De morele ineenstorting van de VS: de oorzaak

In het hieronder opgenomen artikel, geschreven door Umair Haque, eerder gepubliceerd op Vampires, gaat deze in op de morele ineenstorting van de VS maatschappij.

Haque concludeert dat de VS zich andere 'moraliteiten' heeft aangemeten: egoïsme, hebzucht, wrok en wreedaardigheid....... Zie hoe men openlijk haat en angst tegen minderheden zaait in de VS, hoe men zich moreel zo hoog acht dat de VS waar het haar uitkomt illegaal oorlog voert, onder de valse vlag van het brengen van democratie en het bestrijden van mensenrechtenschendingen, zelfs als men een democratisch gekozen regime omver werpt en daar een dictator voor in de plaats parachuteert...... Of wat dacht je van het openlijk steunen van dictatoriaal geregeerde landen als Saoedi-Arabië, de Golfstaten, Egypte, Honduras, Filipijnen en ga nog maar even door....... Steun die niet zelden geleverd wordt door de CIA met 'onderwijs' hoe het best te martelen......

Ook in de binnenlandse politiek zijn menselijkheid, moraliteit en ethische waarden ver te zoeken, zie de omgang met de gekleurde bevolking, de vluchtelingen (veelal door VS ingrijpen op de vlucht geslagen) en de grote onderlaag.... Zo zijn meer dan 50 miljoen VS burgers afhankelijk van voedselbonnen, kunnen veel VS burgers belangrijke medische therapieën niet betalen en sterven mensen onnodig snel na constatering van bijvoorbeeld kanker....... Terwijl je het tegelijkertijd als politicus voor een groot deel kan vergeten als je niet van het christelijk geloof bent....* 

De VS is een maatschappij waar de armoede zo groot is dat velen zelfs met 2 banen nog niet rond kunnen komen en niet zelden mensen met meer banen niet eens een dak boven het hoofd hebben.......

Maar laat ik er verder het zwijgen toe doen, lees wat Haque te vertellen heeft en zie hoe ver de VS is afgezakt van de 'morele ladder' en is veranderd in een ijskoude, inhumane en wrede politiestaat, waar men nu zelfs bezig is om alle critici de mond te snoeren middels censuur...... Let wel: veel van wat Haque stelt is intussen ook al van toepassing op de EU en haar lidstaten, ook hier is moraliteit en ethisch handelen ver te zoeken, lullig genoeg zijn niet alleen politici maar net als in de VS, ook de reguliere media daar debet aan......

(Why) America’s in a State of Moral Collapse

What Happens When a Nation’s Taught to Think What’s Right is the Enemy of What’s Good

umair haqueFollow

vampire. Nov 26

I spent a gentle and quiet Thanksgiving with family, watching Christmas movies and overeating — away from the internet. Yawning and checking the headlines this morning, I was startled, horrified, to see the picture above — toddlers being tear-gassed. I asked myself what many of you probably did: “is this who we’ve become? Or is this, perhaps, who we always were?”

What a moral abomination — attacking children. Is there anything lower? And yet that’s hardly the only one — what the world regards as moral abomination has become a gruesome habit in America, a grim feature of daily life. Here’s a shocking yet somehow unsurprising statistic — 40% of Americans struggle to pay for basic medicine. School shootings, opioids, suicide, depression, an imploded middle class, the swelling ranks of the new poor — everyday American life is an endless list of the kind of stuff that would make dystopia blush. What links all these things?

America’s a nation in steep, profound moral decline. It gasses “those” kids — while making its own do “active shooter drills.” What kind of society lets this happen? How did America become such a society? I think it happened because America’s moral muscles atrophied to the point that it became a moral weakling — unable to shoulder any kind of weight, to act with much humanity, decency, or goodness, towards itself, or othersNow, I don’t say that to judge or condemn or shame — but to observe gently, and to maybe point a way forward.

