VP Harris Is Right About Solving Central American Migration

 VP Harris may have been somewhat inartful in explaining USA's new strategy in addressing the Central American crisis at our southern border but she's right about solving some of the core causes of its people's migration to our country.

The USA border patrol and policy prescriptions to address longstanding border crises of desperate Central Americans seeking protection and new lives have been an abject failure.  It is time to refocus the reasons these good people are leaving their homes and families for a life free of deprivation, physical harm and abject poverty.

Americans have not a clue as to our history in abetting this human rights abuse in that region. I will lay out few historic facts to give my readers a flavor of our role in direct responsibility for this border crisis and more importantly, the abuse of millions of wonderful people just trying to survive.

On a macro level, since the very beginning of the 1900's it has been U.S. policy to support U.S. companies in their quest to exploit the agricultural resources of this region, including but not limited to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.  Among the specific companies are Dole, Chiquita and United Fruit, though there are many others complicit in essentially the colonization of this region by the U.S.A.

How, you ask?  They are just trying to supply us with fruits, bananas in particular, coffee and other stuff we need to sustain our lives, aren't they? Well, yes, but to do so here is what they have done, before I get to the role Central American and US administrations have played to enable this seemingly good work to sustain our diets.  These companies have supported right wing, oppressive governments there who return the favor with special privileges.  Like limiting or rolling back land reforms fought for by peasant/agricultural populations just trying to eke out a living on the land.  Like lobbying those right wing governments for tax policies to favor those companies over the basic need of their people for education, housing and fair employment to sustain life.  Like lobbying the US government for support to sustain tax policies in those countries and to train those government's military forces with such institutions as the School of Americas in repressing public uprisings for justice; yes,through cruel exercise of force and disappearance strategies.  Like direct U.S. military and CIA intervention to overturn left wing governments fairly elected by their people to bring reforms and democracy.  And similar interventions to protect and sustain the rule of right wing, despotic rulers dedicated to upper class domination and economic advantage.  These companies for over a century have turned to the local despots and supporting U.S. administrations to suppress attempts by workers to form unions to bargain for living wages and fair treatment of employees.  Simply put, I urge you to read the history detailing the role these companies have played to suppress democracy in this region and retain near slave-like labor to power their massive businesses.

Now our government's role, it really started with Teddy Roosevelt  who argued we have the right to police powers in this region to support our companies there.  His policies have extended to multinational corporations in recent decades. In El Salvador the U.S.A. helped suppress a popular rebellion n 1932 and again in 1944 there. In 1960 our beloved Pres. Eisenhower ended free elections there to support a right win despot.  From 1980 through 1992 they had a civil war in attempt to bring forth a left wing democracy resulting in the US extending temporary status to migrants from there, only to be stopped by Trump in 2018.  In 2003, El Salvador joined CAFTA, designed by the U.S. to provide favored  regulatory protections to U.S. companies and expand their influence.

In Honduras, 1911 we helped depose a left wing government; the next year special access was extended to US agricultural companies, who were granted rights to 1 million acres with protections provided by the U.S. military.  As recently as 1975, United Fruit attained reduced export taxes to aid their bottom line. Five years later we were training Contra rebels in suppression  tactics and global capital were granted trade favors.  Honduras entered CAFTA in 2005 and the country became a net importer of agricultural products from being a net exporter.  This was the beginning of the migration of peasant farmers to the USA. In 2009 a duly elected left wing government was ousted with support and endorsement from the U.S.

Finally, Guatemala, in 1920 the U.S. military intervened in a Guatemalan government attempt to oust United Fruit Company. In 1947 United fruit got our government to stop unionization of United Fruit. From 1954 through 1981 the CIA was enlisted to assure left wing administrations did not win free democratic elections and to sustain the rule of right wing governments. In 2006 Guatemala signs onto CAFTA, starting duty free US agricultural imports.  This starts their migration of small farmers to the US border.

This history was equally created by both Republican and Democrat administrations.

