As the global COVID-19 crisis builds up its incredible momentum, for which an apex is still months to come, the mainstream media and so-called policymakers are dazed and confused, lost in graphs of exponential case counts and body counts; shipments of masks and respirators; and the assembly of makeshift hospitals. Everywhere the morgues are filling up and the crematoriums are burning the cadavers at full tilt.
While the palpable fear of death looms everywhere, the 2,020 members of the billionaire class, and their worldwide political surrogates, have an eye on other graphs: not going up like the graphs of the deaths, but plunging in an even more dramatic configuration. It is, of course, the COVID-19 induced crash of all financial markets and the precipitous dive of oil price. It is the Great COVID-19 Depression.
While the so-called Masters of the Universe billionaire class are scared like deer in a headlight, they haven’t come to the realization that their complex edifice built on the brutal exploitation of people and resources was as flimsy as a castle made of sand. It is not even a tide that is undoing global capitalism, it is a giant tsunami coming ashore everywhere at the same time. Its name is COVID-19. Those who call themselves political leaders should pay close attention. If they think they can bring back the world order the way it was before the pandemic, they are cruelly mistaken. Like it or not, COVID-19 marks the beginning of a new era in the human adventure on the Earth. Things will never again be the same. Therefore, we must seriously think, not only about crisis scenarios but also their aftermaths.
Several worst-case scenarios are worth exploring. The first one, and some early signs indicate it is a possibility, would be the implosion of globalization and rise of populist fascist states. In the second one, which would be even worse, the billionaire class and their political surrogates would gang up to impose a draconian authoritarian world order on the entire human population.
End of globalization and rise of small ethnic fascist states
This trend has already started within the European Union, and it is threatening to be more damaging to the EU than Brexit. As soon as the pandemic exploded in Italy, the borders within the union started to shut down. This now concerns all European countries, and it is likely to stay this way for months. To the Italian government’s dismay, China, Russia and Cuba were more proactive in helping Italy than France, Germany and the other EU countries. It is as if the Trumpian my-country-first doctrine gained ground across Europe overnight. Lockdown quickly meant a shutdown of national borders.
An example of this, which was perfectly despicable, was when the Czech Republic hijacked an airplane shipment from China, full of masks, on their way to Italy. It is even worse in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban is taking advantage of the COVID-19 crisis to do a power grab and indefinitely rule by decree. In this time of extreme global crisis, the temptation for the want-to-be neofascist strong men has become too strong to resist. Besides, neoliberal governments like the Macron administration in France are applying coercive and authoritarian methods on their population. Therefore, who will notice it if Orban pushes things a step further?
Authoritarian billionaire class global world order
This would be the more nightmarish case scenario. One cannot discount that this option of a global corporate COVID-19 coup may come to the malevolent minds of some of the Masters of the Universe who meet in Davos every year or, even worse, the very secretive Bilderberg group. Despite the fact that the global economy is in ruins, the policymakers who work for the billionaire class will want to maintain control. They may think that the fear of the pandemic, which has made people accept oppressive measures, can be maintained indefinitely through the media they control. One can easily imagine that only a fraction of the population might regain complete freedom of movement and assembly. Meanwhile, the old, the average worker bee, and the dissenters could be confined at a whim. Besides, who needs pesky humans in capitalist production lines when they can be replaced by the docile robotic of AI?
Some people are evil enough to think along those lines. The problem with this assumption, however, providing anybody is thinking about it, is that their cherished supposed free-market economy has already collapsed. Presently the hottest commodities worldwide are masks and pulmonary respirators. The masks, of course, are still largely made in China. They are so valuable that they are put under heavily armed military escort. Operatives from the CIA travel to China with briefcases full of cash to outbid, on airport tarmacs, precious cargos already purchased by France. Israel’s Mossad has been involved in trafficking large quantities of test kits. The nationalistic fight for survival has become raw and nasty, but again capitalism was always bloodthirsty, ugly, and mean. Hopefully, for the sake of humanity, the systemic damage is too grave to fix. COVID-19 might have triggered capitalism’s end game.
Oppression and starvation — not ideologies — bring revolutions
As the COVID-19 crisis devastates the financial markets and global economy, the smarter neoliberal governments are trying to mitigate potentially unpredictable social unrest phenomena by the tricks aristocrats have used during feudalism. Like the lord of the castle, who threw a few gold and silver coins to the starving peasants during famines after bad crops, the lords of today’s capitalism put in effect “quantitative easing,” which is a euphemism for printing a massive amount of money. In the United States, the $2.2 trillion bailout is mainly for Wall Street and large corporations like Boeing. The citizens of the US will get the crumbs, in the form of a $1,200 check from Uncle Sam. In European countries, the give away to citizens is much bigger: the unemployment benefits to people who were laid off will reach 80 percent of their pre-COVID-19 wages.
