A broad historical case can be made, that when huge changes take place but are not understood that…
By: David Chinook Bean
Tags: Anger, Politics, Elections, Vision, Religion

A broad historical case can be made, that when huge changes take place but are not understood that demagogues easily arise. An animated speaker that calls to base instincts maybe more vibrant than an politician mouthing platitudes about how it was good before when we all see it getting worse.

In The Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra also draws the parallel between Il Duce and the current occupant of the white house . He draws a large canvas that includes Britain and Brexit, India and Modi and even Germany. Many people are responding to the betrayal of dreams, not just here, and it does not align with the old right and left model. There are quite a few PhDs with big debt and no way to pay for it and world looks like a false promise, somewhat independent of national culture.

The elites around the desiccated media, opinion and political landscape have no answers and cannot see the scale and dimension of our rootlessness. Many feel overlooked and not seen. For some, our globalized culture has no place, no community, indeed no history; where people may trust their handheld device more than the few human beings with whom they are in contact. Even our language does not map the territory so as to clarify and not obscure. Where liberal and neoliberal are at opposite poles; as are conservative and conservation as it seems to me.

Pankaj Mishra puts the historic lens on the hugeness of our economic changes, so one can see both Il Duce and Trump as a response to our not understanding the change…. each time. I just pray that the traditional response… war, over there, over there as happened a century ago does not repeat. I know young men. They are a force of nature, and will not be told there is no place for you…as many cultures are doing.

I have imagined bitter and disillusioned Baathist officers, betrayed by the US in Iraq, boosting young alienated men to get even. I saw George W Bush wage war on a tactic(terror), and then brand the opposition with a religious brand. Alienated young men are a force, and it is far better to offer them direction, such as to make the forests safe to withstand fire than to go to war as was done to my generation during Viet Nam, or my uncle’s in world war one.

Whatever the case, the libertarian way with its billionaire boosters will not give direction to a generation looking for purpose, and a place; All religions have some truths, some version of the golden rule, and their proverbs; where there is no vision, the people perish. When politicians begin to use religions, as Il Duce did, as Modi, as Trump, then watch out! In short when religion is no longer a moral guide for unity and compassion, but a tool of division, it is time cut any link between politics and religion. The constitution is strict about the separation between church and state for that very reason.

For us to begin to understand that we are at the end of the age of appetite, that is a start. And then to begin the celebration of richness of live culture, good local food, there is a step. And to be surrounded by live theater, art and the quality of being, as in human being; we could do that without need for transport. And what if we used electronic tools as tools owned our own data and did not allow ourselves to be manipulated by gadgets; well, it could lead to a bright future. What if we realized robots are part of the mix and we do not need to compete with them; wow, wouldn’t that lessen the sense of desperation. But all this would take Vision, and it would certainly be a different direction than the one in which we seem to be headed.