There is something deeply, profoundly unhealthy in terms of mental health and behaviour behaviour of people in the USA, across the political domain.
One cannot take any comfort from political violence. In that moment Mr. Trump was victimised. As was the person who died from a head wound, and the two people who received non-lethal wounds, and to a certain extent, the gunman. A 22 year old, barely an adult. What did he learn that drove him to take such an action?
What happened to infant Trump. What did he learn, and from whom? What influenced his development, behaviour and character?
What is either person symptomatic of?
Nothing can justify such action, nothing, we do not need to make an excuse for either party - and we must try to understand. We must.
A problem correctly understood is half way towards a solution. A problem incorrectly understood is insoluble.
This is a soluble problem.
The adversarial dynamic is not the friend of the people at large.
The adversarial dynamic tends to empower predatory behaviour rather than prevent predatory behaviour. It enables bullying as a tactic and a behavioural problem becomes an institutional and cultural problem.
What is truly worrying is that it is intentional and incidental. The adversarial approach seems to incite chosen groups to engage in violence with 'othered' groups, driving ordinary apart.
There's no value in speculating about these events. We must understand them accurately. What does the evidence suggest?
Othering
"The term Othering or Otherizing describes the reductive action of labelling and defining a person as a subaltern native, as someone who belongs to the socially subordinate category of the Other.
The practice of Othering excludes persons who do not fit the norm of the social group, which is a version of the Self; likewise, in human geography, the practice of othering persons means to exclude and displace them from the social group to the margins of society, where mainstream social norms do not apply to them, for being the Other" Source : Wikipedia
There is a website that tracks mass shooting events in the United States of America. It records every known mass shooting updating daily, often with multiple entries for a single day.To shoot other human beings one has to have 'othered' them entirely.
Clearly the United States of America is not a healthy polity. Too much 'othering'.
The USA is a State that operates more than 700 military bases outside its own territory. In other States territories. A state with declared adversaries, enemies, allies.
A state engaged in warfare, in supplying weapons to allies waging war, even going so far as to enable a genocide. A state where regular mass shooting events occur. Multiple states at war. A pattern. A global cultural institutionalised behavioural dysfunction.
This is not healthy behaviour.
The sickness is systemic, a global culture of adversarial violence and power struggles.
The consequences of that are horrific.
“Suddenly, we heard sound of a missile, and then a very strong explosion,” said Abu Hammad, 36. “Then the sound of screaming, ashes, and blood were the only thing you could hear, see and smell. When I pulled myself together, I remembered that my daughter had been standing near the school’s gate. I ran madly, and screaming her name.”
Abu Hammad started looking for her daughter, stepping between the injured, the dead and the scattered body parts, but could not find her.
“There were many bodies, including children, women, and men, some cut to many pieces, some burnt alive. The street was a pool of blood. But there was no trace of my child.”
source : The Guardian
There is much, much worse on Instagram, Twitter, Al Jazeera, Tiktok, Telegram and beyond, with all of these horrors intended by Israeli and seen by USUK air and satellite surveillance systems. The reality is undeniable.
What is that?
Gaza, The Sudan, Ukraine, Congo, Myanmar , Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and so many other places.
Political violence in the service of Wealth as Power.
The hierarchy of a culture, any culture, can exert an immense influence on the lives of the majority outside the hierarchy circles who must live within the conditions they set. And the hierarchy class can and do often exert that influence with impunity. They are rarely held accountable.
In this case, the case of the USA, the political hierarchy is a well studied and understood malign influence, with lethal consequences for its own populations, and those of many other States.
America is not alone in this dynamic. It is a global problem. Adversarial dynamics among ruling classes is an ancient reality, alive and well today.
Historically speaking it is true to say that Competing Warring States is the prior geopolitical system, and the inheritance of that line of governance remains hugely problematic, in spite of liberal democracy and its promises. Liberal Democracy emerges form an adversarial dynamic without challenging that adversarial dynamic, which keeps that dynamic in place, and we all suffer for it.
Adversarial Politics is not our friend.
No more left tight tussles, please - it’s exhausting. I know this is not an imminent possibility. It remains a possibility nonetheless.
There you have it, on one easy to understand quote, from Tim Field.
Tim Field born 24 April 1952 in Eastbourne 15 January 2006) was a British anti-bullying activist with his main focus relating to workplace bullying. He was the author of two books. In 2011, Field and a journalist Neil Marr coined the term "bullycide"
I tend to see Neoliberalism as just another branding in the historical trend of 'Wealth Extraction as Power Oppressing Nations'. I call this kind of system a Bully Cult. It operates as a bully, imposes beliefs to justify and rationalise the bullying, and it encourages bullying through curating bigotry.
The WEAPON cult which long, long ago created the adversarial system because even within it's constituents, the leading power factions - the Owners, the Kings and Queens, the War Lords, the Barons, the Hedge Funds, The Corporate Owners, The major institutional religions - all engaged in open and covert violent competition, where adversarial approaches were and remain the norm.
Monarchy the original knife crime syndicate.
