The Case for Hope

If a soothsayer last year told me that 2020 would consist of a mutating and elusive virus, resulting in the necessity of the world to self-quarantine, along with being the year of the greatest civil unrest ever experience in my lifetime, due to another brutal police murder of an unarmed black man, well, I’m pretty positive I would’ve had a panic attack. However, we have arrived, and surprisingly I only really had one panic attack this year, the catalyst being the final democratic debate between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden in mid-March. That debate was so surreal… It was so satisfying for Bernie to speak undeniable truth to power in the face of a bewildered Biden, and to speak so passionately, but to a silent, empty audience. It was cinematically bizarre, cathartic, and so very disturbing. But alas, I digress. 

I’ve been thinking about all this unrest that has been 2020 so far (as we all have been): all the anger I believe we are all collectively feeling, the role of mass communication and fast information, and the necessity of compromising one’s psychological safety in order to achieve a degree of clarity concerning the state of America. I also have been reflecting on how I used to write so much, and how privileged I was to go to graduate school for social(ist) work 2015-2017, and what changed for me personally- why I have hardly written anything in the past two years. The answer to my lack is that I’ve been overwhelmed and then recovering from all of these political and cultural shocks to my system, my psyche. 

Shock therapy for the US has been full throttle for the American public over the past five years, the most visible origin being Trump’s campaign announcement. I believe that this is when our current new chapter of America’s book began, and I find it as perturbing as other stories in our dark past.  Shock therapy has been used for as long as there’s been power and corruption, and I highly recommend everyone who hasn’t read the primer on this, “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein, to pick up as soon as possible. This is the text that really woke me up personally in 2015, and wiped away any rose hue left on my glasses. Shock therapy centers on the idea that neoliberal free trade markets exploit national crises (disasters, upheavals, global pandemics, etc.) to establish controversial and questionable policies, where citizens are excessively distracted that they cannot engage and develop an adequate response, resist effectively, or even process the information at hand. When you recover from a shock, you have to take time to rest, recover, and try to make sense of the new reality. After a shock, we naturally find a new homeostasis, which more times than not, requires normalizing our environment, regardless of how abnormal it is. 

I haven’t written seriously in a while because I’ve been recovering from all of these shocks, all these horrific acts of violence we’ve experienced as a nation over the past four years, all the things I’ve previously written about from 2015-2018. I’ve been tired, atrophied, and apathetic. I’ve allowed myself to stay quiet, because really trying to process and learn about our current environment is so taxing and can feel so hopeless. I’m doing my best to break out of that now, but it is hard and I am still weary. However, I am grateful that I feel this spark of motivation growing brighter inside of me, and I’m trying to fan this flame. For myself, the best way to grow and harness this energy comes from illuminating hope and consciously choosing love over fear. 

Me at Trump’s Inauguration in DC when my brain was focused on this truth rather than fear

I subscribe to the theory that there are only two emotions- love and fear- and all other emotions stem from these two primary emotions. It wasn’t until I had a recent conversation with a close friend that I recognized just how much I have been fearful in the past two weeks since George Floyd’s murder. I have been so angry, so overwhelmed, so stressed, so nervous, and dare I say even hateful, that I almost lost sight of love. I had not been feeling much compassion, only horror and outrage. 

 I was not super productive during this quarantine, and although I’ve enjoyed having more downtime, my personal mental health hasn’t been great. I’ve been worried, lonely, and sad. I regressed into old routines, like not having a routine, and even stopped meditating daily, which I’m terribly ashamed to admit. I share this personal accountability in order to give insight into where my head and heart had been lately; they’ve been pretty fear-based and loveless.

Quarantine did allow me to finally read “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl, an account of a Viennan psychiatrist who survived three Nazi concentration camps. He was survived by no one, his entire family was murdered in the camps, including his young wife. After liberation, he went on to create the theoretical basis for logotherapy, a therapeutic modality that is based on the premise that humans are driven to find meaning and purpose in their life. I’d been familiar with logotherapy, but never read this seminal work until a month ago. One of the most important points I took from “Man’s Search from Meaning” was Frankl’s observation that the first people to perish in the concentration camps were those who lost hope. Hope is necessary for survival, it is a requirement for resilience. 

