How Would A No Labels Presidential Candidate Change the Outcome in 2024?
This blog focus on the idea that the non-profit organization called No Labels plans to put a third party candidate into the 2024 Presidential Campaign. While I agree with Ryan Clancy’s idea of creating more choice for American voters, it is an extremely, short-sighted, ill-conceived, and premature idea to try to do this year.
While 60,000 voters think a third party candidate can win, so far no third party candidate has ever come close to getting a toe hold into the White House. There are so many more MAGA voters inspired by cooky myths, lies, and the very scary Seven Mountain Mandate men, of whom Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are examples of women leaning heavily into “Let’s Do Medieval Again!“
The Stakes
This year, more than any year in American history, the stakes are higher than most people care to believe or admit or reckon with. Having Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West already running on third party tickets is concerning. So now, we want more choice and add a No Labels ticket too?! Really, this year, when King Kong and his MAGA base is coming to rip down democracy and replace it with the Christian Alt Right Stary-Eyed, Let’s Have Kings Again, The Seven Mountains Mandate men?!
Who are The Seven Montains Mandate men and women? Think Handmaids Tale.
It is not: “Oh the guy I voted for didn’t do the one thing I really wanted him to do, so I’m not voting for him again.”
This is an ignorant, short-sighted, and extremely selfish opinion. Running a country of 331+ million people democratically is not done by waving magic wands and fixing this problem instantly, then this problem, then that problem, and so on and so forth…
Do you live in reality people who give this as a reason for not voting for Joe? MAGA voters are a whole different story. They are a battering ram. They want to destroy democracy and rebuild America as a Totalitarian Christian Nationalist Country. Do you, ordinary voters unhappy with Joe want to live in a Christian Nationalist State run by one of the stupidest men on the planet… the Orange Baby?
Bradley Onishi is a former Christian nationalist who's now a professor of religion and the author of Preparing for War, a critique of the movement and its impact on American democracy.
BRAD ONISHI: I think it has. Christian nationalism is having a moment. It's having a moment in ways that it's requiring those who adhere to its principles and ideologies to respond to it. Folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and others have talked about the ways that Christian nationalism not only informs their understanding of politics, but how they identify explicitly as Christian nationalists. And so we are at a point in American politics where Christian nationalism is something that many people are discussing.
GROSS: Are there many people in Congress who are affiliated with Christian nationalism?
ONISHI: I think it's fair to say that, yes. One of the things that's true about our Congress is that it is disproportionately Christian. Now, there are many different types of Christian people in our Congress from various denominations. However, if we look at the GOP and we look at the tenets of the party's policies and its approach to the upcoming elections, we find core Christian nationalist ideals in that platform. And we find many, many, many members of Congress from the GOP who support those principles. So from outgoing Speaker Kevin McCarthy to current speaker Mike Johnson, all the way to senators and other members of the House, there are many folks who I would describe as Christian nationalists in the United States Congress.
GROSS: What are some of the fundamental principles of Christian nationalism? Like, how would you define Christian nationalism?
ONISHI: I think in very simple terms, Christian nationalism is the idea that Christian people should be privileged in the United States in some way - economically, socially, politically - and that that influence and that privilege is a result of the country being founded by and for Christians. Christian nationalism is not the idea that others can't be here - that if you're a Muslim or an atheist, that you have to leave. It's also not the idea that only Christians can be part of the government. However, for most Christian nationalists, there is a core belief that the story of the United States is one where it has been elected by God to play an exceptional role in human history, and as being chosen by God, it's the duty of Christian people to carry out his will on Earth.
So Christian nationalists take an approach to their Christianity that says it should have an undue influence on our government, on our economics, on our culture, and that it is by dint of our history, the religious faith that is meant to be privileged in our public square. With that said, there are different kinds of Christian nationalists and different ways that people manifest their understanding of the term. But when it comes down to it, if we all sit down as Americans at a table and there are people from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different faiths, and someone who is a Christian says, just by being at this table, I should have a special place, well, to me, that's Christian nationalism because you're saying that somehow this country is yours in a way that it is not for everyone else. And to me, therein lies the problem.
Go to Fresh Air to listen or read the rest of this interview. It is really, really important!
And this is really creepy:
GROSS: An extreme group of Christian nationalists is the New Apostolic Reformation, and they advocate the Seven Mountain Mandate, which is that Christian nationalists or Christians should lead government, family, religion, business, education, media, arts and entertainment, and that they - all of these sectors should reflect the kingdom of God. And I think I mentioned all seven there. So what does that mean to reflect the kingdom of God in family, religion, business, education, media, arts and entertainment, and the government?
ONISHI: The Seven Mountains mandate is a particular form of understanding human society that says that Christian people are not called to persuade their neighbors to practice the Christian faith, to demonstrate to their fellow Americans that the Christian faith is the faith of love and truth. The Seven Mountains Mandate is, as my colleague Matthew Taylor says, a mandate to colonize the Earth for God. The seven domains as you listed them - arts and leisure and the economy and the government, the family - are seen as mountains of conquest. The goal is not dialogue with neighbors who may be Muslim or atheist or Hindu. The goal is not to simply reflect the character of Christ on earth by way of living a life that upholds his glory and his teachings. The goal is to have absolute authority and power over every facet of human society.
And so we can see here what I take to be a very dangerous approach to practicing Christianity in the public square. It is not one that recognizes democracy or dialogue, pluralism as sacred values. The goal is power. The goal is conquest. And so when one hears about a politician or a leader or anyone in influence, especially as part of our government, who adheres to the Seven Mountains Mandate, that should set alarm bells off immediately.
Democracy Is Not: “Joe’s too old, Joe’s too square, Joe’s too this or that...” This is just as stupid, impatience, ignorant reason to not vote for a known and vetted winner: Joe Biden.
There was a time in the not so distant past when age was considered a plus and must for a ruler. Wisdom takes time to ripen and mature inside of people. And it does not come to everyone who ages… look at the overly large, orange, baby King Kong with his revved up mad as hell MAGA base.
Do you think they are worried about the Orange Giant being too old… his less than 4 years younger than Biden!! Anyone giving this as a reason not to vote for Joe is suffering from ageism and is pretty ignorant about how a government governing 331+ million people really works! It takes a lot of people to make it work… good people who are appointed to their positions in a timely fashion and have the expertise and experience to do their jobs. Trump had the most vacancies in top, critical positions of any former President. Some key positions were never appointed under the Orange Giant.
Democracy Is Not: “I’m mad a Joe for aiding Israel.” Modern nation-states are messy… alliances are messy… the world is messy and hard and cruel… that is why nations make alliances, and when Israel was attacked by HAMAS in one of the bloodiest, most gruesome slaughters of innocent people of this century, of course US comforts and supports Israel. There is so much going on behind the scenes that you and I never hear about. The death of any innocent person is intolerable. And Joe and his cabinet are doing their damn best to push for resolution, ceasefire, peace. But, tell me, anyone threatening not to vote for Joe because he can’t wave his wand and make this bloodshed stop… DO YOU REALLY THINK THE ORANGE GIANT (the man to put in place the Muslim Ban days after taking office)…. DO YOU REALLY THINK he is a better option?! I was mad at Obama for not doing more to stop the slaughter of Syrians being bombed by Russia as they aided their ugly ally Bashar al-Assad.
Take A Minute, Learn Something… Maybe Something New
Do Americans really understand democracy? Do Americans really cherish it? Do American comprehend what is at stake this year?
No Labels Debate
It is a choice. Listen to this debate and listen to Fresh Air if you are truly concerned about making an informed, intelligent choice.
The centrist group No Labels is planning to host a bipartisan nominating convention in 2024. This is leading some people to speculate that they may promote a third-party candidate that better reflects the perspective of middle-of-the-line voters who don’t favor President Biden’s re-election bid or Donald Trump receiving the Republican nomination.
Those who say it will help Trump argue the group doesn’t have enough influence to make lasting tangible change and worry that promoting a third-party unity ticket will give an unpopular candidate like Trump a lower threshold for votes that would’ve gone to Biden.
Those who disagree say voters who are discontented with both major parties but particularly opposed to Trump, might turn out in support of the third-party candidate, indirectly reducing Trump's chances.
With this context, we debate the question: “How Would A No Labels Presidential Candidate Change the Outcome in 2024?"
Rahna Epting argues that the No Labels Party does not have a path to win the presidency. Ryan Clancy argues a No Labels unity presidential ticket has a viable path to win the White House in 2024. Emmy award-winning journalist John Donvan moderates.
Open to Debate:How Would a No Labels Presidential Candidate Change the Outcome in 2024?
Feature Archetypal Animation
Music: Mickey Mouse Operation | Little People — [11] Fisticuffs At Dawn 1:02
The Northman really resonated with me. And I know, I’m one year behind its debut. I am often behind the wave of popular culture tending to wait for a time that feels right to me to engage in the drama or story being presented–be it through movie, book, or song.