Yes, VP Harris might have more astutely worded her response to the question of whether she was "going to the border and when," which would have merely been an photo opportunity, not a meaningful action to address the root causes of the border crisis with Central American people. But she is right; it is high time, way overdue time to address the causes of this migration, which now includes drought conditions in the region, compounding the horrific effects on agriculturally dependent families as well as desperation for protections from drug dealing gangs engaged in violence and intimidation.  These are people desperate for safety and life sustaining employment. We are currently ill equipped to help them at the border and better equipped to help them right at home attain the life they so well deserve.  This is where they want to be if life there were sustainable and possible.  No one wants to leave home to start over if they can start over right at home.  

The Biden administration gets history right here and humbly admits our culpability in helping to create these migration and human rights crises.  Humility to admit error and past transgressions can go a long way toward a more just and livable America.

I want to credit Mark Putterman who did much of this timeline research and published it in Medium.

2 In 10 Republicans Believe In Authoritarianism And Myth, Not Reality

 A recent Pew Research study reveals that about 21% of Republicans do not believe the January 6 insurrectionists deserve punishment.  While somewhat encouraging that a larger number do not support the insurrectionists, this is still a large enough number to successfully overthrow our very fragile and struggling democracy.  A study of world events in governments overthrown, including our own Revolution  suggests this to be quite true and a very serious threat.

The solution?  Communications experts are saying that a massive public discussion on causes and solutions is required of democracy loving Americans, led by the our very necessary media, public figures in many fields of expertise and well regarded democracy loving leaders formed into commissions and panels widely covered by our media if our democracy is to be saved.   This of course, includes massive governing reforms to bolster and increase public confidence that democracy can solve major problems our citizens struggle with every day: economic, social, policing, governing and fairness of our society.  As in the BLM movement, we require a massive public movement demanding help from our leaders in many sectors if democracy is to be salvaged.

This public education requires a massive reinforcement of the necessity for truth telling, logic, rationality, science, the reliability of data and vital importance of critical thinking among the majority not  largely driven by myth and belief over fact-driven truth and rationality.

Authoritarian rule is much easier, more streamlined, requiring little public engagement.  Democracy requires engagement, participation and hard, vigilant work to maintain and improve.  This, for the 20% of Republicans is a likely impossible lift; the rest of us, the majority, must rise up and act now, not tomorrow or down the road.  This likely starts with the elimination of the Filibuster to get anything done at the Federal Level.  Gerrymandering must be eliminated at the local and Federal levels to get this process of saving democracy started.  Anything short of these national and local reforms will result in failure.

How did we get here?  Let's start with religion.  The core Evangelical base of this Republican support for Authoritarianism is a major part of the cause.  This group, along with most other religionists, bases its thinking, if you can call it that, on a massive body of myths, many rooted in Pagan traditions incorporated in early and late Christian theology.  That is a blog by itself.  Theologians have well documented the roots of beliefs like virgin birth, salvation, divine intervention,  miracles and the like.  More sophisticated Catholic theology further amplifies this dependence on mythology and male dominated authoritarianism; things like transubstantiation and Papal infallibility for example and lord knows, Republicanism is strongly populated with Catholics; just look at Republican leadership over the last few decades and the Supreme Court.

The large number of Americans driven by mythological religious belief and also driven by America's penchant for mythology and untruth about our history and origins as a society.  This circumstance is fueled by our failure to reckon with our history of invasion, oppression of those we have displaced  and/or enslaved to meet our economic goals in the Americas and our failure to come to terms with its impact on those we dominate and the success of our current society and democratic governance. 

We are not a bad people.  Our origins are not all bad.  We are not unlike societies which preceded ours.  We are human, thus flawed in some ways, amazing in other ways.  We are capable of correcting our ways and improving on our flaws if we engage our brains and consciences.  

What remains to be seen is if we and our leaders will rise to the challenge to save and improve on our form of democracy and isolate those intent on imposing their deeply ignorant and greedy authoritarianism on us, the majority.

Is More Civics A Solution To America's Democracy Stupidity?

 

Some propose improving and expanding Civics education in our schools.  I presume they mean our public schools.  25% of us attend private schools, 78% which are religious based, which raises all kinds of questions about reliance of facts, critical thinking, the scientific method versus "faith" and "belief" not requiring verification or rational challenges.