(Moral atrophy shouldn’t be a surprise — Americans have been taught, maybe indoctrinated, not to care for one another, that they are only their “productivity” and “utility”, seduced or compelled into a kind of survival-of-the-fittest culture of cruelty, overworking and undervaluing themselves and each other, which is the inevitable result of a history of exploitation, slavery, segregation. It culminated in the apocalyptic every-man-for-himself ideologies of neoliberalism and predatory, which imploded back into the supremacism they were born from. But I’ll return to all this.)

Let me explain what I mean, by way of an example.

Americans are told that the only case they can make for things like immigration and refugees is an economic one — hence, endless repetition of the fact that refugees become immigrants, who set up businesses, and create jobs, and XYZ percentage to GDP and so on. Very well, they do. But that fact alone doesn’t convince the unpersuaded, does it? It seems to elide, to miss, to evade something deeper, more crucial, truer — about the heart and soul of a people and a nation.

What is always left unmade — what perhaps cannot be discussed in America — is the moral case. The truly moral one — not just why acting in everyone’s best interest is right, but why it is good. Good for us all. Not just right — at our own expense. Do you see the difference? Think about it. Aren’t we told precisely the opposite in America? What’s good for everyone is what’s bad for us. But is it really true?

What we don’t discuss — what we aren’t allowed to discuss, really — is how morality, true morality, as in humane and caring acts of kindness and decency, not Darwinian-Nietszchean survival of the fittest — dramatically alters the fortunes of a society, betters the prosperity of a nation, in profound, lasting, and transformative ways. Do you see how foreign and alien it is when I speak this way? It is as if this is something that we can barely bring ourselves to even conceive of in America today.

Why is that? Why can’t we make the link between what is moral being genuinely good for us, not just right at our own expense, exactly? Why are we always more or less told to believe, in America, that what is right and what is good are polar opposites? I’m asked by mainstream American thinking to believe, for example, that my greed, vanity, contempt, and selfishness will somehow lead to the best for everyone. In other words, I should never use my moral muscles — that way, everyone will be best off. What’s right is the enemy of what’s good. But does that bizarre, twisted, convoluted logic seem to have worked out for America to you?

Let us think about what happens if a nation accepts refugees. Not to its economy, per se — but to itself, it’s deeper capacities and capabilities, all the things that underpin an economy, which is just stuff. That act of care confirms, strengthens, and expands its capacities for empathy, generosity, humility, courage, truth, wisdom, and gratitude. It extends and commits it to freedom, to justice, to equality, for all. It is an act that builds moral muscles, in other words. But what do moral muscles allow — or maybe compel — us to do?

The growth of all those moral capacities, empathy, generosity, humility, and so forth, in turn, make it much more likely that such a nation will act humanely toward itself, too. Those moral muscles will give it the reason and the power both to develop systems like universal healthcare, childcare, retirement. They will help steer it away from inequality and injustice and bigotry and resentment, and towards the opposites. And if a nation has universal goods, like healthcare and retirement and so on, then humane acts, like accepting refugees, will probably reconfirm its commitment to them, as well, by testing the limits of its own goodness, the power of its moral character.

Let me distill the three key lessons. One, humane acts, by testing us, by strengthening us, and by empowering us, build moral muscles in three ways. And there is no other way to build moral muscles, really. Two, using moral muscles builds moral strength. But leaving moral muscles to atrophy makes a nation morally weak. Three, we can only really act as humanely towards ourselves as do to others, and so when we act humanely to others, it confirms and tests, expands and strengthens, our own moral strength, too.

Now. If all this is not just idle theory, but truth, then we would expect to see something particular happening in the world. Those nations with things like universal public goods would also have the most humane policies towards refugees and so on. And that is very much the case. Scandinavia, for example, has the world’s most expansive public goods, which underpin the world’s highest quality of life — and also, mostly, the most open stances towards refugees. Many of these are the most moral societies in the world — by that I hardly mean they are perfect, but I do mean that in them, people treat each other with greater respect and decency than elsewhere. Not just theoretically, but genuinely — socially, economically, politically. You would be quite right to say that’s changed in a place like Denmark — and I’d say that stance towards refugees indicates a weakening of moral muscles that will have effects on society itself, too, corroding its humanity towards itself in the long run.

