AIPAC is threatening to run candidates against American representatives who criticize Israel. All things considered, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Netanyahu, with Western backing, is a threat to the entire world.

    This is the context in which Recep Tayyip Erdogan defends Gaza. It seems to me that he is our only hope for an end to Israel’s hostilities against Gaza and the rest of the world.