Nonetheless, millions of people are already unemployed. In the US, nearly 10 million people filed for unemployment since March 16. Millions who were already in precarious situations must rely on food banks to eat. This is a recipe for disaster in the perspective of governments trying to keep a lid on some serious social turmoil. In effect, a careful study of the revolutionary process in world history shows that what embarks a population into the violence of a revolution is misery and despair, not lofty ideologies. Practically, it is the combination of oppression and starvation that pushes people beyond their limits. It is a collective breaking that comes once you have nothing, and therefore nothing to lose. Food shortages created by disruption of the food chain or hoarding could do this.
Authoritarian governments are, unfortunately for them, using the stick rather than the carrot to deal with the pandemic. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered police and military to kill citizens who defy the COVID-19 lockdown. The strongman bluntly told police to “shoot them dead.” In India, Modi‘s police and military have been beating people, mostly Muslims, with sticks and dousing them with chlorine. In Kenya, similarly brutal population controls are enforced. In the case of India, a country of 1.3 billion people, which has a health-care system in shambles, millions could die. At that point, the most brutal police and military tactics won’t succeed at keeping the lid on. It is likely to blow. Revolutions are about a vastly superior number of people and the sheer power of their anger. A police and military force of 250,000, for example, even if loyal to its government, cannot prevail against millions. Starvation and oppression will eventually bring fearless collective rage. That is the essence of revolution.
Countries become sovereign, self sufficient with direct democracy
Very few countries have tackled the unfolding pandemic crisis with speed, thorough planning, rationality, and a minimum of infringement on civil liberties. Only four can be named: Germany, Iceland, New Zealand and South Korea. Leaving aside Germany and South Korea, which are much larger economies, the crisis management in Iceland and New Zealand has been rather remarkable. Iceland, in particular, has tested its small population more than any other country in the world.
That island of 350,000 people could become, in the near future, a model for real democracy. They have learned from the 2008 financial crash and changed their ways. A real democracy has to be from the bottom up and must also keep the national interest sector out of the hands of corporate imperialism. A real bottom-up democracy puts a cap on wealth concentration, spends money raised by fair taxation, and provides its citizens with free education and free universal health care. In 2018, the Gilets Jaunes movement in France was demanding a constitutional reform that would allow referendums by citizen initiative. If our world post COVID-19 becomes more fragmented, and countries become more sovereign and independent of mega-corporate entities or global institutions like the IMF and World Bank, then democracy could be reinvented. This being said, the mitigation of global problems like the climate crisis and the mass migration it will provoke, affecting nearly a billion people in coastal areas, will have to be addressed by decisive international cooperation.
Birth of a globalization for the people by the people
There is only one international body that is not fully at the service of global corporate imperialism, even though it has, in recent years, been ineffective at best and nefarious at worst. This organization, which has become a perversion of a good intentions, is the United Nations. For it to become a positive force in the necessary mitigation of conflicts between countries and tackling the massive challenges facing humanity, it would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. A dismantlement of the Security Council would be sine qua non. Furthermore, the delegate(s) from each country should be elected democratically. But let’s face it: at this juncture, the five countries that permanently sit on the Security Council because of their nuclear and military might are unlikely to relinquish their privileges.
It is hard to forecast what a post-COVID-19 world will be like, but the deck of cards has been reshuffled. Global corporate capitalism was sick, in all possible ways: a voracious sociopath bent on growth and without empathy, morals, and foresight. Right now it has a fever, it is coughing, and it has lost its sense of taste and smell. Truly, it is on life support.
Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.
However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.
Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.
As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, 'The United States reacted...like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.'
It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.
The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.
If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.
Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?
"It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.
"Abject surrender"
What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.
Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.
In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and 'recreational activities'.
Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: 'We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.'
This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.
It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the 'deep state' and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.
Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.
The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has 'total authority', and on the other that 'I don’t take responsibility at all'. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.
"Fertile ground"
But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.
There are very powerful interests who demand 'freedom' in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that 'freedom' is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber ('I Need a Haircut' read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.
Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.
And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.
That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.
And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked 'American carnage' and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.
As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.
Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.
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Fintan O'Toole is an Irish columnist, literary editor, and drama critic for The Irish Times, for which he has written since 1988.
Chris Hedges is one of the best public intellectuals in the US. His a
Pulitzer-winning journalist, author, and philosopher. In this
eye-opening conversation, Hedges warns that the tumult and pain of
Trump’s coronavirus crisis is but a preview of far worse things in
America’s future, as social inequality and political failure combine to
create a full collapse of the country’s already declining standard of
living and its ailing democracy.
How many stories have we heard about non-white/non-female genius & talent being snuffed out because of misguided notions of white male intellectual superiority?
This is the story of Ed Dwight Jr., who was invited by his country to train to be the first African-American astronaut. Back in 1963, it was hot news. But the United States never sent Dwight to space. For decades, he has maintained that he was discriminated against during his time at the Aerospace Research Pilot School, a prerequisite to NASA run by the legendary pilot Chuck Yeager.
Dwight is now a prolific artist, building memorials and creating public art honoring African-American history. His footprints cannot be found on the moon. But his fingerprints can be found on sculptures across the country.
Many stories similar to Ed Dwight Jr have yet to be told. Stay tuned....