Often when I do this, the timing coalesces with my own creative work and the act of watching a drama or reading a story feds my inner world. I think creative works no matter what time, place, or culture have always served to feed our inner beings and to strengthen the invisible realms we all inhabit because we are sentient, self-aware living beings.
Circle of Sacred Creation
When we watch, read, or listen to any act of creation, we complete the circle of the sacred act of creating. This sacred circle of creating is something humans do that empowers us to master and control the world in ways no other living beings have done on Earth.
Throughout most of human history this sacred circle of creativity was revered and highly valued for every group of humans struggling to survive understood the transformative power of symbols. They understood how symbols can awaken and transform human consciousness. They knew the power of collective human endeavor, and they could feel how collective cultural symbols galvanized collective will.
However, this process of creative completion has been dreadfully downgraded in our Modern Age. We have cheapen it by slapping monetary values onto creative workd determined by arbitrary values such as how much money a movie made on its opening weekend.
This is true of books and songs too, while paintings and sculptures still get a pass tending to gain monetary value over time rather than lose it. However, collective judgements are made on these works too. Judgements that determine which works of art get displayed in museums or galleries as worthy of the public’s attention. Judgements that are often heavily laced with biases such as race, social status, gender identity, religious identity, or any other label we want to throw on people.
Monetary value of creative works tends to act like a rating system or popularity contest. It is a sign of our time. A time when hard-working, ordinary men and women are stressed, over worked, under paid, in constant fear of losing their jobs, and 10,000 other things all modern people must pay attention to survive in a modern civilized society. So it is no wonder people need distractions to silence a restless inner feeling that something is terribly amiss, awry, unsatisfactory, adrift, and completely out of order in our lives.
Since we don’t have time to wonder why we feel this way, we try to distract ourselves from this unpleasant feeling or any unpleasant feeling we may have in the course of living our overly sped up lives in our overly complicated societies.
In search of the next fix, the next distraction, most modern people don’t have the time or energy to complete the creative circle by digesting what they have experienced. The creative thing is reduced to its most superficial qualities and forgotten as the hungry collective searches for the next big blockbuster thing.
Synchronistic Perfection
So, I missed the crashing wave of The Northman that debuted in 2022. It is a Nordic tale about Prince Amleth who witnesses his father’s murder by his uncle Fjölnir who lusts for the throne and his mother. It sounds like Hamlet or even the Lion King, but this story is much older than both. This story is the cradle from with Hamlet and the Lion King emerged.
Young Prince Amleth narrowly escapes his own death and is forced to flee his Icelandic homeland. The story fast-forwards 20 years to a grown Amleth who is a warrior of a Viking Raiding party making its way up a river to raid a Rus settlement. These are other Vikings who settled in the area that we now call Russia. In fact, Russia comes from Rus.
But the timing for me watching it just shy of the United State’s 4th of July holiday weekend, is a matter of synchronistic perfection. This July 4th weekend marks 5 years since I had a chance to save my father, who was also a Northman.
I had an intense feeling around this time 5 years ago that I should hop on a plane and go see dad. I did not because my husband had just left to go deal with his narcissistic mom playing her narcissistic games with her children. Our daughter had just graduated from high school and I didn’t want to leave her alone her last summer home before going to college.
By this time 5 years ago, I had submitted two huge government proposals for a small religious-based non-profit that had previously not had the where-with-all to write or submit government proposals. In less than one year, I had submitted 3 big government proposals and countless other foundation and local government proposals for them. I had not taken any time off since being hired and had accumulated 89 hours of unpaid time I had worked above and beyond the measly 40 hours per week I was paid.
The only catch is my father wouldn’t make it to September 2018 because he would have a massive heart attack later in July. First responders would revive him after 15 minutes of resuscitation efforts and he would be flown to the Mayo Clinic where he would survive 10 more days before dying.
The day after his heart attack, I was by his side and would not leave it until he died. Indeed, I had to make the call to remove lifesaving support and I would be with him when he died. And he had almost made a full recovery, only to not make it.
I won’t retell the tale here. I fully account this terrible time here:
I would be fired by the CEO of this religious organized where I worked for being with my father when he died. This moment marks a downward spiral I barely survived.
Sláine
When dad died, I was working on the backstory for one of the 7 Warrior-Priestesses that are part of an epic novel I have been writing since 2012.
My story is not published yet, but this did not stop me from working my story’s timeline forward and backwards. Sláine is a young orphan girl raised by nuns living in Ireland during the mid-800s—a time when the Vikings were plundering and raiding much of Europe and beyond alongside the growing strength and influence of the Catholic church.
In fact, I as reading my new work to dad when he died. I had a vision earlier that morning that I should read to him my story and tell him that it was a sled pulling him across to the other side where his mother and brother and other loved ones were waiting for him.
I told him that he could leave any time and that I would read for as long as he needed. I didn’t think he would die that day. But he did. He departed just after I finished the chapter about Easter.
I had been doing tons of research on life in the 800s C.E., especially Nordic life. So seeing The Northman’s time stamp of A.D. 895 definitely caught my attention and it felt eerily similar to what I had been dreaming into my own story of Sláine and what happened to her when Viking raiders came to her convent in the early 800s.
Since I am rushing to watch as many DVDs as Netflix can send me before they stop sending DVDs in the mail, I happen to watch the cut scenes and interviews with Robert Eggers (writer-director), Alexander Skarsgård (actor who plays the grown Amleth, and others involved in the making of The Northman who included historians and museum specialists.
I was struck by how much time and care they took to recreate the known details of Nordic life and culture during this time. The Northman is as much a historical accounting of European history as it is a creative act of entertainment. It does not reduce Nordic raiders to savage brutes but rather gives critical cultural context to why they did the things they did and how it fit into their collective culture beliefs and worldview.
Indeed, if you are paying attention, the people and civilizations depicted from this time are incredibly violent. It is a time of Viking history dominated by male violence, greed, and revenge. No wonder Viking warriors wished to be killed in battle because if they did not die there, they were sure to be picked off by one of their own like what happened to Amleth’s father.
Mashables writes about The Northmen:
"...the friction between man and beast, and the beast within...how you're trying to hold onto your civility and your humanity but the animal comes out,” says Skarsgård. "Some of them it just explodes out of the body, and that reminded me a lot of that transformation, that scene in which Amleth sheds his humanity and becomes Bjǫrnúlfr (or 'bear-wolf'). The beast comes out and he doesn't try to fight it but actually lets it out, which was quite a trip."
Of course, this level of unleashing the beast comes with some uncomfortable modern associations, and The Northman is, in a sense, an examination of Viking men (among weirdly pristine women), and masculinity. Price has written at length on Viking masculinity, noting in an article(opens in a new tab), "Beyond the stereotype, there is a cold truth to Viking male violence. At the height of the 9th-century raids, Viking armies shattered the political structures of western Europe: the loss in blood and treasure was immense, thousands were violated and enslaved. There were parallels at home, too, not just in the form of civil warfare between rival petty-kingdoms, but also in domestic violence...Today there are those who tend to glorify the Vikings in their male, militaristic incarnation, but this is a mistake; they were no heroes, at all."
"The thing is that they do terrible things and they are seen to do terrible things, and that's important," Price tells Mashable of The Northman. "Robert and I talked about this a lot. I personally really don't want anybody to come out of that scene and want to be a Viking."
-- Robert Eggers film. In an age of Viking myth overload, the film doubles down on the details. By Shannon Connellan for Mashable on April 20, 2022
This is such an important point that cannot be emphasized enough. But the problem today is that we DO want to BE like them.
The Heinous Crime Modernity Refuses to Admit
In our rush to become a civilized, modern world, humanity has committed the most heinous act of violence of them all. It is more heinous than Vikings Berzerkers ever committed in their altered states of animal consciousness.
Image from: Mashables | How accurate is ‘The Northman’ to Viking history? Well, it’s a Robert Eggers film. In an age of Viking myth overload, the film doubles down on the details. Alexander Skarsgård stars as Amleth. Credit: Aidan Monaghan
Western Civilization is particularly guilty of this crime, but all modern civilizations suffer from this transgression. It is a point of view that has steadily invaded and infected pretty much every human being trying to survive in the modern world.
Alan Watts says it best:
And indeed, there is a point of view which occurs in certain forms of paranoia, where people don’t seem to be real. They are mechanisms, and you can think that out quite intensely with a good deal of intelligence. After all, if you start from a good old Darwinian or Freudian basis, and see that man is a material machine, and that the consciousness of man is simply a very involved and complicated form of chemistry, and that’s what it is, you see? Well, then these awful mechanical things, these Frankensteins that everybody is, they come around and they say, “Well, I’m alive. I’m a human being. I have a heart, I love, I hate, I have problems, I feel.” And you feel like saying, “Come off it! You’re just a monster, and you put on this civilized act because, really, you’re just a set of teeth on the end of a tube, and got a ganglion behind those teeth which you call your brain or your alleged mind.” -- WEB AS MUTUALITY | Out of Your Mind Series | Library of Consciousness
And this thing is really, basically, there for two purposes: one, to be cunning enough to get something to eat, to put down the tube, and the other—you know what—Mr. Freud’s libido. And everything else, you see, can be construed as an elaborate, subtle way of pretending that that’s not really what you want to do. But you do, but you put on a great show. Now some people, according to this view, get mixed up. They so repress that what they really want to do is to eat and to screw, that they get involved in higher things that are the masks for these activities, and think that that’s the real purpose of life. And then they become what’s called neurotic, because they get involved in being pure camouflage. So that’s what’s called escaping from the facts: not looking at life, not looking at reality correctly. -- WEB AS MUTUALITY | Out of Your Mind Series | Library of Consciousness
This Modern point of view permeates the Modern Mind and provides cover for plausible deniability of who we really are as human beings.
