Let's talk about fighting. An odd topic for a pacifist? Words don't always mean precisely what one might think, and the reality they describe is squishier still. Our reality is characterized by infinite layers of complexity. There is a whole range of thought in the philosophy of pacifism. Some schools of thought believe in self-defense. I personally believe in self-defense and in fighting for what’s right. I oppose all war waged with less than noble intent, and wish it to be altogether a relic of our primitive past. I choose to believe, as a matter of philosophy, that we are better than that.
I've never liked fighting but I learned how. I've always been one of those hippies that would punch back. I grew up with two older brothers. I learned early on that it's an unjust world and sometimes, even if you hate it, you have to fight. That recognition is at the heart of any noble warrior culture. Sometimes you have to defend yourself.
That's precisely the conclusion the Shaolin monks came to in ancient China. How could one in good conscience, watch passively as robbers and brigands lay waste to innocent villages and violently abused the peasants?
They decided they could no longer bear passive witness to such great evil. So they invented kung fu, which I studied later in life and is, in part, why I'm still here with us.
Sometimes you can only fight fire with fire. But violence is an obstacle to be overcome by those who would be wise. As long as war is 'okay' all violence receives our blessing.
It's time to rise above violence and hate, but there has never before been a time for a fight like this one. The establishment wants to avoid this 'contentious' fight. But it's time to have it.
To be clear, I'm talking about a fight that is emphatically not violent. Only democratic. Our only weapons are our votes and our little people bucks – that and the enormous power of our creative will and imagination.
Witness the miraculous power of democracy. If it's good for all those countries we keep exporting it to at the barrel of a gun, it's good enough for us. May democracy rule and may it do so with all the love and wisdom in the world.
I grew up knowing there was something wrong with America. They killed JFK before I turned twelve. The war in Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement and the great hippie rebellion consumed my adolescence and youth. All of it fueled by something that had gone sideways in America. Though it's probably more accurate to say it was something that was never right in the first place. Though I couldn't imagine the extent of it.
I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee when it was hot off the presses in '70.
I came of age learning about injustice, hate and the infliction of violence. I began to grasp how deep the wormhole of hatred and deceit goes – how many lies I had been told, how much of our racist and murderous history had been concealed from me, how misleading the version of history sold to me had been.
I lived through having a dream, Mississippi burning, our best leaders murdered in the street, massacres, police riots, little girls bombed in church, carpet-bombing, domestic spying and lovers hounded by the secret police.
What was wrong? What could drive such madness? Was it just a shit-storm of bad ideas?
No, it was a heady mix of racism and greed, white man's greed. One robust facet of greed is the fear that someone might take something away, a sort of preemptive selfishness, a knee-jerk grabby impulse. You saw it a lot in the old south, the one that’s still too much with us, the envy that a black person might have something as good or better than what only white people ought to have. Even the lowest white person could be respected for not being black. There's your white privilege.
Another facet where greed and racism become entertwined is the need to feel oneself better than others – a greed for status or self-esteem, a propping up of ones self-worth by crapping on that of others. Underneath it all an inability to rise above ones own pettiness, ones own fear of being nothing, too afraid to accept and embrace others as ones fellows, ones brothers and sisters, the NEED to be more important, more worthy, more in line with the grand plan of the universe, more of what God had in mind.
It’s asking a lot of people to love one another. It’s a radical thing. Not a typical challenge. It’s asking a lot, more than many will manage no doubt.
Some people are (at least temporarily) too small to accommodate a fully opened heart or mind, or to see humanity as a whole. They just haven't learned how to do that yet. It's not that they're not capable of it, they've just not managed it. I try to remind myself of that when dealing with a myopic or obstinate mind. Consciousness is a funny thing, a shifting, mercurial, unpredictable thing, a mysterious thing, a thing of mathematics and miracles. Satori is always possible. People do have epiphanies.
Understanding pierces the veil. It can happen at any moment. Zen.
POW! x YouTube VideoWe must quit waging war on humanity and figure out how to best take care of each other and the eco-sphere.
