Make
no mistake about my words, America is fast approaching a spiritual death with
the election of Donald Trump and no one describes the causes and proportions of
this eminent spiritual blackout better than teacher and philosopher, Cornel
West. President Obama has, in essence, put an African-American face on American
neoliberal Imperialism and Cornel describes our spiritual death throes with a
knowing candor and honesty: Allen L Roland, PhD
"We may fight against what is wrong, but if we allow
ourselves to hate, that is to insure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to
what we hate." George William Russell
Four years ago, I wrote that
the average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred
years and that these nations have progressed through a nine stage sequence: From
bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage
to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from
selfishness to complacency; from complacence to apathy; from apathy to
dependence; from dependency back again into bondage. See VT Article ~ http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/03/19/the-nine-stages-of-civilization-were-in-the-seventh-apathy/
As Ramsey Clark, former U.S.
Attorney General, once correctly said ~ ”We’re
not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of
democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the
wealthy.”
In our present Plutocracy, we
made the transition last year from complacency to national apathy ~ but with the passage
and implementation of Obamacare, along with an increasingly militarized
surveillance state, we have now entered stage eight, Dependence on the state ~
which will soon be followed with militarized Bondage by the state and
eventually spiritual death.
Donald Trump's campaign vow to
register Muslims is a frightening echo of the shameful treatment of
Japanese-American citizens during World War II.
The British Economist magazine wrote in a worried
editorial that with the fall of the Berlin Wall, “history was said to have
ended,” bringing with it the final triumph of “liberal democracy.”
With Trump’s victory, however, “that illusion was shattered. History is
back ~ with a vengeance.” The election is a “hammer blow both to
the norms that underpin politics in the United States and also to America’s
role as the world’s pre-eminent power.”
We are now ironically the Germans in the
1930's as they slowly viewed their freedoms being taken away with each new fear
based edict and political appointment or announcement from their newly
appointed Chancellor, Adolf Hitler. They could feel the ground slowly
shift beneath them and they became spiritually numb.
They silently watched in disbelief and shock as these events rapidly
unfolded ~ as we are now ~ and as they always do before spiritual death.
Following the Reichstag fire, the Nazis began to suspend civil
liberties and eliminate political opposition. The Communists were excluded from
the Reichstag. At the March 1933 elections, again no
single party secured a majority. Hitler required the vote of the Centre Party
and Conservatives in the Reichstag to obtain the powers he desired. He called
on Reichstag members to vote for the Enabling Act on 24 March 1933. Hitler was
granted plenary powers "temporarily"
by the passage of the Act . The law gave him the freedom to act without
parliamentary consent and even without constitutional limitations.
Employing his characteristic mix of negotiation and intimidation, Hitler offered the possibility of friendly co-operation, promising not to
threaten the Reichstag, the President, the States or the Churches if granted
the emergency powers. With Nazi paramilitary encircling the building, he said: "It
is for you, gentlemen of the Reichstag to decide between war and peace".
The Centre Party, having obtained promises of non-interference in religion,
joined with conservatives in voting for the Act (only the Social Democrats
voted against).
The Act allowed Hitler and his Cabinet to rule by emergency decree for four
years, though Hindenburg remained President. Hitler immediately set about
abolishing the powers of the states
and the existence of non-Nazi political parties and organizations. Non-Nazi
parties were formally outlawed on 14 July, and the Reichstag abdicated its
democratic responsibilities.
Adolf Hitler addressing the Reichstag on 23 March 1933.
Seeking assent to the Enabling Act, Hitler offered the possibility of
friendly co-operation, promising not to threaten the Reichstag, the President,
the States or the Churches if granted the emergency powers
All we need for a similar unfolding of events at present
is another false flag event, similar to 9/11, and away we go. But there are many other voices sounding the alarm, besides
myself, and one of them is Cornel West.
Cornel West / 2016
Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, academic, social activist,
author, public intellectual, and prominent member of
the Democratic Socialists of America.
The bulk of West's work focuses on the role of race, gender, and class
in American society and the means by which people act and react to their "radical
conditionedness." West draws intellectual contributions from
multiple traditions, including Christianity,
the black
church, Marxism,
neopragmatism,
and transcendentalism. Among his most influential books are Race
Matters (1994) and Democracy Matters (2004).
On November
third ,2016, West wrote an opinion piece for
the Boston Globe entitled Spiritual Blackout in America: Election 2016 ~
in which he brilliantly builds on the themes
of Plato, King and others as he describes
our impending spiritual blackout and demise;
"The most frightening feature of the
civic melancholia in present-day America is the relative collapse of integrity,
honesty, and decency ~ an undeniable
spiritual blackout of grand proportions.