We are the creators of Heaven and Hell. We choose what each and every day that we live and breathe what we are going to bring into this world or not allow to grow. And we, the Good People of Earth, have developed the capacity and power to annihilate ourselves and all life on Earth.
We are the Devil and we are the Almighty God himself, but we pretend and play at being Poor Little Old Me!
This way of being in the world has been long in the making. It is the rippling effect of thinking too much, of ripping the world into opposites and colliding into our self-made polarized ideas and beliefs over and over and over again.
The Universe as a dumb thing that must be dominated and controlled (the mindset destroying Earth Now) is a counter reaction from the overbearing influence of religiosity, which really took root and grew into a Titanic force in the civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and EuroAsia that have been jostling for survival and supremacy for more than 5,000 years.
In all this jostle, civilizations found religions provided a powerful galvanizing glue that held together the power and authority of a king or an emperor. A ruler could imbue legitimacy to his rule not only through laws and armies, but through the Gods themselves. This was a powerful way to bind together burgeoning cultures and civilizations that were growing larger and larger.
The problem all rulers face as their kingdoms grew bigger and bigger was how to keep everyone on the same page. Every intelligent ruler understood that if the people of his or her kingdom began to crack and fracture into opposing fractions, his/her power and authority would eventually fall victim to the fracturing and fragmentation of the civilization, unless unity could be restored.
But with the advent of highly successfully civilizations, it was getting harder and harder to get everyone to hold the mold and stay on the same page as group. Rulers use many devices to hold the mold of their societies and civilizations, but by far one of the most effective is Collective Beliefs, especially spiritual and religious beliefs.
But, in the early days of civilizations there were so many Gods and Goddess one could pay homage to, and if a ruler selected one to honor above another, he/she would inevitably alienate an important group of people needed to keep the unanimity of the kingdom or civilization and alienation can rapidly lead to loosing control of one’s power, authority, and supremacy.
I write about this in great detail and depth in Book 1 of Sapience Series (look for it 4/24/24), but long story short, it was really convenient for the ancient rulers of pre-Christian civilizations to winnow down the Gods to just ONE. The first ruler to do this is Akhenaten who got rid of all the other ancient Egyptian Gods and Goddesses claiming that Aten is the one and only God, all others are blasphemous, and that he was the one and only chosen son of Aten, represented by the solar disc of the sun.
This was a powerful claim that pissed a lot of people off way back then. When Akhenaten and his beautiful queen Nefertiti died, probably due to plague, the people and the priests abandoned his brand new city built by children appropriated by his kingdom and did everything possible to wipe his memory from Egypts memory.
But the one God would return again and again through the Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are the biggest ones with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam dominating the modern world. But there are others including Baha’i Faith, Rastafari Movement, Sikhism, Vodou, Eckankar, and Tenrikyo.
One God unifies all the people of a kingdom or an empire under one king or empire under one celestial and holy authority and this is a powerful thing.
In the story I write, I explore the collision and confluence of polytheistic and monotheistic beliefs in great detail, and when I get to Sláine, I explore the collision between the violent Viking Berzerkers and passive Catholic Priests. It is a colossal clash of opposites that will send shock waves through the centuries.
Indeed, we are still reverberating from this collision, perhaps most especially today.
Christianity Eventually Subdues the Viking Beast
The Catholic priests do suffer for centuries. They are killed, enslaved, and their riches taken by the Vikings for several centuries, but eventually Christianity tames and subdues the Viking beast.
This period of time of Nordic history is beautifully written about by Sigrid Undset in her three part series entitled Kristin Lavransdatter: The Bridal Wreath, The Mistress of Husaby, and The Cross.
This course will focus on the novel "Kristin Lavransdatter", in three volumes 1920-1922, by the Norwegian Catholic writer Sigrid Undset. We will read the novel with reference to Undset's life and other work. "Kristin" is one of the greatest Catholic novels yet written, and it's popularity reignited after its second translation into English by Tiina Nunnally whose edition we will be reading. It's strongly recommended students read as much of the novel ahead of time as they can. The trilogy has nine parts, three per volume, that we will be treating in eight classroom settings. The Nunnally translation is available both in paperback and Kindle.
In pursuit of my interest in all things relating to the history of Northern Europe, and on my wife’s strong recommendation, I read Kristin Lavransdatter, a trilogy of books written by the Norwegian author and Nobel laureate, Sigrid Undset. Comprised of The Bridal Wreath, The Mistress of Husaby, and The Cross, Kristin Lavransdatter is an unusual work of literature. It looks back on the medieval period without the romanticism of many fantasy authors while also avoiding the stark ugliness which characterize many modern “realistic” portrayals of the Middle Ages. In other words, while being a firmly modern writer, she comfortably and capably depicts the time period as it was in accurate detail without feeling the need to push an agenda on the medievals in her portrayal.
If you have not read these stories, I highly recommend them. They honestly portray the positive and negative consequences of this transformation of Nordic culture from mysterious, mythical, pagan beliefs into modern Christian sensibilities and beliefs.
Now my father was a Lutheran minister as was his father and my other grandfather and many of my uncles. Both sides of my family are devout Christian Norwegians. And both sides have done many things that have brought comfort to others who are suffering.
But there is a price for all this goodness. And the price is cutting oneself in half. To be a good Christian, I would be taught early on that I must identify everything bad in me and suppress it. Even better is deny the existence of the beast inside me… the Devil… the very fiend that ancient Vikings clearly knew lived inside of them and called upon to conduct their violent conquests.
And this is a very dangerous thing to do… because if you aren’t the Devil or the dangerous beast… then someone else has to be it because the world is both Good and Bad. Alan Watts calls this duplicity in man’s mind out too.
“Superior virtue is not conscious of itself as virtue, therefore it is virtue. Inferior virtue is conscious of itself as virtue, therefore it is not virtue, it is hooked on being virtuous.”
Alan Watts – The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions
“Inferior virtue can’t let go of virtue, thus not virtue.” — Alan Watts
Watts often says that wars conducted for purely selfish reasons are merciful wars because the raiders want to enjoy the goods of the people they are invading. They want to take their treasures and enjoy their women, and because of this they will not destroy everything.
But wars conducted in the Name of God, or even worse, wars waged by men who claim to be chosen by God and therefore they are waging a righteous war, or even more worse than this, men who believe themselves to a God and they are bringing in a superior, better world, these kind of wars are the most brutal, most merciless, most destructive wars ever conducted by mankind.
When you hear someone invoking the Name of God to legitimize an idea, a cause, a belief, a political party… you should run!
These people are not doing this thing or touting that belief in the Name of God! They are doing this for their own personal Power and Glory!!! They are doing it to get inside your mind! And once inside, the will control you like a hungry Monster!
There have been many monsters like this since the dawning of our gleaming, golden modern age! Monstrous, modern men who have engage in the the most gruesome, heinous Virtue Wars.
All of them have conducted in the name of some God–be it the Holy God Almighty or the God of Ideas (man’s petty, polarizing ideas that they believe will bring glory to the nation, which is really double speak for Power and Glory to themselves). Virtue wars are the bloodiest, most violent, most merciless, most catastrophic wars ever conceived and conducted by mankind.
Each generation of men seems to breed a more hideous monster, and there have been many: Adolf Hitler (Germany 1934-1945), Joseph Stalin (USSR 1924-1953, Idi Amin (Uganda 1971-19790, Pol Pot (Cambodia 1975-1979), Muammar Gaddafi (Libya 1969-2011), Saddam Hussein (Iraq 1979-2003), Benito Mussolini (Italy 1926-1943), and the list goes on and on… to reign terror, destruction, and death on scales never before achieved by one man or one brutal bunch of people.
In some ways, the Vikings were simply more honest about their violence. Today, we glorify their violence while pretending to be Modern, civilized, virtuous beings who know how to make the world a better place.
In fact, they are the only ones who know and they will kill you if you don’t believe them!
This is the world we live in now.
My Dad Was A Northman Too
My dad was a Northman too. He was a civilized one…a man of the cloth…but he had suffered early in life…and he doubted his faith greatly throughout his life, especially as he bore witness to the monstrous things man was doing to his fellow man.