Why does race matter so profoundly for health? David R. Williams developed a scale to measure the impact of discrimination on well-being, going beyond traditional measures like income and education to reveal how factors like implicit bias, residential segregation and negative stereotypes create and sustain inequality. In this eye-opening talk, Williams presents evidence for how racism is producing a rigged system -- and offers hopeful examples of programs across the US that are working to dismantle discrimination.
REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM is the definitive discourse with Noam
Chomsky, widely regarded as the most important intellectual alive, on
the defining characteristic of our time - the deliberate concentration
of wealth and power in the hands of a select few. Through interviews
filmed over four years, Chomsky unpacks the principles that have brought
us to the crossroads of historically unprecedented inequality - tracing
a half-century of policies designed to favor the most wealthy at the
expense of the majority - while also looking back on his own life of
activism and political participation. Profoundly personal and thought
provoking, Chomsky provides penetrating insight into what may well be
the lasting legacy of our time - the death of the middle class and swan
song of functioning democracy. A potent reminder that power ultimately
rests in the hands of the governed, REQUIEM is required viewing for all
who maintain hope in a shared stake in the future.
“Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others - the empires and their native overseers. In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.”
I had this fantasy that the New York Times would follow up its 1619 Project
look at slavery with a comparable examination of Settler Colonialism.
Instead, they made a pivot from slavery to what they are calling the
“Inequality Project.
Apparently the Times is OK with that whole settler colonialism thing.
Well, not just OK. Wildly enthusiastic would be more like it.
We learn this because on April 19, the very same day the Times
revealed the Inequality Project in the Sunday print edition of the
paper, an accompanying editorial titled The America We Need said so. Here’s how it begins:
From some of its darkest hours, the United States has emerged stronger and more resilient.
Between May and July 1862, even as Confederate victories in Virginia
raised doubts about the future of the Union, Congress and President
Abraham Lincoln kept their eyes on the horizon, enacting three landmark
laws that shaped the nation’s next chapter: The Homestead Act allowed
Western settlers to claim 160 acres of public land apiece; the Morrill
Act provided land grants for states to fund universities; and the
Pacific Railway Act underwrote the transcontinental railroad.
What’s wrong with that? Those foundational laws are the three legal
pillars of post Civil War settler-colonialism. That’s what’s wrong.
What the Civil War era expansion plan envisioned and achieved became
the source of untold misery for Native people. It produced uncountable
atrocities, large and small. Not only have the moral, financial and
cultural crimes yet to be admitted. Those three laws remain a source of
ongoing oppression that continues to this moment.
Consider what might seem the most benign of the three, the Morrill
Act. It created all those wonderful Land Grant colleges. If you didn’t
graduate from one yourself, you may know someone who did.
In March 2020, the High Country News published an exhaustive and devastating study
on the past, present and future of what it calls Land Grab
Universities. It was sub-titled, Expropriated Indigenous land is the
foundation of the land-grant university system.
Here’s a very brief excerpt:
Over the past two years, High Country News has
located more than 99% of all Morrill Act acres, identified their
original Indigenous inhabitants and caretakers, and researched the
principal raised from their sale in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. We reconstructed approximately 10.7 million acres taken from
nearly 250 tribes, bands and communities through over 160
violence-backed land cessions, a legal term for the giving up of
territory.
Our data
shows how the Morrill Act turned Indigenous land into college
endowments. It reveals two open secrets: First, according to the Morrill
Act, all money made from land sales must be used in perpetuity, meaning
those funds still remain on university ledgers to this day. And
secondly, at least 12 states are still in possession of unsold Morrill
acres as well as associated mineral rights, which continue to produce
revenue for their designated institutions.
I long ago rejected the “original sin” framing as a helpful
explanation for slavery as a “flaw” of the otherwise idyllic and utopian
United States. For now though, let’s set that aside.
If there was an original sin it was not slavery. That could not have been the original sin because it came second. It was preceded by the brutalization of the humans who were already here. First,
the Indigenous people had to be slaughtered and displaced so that their
land could be occupied. Otherwise, there would have been no place to
put the slaves once the white man started bringing them here.
The first wave of colonizer occupation and displacement took place
from 1492 until 1776. It is rarely acknowledged, but the motives of the
white, male property owners seeking independence from the British were
not entirely as pure as our national myths proclaim.
Among the incentives for overthrowing British rule was a bitter
dispute over westward expansion beyond the 13 original colonies. An
aspect of this is captured in the Declaration of Independence. Most
people think the Declaration is just the first two paragraphs. That’s
where the noble “all men are created equal” phrase appears.
That is not, however, where the document stops. The Declaration goes
on to an itemized list of twenty-seven grievances against the King. It
makes for fascinating and revealing reading.
Two items on the list are particularly relevant to the expansionist aspirations of the Signers. This is number seven:
He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these
States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of
foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations
hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. (emphasis added.)