When I reflect on this myself, it becomes crystal clear how fearful and hopeless I’ve been the past months, especially these recent two and a half weeks since George Floyd’s murder. I’ve been consumed by the constant shocks to my system and instead of trying to hold on to hope, I’ve been drowning in dread. Now that I am aware of this, that I’ve gained this clarity, I have the power to change it. I must don an old perspective I have not worn much this year, where hope acts as my lens. 

I’ve always been an advocate for dreaming big and consider myself a radical idealist. People across the US are finally being confronted with the truth that is police brutality and the militarization of the police. There’s no hiding these horrific displays of unmitigated violence and cruelty by the police during the major protests. It’s shocking (yet extremely gratifying) in itself that finally, the mainstream media cannot avoid showing this systematic reality because of the digital age!!! And with this greater realization, that police brutality is a systematic injustice ingrained into the foundation of the police FORCE, there is meaning to be made, there is hope. I am hopeful that those who believed it was “only one bad apple” now begin to recognize the truth about police brutality and learn that the institution of policing was created on the foundation of oppression. The more people are confronted with this truth, the more we can imagine a new way of policing (or dare I say abolishing). The more people learn the truth, the greater the chances for real, true change. 

I’m hopeful that all of this civic unrest spurred by racism will bring light to the structural forces embedded within the heart of America that continue to perpetuate unjust treatment of black, indigenous, and other persons of color. I hope that this conversation of racism grows into a conversation about class. I hope poor white folks are able to see how they are so much more similar to poor black folks than they are to Donald Trump. I hope more middle-class white folks see how they are much more similar to poor black folks than they are to Donald Trump. I am hopeful about this awakening. 

I am hopeful about the positive evolution of culture, spurred by greater access to education via the internet. I am hopeful that as a culture we begin to question polarized thinking and instead start to see how everything is gray. At risk of sounding like a kumbaya drum circle leader, I am hopeful about evolving morally. I am hopeful that we evolve together spiritually. I am hopeful for peace.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying hope replaces outrage. That would be impossible, and outrage has an incredibly important motivating purpose. However, I know for myself, being in a constant state of outrage is exhausting, and that all of these continuous shocks inevitably wears you down to an indolent state of apathy if you’re not careful. What I am saying is that we harness hope in order to recover quicker, and less scathed, from these shocks. The world is not rainbow and unicorns, I am aware of this, and the current state of America is dire. But let us not be fearful. I am advocating that our outrage begets hope, not fear, and that hope catalysts a meaningful change, and welcomes a new reality that us dreamers have been tirelessly waiting for. 

 

A Quick Explanation of Brazile’s DNC Bombshell and it’s Apathetic Implications for the Future of Truth

Last week, Bernie supporters, DemExiters, and the remaining disillusioned Dems have had our beliefs proven by Donna Brazile’s recent book that finally reveals that the DNC rigged the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton. Most of my compatriots who fall into the aforementioned categories have known that the DNC was not on our side since 2015, so Brazile’s claims aren’t necessarily news to us. However, it is a bit satisfying that our truth has been recognized as such, and that we aren’t the un-American, conspiracy theorists, election-sabotagers that the Democratic Party has made us out to be. I personally have not rejoiced over Brazile’s admittance, although I am grateful for it, because I think the Democratic PR Machine is working right now to dissolve this mess and replace it with their rallying cry of “We did nothing wrong!”. This post is to hopefully help people understand what happened, so that the truth is a bit harder to sweep under the rug.

Key Players

Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC): 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary loser to Barack Obama and 2016 Democratic Presidential Candidate loser to Republican challenger, Donald Trump. Since her loss, she has been spending her time promoting her book, “What Happened”, which details the 16 reasons why she lost the election (none of the reasons have to do with her or her campaign, fyi).