He knew he could not correct the malfunctioning mentally leading to our great destruction as a species, but he did what he could with what he had wherever he was. And he remembered his roots. He knew he was capable of good deeds and bad deeds. Because of this he did not shame and blame others. And because of this, he could truly be with people and comfort them at their times of greatest need and suffering.
I was captivated by another Throughline that aired on January 19, 2023. This episode explores possible Extremist Futures as envisioned by Omar El Akkad in his novel American War.
Omar’s novel is about America’s second Civil War. He imagines 50 years into our future. A time when climate change has turned Florida into an underwater theme park and climate disasters devastate the world. His vision is very similar to mine in my novel Sapience: The Moment Is Now (not yet published).
In American War, the world finally understands that it has to stop burning fossil fuels and bands them–but it’s too little too late. The US is the last to band fossil fuels. All states agree to switch to more sustainable energy except Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. These three states take up arms, deciding they would rather secede than stop burning fossil fuels.
They lose, again, but what follows is a years-long insurgency. This is where his story is mostly centered.
Ignorance
Something Omar says in the beginning of this Throughline needs to be emphasized. He says, “We read to feel into another.”
This is how we come to know and understand each other. A country or a state (I’m thinking of you Florida) that bans books because they might be subversive… God Forbid… they might give children ideas… is a system that seeks to keep its citizens in ignorance.
Break down the word: ig — nor — ance. States and countries that ban books are teaching their people to ignore what they see with their very own eyes.
And, people who are kept in ignorance are a heck of a lot easier to manipulate too!
He also says, “Story is the final act of Resistance!“
Disturbingly Plausible
The New York Time’s describes his novel: “Omar El Akkad’s “American War” is a disturbingly plausible case in point — a tale of a future America torn asunder by its own political and tribal affiliations.“
This is what caught my attention too.
Throughline plays some from the audio book of American War that includes sound effects. Had I not caught the beginning, I might have thought I was listening to real, on-the-ground reporting.
Omar’s story feels real, very real. It feels like it is already happening.
He grounds his story telling by his real life experiences as a boy in Lebanon where he was a witness to the devastation of war and what happens to people in refugee camps.
Omar says, “A society subjected by warfare is akin to moving backwards in time.”
Think of what Putin is doing to his people and to the beautiful people of Ukraine. Every image coming out of his sick ego trip is likened to images from WWI.
The Academy Award nominated movie All Quiet on the Western Front vividly paints the insanity of rich, powerful men who send other men to die for their personal power and glory. In this movie (and of course the book), Paul Bäumer and his classmates are just cannon fodder for a fatherland that has gone mad.
All Quiet on the Western Front | Official Trailer | Netflix
If you are having a hard time remembering the horror and senselessness of death of WWI, then watch All Quiet to remind yourself that quiet means dead. Watch as these young, gifted boys sign up for service and get pumped up by grumpy, old narcissistic men who stuff them full of overly romanticized, patriotic notions of war and how they are defending the fatherland. It’s on Netflix, so you have no excuse.
Euphemistic Fraudulence
Omar describes this souped-up patriotic messaging as euphemistic fraudulence.
This article begins with the college admission scandal that caught up actress Lori Loughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli in acts of fraud to get their children into the best schools.
Robert writes, and this is important:
In an earlier blog post we suggested some reasons, grounded in behavioral ethics, that might help explain why reputable people and loving parents became involved in these frauds. The conformity bias, the self-serving bias, and incrementalism all may have contributed. The evidence disclosed in the indictment offers additional clues.
A euphemism, say’s Webster’s, is “the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant.”
Famed Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura writes of “moral disengagement,” suggesting that people, such as Loughlin and Giannulli, who think of themselves as good people can do something bad so long as they can selectively suspend morality for their activities. One way people do this is by use of euphemisms. Bandura notes:
“Language shapes the perception of events and the thought patterns on which people base many of their actions. The personal and social acceptability of given activities, therefore, can differ markedly depending on what those activities are called. Euphemistic machinations are used widely to detach and depersonalize doers from harmful activities. Cloaking detrimental activities in euphemisms can be a powerful weapon.”
Examples of the “sanitizing and convoluted language” (Gambino) of euphemisms that have helped people make their peace with wrongdoing include the following:
Dead civilians = “collateral damage”
Mass firings = “right-sizing”
Lies = “alternative facts”
Burning down villages = “pacification”
Fraud = “creative accounting”
Genocide = “the final solution”
Empirical studies indicate that “euphemistic labels can psychologically sanitize unethical practices, facilitating our participation in them.” (Moore & Gino).
The World is Either Good or Evil
This is a lie. Every modern human being born today is told this lie.
Omar talks about how this idea is used to twist us into doing all sorts of evil things. It is a notion, an idea, a belief drilled into us since the day we are born until the day we are dead.
It is this very idea that the world can be cleaved into a good side and a bad side that allows us to be manipulated.
I would add it is precisely splitting the world into Good and Bad parts that lets us justify just about any abominable violence we can dream up.
It is also what allows ruthless rulers to turn plain, ordinary, decent human beings into killing machines and monsters.
Ruthless Rulers are already monsters and include men such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Ali Khamenei, Kim Jong-um, Denis Sassou Nguesso, Abdullah Aziz Al Saud, Bashar al-Assad, and there are many more (see the list of Current World Dictators).
We live with these monsters right here, right now on our planet. And they are pounding our world straight back to the Stone Age just as fast as they can.
This is a comprehensive, up-to-date list of the current world dictators and authoritarian regimes. In 2022 there are 57 dictatorships in the world. We define a dictator as the ruler of a land rated “Not Free” by the Freedom House in their annual survey of freedom.
What do you think? Are they winning? The Red countries that is… are there more red countries than yellow or green?
That is exactly what they want you to believe. But, perhaps you are beginning to sense out it is precisely this idea of division that is the problem.
Empathetic Liars
One of Omar’s characters is an empathetic lair. He is the character that goes into the refugee camps and radicalizes the kids there.
Omar says there is no such thing as exotic suffering, but empathetic liars make you believe there is. Empathetic liars parse the fine threads of what we do and what is done to us. Empathetic liars play upon the lack of self-agency in a place like a refugee camp (or one of Putin’s prisons) and use it like a gleaming lure to hook their targets–kids (or Russian prisoners) whom they plan to turn into cannon fodder.
Omar says, “People go to bad place when their self-agency is taken away from them.” And the more damaged a person is, the more their circle of Trust closes in, making them extremely vulnerable to empathetic liars
And that is exactly what autocrats, dictators, and pretty much most of the Republican Party in the United States are doing. Whoever they are…all close ranks around their strong man, hype their followers up on FraudulentEuphemisms, and close the circle of Trust until only one man can be trusted.
And, there sure are a lot of want-a-bee dictators who desire to be the one and only man the entire human race can trust–Putin, Trump, Xi Jinping, Ali Khamenei, Kim Jong-um, Denis Sassou Nguesso, Abdullah Aziz Al Saud, Bashar al-Assad, or pick your poison.
Yes, Omar is very right to envision the coming of America’s Second Civil War! Heck, we might be staring down the path to WWIII.
I think Empathetic Liars is another name for Dark Empaths. Dark Empathy is not a good thing. Dr. Ramani does a very good job in this video explaining why all of us need to be on the look out for Dark Empaths and Empathetic Lairs.
Omar talks about when a group of people believeanything they want to believe is real… you’re living in a very dangerous place and time.
Add the element of violent insurrection being a central part of a country’s narrative, and you have a tinderbox waiting to explode.
He admits he’s been amazed how reality has out did his fiction.
He warns, “There is a particular Force that when it emerges within a group of people, it must be stared down directly.”
I would add that when this Force is encountered: You cannot blink. You cannot turn away. And, if you falter, it will destroy you.
I’m writing about such a force too. I was reminded of a prologue I was playing around with to describe my story. I realize it is exactly what Omar is warning us about.
The Last DJ on Earth | I wrote and read the beginning of this video. My husband plays the Last DJ and my friend Brain (who has since passed) plays the Persuader
Image from: Penguin Random House Audio | “Powerful . . . As haunting a postapocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy [created] in The Road, and as devastating a look as the fallout that national events have on an American family as Philip Roth did in The Plot Against America. . . . Omar El Akkad’s debut novel, American War, is an unlikely mash-up of unsparing war reporting and plot elements familiar to readers of the recent young-adult dystopian series The Hunger Games and Divergent.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
The prosperity gospel is quintessentially an American theology. It is 17th century Puritanism colliding with 19th century New Thought; a spiritual movement that included unconventional and nonconformist thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James.
This strange mix then gets hitched to capitalism with a generous sprinkle of hand raising, hallelujah happiness on top; a highly energetic spiritual movement emerging out of little old Topeka, Kansas, in 1901.
The prosperity gospel makes it alright to be rich. In fact, if you’re not rich, you are probably not a good Christian and probably going to Hell.
“The Lord is my banker; my credit is good”
This is Charles Fillmore’s reinterpretation of Psalm 23.
