BULLIES
Should what happened on Saturday the second of March, 2025 in Washington surprise us? Not at all. Whatever vile policies, what ever horrid hatreds the lost-leaders of the Free World can imagine are in the ambit of their actions.
Most of the ideas and actions to injure society in favour or the ultra-rich arose in the proto-fascist ideals of Neoliberalism. These began to infiltrate the US and UK governments under Reagan and Thatcher. I was able to predict this turn towards oligarchic fascism in the US because they have revealed their hidden pro-fascist agenda in many key moments of their evolving Neoliberal’s policies.
In this world of hunger, illness, climate change, wars, racism and private hatreds and violence we need a moral reset. We need to take the wealth of the earth out of the hands of the Neo-liberal’s ultra rich proto-fascists. It is we the people who discover, mine, transport, turn into machinery that which makes other machinery that makes consumer goods; it is we who drive the trains, fly the planes, grow the food and provide safety and care, all of which creates our world.
The wealthy oligarchs have their signatures on our wealth; we have our sweat in that same wealth. Our politicians are their puppets….to humanise capitalism and democracy we need a new world order, in the first place based in kindness. The first question in all decision and policy making must be ‘how do we help others rather than ‘what’s the bottom line’? This requires a huge reset of our moral compass.
How can we not be disgusted by the now lost- leaders of the Free World?
They who meander down rutted lanes of hatred carrying cartloads of narcissism, psychopathologies and murderous intent.
They have shown themselves to be emotionally illiterate liars, fantasists, cowardly and bullying. Sadly there is no rational way to deal with irrationality. It is for me, stomach-churning, disgusting and reminded me of the following.
I was walking down a street in Manhattan’s Little Italy on a summer’s late afternoon. The Vietnam War was raging, the Civil Rights movement was struggling and I was then a young man with slightly long hair. No, never a Hippie, more ‘rebel searching for a cause’ and permanently angry with the disappointing racist war-mongering country I lived in.
Suddenly I was surrounded by a group of eight teenagers who began to insult me, to swear at me, and then to push me around. I looked over their heads and saw an old man leaning against a wall, smoking. I shouted to him, “is this what you let your kids do.” Impassively, he tapped his cigarette, breaking the long ash into the gutter, but otherwise didn’t respond. One of the kids hit me in the stomach from my right while a red haired kid (yes a red-haired Italian kid) hit me in the jaw from the left. I dropped to my knees, stunned. Something stirred in me: the many times my brother had beaten me, the whole history of haunted and hunted Jews, the almost moral disdain I felt about cowards. Flushed by adrenaline, I pushed my way up onto unsteady legs. Understanding that Red was the gang leader, all my belief in non-violence, all my desire to never hurt anyone disappeared. I twisted my body from waist to shoulder back and around to my right, dug my right heal into the cement and swung around to the left with my arm flexed and my fist flattened and tightened. I aimed for and connected to Red’s left cheek bone. He sank down, as surprised as he was stunned. The others were shocked. Their circle cracked open, they backed away from me not knowing how to respond. Head bully, their leader, their instigator of evil was down. I scanned them with what may have seemed a vengeful expression and simply shoved my way out of the circle.
THE VALUE OF HISTORY
(It’s been said, ‘those who control our understanding of history control our future’
I have read history and know from the past that when we who do not believe in violence sink to the level of the Neo-liberals, we simply become them with a different set of promises and speeches, with different self-interests and different masters and cronies to buy off. Alas the rebels become the tyrants.
GOODNESS AND HOPE
To maintain an embrace of the best of our beings let me remind you of Martin Luther King’s sermon to America.
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
“I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
“I have a dream that one day “every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight.…”
Our salvation in all of this is in the ability of all who believe in the better angels of our humanity to spend a part of each day being kind, thinking of the other, doing good rather than concentrating on the profoundly un-American, irrational mis-achievements, lies and gutter responses of the psychopathic cowards who now lead us.
If we don’t win the battle for hearts and mind…..
The Elite will continue to rule our lives, Houses of Parliament, mid 1970’s
Photograph: Robert Golden/TopFoto