So the link seems to be true in the real world, too — humane acts build our moral muscles, and make it possible for us to act humanely towards ourselves, too. When we do things like accept refugees, we are in a sense going to the moral gym — and making sure we are morally strong also ensures that we have the power and strength to treat each other humanely, too.

You would be right to say that I am suggesting nothing different than Jesus or Buddha or the prophets said thousands of years ago. So why are Americans taught that they were wrong, essentially? That what’s moral must come at their own expense? That what’s right is the enemy of what’s good — not that what’s right is what’s good? Do you see my distinction? It’s a subtle — but I think a crucial — one.

Let me put it another way. Why are Americans never taught any of this? That there’s a moral case for humane acts — like accepting refugees — not just an economic one? Why does the kind of discussion above — that links real world morality to economics and society, and produces a more sophisticated account of the prosperity of a nation — never really take place?

The reason is that Americans have been confused about what morality is for a very long time now. For example, in America, it is perfectly acceptable to label selfishness, greed, spite, and cruelty merely as “different kinds of morality.” But a sensible, thinking person should reject this approach entirely. Me thinking your kids are not really people or denying you healthcare or turning a blind when your kids are shot at school is not moral in any sense of the word — and so if we accept such stances merely as “different moralities”, we undermine the idea of morality to the point it has no meaning whatsoever. It may be something that elevates my status within my own group — but in no sense is it moral, because what I give to my own, I merely take away from yours.

At minimum, performing one’s moral duty as a citizen of a society is to imagine, to learn about, to reason towards, how to care for all — not just some, those of your own tribe, race, color, creed, religion, place, or stratum. When I put it to you that way, it should be much clearer where America’s problems stem from. It struggles to reach the mature morality of a developed nation, because it has never really built moral muscles to begin with. America’s moral horizons never really expand beyond the idea of caring for your own tribe or group — that is the toxic residue of centuries of slavery and segregation, which resulted in a social philosophy of almost pure atomic individualism, bitter competition, and power, money, and status as the prizes to be won. The idea that one’s moral duty as a citizen is to care for all — how could it ever develop in an America that was segregated until the 1970s?

But today, that failure to develop moral muscles has left America in a state of moral collapse. It is having a kind of implosive blowback — only having been taught to care for themselves, or, at best, their own kind, Americans are left unable to build a truly modern society.

And yet at the same time, Americans aren’t often offered a perspective of themselves that goes beyond economistic — mere cogs in a capitalist machine, not truly moral agents. But being true moral agents is what forging a genuinely better society — a more decent, humane, caring, courageous, and wise one — demands. How can mere cogs in a capitalist machine ever do it? That is why cases for human actions which only analyze economic consequences are badly deficient things. They are well intentioned, but they don’t ultimately help a society build its moral muscles. If the only reason I am helping you is that I will grow rich — then I am not acting morally at all, I am still just a self-interested automaton. But if I am helping you because it is by helping that you that I help all, of which I am a part, then I am a moral being, who can reason morally, think morally, and act morally, too. Do you see the difference?

The atrophy of their moral muscles has left Americans weak where it counts most. Not just economically or socially or politically. But morally. One of the great lessons of the last century is that morality and prosperity go hand in hand. The riches and wealth we gain from exploiting others come with a curse — they cheat of us modernity itself. But modernity’s riches — societies wealthy in the most beneficial goods of all, like healthcare, education, retirement, which then engender trust, meaning, belonging, and purpose — cannot be had any other than by building one’s moral muscles.

How strong? So strong that it is each one’s first duty to lift up all.

Umair

November 2018

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* Alsof men in de 'christelijke' VS politiek niet weet dat het nieuwe testament van de bijbel in sterke tegenspraak is met het onmenselijke beleid dat men voert, neem de omgang met vluchtelingen en arme VS burgers........