Fillmore founded Unity in 1889 in Kansas City, Missouri. He wrote, “Unity is a link in the great educational movement inaugurated by Jesus Christ; our objective is to discern the Truth in Christianity and prove it.”
It is one of the many religious movements towards the end of the 1800s coalescing and growing out of the New Thought movement.
Fillmore was known as an American mystic who was renowned for his spiritualist interpretations of Biblical Scripture.
His beliefs paved the way for even shinier and more fervent believers who felt God rewards those who are most deserving and faithful to him with money and wealth.
The Lord is My Banker; My Credit Is Good | Music: Money so Big (Sped Up)| MADAX | [1] Money so Big (Sped Up)
Laws of Prosperity
By the early 1900, the blending of the Puritan work ethic with New Thought was fully fermented into a very bubbly, verifiable, abiding religious zeal that would be enough to put any over-worked, poverty-stricken, overly anxious worker into a state of heavenly glory, at least for a little while, say the typical time of a religious revival promising wealth and prosperity to all of God’s law-abiding, hardworking sheep (Christian-speak for people of faith).
With earthquake-like economic disruptions caused by the Industrial Revolution, this refreshingly fervent religious pastime came just in time for greedy corporate capitalists who needed people to work hard, really hard, so they could make more money.
Add the Holy Fire of the Pentecostal church that believes spiritual gifts are the miraculous ways God works in the world today, and the bomb fire of the Prosperity Gospel Movement ignites into a big and growing spiritual fire of everlasting glory–Hallelujah…praise the Lord, our savior Jesus Christ!
Never mind about deep structural inequalities built into capitalistic systems that are designed to elevate and reward individuals who hold the reigns of power while holding down and keeping poor people who are not born into such privilege.
Russell Conwell and other very charismatic ministers (such as Kenneth Hagin, Ken Copeland, Oral Roberts, and Jim Bakker) blame poverty on an individual’s failure to believe hard enough or to be good enough people who deserve to be rich or to not giving enough of what little money they have to the preacher man.
The idea that you have to give money to get money is a fundamental message preached in the Prosperity Gospel like a little money seed that might grow into a great big money tree one day.
Trumpism Is the Prosperity Gospel Running Wild in American Politics
Since its beginnings in the early 1800s, the Prosperity Gospel has ebbed and flowed. It grew rampantly in the 1900s, then waned during the WW I and II years. It rallied again during the postwar boom of the 1950s, then waned only to return bigger and better than before with the big hair days of the ostentatious 80s.
The mega fall of mega church tele-evangelical preachers and power couples such as Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye or Becki and Jerry Falwell Jr. might have hinted at an incredible reservoir of hypocrisy bubbling underneath all the pretty God Loves You, hallelujahs, and Praise the Lord, but it wasn’t enough to inoculate the masses from the powerfully, tempting, very yummy Gospel of Prosperity.
THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE | Official Trailer | Searchlight Pictures — Story of the rise and fall of the Bakkers during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s
Pool Boy Shares Details of Affair With Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Wife — The pool boy whose affair with Jerry Falwell Jr.’s wife brought down an evangelical dynasty is telling his story in an upcoming documentary called “God Forbid.” Giancarlo Granda was working as a pool boy at the Fontainebleau Hotel in 2012 when he says Becki Falwell began flirting with him. In his new book about the eight-year relationship, he described the bizarre first encounter in a hotel room with Jerry Falwell Jr. watching them. Granda now says he regrets the affair.
Enter televangelist Joel Scott Osteen and his non-denominational very charismatic brand of christianity to save the day. He offers 40 powerful promises right from the mouth of God that he, little old Joel Osteen, can let you in on…if you buy his book, believe hard enough, and oh yeah, donated to his mega church in Lakewood, FL.
Jumping into the very big wake being made by Osteen and other mega-ministers who shepherd their ever growing flock of faithful followers with bigger, badder, ever better televangelism programming is the man with the yellow hair and permanent orange tan… and oh yeah, about half of the Republican Party who want to get in on all that fun and money!
And WOW-WE! Look how the Repubs are battling it out for who gets to have the biggest slice of followers! Looks like running down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring on Trump’s orange hand after January 6, 2021 wasn’t enough to save you Kevin. God isn’t shining his spiritual gifts of prosperity on you today Kevin–that’s for darn sure!
NBC: For the first time in 100 years, Republicans have failed to elect a Speaker of the House after GOP leader Kevin McCarthy fell short of the 218 votes needed to secure the leadership position.
But, I digress, let’s get back to Trump who makes a pretty simple political pitch that Jonathan Last sums up nicely in a piece he wrote after Trump whipped out a front page story about himself on February 6, 2020 at the 69th annual National Prayer Breakfast: Acquitted.
Trump’s simple pitch is this:
"God wants you to have what you want! I should know, because I have it! Come get yours too, for a small contribution!"
Ignorance Is A Choice | Music: Ignorance (Deluxe Version) | The Weather Station | [3] Tried to Tell You 3:39
It might be interesting to note that at this time, while Trump was at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 6, 2020, COVID-19 is already spreading in the United States.
Trump says nothing about COVID. Days and weeks after the prayer breakfast, Trump continues to gloat about his Acquittal but still fails to say much of anything about COVID.
He says nothing despite advisors warning him in December 2019 and in January 2020 and February and March of 2020 that COVID is coming!
Bob Woodward interviewed Trump during this time for his book Rage. Woodward repeatedly asked Trump about his response to COVID. Trump repeatedly played it down saying he didn’t want to cause a panic.
Rather than cause a panic, Trump turned commonsense ways of staying safe, such as wearing a mask, into a culture war.
The U.S. has one of the highest death rates from COVID since the beginning of the pandemic in 2019 and 2020. The vast majority of deaths occurred in 2020 while Trump was President and playing it down so he might get re-elected as President so he could make more money!
Personally, this doesn’t sound like a very good way to enjoy the fruits of the New Prosperity Gospel that Trump touts. Dying seems the very opposite of enjoying prosperity.
Wrapped & Tied in Knots of Powerful Positive Thoughts
Tara Isabella Burton sums it all up very well in her 2017 article published in VOX.
It’s difficult to say that the prosperity gospel itself led to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Again, only 17 percent of American Christians identify with it explicitly. It’s far more true, however, to say that the same cultural forces that led to the prosperity gospel’s proliferation in America — individualism, an affinity for ostentatious and charismatic leaders, the Protestant work ethic, and a cultural obsession with the power of “positive thinking” — shape how we, as a nation, approach politics.
Also see, Throughline’s very excellent episode, Capitalism: God Wants You To Be Rich, which aired July 8, 2021. Towards the end of this episode, they play a soundbite from an archived recording from a Trump rally.
TRUMP: You know, I said the other day - 'cause so many people, they carry around "The Art Of The Deal" because they're begging. They're begging their politicians, please, please read "The Art Of The Deal" when you negotiate with China and with Japan or with Mexico and with Vietnam.
One of the speakers in this episode unpacks what Trump is plugging into here.
BUTLER: And I think this is crucial for right now. It flows into a kind of Christian nationalism. It means that God is especially favoring, you know, the nation as a special place. And so the people who live in it, who follow after this particular kind of thing, are going to be more blessed than anybody else in the world.
And another speaker unpacks it a little further.
BOWLER: I think people crave - even if they might hate it, they crave a gospel where the responsibility always falls back on them. Because it's always the one thing we can control is ourselves. So if you preach an empowered individualism, you've got a gospel you can believe in, which is always us.
The prosperity gospel goes by many names: Word of Faith, Health and Wealth, Name It and Claim It. This “different gospel” teaches that God provides rewards, including personal happiness, financial wealth and physical health, for believers who have sufficient faith. Prosperity theology developed in America in the last century and has been called a “baptized form of capitalism.”
The preachers associated with the movement — including Kenneth Copeland, Joel Osteen, and Creflo Dollar — have some of the largest congregations and best-selling books in the country, and they host television programs that seem to air at all hours of the night (and are some of the most-watched programming around the world).
1. John 10:10 — “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
The signature verse of the prosperity gospel, John 10:10 is used to suggest that God loves his followers and wants them to have every good thing. But interpreting this verse to promise physical gain neglects the depth suggested by its context.
The preceding verses illustrate the parable of the sheep and their good shepherd, Jesus, who calls them by name. The sheep know the good shepherd’s voice and follow. Verse 10 contrasts Jesus with false shepherds who steal and kill and destroy. The abundance of life suggested here has to do with knowing and being known by Jesus, not material things. The Tyndale Commentary explains, “He does not offer them an extension of physical life nor an increase of material possessions, but the possibility, nay the certainty, of a life lived as a higher level of obedience to God’s will and reflecting his glory.”
2. James 4:2 — “You do not have because you do not ask God.”
This verse is used to bolster the “name it and claim it” part of the prosperity gospel — if you don’t “have,” it’s because you haven’t prayed enough. This interpretation ignores the verse that follows, in which James says, “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
Creflo Dollar says this of prayer: “When we pray, believing that we have already received what we are praying, God has no choice but to make our prayers come to pass.”