But, let's suppose reaching 75% of us with rigorous, fact-based, verified data and truth about our democracy and how they are impacted by self-governance would make a big difference in Civic participation. Let's examine first the concept of self-governance.  

Data suggests that an overwhelming majority of us typically do not vote in America, which is the first principle of self-governance. An overwhelming majority of us, the data suggests, never attend a village, town, city or state legislative meeting and do not know and have seldom talked to an elected official. 

So, would better and expanded Civics education change that materially?  I have serious doubts.  In my own family, deeply exposed to politics, government and political engagement  some are on record saying "fuck politics".  I wonder if my own experience is mirrored in the broader world of our population.  I don't know but deeply suspect that it would have little impact.  That does not mean it is not worth trying if our very democracy is at stake. Which it is at this very moment.

Here is what Civics educators have to work  with in the families surrounding our young Civics students.  According to the Annenberg Public Policy Center in a study published in 2018, only 26% of us can name the 3 branches of our government.  18% of us trust our government. Other studies tell us only 30% of us know that the House of Representatives have 2 year terms and only 25% of us can name the 5 freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.  23% of 14 year old eight graders are proficient in the National Assessment of Educational Progress Civics Exam.  Only 9 of our 50 states require one year of Civics education in their public schools, only 32 of these states require instruction on American democracy and other systems of government, Constitutional history, the Bill of Rights or how to participate in self governance. Only 6 states require Civics education of any kind and 8 states require none.

Colorado and Idaho are considered models of really good Civics education. Their respective turnouts in the 2020 election, in the 84-85% levels, with very different Presidential  preference results suggests that I might be wrong.  I hope I am wrong. 

There is now serious questioning going on about the factual content of our American history education in public schools, valuing mythology and over actual documented facts about the failures of our founders and their successors in providing democratic governance for all of our citizenry over the course of the many decades and centuries of our history dating back to the 1600's.  That is is the subject of a raging public discussion today and that is both welcomed and invaluable in looking for solutions to ignorance and susectibility  of a significant plurality of our citizenry to cultish preference for untruth and the faster, easier adoption of authoritarian governance over the plodding, sometimes ineffectual methods provided by self-governing and citizen engaged democracy.

Some are advocating some form of national service as a solution.  There is evidence with some other democracies that this improves public engagement  and tolerance for differing cultural and ethnic backgrounds.  Yet, in many of those European democracies there is a similar trend toward right wing, authoritarian fascist movements as we are currently experiencing here in America.

There is no question that major reforms are necessary to make our democracy more responsive to the needs of our citizens, all of our citizens and less manipulated to the ends of hyper capitalism so pervasive in our country and its destructive influence on the success of citizen driven public engagement largely ignored by the majority of our people, driven by the failures of hyper-capitalism to provide for the basic needs of a huge portion of our populace.

The jury is out on Civics education.  It is well worth attempting to improve and make relevant to a people mostly driven by the need for economic and social stability.

The Derangement of America

 

America is undergoing a derangement.  This was the hoped for outcome of the Steve Bannon/Mercer Brietbart fascist project in embracing Donald Trump's candidacy as  vehicle to begin the disruption of our American democratic project in order to create a new fascist order themed with White Nationalism.  Bannon continued his project in Europe with right wing fascist organizers following his departure from the White House.