The last of the Declaration’s complaints against the King, the grand
finale, the straw that breaks the camel’s back, if you will, says this:
“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and
has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the
merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
The Treaty of Paris of 1783 formally ended the war. One of its key
provisions was that Britain ceded the Northwest territory to the United
States. That territory included what later became the states of Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and a portion of Minnesota. It
had been fiercely contested between Natives, the English, the French and
the settler colonialists for decades prior to 1776.
In 1787, following what we call the revolutionary war, but before the adoption of what became the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance.
That legislation became the first institutionalized claim by the United Statesgovernment
(as distinct from individual colonies) to territory occupied by Native
people. In fact, assisting the 13 states with their suppression of
Native people became one of the main selling points for the state-by-state ratification of a more powerful Federal government.
By the time the Constitution was formally ratified in 1788, white
settlers were already on their way to populate the Northwest
territories. We are taught to revere them as Pioneers. A dreadful 2019
best selling book called The Pioneers by David McCullough updated this mythology for the current generation.
The promotional copy for the book is sufficient to reveal what McCullough is up to:
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough
rediscovers an important and dramatic chapter in the American story—the
settling of the Northwest Territory by dauntless pioneers who overcame
incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would
come to define our country.
By 1832, the growth of territorial occupation by white settlers had
laid the foundation for Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears. That term
symbolizes the U.S. Government’s decade-long lethal and brutal expulsion
of still more Indigenous people.
By the time of the Civil War, the land grabbing ambitions of the
white-male property owning class had expanded even further. Which bring
us back to the stunning endorsement of settler colonialism which opens
the 2020 vision of what the editors of the New York times believe is The America We Need.
The 1619 Project was a step forward in coming to terms with the
history of the United States. Clearly there is still a lot to be
learned. What remains mostly hidden is the settler colonialist component
in the equation. Understanding how slavery and settler colonialism
combined to make such an enduring and toxic brew is essential to
deconstructing the racist ideology, culture and policy that dominates
the U.S. to this day.
One of my favorite public intellectuals, Chris Hedges, talks to Cornell University Professor, Noliwe Rooks about how America’s public education system, under successive administrations, continues to be segregated along racial lines, and what is taught often shaped by business goals and ideas.
With the rise of charter schools, a cover for privatization, steering public monies towards corporate profits, the most disturbing trends are cyber charter schools where children only have to check-in with teachers three times a week, term papers outsourced and graded in India, and the advent of cyber classes for pre-K children.
On this past International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I reread a bit of Bertrand Russell. In 1933, dismayed at the Nazification of Germany, the philosopher wrote “The Triumph of Stupidity,” attributing the rise of Adolf Hitler to the organized fervor of stupid and brutal people—two qualities, he noted, that “usually go together.” He went on to make one of his most famous observations, that the “fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Russell’s quip prefigured the scientific discovery of a cognitive bias—the Dunning–Kruger effect—that has been so resonant that it has penetrated popular culture, inspiring, for example, an opera song (from Harvard’s annual Ig Nobel Award Ceremony): “Some people’s own incompetence somehow gives them a stupid sense that anything they do is first rate. They think it’s great.” No surprise, then, that psychologist Joyce Ehrlinger prefaced a 2008 paper she wrote with David Dunning and Justin Kruger, among others, with Russell’s comment—the one he later made in his 1951 book, New Hopes for a Changing World: “One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.” “By now,” Ehrlinger noted in that paper, “this phenomenon has been demonstrated even for everyday tasks, about which individuals have likely received substantial feedback regarding their level of knowledge and skill.” Humans have shown a tendency, in other words, to be a bit thick about even the most mundane things, like how well they drive.
Stupidity is not simply the opposite of intelligence.
Russell, who died in 1970 at 97 years of age, probably would not be surprised to hear news of this new study, published in Nature Human Behaviour: “Extreme opponents of genetically modified foods know the least but think they know the most.” The researchers, led by Philip Fernbach, cognitive scientist and co-author of The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, analyzed survey responses from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. They obtained similar results, they write, “in a parallel study with representative samples from the United States, France and Germany, and in a study testing attitudes about a medical application of genetic engineering technology (gene therapy).”
Fernbach called their result “perverse.” It was nevertheless consistent with prior work exploring the Dunning–Kruger effect and the psychology of extremism, he said. “Extreme views often stem from people feeling they understand complex topics better than they do.” Now as ever, societies need to know how to combat this.
But what exactly is stupidity? David Krakauer, the President of the Santa Fe Institute, told interviewer Steve Paulson, for Nautilus, stupidity is not simply the opposite of intelligence. “Stupidity is using a rule where adding more data doesn’t improve your chances of getting [a problem] right,” Krakauer said. “In fact, it makes it more likely you’ll get it wrong.” Intelligence, on the other hand, is using a rule that allows you to solve complex problems with simple, elegant solutions. “Stupidity is a very interesting class of phenomena in human history, and it has to do with rule systems that have made it harder for us to arrive at the truth,” he said. “It’s an interesting fact that, whilst there are numerous individuals who study intelligence—there are whole departments that are interested in it—if you were to ask yourself what’s the greatest problem facing the world today, I would say it would be stupidity. So we should have professors of stupidity—it would just be embarrassing to be called the stupid professor.”