While prayer (including intercessory prayer) is crucial to the life of a Christian, using it to force God into appeasing the believer’s desires also goes against the very prayer Jesus prayed on the eve of his crucifixion: “Yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42
The last chapter of Maria’s book is: Why Fascism Is Winning and its subtitle is Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate. She is the recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for her courage and work standing up to President Duterte, 16th President of the Philippines who was elected to the role of the presidency on June 30, 2016 (exactly 6 months after Trump did the same thing in the United States).
Both men went to work attacking the Press. Both men claimed they, and they alone, knew what is right and wrong. Both men labeled any coverage from the press that they didn’t like as Fake News, Unreliable, Unprofessional, Untrue. Both men worked furiously to annihilate truth, facts, and reality. They knew divided we fall!
To some extend, both men succeeded beyond their wildest mad fantasies!
Duterte’s Mad War
Duterte went to war, he said, to reduce ‘crime, corruption, and illegal drug trade‘. Many cheered. In reality, he would leave a brutal, bloody legacy of dead. Official numbers account that 6,248 people were killed, but human rights groups say the number is much higher, as high as 30,000 people.
Image (GETTY) from BBC article: Mr Duterte’s war on drugs has claimed an uncounted number of victims
Investigations show many victims of Duterte’s war on drugs were his opponents, leftists, drug users (who needed treatment, not a bullet), and some dealers. The UN has implicated Duterte in more than 1,000 killings and disappearances of people. Police whistle blowers have told how they planted guns and drugs on these victims to frame them as involved in the drug trade. For more on these stats, please see the BBC’s June 30 article: The bloody legacy of Rodrigo Duterte.
Trump’s Mad Dash to Dictatorhood
Trump’s 4-year term is just as distributing. He knew COVID-19 did not bode well to be elected for a second term. So when the virus arrived in the United States, Trump went into deny, distort, and distract mode.
He continually played down how deadly the virus was and mocked people who wore masks. This turned a cheap, easy, commonsense public health approach of keeping people safe into a culture war.
Veteran Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward on Monday called the former President Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic a “crime” that killed more than 1 million people.
The Hill reports Woodward said: “I call it a crime, not telling the people that he had been warned that — by his national security advisers in the most vivid way, which is outlined in these tapes, the interviews with them, where they are telling him.”
This is the reason why Woodward released the tapes he recorded with Trump early in 2020 as he interviewed him for his books Rageand Peril; earlier, he wrote Fear.
As of November 23, 2022, over 1 million US citizens have died of COVID; the vast majority of these deaths occurring while Trump held office before a vaccine was available. Trump crippled the CDC and turned public health guidance into a political weapon.
I haven’t even gotten into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. You can read all about this in my blogs When Do We Get To Use Violence? and Free to Choose.
This is a real time snap shot of COVID cases in the world as of 12/1/2022, 1:20 PM | John Hopkins COVID Tracker
There Is A Big Yang to Pay When Facts Fall Prey to AuthoritarianDisinformation Campaigns
Since we are on the topic of global pandemic, let’s take a look at President Xi Jinping. He has recently been elected to a historical third term. This of course is code for President for Life.
He has cozied up to Putin, imprisoned Chinese Wiegers, carried out a brutal crackdown on democracy protesters in Hong Kong, and most recently was posturing in a tense standoffs about the fate of Taiwan. Many think Taiwan could be the next Ukraine as XI Jinping lines up his ducks to make Taiwan China again.
But real life, especially nasty little viruses, don’t always go along with the next chapter of the Dictator’s Playbook. President Xi Jinping took a hardline approach to COVID when it first emerged in Wuhan, China.
Zero COVID policy worked at first and it became the main strategy of Xi. Local authorities eager to prove how loyal they are to Xi have implemented extreme lock down measures, including locking people inside their homes and whole apartment complexes.
Xi has bragged about how effective China’s Zero COVID policy has worked, while the rest of the world suffered. He didn’t put much effort into vaccination efforts other than insisting China make its own vaccine while claiming Western-made vaccine like Pfizer or Moderna would be ineffective.
“China would never do something crazy like use a COVID-19 vaccine made in the West! Heck, the Western World is falling apart… look at what happened at the US Capitol!“
Well, Xi is right about the US Capitol. We have lost our collective mind, but it is not because we have a free society and democracy (that is what he and his flying monkeys blameall the evil on).
The reason we are losing our collective mind is because our trust landscape is being destroyed by people who want to be just like him–a bully and a dictator—and digital clones, keep reading! But when you tell lies and spread disinformation to prop up your authoritarian ambitions, they tend to come back and bite you in the butt. And that is what is happening in China now.
CNN reported more than 17 protests occurring all over China, some very bloody. The deaths of people trapped inside their high rise apartment because the fire escapes had been locked due to Zero COVID lockdown measures ignited these protests but anger has been building all over China after 3 years of overzealous lockdowns. These measures are killing people too. Some have not been able to get medical care for heart attacks or other life threatening health conditions, others have committed suicide, all locked down have complained about getting rotten and substandard food or no food. This has lasted for months at a time.
‘Unbelievable scenes’ in China as protesters speak out against zero-Covid policy
Xi put himself into this very small box.
The protests are a real threat to his authority, but so too is China’s failure to create a vaccine that works. Virologists have compared China’s vaccine to Pfizer and Moderna and found it is not as effective.
Compounding the limited effect of China’s vaccine, China just has not put as much effort into vaccinating its population, relying instead on enforcing its Zero COVID policies with upmost brutalities. The result is the vast majority of China’s population are under vaccinated or not vaccinated. Nor do many individuals have immunity from a previous infection compared to the overall population.
If they let up on Zero COVID without vaccinating their population with a vaccine that works, COVID will roar through its population killing millions and while it does, it will be mutating and this could cause a BIG problem for the rest of the world, again.
If Xi relents and allows Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to be used in China, he reveals his lies about Western democracies to his people and he looks weak.
Oh what a sticky misinformation landscape Xi has created for himself!
If Disinformation Doesn’t Work, Create A Scapegoat and Attack It
This is what Putin is doing now in Russia. He is losing the war in Ukraine. He looks weak and stupid. He needs a good distraction so his citizens don’t rise up against him and who knows, perhaps they castrate the man.
After all, it is his actions, and his actions alone, that have cut the Russian people off from the rest of the world–no Facebook, no Twitter, no vacations to Paris or Italy, no McDonalds–all because of his war with Ukraine.
So what does Putin do? Putin makes being gay illegal in Russia. He calls it a sickness of democracy and the Western World. He claims Russians don’t have gay people.
Come on Putin… now you look even more stupid than before. To read more about Putin and his flying monkeys, see Ukraine Letters.
Scapgoat from January 2021 blog
The Dictator’s Playbook
Dictators around the world and throughout history use the same tactics. They attack the truth, exaggerate threats to make people afraid, and enflame emotions to herd as many people as possible under their make-believe umbrella constructed out of their annoying, droning chant: “I and I alone can fix it.”
That is the secret spell of a dictator. This stupid chant is his top-secret, classified magic potion. This is what every dictator throughout time has ever used to manipulate the masses. It is called ignorance dust. It is what evil fairies use to make their mischief.
My drawing from April 2021 blog
What they don’t say out loud is …they broke it and they made up the boogeyman who you are now afraid of!
Dictators systematically claim they represent truth, decency, and dignity while fabricating facts, fiends, and fantasies about their own greatness.
Dictators pit people against each other, then they sit and watch the carnage on TV.
1. Expand your power base through nepotism and corruption.
2. Instigate a monopoly on the use of force to curb public protest.
3. Curry favour by providing public goods efficiently and generously.
4. Get rid of your political enemies.
5. Create and defeat a common enemy.
6. Accumulate power by manipulating the hearts and minds of your citizens.
7. Create an ideology to justify an exalted position.
You should read the article because Mark gives some very lively examples.
So, Just How Do You Stand Up to a Dictator?
Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate
This brings us back to Maria Ressa. She stood up to Rodrigo Duterte and to Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook nightmare. In an interview with Dave Davies on FreshAir she said:
I wasn't the only one under attack in Rappler. And Rappler is about a hundred people. We're - we just became - we hit 10 years. We're 10 years old January this year. So my gosh, we're going to be 11 by January next year. But it's 63% women. And our median age is 23 years old. So when our younger reporters came under attack, I became far more protective of our team.
And within a short period of time, we increased our security six times, seven times, because at some point it became very clear that online violence is real-world violence. And, you know, in your introduction, you talked about the attacks of President Duterte and Facebook. I think, by 2016, I was calling for an end to impunity, impunity of Rodrigo Duterte and this brutal drug war and impunity of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. They go hand in hand. One could not have happened without the other.
DAVIES: When you started Rappler, this news service, one of the things you note is that the population of the Philippines had already become remarkably attached to digital technology. Different from a lot of places in that way, wasn’t it?