Fascisme nog steeds niet begrepen in de VS en de EU

Beste bezoeker lees het volgende opiniestuk van Umair Haque. Hierin legt hij uit dat de VS geen snars begrijpt van fascisme: de opkomst en het grote gevaar van fascisme zoals we dat in Duitsland, Italië, Spanje en aantal Latijns Amerikaanse landen hebben gezien.

Moet wel opmerken dat wat mij betreft de VS al een fascistoïde maatschappij is, neem de omgang van de politie met de gekleurde en zeker met de zwarte minderheid in de VS. Dan is er nog het frustreren van het kiesrecht voor gekleurden, die veelal niet eens kunnen stemmen als ze daartoe gemachtigd zijn (en aan die machtiging wordt ook nu weer flink geknaagd)...... Wat voorts te denken over het inperken van vrouwenrechten (zoals voor abortus en anticonceptie) in een aantal VS staten....... 

Lees en geeft het ajb door, ook hier begrijpt men niet welk gevaar de fascisten vormen voor onze toch al lamme democratie..... Hoewel wij de les bij wijze van spreke aan den lijve hebben ondervonden, zie je ook de neoliberale partijen als VVD, D66, CDA (in feite ook neoliberaal), PvdA, CU en SGP meer en meer uiterst rechtse of beter gezegd fascistoïde denkbeelden omarmen, zie alleen al hoe men met vluchtelingen en hun kinderen denkt om te kunnen gaan.......... 

De CU sputtert nog wel wat op het gebied van vluchtelingen, maar deze hypocriete partij blijft wel achter  het inhumane waardeloze kabinet Rutte 3 staan, een kabinet waar het zelf aan deelneemt...... Sterker nog: dit kabinet kan niet zonder de steun van de 'Christen'Unie.....

Ook het etnisch profileren in de VS en hier, is feitelijk een fascistische vorm van politie-inzet......

Bovendien is het neoliberalisme uiteindelijk goed beschouwt niets anders dan een fascistisch gedachtegoed! Daar is Haque het overigens niet mee eens, gezien het artikel dat hieronder is opgenomen. 

Verder stelt Haque dat de hang naar fascisme niet in de grote steden is te vinden, echter daar ben ik het niet met hem eens, zie alleen al de neonazi parades in diverse grote steden in de VS. 

Hooguit kan je uit het stemgedrag buiten de grote steden in de VS als meer rechts bestempelen dan in de grote steden, waar uiteraard het discriminerende gedrag tegen de gekleurde minderheid in die gebieden extremer is dan in de grote steden, ook al schiet de politie in de VS meer gekleurden neer in de grote steden van de VS.....

Vergeet verder het gevaar niet van de steeds verder toenemende macht van grote bedrijven die met een beroep op duurzaamheid intussen de wereld verder verrampeneren en de volksgezondheid ondergeschikt houden aan het maken van (mega) winsten....... Waar dit bedrijfsleven graag foute regimes steunt en van de VS regering eist dat consumenten zo min mogelijk te vertellen hebben over o.a. voedselveiligheid...... Ook hier is dit te zien, al helpen onze politici daar graag aan mee, neem het TTIP handelsverdrag*, een verdrag waarmee de consument wordt gereduceerd tot een lastige klant die zich vooral niet moet bemoeien met voedselveiligheid en zaken als genetische manipulatie....... Verder is het een feit dat het bedrijfsleven in Duitsland het prima deed in aanloop van WOII (vanaf 1933) en de eerste twee jaren van die oorlog...... Sterker nog: zonder het grote bedrijfsleven was Hitler (en de NSDAP) waarschijnlijk niet zo machtig geworden........

Lees het volgende artikel van Umair Hague en oordeel zelf: 

umair haque

vampire. Sep 3

What America Still Doesn’t Understand About Fascism

What Happens When a Rich Society Suddenly Becomes a Poor One?

Today, I read, as you probably did, that Steve Bannon is to keynote the New Yorker’s Ideas Festival. LOL — it should go without saying that’s a pretty good indication that a society is out of ideas. Yet I can almost hear the reasoning in the New Yorker’s offices. Their problem is that American thinkers have no real explanation for fascism — just fairy tales — and that leaves you with…the fascists. Or maybe they just wanted to stoke controversy and make money (I’d give them more credit than that, but I digress.)