Donald Trump and extreme right groups are encouraging people to take to the streets during a pandemic. Hidden behind the scenes of protests against Democratic governors is the role of radical fringe groups, gun enthusiasts, and right-wing financiers, some with ties to the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Author Jeff Sharlet discusses the rise of right-wing religious extremists, influential members, their broader strategy, and how the shutdown protesters are being used as disposable pawns in a much longer game.
The barbaric leaders of China, Europe & the USA have it all twisted! See Too Many Africans by Stephen Corry which breaks it down in simple, easily digestible terms. For a more meaty & foundational analysis, see Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
Since China is the new "neocolonial power" in Africa, let' me touch on it a bit. Trade between China and Africa was worth more than $200 billion in 2019, 20 times what it was in 2000. Many Africans - & others - say that China is a
better partner than Europe or the U.S. However, China’s extraction of
billions of dollars in African resources, which are used to make the
manufactured goods that are then sold back to Africans at a marked-up
price, is the essence of European colonialism, without the extreme brutality. This results in the same
outcome where the value and money from the natural resources go to the
West and East Asia rather than Africa, further causing poverty, misery & underdevelopment in much of this vast, beautiful cradle of Humankind.
Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quoa is the former African Union Ambassador to the United States. Her career as a pan-Africanist has taken her throughout the continent and the world. She sat down with VOA Our Voices to talk about the great strides Africa has made despite a harsh colonial legacy, and what she thinks are Africa's greatest challenges today.
The rise of Donald
Trump may have shocked Americans, but it should not have surprised them.
His anti-democratic movement is the culmination of a decades-long
breakdown of U.S. institutions. The same blindness to U.S. decline –
particularly the loss of economic stability for the majority of the
population and opportunity-hoarding by the few – is reflected in an
unwillingness to accept that authoritarianism can indeed thrive in the
so-called “home of the free”.
As Americans struggle to reconcile
the gulf between a flagrant aspiring autocrat and the democratic
precepts they had been told were sacred and immutable, the inherent
fragility of American democracy has been revealed. Hiding in Plain Sight
exposes this continual loss of freedom, the rise of consolidated
corruption, and the secrets behind a burgeoning autocratic United States
that have been hiding in plain sight for decades. In Kendzior’s
signature and celebrated style, she expertly outlines Trump’s meteoric
rise from the 1980s until today, interlinking key moments of his life
with the degradation of the American political system and the continual
erosion of our civil liberties by foreign powers.
Kendzior also
offers a never-before-seen look at her personal life and her lifelong
tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – living in New York
through 9/11 and in St. Louis during the Ferguson uprising, and
researching media and authoritarianism when Trump emerged using the same
tactics as the post-Soviet dictatorships she had long studied.
Hiding in Plain Sight
is about confronting injustice – an often agonizing process, but an
honest and necessary one – as the only way that offers the possibility
of ending it.
“Hey all you people
sing a new beginning
while the days are shortest”
*************************
A feeling holds my heart
enfolds me in deep snow
like winter in the Sierra
she beckons and invites
from the doorway of our cabin
light from window and door
promises golden warmth
if only if I will come in
I first left this place in spring
with no memory of winter
creeks full with songs
land awake with first bloom
blue gray peaks above the timberline
standing watch, beautifully thoughtless
As a hero though I did nothing
simply being born heroism enough
the visions came without looking
elders, past and future, are present
in awful tenderness, silent compassion
But now I return, broken and in need
I will enter and rest and though spring
may not follow the nights that are longest
perhaps my people will sing me back
Hey jays, juncos and woodpeckers
Hey hawks, owls, and doves
Hey humans, coyotes, and pumas
Hey deer, bears, and badgers
Hey snakes, worms, and beetles
Hey trees grasses and mushrooms
Hey creeks, lakes, and oceans
Hey rain, snow and lightning
Hey sun, moon and stars
Hey all you people
sing a new beginning
while the days are shortest
Hey from your sleep, from your dreams
Hey whether you know or not
Hey grandmother teach us
Hey grandfather teach us
teach us to sing
The late Neil Postman was an author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic. His book, Amusing Ourselves to Death was one of those books I couldn't put down. This riveting speech, recorded in 1998, is still of the highest relevance in 2020. I highly recommend everyone take the time to listen to it.
As the worldwidecoronavirus pandemic rips throughthe world shattering national health systems and economies, unsettling lives, routines, comforts & joys, we now find ourselves in a new world of isolation, paranoia, social distancing & uncertainty. In this new world, many things are becoming better understood — & felt — like our interconnectedness to each other & to Nature. We are also fast learning — for good &/or bad — more details about the people we share our homes with. Let me just say, there are stories to be told y’all!!
I have pondered about this new world we’re in from the moment of mass lockdowns & closures. How will the young ones cope? How will we — the non-rich — cope financially? How will couples with domestic strife handle this with few options of escape? How will otherwise healthy relationships weather the storm — a critical question may arise: Is love enough? And for those of us who regularly worked out in a gym, will our hard-won muscularity & nimbleness turn to flab & creaky, stiff joints? Oh! These times are quite challenging on so many levels!