RESSA: Yeah. Look, we were the texting capital of the world before this, the SMS capital of the world. And then we became known as the social media capital of the world. And by January 2021, for six years in a row, Filipinos spent the most time online and on social media globally. A hundred percent of Filipinos on the internet today are on Facebook. Facebook literally is our internet.
DAVIES : I mean, it seems that what you were discovering was that social media platforms, like Facebook, have discovered that people respond to sharply emotional messages. And so the algorithms give them more of that – anger, hatred, resentment – which, in turn, brings more engagement, which is what their economic model is based on. And it – you observed that this was allowing people who were telling lies that were destructive and poisonous to democracy to spread faster than truth.
The interesting thing is that you actually had conversations with Facebook executives about this, right? You met with a bunch of them. Did they get it? What did they say?
RESSA: Rappler was essentially an alpha partner of Facebook. We knew Facebook in the Philippines better than Facebook did. And I went to them with the data, hoping that they would give me more data and fix it. I thought it would be an easy fix 'cause in 2016, it was alarming to see this kind of, you know, incitement of hate. In 2017, I was one of about a dozen startup founders that Mark Zuckerberg met with. And, you know, I was trying to get him to come to the Philippines to see how powerful Facebook was. And at that point, 97% of Filipinos were there. And that's what I told him. I said, you know, you really have to come 'cause 97% of Filipinos on the internet are on Facebook. So he started frowning. And I thought, OK, I must have been a little too pushy. And then, he looked at me. And he said, Maria, where are the other 3%?
DAVIES: (Laughter).
RESSA: I think that was the problem, right? They were so focused on market share, their profits, their goal for the business, that they forgot to look at the social harms. I also don't think it's a coincidence that they do not tell the difference between fact and fiction. It doesn't have any business or economic benefits to doing that. So at this point, you don't even have facts. So what did they do? They outsourced it. They gave - it became a fact-checking network that was doing this. But it was never integral to the product by design. Social media divides and radicalizes, and this is what we're seeing in the world today.
DAVIES: You write that, at one point, Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to start to really focus on weeding out offensive content. And you said, you’re missing the point. It’s – the problem isn’t content; it’s distribution. What did you mean?
RESSA: Because so much of the debate centers on content when that isn't the problem. Doesn't matter if your crazy neighbor talks about a conspiracy theory. You'll still like your crazy neighbor, and you listen. But it becomes different when that's the front page of your town newspaper. Imagine, the crazy things now make it to the front page. That is what goes viral. And that's the world we live in.Doesn't matter if it's real or not as long as it captures your attention. So it is your amygdala that decides, right? If you get angry, you'll share it.
And this is the - I mean, look, there is a - E.O. Wilson, who studied emergent behavior in ants, said that our greatest crisis that we face is our Paleolithic emotions, our medieval institutions, and our godlike technology. That godlike technology manipulated us to the point that the very systems of democracy that gave rise to this is now at the verge of failure.
DAVIES: You know, at the end of the book, you kind of ask the big question, which is, what do we do about this? I mean, now that you’ve – it’s apparent how harmful and poisonous this can be for democratic institutions. You know, in the United States, I mean, tens of millions of people believe made-up stories about a stolen election despite plenty of fact-checking that has been published debunking a lot of these stories. You think you have some strategies that might be effective? I mean, this is a little complicated, but share some of these ideas with us.
RESSA: In the short term, we decided, as we were walking into our presidential elections, that we would try to figure out what a whole-of-society approach to civic engagement could look like. And we created a four-layer, facts-first pyramid - four different layers. The bottom layer are 16 news organizations - the first time news groups worked together. You know, I've been trying since 2016, but we finally all work together. And that is the supply of fact checks.
But as you know, fact checks are really boring. They don't get wide distribution on social media. So that leads to the second layer. It's called the mesh - 115, 116 different civil society groups - NGOs, human rights organizations, climate change groups were there - business, the church. The Philippines is Asia's largest Roman Catholic nation. And the goal of the mesh layer is to share those boring fact checks, but to add emotion because emotion is what moves it through distribution. And what we found when we did that was that inspiration spreads as far as anger. The third layer are academic institutions. Eight of them total that took the data from the first two and every week told Filipinos how we were being manipulated, who was winning, who was losing, what were the media narratives being seeded? And then finally, the last layer, layer four, is rule of law. It's legal organizations from the left to the right in the Philippines, from the free legal group to the integrated bar of the Philippines to the Philippine Bar Association.
They filed, in less than three months, more than 21 cases, tactical and strategic, that helped protect the three layers. It worked. We were able to - it was the most successful attempt to try to take over the center of our information ecosystem. We mapped it. But more than that, within two weeks of launching this facts-first pyramid, the Philippine government - the office of the solicitor general filed a petition at the supreme court against Rappler and our commission on elections, because we were working with them at that point. They said that fact-checking is prior restraint. They tried to stop us from fact-checking. It almost made me laugh.
DAVIES: To kind of summarize here, it sounds like what you’re proposing is that news organizations need to overcome some of their competitive instincts and work together when there is important fact-checking to be done, connect them to other organizations in a way that puts energy and emotion into it and get that out there.
RESSA: Think about it like this. Like, if you don't have integrity of facts, you cannot have integrity of elections. And ultimately, what that means is that these elections will be swayed by information warfare. I mean, you know, it's funny. Americans actually look at the midterms. And they say, well, it wasn't as bad as it could be.Death by a thousand cuts - it's still bad. And if we follow, you know, what - the trend that we're seeing, if nothing significant changes in our information ecosystem, in the way we deliver the news, we will elect more illiberal leaders democratically in 2023, in 2024.
And what they do is they crumble institutions of democracy in their own countries, like you've seen in mine.But they do more than that. They ally together globally. And what they do is, at a certain point, the geopolitical power shift globally will change.Democracy will die. That point is 2024. We must figure out what civic engagement [looks like and], what we do as citizens today, to reclaim, [and] to make sure democracy survives.
Surveillance capitalism
In Maria Ressa’s interview on 1A, she explained surveillance capitalism and how it enabled want-a-be dictators like Duterte and Trump to actually get elected in Free and Fair elections. Something she told Jen would never have happened pre-Facebook (and other social media era).
Here is how she explains it:
technology has degraded facts and broken our societies. I became a journalist because I believe that information is power - it’s how we get justice. The death of democracy began when journalists lost our gatekeeping powers to the technology platforms that not only abdicated responsibility for protecting us ... but also destroyed democracy by destroying the facts ... for immense profit.
Like the age of industrialization, there’s a new economic model that brought new harms, a model Shoshana Zuboff called surveillance capitalism - when our atomized personal experiences are collected by machine learning, organized by artificial intelligence - extracting our private lives for outsized corporate gain. Highly profitable micro-targeting operations are engineered to structurally undermine human will - a behavior modification system in which we are Pavlov’s dogs, experimented on in real time with disastrous consequences. This is happening to you - to all of us around the world.
Engagement based metrics of these American tech companies mean that the incentive structure of the algorithms, which is just their opinion in code implemented at a scale that we could never have imagined, is insidiously shaping our future by encouraging the worst of human behavior. Studies have shown that lies laced with anger and hate spread faster and further than facts.
Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without these, we have no shared reality, no rule of law, no democracy.
In my upcoming book, the prologue I submitted last year began with the splintering of reality in Crimea in 2014. I had to revise that when Russia invaded Ukraine using the same narratives seeded then. Would that have happened if the platforms had acted 8 years ago? That is the true cost for the world.
Now these networks form a global nervous system of toxic sludge partly fueled by geopolitical power play. In 2018, we connected the information operations in the Philippines with Russian disinformation networks through websites in Canada. In 2020, Facebook took down information operations from China that were creating fake accounts for the US elections, polishing the image of the Marcoses, campaigning for Duterte’s daughter, and attacking me and Rappler. In 2021, the US and the EU called out China and Russia for Covid-19 disinformation.
We are all connected.
To read more on how to tackle this huge problem that the whole world faces, a psychological-social virus just as deadly as the Coronavirus, see her speech: The Assault on Freedom of Expression. It is jaw dropping.
No one can afford to sit on the sidelines and watch how this all plays out. Every human being alive right now has a choice to act or watch democracy fall. And if the choice is to watch, you will also watch the world fall over the Climate Cliff.
You (reading this right now)… you will be alive to watch this all happen. It is happening right now and it is going to happen faster than anyone has previously predicated.
If we don’t save democracies, we will never get around to collaboratinglike we have never collaborated before as a global species to solve the looming climate crises bearing down on all of us right now. These climate crises are going to push the entire human race over the Climate Cliff.
It is time to Wake Up!
And Ron DeSantis (another want-a-be dictator), go buy yourself a mask, fins, and snorkel because if Florida is where Woke Goes to Die…well, Florida ain’t going to be around after Earth’s glaciers melt… and it’s going to happen much faster than the Woke People you disparage are telling you it will happen!
What will you say to your children and grandchildren 50 years from now when there are no more democratic countries and we fail to act on Climate Change?