The sad spectacle of
the presidential election is no surprise. Rather, the ecofascist catastrophe
called Donald Trump and the neoliberal disaster named Hillary Clinton are
predictable symbols of our spiritual blackout.
Trump dislodged an
inert conservative establishment by unleashing an ugly contempt for liberal
elites and vulnerable citizens of color ~ and
the mainstream media followed every performance (even his tweets!) for
financial gain.
Clinton laid bare a
dishonest liberal establishment that was unfair to Bernie Sanders and obsessed
with winning at any cost ~ and the
mainstream media selectively weighed in for pecuniary ends.
In short, the rule of
Big Money and its attendant culture of cupidity and mendacity have led to our
grand moment of spiritual blackout.
The founder of
Western philosophy, Plato, foresaw this scenario. In “The Republic” ~ history’s most profound critique of democratic
regimes ~ Plato argues that democracies
produce citizens of unruly passion and pervasive ignorance, manipulated by
greedy elites and mendacious politicians. The result is tyranny ~ the rule of a strong
man driven by appetites,
corruption, and secrecy.
There is no doubt
that Trump meets this description more so than Clinton. Yet neoliberals like
Clinton bear some responsibility for the anger and anguish of Trump’s followers
~ especially those white male working and
middle-class citizens who have been devastated by neoliberal economic policies
of deregulation, NAFTA, and Wall Street protection.
The vicious
xenophobia toward women, Mexicans, the disabled, gays, Muslims, Jews, and
blacks are the sole fault of the Trump campaign. Yet the rule of Big Money
in capitalist USA downplays the catastrophic effects of global warming, of
poverty, and of drones killing innocent people ~
all the common ground of Trump and Clinton.
For over a century,
the best response to Plato’s critique of democracy has been John Dewey’s claim
that precious and fragile democratic experiments must put a premium on
democratic statecraft (public accountability, protection of rights and
liberties, as well as personal responsibility, embedded in a fair rule of law) and
especially on democratic soul craft (integrity, empathy, and a mature sense of
history).
For Plato, democratic
regimes collapse owing to the slavish souls of citizens driven by hedonism and
narcissism, mendacity and venality. Dewey replies that this kind of spiritual
blackout can be overcome by robust democratic education and courageous
exemplars grounded in the spread of critical intelligence, moral compassion,
and historical humility. The 2016 election presents a dangerous question as
to whether Dewey’s challenge to Plato’s critique can be met.
Yet Clinton is not a
strong agent for Dewey’s response. There is no doubt that if she becomes the
first woman president of the United States ~
though I prefer Jill Stein, of the Green Party ~
Clinton will be smart, even brilliant, in office.
But like her
predecessor, Barack Obama, she promotes the same neoliberal policies that
increase inequality and racial polarization that will produce the next Trump.
More important, she
embraces Trump-like figures abroad, be they in Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Israel,
or Syria ~ figures of ugly xenophobia and
militaristic policies. The same self-righteous neoliberal soul craft of
smartness, dollars, and bombs lands us even deeper in our spiritual blackout.
Instead we need a
democratic soul craft of wisdom, justice, and peace ~
the dreams of courageous freedom fighters like Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham
Joshua Herschel, Edward Said, and Dorothy Day.
These dreams now lie
dormant at this bleak moment, but spiritual and democratic awakenings are afoot
among the ripe ones, and especially those in
the younger generation."
Cornel West opinion piece
~ http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/11/03/spiritual-blackout-america-election/v7lWSybxux1OPoBg56dgsL/story.html?p1=Article_Recommended_ReadMore_Pos2
Speaking for the younger generation, although
a senior member of an older generation ~ when
we collectively surrender to the universal love that is deepest within
ourselves and take full responsibility for this love in our actions with one
another and the planet ~ we will finally realize that we have never been
alone in the Universe and that we are all one.
And as we
do this, one by one, we will experience,
planet wide, a Unified Field of love and soul consciousness which exists not only beyond
time and space but also beneath our deepest fears
and whose principle property is the universal urge
or propensity to unite ~ and we
all have a part to play in this spiritual transformation and evolution.
"If there were no real
propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level, indeed, in the
molecule itself, it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up
in the 'hominized' or human form": Teilhard de Chardin,
The phenomenon of Man.
Allen L Roland, PhD
Heart
centered spiritual consultant and advisor Allen L Roland can be
contacted at allen@allenroland.com Allen is also a lecturer and
writer who
shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com. He is also
featured columnist on Veterans Today and is a featured guest on many radio and Television programs