Democratic National Committee (DNC): is the organization  that runs the Democrat Party. They help figure out who to run, craft the party’s platform, and create campaigns to get Democrats to win unilaterally across local, state, and national races. It’s main purpose is to raise money and then use this to best strategize ways to get their candidates to win. When people want to donate money to the Democratic party, the DNC is the beneficiary.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (DWS): She was one of Hillary Clinton’s top aides for her 2008 campaign. She became the chair of the DNC in 2011, where she took Tim Kane’s position, who would later be HRC’s 2016 running mate. She resigned from the DNC in 2016 after emails were published that showed her preference towards HRC during the campaign, among other allegations. She was a close friend to HRC, and didn’t resign herself from the DNC during HRC’s 2016 run, which is pretty unethical considering the chair is supposed to be unbiased. I mean, how can you be unbiased when one of your BFFs, and someone who would give you a top job in her administration, is running for president? For further reading, see this post from 2015 where I was first critical about DWS’ bias for HRC and the lack of Primary Democratic Debates between HRC and Sanders.

Donna Brazile: Took over as interim chair of the DNC in 2016, when DWS resigned, until Feb 2017 when Tom Perez was voted in as chair. Her book, “Hacks“, which this article is based on, comes out November 7th.

Hillary for America (HFA): Hillary Clinton’s official presidential organized campaign.  Under FEC rules, the maximum individual contribution allowed to any candidate is $2,700.

Hillary Victory Fund (HVF): Hillary’s Super PAC- if an individual exhausted the maximum contribution to HFA, they could give an additional $353,400 to this PAC in support of HRC.  In 2016 they raised $529,943,912.

Brazile’s book talks about a conversation she had with Gary Gensler, Hillary’s Chief Financial Officer, when she took over the DNC in the summer of 2016.  He explained to her that in 2015, the DNC, under DWS’s rule, contracted an agreement known as “The Joint Fundraising Agreement between the Democratic National Committee, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America”. Apparently, the DNC was in debt in 2015 due to Obama’s campaign, and DWS was a shitty fundraiser and manager.  Under this agreement, HRC would pay off the DNC’s 2 million dollar debt (which is kind of measly, right?) in exchange for having control over the Democratic Party’s finances, strategy, and all of the money raised. Anything that happened within the DNC and the decisions about everything from operations to messaging of the Democratic Party had to go through Hillary. HRC had control of the entire party, ultimately halting any potential support from the party to go towards Sanders. Brazile writes, “The campaign had the DNC on life support, allocating money each month to meet its basic expenses, while using the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse”. 

Brazlie’s book is the proof that all of us who dared to question HRC and the DNC had waited for: that Bernie Sanders’s chance at winning the 2016 primary was doomed from the start due to the pro-HRC biased messaging and spending disseminated throughout the US by the Democratic Machine (DNC), which had HRC at the helm. The question is, now that our beliefs have been confirmed, will anyone who refused to believe that HRC or the party did anything wrong acknowledge and accept this new reality? Sadly, I have my doubts. I believe that the DNC and HRC manipulated messaging and took advantage of creating and promoting identity politics which lead to the formation of the current militant group of anti-Trumpers/HRC lovers, who shun and shame any thought that is outside of the Democratic box. The HRC “Feminist” Facebook Moms, who identify and exploit the message that they were wronged due to no fault of their own, most likely aren’t willing to open their ears to Brazile’s truth, let alone accept it. And that’s the problem. Even though the truth is out there, even though it’s been clear that the deck was stacked since 2015, too many people aren’t willing to accept that their golden calf was actually a serpent  who cares nothing of truth, virtue, dignity, fairness, or the democratic process from inception.

Again, I sadly don’t expect much to happen from this news. I hope it helps persuade people to question the Almighty Democratic Doctrine, but my faith in this is pretty low. I guess all we can do is continue to strive for truth and hope others eventually recognize that the truth is more important than being right.

***

I used Brazile’s book excerpt and the actual Joint-Fundraising Agreement as the main sources for this article.

geopolitics is hard

Geopolitics is a symbiotic jigsaw. When one piece seems to fit in place, another pops out. And this puzzle isn’t going to be put together anytime soon. Fuck, we don’t even know what the finished puzzle is supposed to look like. I believe that we’re entering a new era that is changing what that picture will look like and the pieced may have to be rearranged. Whether this era is postcolonialism, I’m not sure, but if we use the past 6 years as a proxy for what will come, I think it’s fair to say that authoritarian powers aren’t going anywhere.