The Covid 19 pandemic was a lucky stroke for their project because it added to the disruptive environment they saw as a tool to weaken American's already unstable commitment to democratic processes and structures.  It made Americans even more vulnerable to untruth and propaganda to undermine public confidence in both government, politics, the economic order and a free press.   Enablers of  this fascist project underway, wittingly or unwittingly are megachurches with its adulation of authoritarian ministers offering a brand of Christianity suggesting righteousness offers material rewards, right wing evangelical Christianity offering a deeply mythological interpretation of the gospels and a fearsome deity threatening hell to non-believers and Catholicism rooted in a male dominated authoritarian ruling structure.   The Bannon and Republican de-democracy project has entailed capitalizing on American derangement in practicing the mind control techniques refined in the Stalin and Hitler eras, repetition and the use of it in selling untruth over proven fact and science based truths. The use of logic and reason so well explored by Plato, Aristotle and those developing the processes of metaphysics, ontology and epistemology by early Catholic scholars, later refined in the Age of Enlightenment have been largely abandoned by this fascist program in favor of myth and "alternative facts" promulgated by this crowd to a vulnerable, mostly poorly educated/informed sector of our citizenry.  Reason has been replaced for these people who rely mostly on "faith", much as was the case in the Dark Ages before the Enlightenment which gave birth to a rejuvenation of democracy attempted in the pre-Christian/Islamic era. Add to that a distortion of American history depicting colonists as religious and material saviors of indigenous people already populating and self governing the Americas, supported by an economics propelled by enslaved Africans brought here to do the heavy economic lifting, mostly condemned by European nations though cheering on the American project. These existing forces further created a mindset receptive to fascist authoritarianism which promises faster results in governance and a promotion of the Anglo Euro-centric dominance of a rapidly diversifying American demographic threatening their interpretation of American Exceptionalism.  Critics of this trend in American life of course are called unpatriotic and bleeding heart liberals. Studies are being published one year or more after the post Covid 19 pandemic are suggesting further conditions favoring the success of the fascist movement.  For example,  one study suggests 34% of patients who survived Covid have indications of  diagnoses of mental or neurological problems.  Their lives are destabilized.  A recent study of Q-Anon followers reveals that 68% of them informed of mental health disease diagnoses.  44% informed of serious psychological trauma in the medical history.  IMO their mental health status mirrors that of other right wing extremist groups with whom they are collaborating. 14 % of us experiencing the consequences  of more than a year of erratic and conflicting information on the health future we face, quarantine isolation and disruption of our previous life routines report psychological distress triple the rate we reported in 2018.  4 in 10 of us report anxiety and depression, up from 1 in 10 in previous non-Covid years.   Thus, a huge sector of the American populace are vulnerable to right wing promises of results-producing governance and improved lives through fascist authoritarianism. This is not to excuse the pre-Trump  drift toward authoritarianism, Trumpite behavior of racism, sexism, selfishness and tolerance for predatory behaviors or the diminishing commitment to the democratic project.  It is to explain at least in part the causation of the state of conflict we find ourselves in .  It may offer some hope that if we are successful in containing and minimizing the pandemic and the Biden Administration's encouraging demonstration that government can actually work to help improve our lives, there may be a way forward with democracy.  Stable comportment of those of us not on the right as an example of how American life can be lived together with a massive expansion of mental health services might at least bring us some remedy to this current American Derangement.

The Next Trumpism Generation Will Be ENRON Slick

 Don't be fooled or lulled into complacency. The fascists engaged in Trumpism have learned  lessons from their partially failed effort to end our democratic experiment in favor of an authoritarian fascism.  Trump didn't do what damage he did alone.  Likely he did not have a grand strategy, given his impulsive, narcissistic personality.

Smart, cunning fascists saw in him an opportunity to launch their attack on a democracy they were forced by history to share with those they called liberals.  Liberals were an extreme inconvenience to them in attaining their faster, easier claim on wealth and riches.  Some in his midst were ideologues like Bannon, Miller, Gorka.  Most were very impatient business types who found our plodding, messy and shared democracy a major impediment to wealth building.  Take a look at Trump's former cabinet and key Federal department appointees.  Grey, colorless, boring financiers and industrialists whose personal agendas were accumulation of dollars, preferably stored offshore.

The Enron corporate model exemplifies the predictable next round we face in the deconstruction of small d democracy. The founders , all slick operators like Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow. who chose a relatively colorless, not so smart CEO from a traditional Texas energy career. Yes, he had a PhD in economics, so he knew what they all were doing with their new company whose brand theme was "Endless Possibilities".   But his mind manner and winning, nice guy personality masked the criminality his company and board were engaging in.  And a very un-flashy complicit board it was of equally colorless people  you never heard of from a variety of industries and backgrounds.  It included the wife of a very influential Texas Senator also with a PhD in economics.