What will you tell them when you did not try to stop the Putins, the Xis, the Trumps (and his flying monkeys), and the rigid old men in Iran persecuting and killing their young people?
Archetypal Animation for Ukraine Letters | March 2022
And old men of Iran, for what? What are you killing your young people for… a strand of hair sticking out from a veil?! Come on you stupid old men… what are you going to do? Kill every young person in your country? Yes, probably you will… the ouroboros is the symbol for rigid old men clinging to their dictatorships.
And the North Koreas…well, Kim Jong Un is sitting pretty these days not collaborating with anybody not even his fellow dictators and firing off his rockets… he is the ultimate symbol for a manly male, a tough pluck... a virile coward if I ever saw one. Someone has to enjoy all the spoils he directs only to him and his loyal supporters.
Maria Ressa says we are all living in the upside-down now. Yes, the very same weird world as depicted in Stranger Things. In this world, only the ruthless get to relax in luxury. Everyone else suffers unbelievable poverty, abuse, and gets crushed under super surveillance systems created by dictators afraid of losing power.
We may be wise enough to know that Facebook is tracking us using super surveillance systems and this is pretty bad… thisis where we are now. We all exist in a world of digital clones that are used against us to make huge profits for the ridiculously rich people of the world (think Elon Musk— you can be a corporate dictator too!). These are nasty little things corporations and social media platforms use to make more money by tearing truth, facts, and reality into tiny shreds. Read Maria’s book!
But the next step is not so very far away in our collective global future. The people fighting for their very lives in Ukraine RIGHT NOW know this! They know Putin will not stop if he wins Ukraine. No strongmen, no dictator, no authoritarian is ever satisfied with what they have. They always want more. That is their purpose in life. They have made themselves into monsters and the only thing they can do is devour the entire world. There are a lot of monsters alive RIGHT NOW trying to do this very thing.
One of the images used in Feature Archetypal Animation from November 23, 2022 | The Monsters We Make
The next step Maria Ressa is very clear about is the fall of democracies around the world and the rise of dictatorships ruled by the ruthless. I believe her. And guess what? There is not much room at the top. What all ruthless rulers eventually do if they last long enough is turn on the very people who put them in power. Think about it. Ruthless rulers always need a foil,a ploy, an enemy, a scapegoat. Once they kill all the obvious people, they will start in on their loyal base of followers, the very people they put to sleep using their maniacal evil fairy dust:ignorance.
Archetypal Animation for When Do We Get to Use Violence | January 2022 blog
This is happening NOW on our watch!
How will you explain this to your children?
How will you explain food shortages, water shortages, raging floods and fires, sunken cities, more global pandemics, and governments that won’t even allow you to hold up a blank sheet of paper to protest not being able to protest for your most basic human needs and rights?
I just finished watching the first season of Apple’s Original TV series Foundation based on Isaac Asimov’s book series by the same name. I was especially interested in how Asimov deals with the inner workings of a highly advanced technology-based empire spanning the entire galaxy. This Empire must deal with all the peculiarities that make life so interesting and precarious on Earth, except it manages hundreds of thousands of planets that are spread light years apart from each other. It’s an Empire whose human descendants don’t remember where they came from, which of course is Earth.
Some unexpected things happen to Gaal on Trantor. People in the galaxy call this planet the machine planet. It is where spectacular special effects occur. Apple won a Golden Globe (or something like that) for the special effects in this first episode, called TheEmperor’s Peace.
Home of the Empire
Trantor is also the planet where the Empire is based. It looks like a machine from space because its needs a massive amount of infrastructure to run and rule an entire galaxy full of people who are constantly getting into conflicts and warring with each other. That’s an Empire’s job–right?–to run and rule the people of its realm fairly and justly and to keep the peace?
“No,” you say?
Well, you are right…most empires, including future highly technical ones, tend to do a pretty crappy job of ruling their territories and people. Disparities tend to develop between those with power and those who supply the power to run the empire. For instance, everyone in Trantor lives in the machine environment that goes 100 levels underground. The exception is the people living at the Imperial Palace. Here it is green and lush and luxurious. That’s one obvious inequity. There are many more and there are various rebellions against each one, all at a different stage of rebellion against the Empire.
This is what Hari is trying to warn the Empire about. There is a looming disaster coming that is going to crush everything. The Empire will fall and humanity, what is left of it, will plunge into 30,000 years of primitive darkness unless…
It’s the same problem the Lorax had with the Once-ler.
Empires often resort to use of excessive force to put down resistances. They don’t want to look weak! They also tend to think they know everything, and thus different points of view such as Hari’s are viewed as threatening and something to be exterminated. Rules and laws mainly serve as a pretexts for violence and use of deadly force to control the masses. And then wait until you see how this Empire deals with the rather awkward process of succession. Changing from one ruler to another ruler is always a rather fragile and weak time for empires. Researching Ruthless Rulers for my book, ancient Rome was a viper’s nest around issues of succession.
Critique About Series
I read criticism from one source that after the first episode, the Apple TV series veers far from Isaac Asimov original novels. Apple has Asimov’s daughter consulting on the script and in production. And as for veering from the storyline of the books, these critics simply don’t have anything else to criticize. Of course a TV series or movie is going to veer from the original written work, film is a completely different story telling device. A filmed telling of this vastly complex world is necessarily very different than a written telling of it… full stop.
Female Cast and Characters
I think Apple hits it out of the ball park with the female leads! They are impressive.
Lou Llobell plays Gaal Dornick. I couldn’t find much on Lou, but I sure want to see more of her. She is so feisty, intelligent, instinctive, and deeply intuitive–she far surpasses her male counter leads.
Leah Harvey plays Salvor Hardin, the Warden on Terminus. I didn’t find much on her either, but she knocks it out of the ball park and beyond in this role. She too is feisty, tough, intelligent, instinctive, curious, protective, and deeply intuitive. She also far surpasses her male leads…though I do admit, I have a serious crush on her lover, Hugo.
Salvor Hardin and the Huntress behind her
Laura Brin plays Demerzel. She is the last of her kind after the Robot Wars. She serves as Minister to Emperor Cleon. She is one powerful mix of Deanna Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation; 7 or 9 from Star Trek: Voyager; and Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones. She knows how to handle Cleon’s mercurial moods.
T’Nia Miller plays the religious leader Zephyr Halima who is from Mirrus Twelve. She is positioning herself to be the next Proxima; the head of a mother worshipping religion dedicated to the Three Goddesses–Maiden, Mother, and Crone. She is a stunning and mighty woman. I would follow her.
Zephyr Halima Greeting Empire
Kubbra Sait plays the Grand Huntress from Anacreon who has a big grudge against the Empire. She is badass, fast, cunning, and beautiful in a terrifying way.
Male Cast and Characters
The male cast members are great too. They include:
Jared Harris plays Hari Seldon, very convincingly. He is a professor, mathematician, and creator of psychohistory algorithmic science. Basically, your good old troubler maker for the Empire. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? You’re going to have to watch to find out.
Lee Pace plays Brother Day. I hated this character at first, then I begin to like him. Oh yeah, he played Elvenking in the Hobbit too
Cassian Bilton plays Brother Dawn. He is less well known, but his performance is right up there with the women, especially when he is wrestling with the more feminine parts of himself.
Terrence Mann plays Brother Dusk powerfully. I liked him best first, then began to hate him.
Alfred Enoch plays Raych Seldon, Hari’s adopted son. He is awesome and deeply complex character shrouded in mysteries.
There are plenty more amazing characters; after all, this empire needs to populate an entire galaxy with humans!
One Shadow
I was sad to read Josh Friedman left as a key writer earlier in the series. He has written and produced blockbusters such as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, Terminator: Dark Fate, and Avatar: The Way of Water. Wiki says he left due to creative difference with the network over radical difference in vision. I wish I knew more about what these were. He says he was pressured to leave. Several cast and crew left with him. This is a shadow on what I otherwise think is a TV series that is well worth watching and has done a tremendous job in making the cast diverse and reflective of many different skin tones, ideologies, and everything else we humans use to divide ourselves from one another.
Music Feature Archetypal Animation
Music: Foundation: Season 1 (Apple TV+ Original Series Soundtrack) by Bear McCreary [1] Foundation Main Title 1:27
Continuing with the theme of empires, there is a movie worth watching called Waiting for Barbarians (2019). It is based on a novel by the same name written by J. M. Coetzee and published in 1980. This story takes a piercing view into the bureaucratic nature of empires, particularly the warring aspect of them.
The movie begins in a lowly desert outpost on the frontiers of an unnamed Empire, but I can hazard a few guesses. It is run by a Magistrate (played by Mark Rylance) who is humble, curious about ancient artifacts, and does a very good job of maintaining the peace. Mostly he leaves the native people alone, listens, and looks for ancient treasures as he tries to understand what might have existed there before.
Then, Colonel Joll (played by Johnny Depp) arrives wearing his sunglasses!
The sunglasses tell you everything you need to know about him. By the end of the movie, you realize he’s the barbarian.