Let’s take the fairy tales Americans tell themselves about fascism — there are three — one by one, and then discuss what really causes fascism (and why American thinkers are completely unable to get it, even at this late stage). You can skip this part if you want the less nerdy stuff.

— Fascism is caused by identity politics. This is what Francis Fukuyama suggests in his new book — and I’d say he should be ashamed of himself, if it weren’t so funny and laughable. I decide to be a gender-nonconforming them, not a he anymore, and you respond by…cheering on Mexican babies as they’re put in camps? LOL, you see why I think American thinkers don’t know how to think anymore? It’s not just childishly absurd — it’s a grotesque form of victim-blaming, that obviates freedom or liberty in any genuine sense, every bit the equivalent of saying “well, you shouldn’t have worn that dress...!”

— Fascism is a cycle, a backlash against “too much liberalism.” This seems to explain things — but it doesn’t. What is “too much liberalism?” When we have healthcare? Or just sewers and pipes? Does that mean that human beings are doomed to be fascists? This is a kind of theology of individualism — not really an explanation for fascism.

— Fascism happens when white people are afraid of becoming a minority. This explanation is trotted out regularly by American pundits. But whites in Sweden are in no danger of becoming a minority — yet extremism is in second place there, in the upcoming election. That’s true in Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Russia, too. So this theory is obviously false — it can’t explain the global rise of fascism even a bit.

These three explanations lead to what I call the meteor strike theory of fascism. Since we have no real explanation, it becomes a random event, a kind of natural catastrophe. But if it’s a natural catastrophe, then we have no control over it. And if we have no control over it, then maybe the best we can do is…invite the fascists to headline our festivals. As a way to negotiate and bargain with them. Does that make sense?

Now. Let us try to look at all the above from another perspective. Not the one of what we believe, but simply what we know. What do we know about how America has changed over the last thirty years?

80% of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. 70% have less than $1000 in savings. 70% expect their kids to live worse lives. Life expectancy is falling. Real incomes are shrinking. Suicides are skyrocketing. Depression and loneliness are soaring. The old can’t afford to retire, and the young can’t afford to start families. The middle class has imploded, and the ranks of the poor have swollen. What does all this really say?

America is a rich country that effectively became a poor one — in the space of a generation. Is it any surprise that this sudden, unexpected, historic collapse would massively, catastrophically destabilize society — and give rise to fascism?

(Perhaps you object. The mistake many Americans make is to think that flat-screen TVs and microwave ovens somehow make them better off than people in poorer countries. They don’t. People in Pakistan and Chile can afford those things, too. Poverty — the experience of deprivation — is a truer thing that not having a flat-screen TV. It’s about living at the edge of perpetual ruin, which is something that most Americans now face daily)

How might a society plunging from riches into poverty destabilize into fascism, precisely? The social bonds in a town or community get blown apart. People turn to fascism for belonging. The sense of optimism and faith in the future people have is destroyed. They turn to fascism for hope again. All the good jobs are gone. People seek scapegoats to blame for their miseries — the very ones they’ve barely learned to tolerate living next to. Life is a frightening thing now — people seek the soothing, comforting words of a demagogue.

You must work harder every year, just to keep your head above water — the demagogue is the only one who tells you this is wrong and unjust, while elites don’t seem to notice or care much at all. You never expected to be poor — yet here you are. Suicides and illnesses and drug use have come to surround you. Everything seems broken — towns, communities, cities, bonds, families, jobs, livelihoods, careers, even people. In the end, you turn to fascism to restore all the things you feel have been taken away from you — trust, meaning, purpose, belonging, optimism, opportunity, fairness, dignity, pride, and strength.

Those things are what poverty is really made of, and the new poverty that Americans face isn’t just financial — it’s made of all the elements of a decent life. In hard terms, poverty of human, intellectual, social, emotional, and civic capital, to name just a few.