The colorless fraud, well understood by Lay and his Board was quietly sold to a clueless business media and Houston establishment lulled into cluelessness with brilliant marketing.  They had in tow both a very respected Texas/Houston based law firm with international standing as well as a CPA firm of like international standing.   They knew and guided the criminal enterprise.  They just couldn't not know given their experience and brainpower.  

I lived in Houston during Enron's founding and rise to corporate leadership.  Young, ambitious people were eager to board this money-making train which had all the appearance of respectability.  They were attracted both by the dull ordinaryness of the new enterprise but also the slick, corporate flash provided by second tier management embodied by Fastow and Skilling.  They were seen at all the right public events, sports spectacles and fine dining establishments. Well dressed and driving the popular sports cars of the day.  This was to right imagery mix to attract the smart talent as employees and contractors.  I knew some of both. It was a heady time for the up and comers. 

This is what the next fascist Trumpite generation will look like.  And the look will be very different from the Trump era.  Smart, sharp, slick and all business in the campaign, led by a trustworthy colorless Presidential candidate.  Maybe someone like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio.  Pleasant enough, very self confident but not flashy or controversial. 

I got an insight into some of the Enron inner workings from a series of public radio interviews I did with Sherron Watkins, the Enron whistleblower.  What I learned from her, a very ethical, moral and deeply religious person, is that the co-conspirators in the massive fraud really came to believe that they were reinventing business norms, standard accounting and auditing practices and legal compliance.

Not that they didn't at first understand the fraud they were initiating. They knew, but narcissism and greed warped their judgement as they got deeper into the fraud and over time, believed they were right.  They were living the branding slogan "Endless Possibilities".  After all, this is the core promise of the American Dream and capitalism.  Which they turned into an elitist, fascist enterprise of people with superior skills and abilities.  This was the Enron culture. 

Watkins found only denial when she confronted the fraudsters.  They were reinventing business in their minds.  And down the corporate ladder, she found true believers who could not fathom those above them they idolized and were very gratefully benefiting  them financially would be doing anything wrong.  The same held for the world class legal and financial counsel who aided and abetted the fraud.

Sherron had no choice then but to go outside the cult of "Endless Possibilities" to regulators, many of whom too were duped and failing getting help there, went to criminal investigators within the Federal government.  She, as a conservative, found this last resort as distasteful but her only final option.

So, history may well repeat itself.  The model, Enron is there for the emulating by the next, faster, smarter and more cunning generation of Trumpites.  Stay vigilant.  democracy demands that of us.

Contrast: White Despair/Hate-Black Rage/Hope

 

I grapple with a dichotomy.  The white despair documented in rural and small Midwestern and Appalachian towns beset with industry/work abandonment resulting in unemployment, poverty and drug addiction to blunt the pain of living in such a circumstance. In contrast, the Black anger resulting in hopeful activism to end injustice and second class citizenship such as the BLM movement or the massive voter turnout for Biden in 2020.

Prior to economic ruin in these white communities, these tragic people and their immediate ancestors were blessed with secure middle class jobs, their choice of housing, access to education to advance their lives and a culture of privilege based on their ethnicity and political clout.  Many of them lost this lifestyle as result of offshoring of employment and massive changes in industry.  Some restored their political clout through politicians who demonized ethnic others as having stolen their lives.

In urban centers,  many Black people, while enjoying similar economic security with urban manufacturing jobs to which they and their families migrated off their tenant farms in the 40's and 50's. As those jobs too out migrated to foreign shores, they too lost security and stability with their lives. Many expressed their despair with gangs, conflict and drugs.  But in their case, they had never experienced choice in housing, access to quality education or a culture of privilege as had their white counterparts.  Some restored their political clout through civil and voting rights activism resulting in politicians who advocated for them, often with stiff headwinds. 