This contagion uncorks many interesting social and psychological phenomena . I am most curious about how it affects different personality types ranging from the extremely introverted to the extremely extroverted and those in between. Lonely I have never been, but being alone has always been my secret pleasure ever since I was a college student. I am what some would term an introverted extrovert — love being by myself but can chop it up & be highly sociable when the need or situation arises. Feeling comfortable in one’s own skin & enjoying one’s own space provide such a lift bordering on the spiritual. These precarious times can be somewhat less petrifying to the introverted extrovert like myself than for those who are labeled extroverted or extremely introverted by nature. In my neighborhood, I sometimes stop to talk with neighbors (at a safe distance, of course!). Oftentimes I sense the restless energy & ennui of those I know to be extroverted by nature. They tell me of kids driving them up the wall, spouses nitpicking & more time on their hands than they know what to do with (many have been laid off). They’re truly like fish trying to walk on dry land! I have one very extroverted friend, married with children who is now working from home with his wife, but his restless energy has him indulging in porn & sharing it with a selected group of close friends. He is not himself as he has never shared anything like this in all the years I’ve known him. His life has always been on the go with travel, fraternity functions, sports & entertainment outings, date nights with his lovely wife, track meets with his kids, etc., but now he is stuck in the house losing his bearings in this new world.
Every dark cloud has a silver lining, & if ever there was a time to believe that saying, it’s now! In fact, I believe the silver lining in our virus-addled landscape is a spiritual one. Many are becoming aware of our collective mortality & fragility & are questioning the meaning of this existence & our unique place in it. I have no doubt that a vast number of people are diving more deeply into their faith tradition for a clearer understanding, moral refinement & peace of mind. A few non-religious people that I know scour Youtube daily looking for uplifting videos from all sorts of “family & relationship experts”, “mediation experts” &” spiritual masters”. I can’t blame them. These unprecedented times have left them unmoored & nervous about the future. I’m somewhat ambivalent about spending hours online looking for inspiration when other more powerful sources are all around us. As mentioned, religion provides an excellent source. For the non-religious but spiritual like myself, a variety of sources can provide one with spiritual fortitude.
There are a number of places I go to for peace of mind & ecstatic flights. Music has always been a major oasis to set me straight. My musical taste is quite varied & specific to the mood I’m in at any given moment. For this moment in time, songs like “Yesterday Was Hard For All of Us” by Fink, “Alladdin’s Lamp” by Al Jarreau, “Fear & Love” by Morcheeba, “Miracle Love” by Matt Corby & “Valeh” by Axiom of Choice are like medicine to my soul. I supplement this by delving into the works of Rumi, Hafiz, Buddha, Khalil Gibran, the Stoics & numerous authors of Christian Liberation Theology like Dr James Cone who wrote the masterpiece, “The Cross & The Lynching Tree”.
We all need spiritual nourishment to elevate our vibration to help ease the burdens of this mortal coil. In this time also, one must also be highly selective of news sources as the flow of information is overwhelming & distressingly distorted. I stick to news sources beyond the mainstream like DemocracyNow, Alternet, TruthOut, CounterPunch & Black Agenda Report (to name a few). I highly recommend to anyone not familiar with the aforementioned sources to check them out & determine for yourself what is “truth”. As George Orwell once said, “the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history…”.
As previously stated, the silver linings to this isolation & social distancing are right in front of us if we only had eyes to see, ears to hear and wits to understand. It is now an imperative that we all wise up & not be the passive or apathetic creatures the powers that be would like for us to be. for the forces that seek to make this Earth more chaotic, polluted & unjust will keep pressing and pressing and pressing until there is absolutely nothing left to save.
It is a capricious little virus with a funny crown and a flimsy protein coat, zipping across the planet, leaving behind a trail of utter confusion, death and destruction.
And as nations rush to prevent exposure to COVID-19’s deadly effects, the virus is in turn exposing each one of them for whatever they are – good, bad or ugly. Depending on their responses to the deadly pandemic – humane or cruel, systematic or clumsy – the very innards of their systems are today open for everyone to see – like in a public autopsy.
At another level altogether, COVID-19 is stripping the human species itself of its various pretensions- of being in command of Planet Earth, muscular enough to beat any foe or clever enough to manage any crisis. Or for that matter even being ‘human’, as societies respond to the crisis with a mix of panic, prejudice and quest for self-preservation over others.
Sure, this is not the first time our world has faced a pandemic – the history of deadly infectious diseases like small pox or the plague going back several millennia. Despite all the devastation wrought, humans have not just survived such microbial assaults, but also developed clever ways to prevent or overcome them repeatedly – and will perhaps do so in future too.
However, COVID-19 has arrived when, more than any time before in history, technological prowess has created the illusion, that our species is immune to the laws of nature itself. From captains of industry to the politicians who front their cause and even among large sections of the general population, hubris about human achievements has been the dominant sentiment for a long time now.