What is happening in Syria is really fucked up. And how Syria got to the state it’s at isn’t a simple path to understand. I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can about Syria, and the Middle East, and man, when you’re used to learning about your nation that is only 238 years old, it takes some catching up to learn about the history of a region that covers over 3000 years. And here’s the deal- I don’t know what to think of anything. All I can tell is that neoliberalism is strengthening its hold, and just as what was predicted far before Trump even came into the picture, wars aren’t going to end when there is money to be made.

I’m not sure what can be done. I’m nervous after watching how buddy-buddy Trump was with people like el-Sisi and then learning about how seemingly rash the decision to bomb Syria was. My only hope is that America is too big for an authoritarian ruler- that the democratic system in place will safeguard us from what we witnessed in post-Arab Spring countries and that there are too many of us, including elected officials, and too little of them, ultimately the deep statists. However, if we look at the past, empires that were relatively as big as America have fallen, and that’s pretty depressing to think about.

I don’t know what to do. I know it is probably stupid, but for myself, I have to pray (meditate) for some real macro conscious raising- and that’s at a cognitive and spiritual level. We need to help other people understand why we go to war, how war profiteering works, what the dangers are that can lead the US to an authoritarian regime, and how to tune inward in order to produce more loving kindness in the world. I know, it’s hippie shit, but if I don’t believe that there can be good, then what is the point?

Neoliberalism 101

What is neoliberalism?

“lol, i own you”, said Neoliberalism.

I hope I don’t come off as a pretentious dildo with this post. I just thought that I’d explain a little bit about neoliberalism because it’s an important term that is being used pretty regularly these days by the press, and with little context clues, at least that I’ve noticed.

Until this year, I thought that Neoliberalism (and Neoconservatism) were just sects within the left and right of the political sphere (which makes sense). I guess in theory, this is kind of correct… but not really at all. At least not in the regards that neoliberalism actually aligns with progressive liberals. In fact, neoliberalism has been a guaranteed path for the rich and can help to explain why wealth inequality has gotten to this great disparity.

Neoliberalism basically came of age in the 1970s when the Democratic Party started to turn away from the idea that a welfare state was best for the people, and instead the Party began to be wary of big government, hated less on big business, and were unsure about universal entitlements. Basically, people were starting to reject the New Deal ideology.

these assholes

So the toddler stage of neoliberalism happened when Jimmy Carter wasn’t re-elected for a second term, and the executive branch was crowned to Ronald Reagan. (On a completely unrelated note- Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed in the White House to supply solar power, and when Reagan took over he had the solar panels removed immediately. Dick. ).  Along with this new president, in 1980, a Republican senate was elected which made the remaining democrats question and reexamine domestic policy in order to figure out what the fuck they were going to do.  Basically, they started to change their positions from “the government should really try to help as many people as possible with things like healthcare for all, huge federal jobs programs, and hell, let’s start the conversation about an annual income” to “eh, the government shouldn’t waste so much money on everyone, and in fact, the government really has no place really in financial regulation…” These ideas closely aligned with neoconservatives who shared the ideology that people should take responsibility for their own wellbeing (ie: if you’re broke get a fucking job already, you lazy welfare queen), that workfare programs are good, and that there should be time limits on the people who do qualify for government assistance.

Neoliberalism has evolved as an ideology that is associated with Milton Friedman (in my opinion, the devil incarnate) and his Chicago School of Economics, globalization, free trade, deregulation, privatization, and laissez faire economics.  It is the idea that corporations should be able to do whatever they want, and the government should have few controls on economic factors. It’s the school of thought that allows multinational corporations to exist, and therefore allows them to destroy developing nations and plan vicious attacks to over throw governments in order to exploit labor (see: Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Indonesia, Afghanistan).

I hope this will help people the next time they read about the neoliberals in the press. The name suggests that it is just an offshoot of the “liberal” (Democratic) party, but be forewarned. Neoliberalism is very dangerous and is how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It is when the lines between government and multinationals are blurred. And just so you know, the USA has had a neoliberal agenda for decades now… which is another reason why a political revolution is essential for the future of our country.

 

*Some of my sources I used we’re from “American Social Welfare Policy” by Karger and Stoesz, “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein, and “Human Behavior and the Larger Social Environment

” by Johnson and Rhodes.