Now, if the theory is correct, we’d expect to see fascism rising in places where all the above is true — where poverty in all these forms has risen, where all these real “capital deficits” have grown. Where are those places? They are not places that have always been poor — but of downward mobility. And that’s precisely what we do see. American fascism isn’t rising in inner cities — but in Rust Belt towns, in exurbs, in third-tier cities, in the regions where people expected easy, comfortable lives, like their parents and grandparents — but instead, are ending up elsewhere, and can’t understand why, or what to do about it all. Bang! The fascist spark is lit by the implosion of the middle class.

The fascist isn’t the prole — he’s the frustrated bourgeoisie. The one whom capitalism promised to make a capitalist — but only did it to sell him on capitalism. It had no intention of ever making him a true capitalist, like Bezos, Gates, or Buffett — why would it? Capitalism isn’t there to make him rich, it’s there to make them rich. So the prole turns to tribalism, hierarchy, and predation, then, for the power and riches and comfort he was promised — and still hungers for.

So now our theory goes something like this. Capitalism promised proles bourgeois lives — it was the best marketing trick in history, perhaps. But all it ever really wanted to do was to squeeze the proles — and maximize profits. Those disappointed would-be bourgeoisie, who are now poorer than ever, enraged, losing trust and faith in the system, living at the edge, turn to fascism. They band together into tribes of the pure— so the prole, if he can’t be a real capitalist, a true bourgeois, can at least be powerful enough to prey on the weak. The sudden, jabbing sting of poverty, the feeling of being empty, hopeless, weak, damaged, forgotten, abandoned, becomes a sense of of belonging, meaning, purpose, safety, security, and strength. Now he is someone again.

So the disappointed prole turns to fascism to restore precisely the things that capitalism took away from him — what it was impoverishing him of while he wasn’t looking. But that means that he is at the mercy of tribal logic, in all its fearfulness and cowardice and stupidity, too. The rage that should be directed at capitalism is pointed at scapegoats. The anger that should be directed at those above him is aimed below him. The contempt he should have for the rich is turned into scorn of the poor. The disappointment he should have in greed, egotism, and self-concern instead turns to a vengeful resentment of the smallest differences. He imagines that he is history’s great victim, persecuted by malign forces, hunted, and hounded — and so everything becomes an existential battle, in which only the strong survive, and must act pre-emptively, to eliminate their enemies. Self-preservation means that the price of survival is to become a predator. Nobody will ever make him poor again — he will make sure of it, by making everyone else less of a person at all.

Predatory capitalism degenerates into fascism, by creating the glittering expectation of riches, but the shattering reality of poverty. Enraged, embittered, aggrieved, people turn on their neighbours, colleagues, friends, and peers, preying on the weak, to gain back the very things capitalism took away from them — even as it promised them dreams of bourgeois wealth. If it can’t live like the bourgeois, as capitalism promised, the tribe will take whatever it can, by more vicious means, not to be poor in these ways ever again. Democracy itself begins to wither and die. Society shrivels. Norms and values are ripped apart. Everything seems to shatter.

The world has seen all this before. This was the story of Germany in the 1930s, almost exactly. A rich society which had suddenly become poor. A middle class imploding. People turning on their friends and neighbours. The tribe seizing for itself what capitalism had promised — but never had any intention of delivering. In more and more violent ways. Led by a demagogue. Who made people feel strong and powerful and hopeful again. Bang! Fascism.

That story is being retold in American today. America can’t quite bring itself to believe it. It is too busy telling itself fairy tales and fables. That is why Steve Bannon can headline a festival of ideas — LOL — while a nation seems to think fascism is the equivalent of a meteor strike. Fairy tales, my friends, do not help you, in the deep, dark night, when the monsters judder and screech. They are only there to lull us asleep.

Umair
 August 2018

Leadership News Politics Economics Life

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* Sinds Trump aan het bewind is, zijn EU ambtenaren en politici bezig met een peperdure lobby in Washington om het TTIP verdrag alsnog getekend te krijgen, let wel: de EU is een volksvertegenwoordiging en niet een bedrijvenvertegenwoordiging!