A good example is the sheer arrogance with which anyone trying to mobilize global action to deal with the problem of climate change -potentially an even bigger crisis than the current pandemic – was being dismissed by those in power for the last decade or more.
‘Don’t you dare interrupt my orgasm!’ was the refrain of climate-change deniers along with those who benefit from the way industrial capitalism is set up in the world today – of a tiny minority of humans consuming endless amounts of energy while destroying the ecology and very future of the planet. (Thanks to COVID-19 much of the globe is today in lockdown mode, which is what may be needed to mitigate climate change!)
The malaise in the modern human mindset stems from the belief they are above all evolutionary and ecological processes, which stretch back millions of years. While this is true of those who deny Darwin’s ideas on how life arose on Earth, even those who endorse it in theory, seem to believe ‘Yes, evolution happened in the distant past, but today we are in the driver’s seat’. This is due to their almost blind conviction, that tomorrow’s science can always overcome every problem created by the one from yesterday.
What COVID-19 is really telling us in a spectacular and scary way is – the story of evolution – a non-linear process driven by many chance events – is not over yet and never will be. To understand why not, one needs to consider that for much of its existence, our planet, formed 4.7 billion years ago, has been essentially run by microbes like bacteria and viruses. Homo Sapiens, our species, emerged just 200,000 years ago and while we seem to dominate the visible world, we are nobodies compared to the invisible one, which is stupendous in antiquity, diversity and sheer scale.
Bacteria are better known and recognised for their role in a very wide range of essential phenomenon from fertilizing the soil, recycling waste, regulating atmospheric gases and even running critical functions within the human body. Viruses, poorly understood and studied till recently and not even considered a form of ‘life’, are as important as bacteria, if not more, and the most abundant biological entities on Earth.
The best current estimate is that there are a whopping 1031 virus particles in the biosphere. If all the viruses on Earth were laid end to end, they would stretch for 100 million light years. And in every adult human body, while there are 30 trillion human cells and also around 39 trillion bacterial cells, that is nothing compared to the 380 trillion viruses that live inside us (COVID-19 has come to visit its in-laws).
More significantly, their huge population, combined with rapid rates of replication and mutation, make viruses the world’s leading source of genetic innovation and key drivers of the evolutionary process. They are the ones who have since time immemorial ‘invented’ new genes that find their way into other organisms, affecting all life on Earth and often determining what will survive.
In other words, what we face in COVID-19 is essentially a force of nature – like an invisible tsunami- that cannot be stopped. Yes, ‘infection control’ or ‘lockdowns’ can buy some time to prepare better, but in the absence of a vaccine the virus will find a way to infect a very large section of the human population. The only thing we can do now is deal with the consequences (still not clear in the fog of media-driven panic), to the best of our abilities and wait till much of the global population acquires herd immunity, as part of a natural ebb and tide of all viral pandemics in history.
Ultimately, COVID-19 is also reiterating something that all humans know very well, but don’t like to acknowledge because they lack humility – we are just perishable biological creatures, like any other plant or animal. In the larger context of our planet and certainly the universe, we are so minuscule as to be just like microbes themselves (one more reason to treat bacteria and viruses with greater respect).
Even more fundamentally, we are products of nature and not ‘above’ it in any way. We will be again and again subject to both its creative, productive cycles as its sometimes whimsical, destructive ways. That is why preservation and enabling of life in all its forms – using mutual cooperation, human solidarity and all resources at our command – can be the only meaningful goal for societies, instead of chasing GDP growth or accumulation of wealth and military might.
Nowhere is this more tragically clear, than from the current plight of the United States, the planet’s ‘top dog’, being ferociously wagged by its tail in the ongoing pandemic. The world’s only Superpower is painfully learning, that natural phenomenon like climate change or pandemics, cannot be fought by fighter aircraft or nuclear weapons or with all the money in the world.
And though POTUS will never acknowledge this, he surely understands today, it is not he but COVID-19 that wears a crown, because in fact, the virus is the real ‘king’ of the planetary jungle.
Satya Sagar is a journalist and public health activist who can be contacted at sagarnama@gmail.com
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In this TEDtalk, Minna Salami shares images of women from
around the world, highlighting how out of touch the stereotypes are
from reality. She tells powerful stories of her diverse grandmothers
whose lives have shaped hers and of how images of African women in the
West do not represent the experiences of her own friends and family. And
how, very simply, African women like the same things as women
everywhere.
Minna Salami writes, speaks and advocates on a broad range of Africa,
Diaspora and feminist issues. She writes the award-winning African
feminist blog, MsAfropolitan.
I am proud to say that reading books on feminism/feminist politics has made me a better person. No longer do I by default gaze at women one-dimensionally & when I do slip from time to time, I hear Alice Walker, bell hooks, Toni Morrison & Adrienne Rich. Soon I will hear Minna in my ear with "Ok, enough....". Fellas, we got work to do.....
