Truth and Meaning: Priorities

What do Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman have in common? They are the largest defense contractors in 2014 with almost $50 billion in Defense Department awards. They are also the largest recipients among all government contractors for all purposes. Military spending in the United States constitutes our single largest discretionary spending category. It is a safe assumption, therefore, that the maintenance of our military at current levels or greater is the top priority of our government.

Why? There are no armies capable of invading the United States anymore. "Red Dawn" may be a classic cult film, but in our modern world, such a scenario is impossible. And yet, we continue to spend billions on new planes, tanks, ships, bombs and supporting infrastructure for "defense." In reality, we spend this money to allow our nation to engage in and promote more war. When the world looks at the United States, they do not see people — they see a war machine interested only in oiling its own mechanisms.

Imagine yourself in a future century, reading the history of the United States. Will we be seen as liberators, empowering other nations to determine their own destinies? Or will we be seen as simply one more iteration of Babylon, Rome, the Holy Roman Empire and England? Will we be seen as neighbors, or conquerors? Will we be seen as a force for good, or the servant of greed, power and self-righteous entitlement?

A colleague of mine recently posed the question, "Why has there been almost no reaction from traditional elements of the peace/anti-war movement to recent events surrounding Syria?" I responded. I believe the lack of response is from despair.

With few exceptions, there are no statesmen or stateswomen left in Washington. Many people put their faith in Barack Obama to stem the influence of the military-industrial complex, but he has proven little different than his predecessor when it comes to foreign policy. There is no viable solution in the Middle East because the U.S. contributed so much to creating this mess for the past 60 years that we cannot possibly be part of the solution.

Every bomb or drone we drop kills more innocent people and creates even more enemies. We can't even feed our own people, provide them medical care or maintain our crumbling infrastructure. And the prospects for the 2016 election provide no hope whatsoever. The only sliver of hope I have at all is if Bernie Sanders runs — but he has virtually no chance of winning and would likely be saddled with the same kind of Congress we have now — a bunch of stooges of defense contractors and special interest groups.

We got our hopes up with the Occupy movement, but it couldn't sustain itself. Now our police are rapidly becoming an occupation force in our own cities. Unless five million people show up in Washington and demand fundamental changes to campaign financing, corporate personhood and our warmongering, then our future is bleak. We need the passion, the activism and the leaders like we had in the 1960s to pave the way.

Does the passion still exist? Yes. Are activists ready to move? Yes. Are there leaders out there ready to take charge? I believe so. The upcoming elections will tell us much. If the American people don't vote for change, then we are eventually doomed to stagnation and decline, or revolution and collapse.

Truth and Meaning: Occupy 2.0?

 

Sept. 17 was the three-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Whatever you thought of the movement's strategies or success, its wondrous and flawed idealism, ask yourself this question: Has anything Occupiers protested improved in the past three years?

• The bankers, lawyers and other white collar criminals responsible for our economic collapse have not been charged, let alone convicted of crimes. 
• Income disparity continues to rise, with the average corporate head earning hundreds, even thousands times more than their average worker. 
• Racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and other oppressions continue unabated and largely unregulated. 
• Our diet has become more genetically modified and our environment more polluted. 
• Labor unions continue to be assaulted, no living wage is in sight and health insurance remains a target of the "haves." 
• Jobs remain scarce, and students continue to graduate from college with decreasing hope and increasing debt. 
• Corporations are being treated more like people, and people are being treated more like disposable commodities.
• Our reckless policies regarding campaign financing have created a government owned by the tiny elite they are supposed to be regulating. 
• Our blind pursuit of war abroad has now expanded onto our city streets as paramilitary police gun down unarmed, innocent civilians. 
• It has become increasingly easier to buy a gun than to vote in some states.

As the original statement of the Occupy Wall Street movement said, we as one people united must acknowledge that the future of humanity requires that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to us to protect our own rights; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We continue to live in a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments.

 

The embers of the Occupy movement still glow. Perhaps the time has come to reignite the flame. While we wordsmith and squabble over pennies to aid the poor, the wealth of this great nation is being drained by a new monarchy as trickle down economics has become flood upwards economics. A people united cannot be divided. North Carolina is showing us the way with its Moral Monday movement. Perhaps the time has come for every state and for all people to unite and exercise their rights and responsibilities as Americans to reclaim the moral center of our country.

 

Truth and Meaning: Normal

Normal. I am hard pressed to think of a word I dislike more in the English language. Whatever definition one uses, I believe the word creates confusion and prevents us from engaging in useful and productive dialogue.

For instance, one may say that a society is "normal," because it functions by the laws or norms that it has established. Should we consider normal the fact that nearly 50 million people in the richest country in the world live in poverty? Should we consider normal that there are as many guns as people in this country — and we have the gun death rates to back it up? Should it ever be normal that most of our elected officials could not pass the simplest tests on women's anatomy, the environment, or our national banking system?

One may also say that something is normal if it is the "usual" state or condition. But tens of millions of Americans have untreated physical and mental illnesses. For them, the "usual" state consists of pain and anxiety, disability and depression. Tens of millions of people of color in America are "usually" treated as inferior by so-called white people. Should that situation ever be accepted as normal? On the average, 430 young people injure themselves and 13 succeed in committing suicide every day. How could a society ever consider such a "usual" state to be normal?

We routinely say that someone is "normal" if they are free from illness or sickness. Well, if that is the case, then there are no normal people on the face of the earth. We learn more each day about the nature of physical and mental disease, about neuroscience and addiction, about the impact of stereotypes on our levels of stress, and about the long-term impacts of trauma and abuse. Normal health does not exist and we delude ourselves believing that it does.

The word "normal" always carries with it an inherent stigma. When a teacher calls Johnny a normal student, the implication is that he does not really excel at anything but fits some arbitrary average. He may be the next Rembrandt or Albert Einstein, but we might never know because he is dyslexic. When friends call Katrina a normal-looking girl, the implication is that she is not beautiful. She may be the next Amelia Earhart or Sally Ride, but we might never know because she suffers from bulimia. And when we say that the Smiths are a normal family, we imply that the Smiths are heterosexual, have children, and pursue goals that match those of their neighbors. We don't notice the bruises on Mrs. Smith's arms, or the way the children flinch from the slightest touch. And the "abnormal" Joneses next door may be an amazing gay couple who could revitalize the neighborhood, but they just got evicted from their apartment and fired from their jobs for being gay.

"Normal" should be an aspiration — not the average or worse yet, the least common denominator. Wouldn't it be nice if a normal day consisted of the United States not bombing some other country in the name of democracy and freedom? Wouldn't it be nice if a normal day consisted of not one gay teenager being beaten and bullied, and not one woman assaulted or raped? Wouldn't it be nice if a normal day consisted of not one single instance of wanton police brutality against unarmed and innocent civilians? Wouldn't it be nice if a normal day consisted of every person in the world being fed, clothed, sheltered, safe, and happy?

Unfortunately, we live in the real world, and our leaders insist that those aspirations are currently beyond our reach. So, in the meantime, I will revel in being abnormal. Because the only way we can make those aspiration real is if we all excel in whatever makes us not normal — that is what makes us who we are.