Yet the rural, mostly white Americans seem for the most part to be wallowing in their misery and attacking Black and liberal citizens for their plight with no cause and effect evidence.  And they seem stuck in their terrible situation without exercising their voice to the greater society to address this inequity.  I see few ideas for solutions coming out of this sector of our society, not even from the mostly conservative political representation that seems to be failing them.

On the other hand, from a significantly more historically oppressed sector, the Black American community, you see courageous work to replace inadequate political representation with brilliant, motivated leaders like The Squad.  And massive street protests drawing attention to policing violence against all of us and major efforts to reshape public sector approaches to both policing violence and social services designed to provide help and support.  The Black Lives Matter movement is self help at its finest.  All of this energy from an oppressed people defies logic considering the decades of disappointment they bear coming out of our our Civil War.

I am hopeful these two sectors of our struggling society can come together with leadership to address making their lives better, which will make all our lives better.  Massive economic and political change can rectify our societal failures.  Street action, speaking truth to power and leadership from allies in their cause can produce solutions if we trust and engage our democracy. 

Catholicism, Fascism and Trumpism

 Three isms, linked in infamy.  Yes, there really was a group called Catholics for Trump.  And various polls report that somewhere between 50 and 55% of Catholics in 2020 voted for Trump.  

I find parallels between 30% Catholic Germany in the late 30's and their transformation into fascism and our current U.S.A. drift into it quite fascinating.  Back then, recent Vatican documents made public reveal that Catholics in Germany were asking their priests and bishops if they could support the new fascism via A. Hitler they liked.  

The Catholic hierarchy adopted a policy with both fascist Italy and German of "neutrality", even related to the emerging anti-semitism within the populace and German political leadership. There was much documented anti-semitism within Church leadership as well. 

Pius XII's predecessor, Pius XI was quite liberal and had assigned J. LaFarge S.J., an American Jesuit who was editor of America magazine and and staunch advocate of opposing racism was tapped by Pius XI to write a Encyclical on opposing anti-semitism.  Encyclicals are the highest form of Papal teaching.

LaFarge delivered the document a year or so later, but Pius XI died before it could be published.  It was bitterly opposed by LaFarge's Jesuit superior and it is believed he exerted influence on its not being acted on prior to XI's  death.  

I learned some of this history through access to the locked section of the Santa Clara University library where I worked as a student.  I had access to books and documents stored there with my employment.  It began for me the process of working my way intellectually out of the Church and all religion. This included insights into the Church's long early history of anti-semitism, notoriously expressed, though not limited to the Inquisition. The Church in the modern era, starting in the 1960's began to excise anti-semitism from its teachings and culture.

Pius XI had acted to create Vatican City  as a separate Italian political entity apart from Rome as a move to distance the Church then from the emerging fascism regime in Italy.

Pius XII leveraged d his familiarity and respect for the Germans while serving in Germany in key Church ambassadorial positions with his neutrality policy when succeeding Pius XI.  Though some German and Polish Catholic clergy were oppressed by the emerging fascism government, Pius XII believed his neutrality policy would provide cover and protection for the Church in Germany and the rest of Europe as it was overtaken by Nazi leaders. The policy of genocide of Jews materialized and the holocaust began.  

It is clear that German, Polish and Italian Catholicism, with its highly authoritarian structure, had conditioned its faithful to respect authoritarian government in the political sphere.  The same seems to be true with American Catholicism, which has avoided democratization in spite of operating in the American form of democracy.  The Church's highly historically inconsistent policies regarding abortion, largely denied or understood by roughly half of American Catholic clergy and laity has clearly influenced Catholic support for Republican authoritarians for several decades.

I have studied deeply my former Church's policies on both support for authoritarian regimes around the world and its current position on abortion as I  worked my way out of the fold several decades back. One merely has to look at the relationship between the Church and both South American and Central American right wing regimes and its support of those country's wealthy elite keeping it financed to observe this truth.  Mexico, with its revolution and tamping down of the Church's influence stands as an exception.

So, American Catholic support for fascist Trumpism is completely understandable, though deeply troubling. This factual reality further convinces me that few Trump supporter minds will be changed on the destruction of American democracy from within.  Major portions of our electorate find authoritarianism quite acceptable.