Recently, Zoom classes held by professors at the University of Southern California (USC) and other schools were violently disrupted by “Zoombombers” who infiltrated virtual classrooms, yelling racist, anti-Black and anti-Asian slurs, and drawing pornographic images on screens. University closures and the online learning alternatives put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19 have reshaped academic life, bringing teaching—and the deep-seated racism that professors and students of color have always faced—into the intimate realm of the home. These hateful “bombings” differ from other entrenched forms of classroom racism and sexism because their explosive impact penetrates the household at a time when U.S. leaders have applied a wartime analogy to combat a global health crisis.
As millions of Americans have shifted to working from home, online discourses about prepping successful Zoom sessions have included pithy advice about matters ranging from successful lighting to staging one’s backdrop. Although coverage of the Zoombombings at USC and within Los Angeles school districts stressed that these attacks weaponize racism and sexual harassment, reports have neglected to adequately emphasize the threat to domestic life. In the current moment, working from home can be conflict-ridden and Zoombombings are invasions into the safe havens we all strive to maintain.
To be sure the Coronavirus pandemic has dramatically altered how faculty and students work and learn—a re-structuring that has classed and racialized implications based on unequal access to technology. But when bigots utilize virtual combat tactics to invade online classes they highlight how wartime anxieties exacerbate the forms of oppression that people of color face. When attackers interrupted a Zoom lecture for a USC class focused on race and inequality—shouting the N-word—they pierced the imagined safety of the faculty and students’ homes in a manner akin to throwing bricks through their windows. Knowing the hateful history of the N-word enables us to recognize this attack for what it was: racism. Alongside expert warnings about the ways in which panic around pandemics fosters xenophobia and racism, we also must acknowledge how framing our fight against COVID-19 as a “war against an invisible enemy,” as the President and others have done, encourages a wartime mindset for regular citizens.
Yes, national crises breed unity and an outpouring of support from Americans of all stripes—not just self-sacrificing medical professionals, but also devoted grocery store workers, delivery persons, and truckers hauling much-needed supplies. But harsh times also stoke fears of competition for scarce resources and the dark cover of virtual classrooms can embolden those harboring ingrained racism. The challenge this pandemic has issued for our country and the world is not limited to sacrifice and support along health and economic fronts. With professors and students working from home, and supermarkets morphing into the frontlines of pent-up anxieties, we must be vigilant about preserving safety for all vulnerable groups as we negotiate these radically changed spaces.
I concluded my Introduction to African American Studies Zoom class last week with an oft-quoted line from James Baldwin’s open letter to Angela Davis, “For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.” If we don’t stand up to those who spit on and attack Asian Americans in the streets, and if we fail to fully acknowledge the stakes of spewing anti-Black slurs in online classes, then what will happen when they come for us?
Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges & comedian, writer, actor, and activist, Lee Camp & other guests discuss the intensifying COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. They discuss the failure of US officials and infrastructure to adequately cope with the pandemic and discuss whether proposed relief measures can be expected to work. They also discuss how people are adjusting to life amid the pandemic, the possible effects of prolonged "social distancing" and the abrupt absence of sports and nightlife in the coronavirus-stricken US.
"In America, we grew up thinking that the people that we see on the nightly news are journalists. But, there is no journalism happening there, only script reading. That is understood by anyone with a sliver of common sense, and the objectivity to realize that their newsperson is basically an actor "
~~Charlie Robinson, "The Octopus of Global Control"
(Very absorbing, trenchant & for those of us who are of African descent, emotionally-charged. Seeing parallels to our current times is quite an eye-opener).
How did the United States — the richest country in the world — become the worldwide epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, with one person dying of COVID-19 every 47 seconds? Chomsky breaks it down as always.
Ever since I was a high school kid, I have been fascinated by the book. The touch of a sold book of fiction & non-fiction had a power over me, especially if it was new. Before digging into any particular book, I would smell its fresh papers, turn the book over a couple of times, admire the design , observe how it would look on my bookshelf, think of how I would prioritize it amongst other books so that when people looked at my shelf, certain books I favored would stand out more than others. Yes, I was truly a fan & up to this day, the fascination remains with bookshelves of books in my basement & in my room with a special stack by my bedside. Even with the advent of ebooks, I remain loyal to the book that I can touch, feel, smell & listen to when I turn its fresh pages.
At one point in my life, I wanted to open a small bookstore. I did my research by speaking with small bookstore owners & reading up on how I could get one started. My problem back then was getting the capital & fighting the naysayers who felt that it was a waste of time given that "people don't read anymore". I allowed myself to get defeated & my dream died.
After seeing this inspiring story of a small bookstore owner, old memories resurfaced Though I no longer dream of becoming a small bookstore owner, I am hopeful that books/bookstores will make a comeback. Yes, ebooks may provide many with the ease of reading anywhere without a cumbersome book to carry, but it doesn't give the reader the unique sensations of reading an actual book or being in a bookstore with other curious readers in search of a book to devour. Bookstores provide more than just books to scan through or purchase - it provides social connections & the powerful feel of a shared humanity always in search of something to be inspired by.