In a world full of war and hellish brutality, if world peace and the well-being of humanity are not our goals, our goals are unworthy.
People say 'you can't vote your way out of your straight jacket.' Yes you can. That's the beauty of democracy.
x YouTube VideoI wish John Lennon were here for this.
Bernie Sanders' New Hampshire Win Shows How Far He's Come Since Media Wrote Him Off The general consensus was that he would shape the conversation, but wouldn't mount a serious challenge.When he announced his campaign on April 29, the general consensus was that Sanders was a long shot who would drive Clinton to the left during the campaign. Those who put forth this consensus included The Huffington Post, which covered Sanders' announcement by writing that "Sanders isn't expected to mount a serious challenge to Clinton, but he does have an important opportunity to shape the debate in months to come."
The New York Times similarly suggested Sanders would play a role in shaping the conversation of the campaign, but noted the Vermont independent faced a steep challenge.
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Since then, Sanders has received over 3 million campaign contributions.
CNN initially questioned Sanders' viability because he was not a registered Democrat.
"Sanders caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate but is an unlikely candidate for the Democratic nomination, primarily because he has never been a registered member of the party and calls himself a 'democratic socialist,'" said a story onCNN.com. But a June Gallup poll released two months after Sanders announced his candidacy found that 47 percent of voters would consider voting for a socialist for president.
Politico wrote off Sanders' candidacy almost immediately, publishing an item in Politico Caucus the day after Sanders announced his campaign under the headline"Dems to Bernie: Fat Chance." The item quoted "the most important activists, operatives and elected officials in Iowa and New Hampshire," and 93 percent of those on the Democratic side said Sanders would not win their state.
x YouTube VideoIt's beautiful when people do what couldn't be done.
x YouTube VideoSorry, Corporate Media: The More Americans Hear Bernie Sanders, The More They Like HimSNIP
The content of coverage of Bernie Sanders’ campaign has also been telling. Initially, of course, Senator Sanders was viewed as a nobody candidate on the very margins of American politics—until you media started to notice that huge crowds were turning out to hear his message. From that point on, the establishment has played up Sanders’ non-electability and/or lack of “realism.”
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Times columnists from David Brooks on the right to Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman on the liberal left have gone after Sanders ever since his polling caught up with Hillary Clinton’s. Brooks’ penned a plaintiff column, “Stay Sane America, Please!” equating Sanders with Trump and Cruz as extremist candidates who are “not acceptable to all parts” of their parties. Hmmm, I wonder whom he’s talking about.
On January 22, the liberal Krugman lectured the passionate Sanders partisans on “How Change Happens,” warning them against preferring “happy dreams to hard thinking.” Kristof chimed in recently with the warning that Sanders’ bolder proposals simply “won’t happen” and that voters won’t vote for a “socialist.”
The editorial board itself issued an unusual pre-primary endorsement of Hillary Clinton as “one of the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history”—a one-term Senator and Secretary of State with a record of devastating foreign policy decisions? The paper did acknowledge that Sanders’ “boldest proposals … earned him support among alienated middle-class voters and young people,” but asserted that he did “not have the breadth of experience or policy ideas that Mrs. Clinton offers.”
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Up to now, you national media have obviously misjudged Bernie Sanders’ appeal, narrowing it to “telling progressives what they want to hear,” or more recently tapping into the “alienation” of youth and the middle-class. But Sanders’ critique of the control exercised by corporate and wealthy elites over our political system taps into consciousness that has been building since the Occupy movement first emerged in 2011.
Clearly, the more Americans hear Bernie Sanders, the more they like what they are hearing: personal integrity, commitment to an egalitarian democracy, and some profound truth-telling about the nature of American politics. The campaign has galvanized a hopeful fervor around these issues and has introduced into our political discourse issues that have lurked on the margins for a long time—the very ones you media criticize as “unrealistic.”
This is a time for profound truth telling.
It's not about Bernie becoming president. It's about the people standing up for themselves.
Now is our time for standing up.
It's now or never.