It is a behavioural characteristic, a cultural pattern rather than a standard human behaviour. It is also a learned pattern of behaviour. Who teaches that? Who mentors children to become professional bullies adults?
Adversarial Culture is not going to help us.
My humanist political stance points out that the Left/Right dynamics of political ideology are inherently adversarial and that they cannot facilitate Mutual Aid approach to Governance.
These then are the settings born of adversarial relations and they do not reflect a need to abandon the adversarial model of governance, in order to achieve mutual aid and healthy governance.
Most users of the terms Left/Right believe the adversarial dynamic is inevitable, natural and that 'it is the way reality works' because it is here, has always been here in recorded history, and it seems to be inevitable. It is not.
I find at times that for me the terms Left/Right are inadequate to our political needs in these times. They carry malign, curated characteristic attributions, because they have become weaponised. They are used as emotional weapons. Dog whistles for the pain of impotent anger and the regression of revenge.
Hit back! Hit Back! Destroy them..
Historically the oppositional dynamic and psychologies of Power contained within Left/Right labelling are rooted in old 18th Century categorisations, from the French Revolution, a violent uprising that was presented as a struggle for liberation, which it was in part.
What happened was that pretty soon another violent hierarchy emerged to continue the ancient systemic approach of Wealth Extraction as Power, now represented by the Right, in opposition to the Left, who represented the ordinary people in general terms, rather than specific.
Within Marxism, a contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose each other, leading to mutual development. It is adversarial.
This pattern of thinking ensures that the hierarchy and its violence persists.
Wealth as Power opposing the People
The term Left was later adopted to meet Marxian analysis, and the rise of Trade Unions as a political lobby protecting workers from Abusive Industrialists.
The Left was for Workers Rights, The Right was for Owners Power way back then and remains so through to today..
Both sides claim that it is ‘hard working people’ and 'entrepreneurs' and 'honest workers' who they appeal to and who form up their natural support base. Factories need workers. Wealth Extraction needs workers. Workers towns need shops. Shops need workers. Wealth extraction needs to extract from every level of that. Wealth extraction needs workers.
While they are not the same, or comparable, The Left and The Right, they are bootstrapped by the dominance of the adversarial dynamic of power politics. That dynamic entraps all who participate in it. That is why it is allowed to persist.
That dynamic is a huge driver of the conflict, warfare and impoverishment of humanity - we have to call it out in public, and challenge it without feeding it.
And yet they both agree that Wealth Extraction needs 'workers.' Both Left an d Right need 'workers' to 'grow the economy'.
What about the people?
They do not cite decent, warm hearted, intelligent, kind people, of all ages, creeds, languages, cultures and communities - the vast majority of us - as their base. They do not claim the disabled, the vulnerable, the distressed, the wounded and maimed, the traumatised or the impoverished as their base. Where are they represented and where are their needs as yet un-met?
All the leading adversarial parties have a minority voting base, pretending to represent the majority view.
Mutual Aid is the answer to that problem. Mutual Aid includes all the people, all the time, us together in solidarity.
21st Century
The shituation has moved on - the issue is hierarchy and abuse of power, the issue is war, where workers murder other workers, as ordered by Wealth Extraction Lobby politicians.
The issue is genocide. The issue is Climate Disruption. The issue is impoverishment. The issue is curated weaponised bigotry.
The issue is lethal bullying and that must be stopped.
These are global issues, because they are symptoms of systemic, cultural, embedded and normalised adversarial dynamics operating within every modern State, and operating between States. It is insane behaviour. It is causing intolerable harms.
An adversarial approach has no hope of dealing with these issues safely. It is not possible to solve problems like this using adversarial approaches.
Humane Solidarity is our Superpower.
I see the emergence of another political stance - Mutual Aid, Egalitarian Justice, Deliberative Democracy, Devolved Power based on honesty about the evidence and what it means. Emerging from the population rather than the existing hierarchies. Grand words, sweeping generalisations some would say. I would argue the opposite. Mutual Aid is helping each other. It immediately challenges the Adversarial Dynamic.
Egalitarian Justice is full public accountability of all elected officials, so that any corrupt behaviour is a criminal offence, with a prison term. Betray the people, pay the price. Same laws apply to everyone, nobody is above the Law, overtly or covertly.
Deliberative Democracy is where the people who are to be impacted by a policy are part of the discussion, with a view to prevention of avoidable harm to their welfare and security, informing policy and changing it where it needs changing, in order to meet their needs.
Devolved Power is about decentralising political power and the institutions of state, so that they are among the people, a workforce of the people, carrying out the day to day administration of good governance.
Working together rather than factions working against each other.
The constant adversarial struggles for power are exhausting.
The constant harm causation is exhausting.
The daily awareness of what is being done to innocent people as we go about our day is exhausting.
Being a witness to all of this is exhausting.
Going through it as ones daily lived experience is intolerable, a living hell. Beyond exhausting.
We, the exhausted witnesses, are in the easier place to mobilise as a political lobby to challenge the adversarial dynamic.
We are exhausted.
A new term emerges, Continuous Traumatic Distress, where the events that cause distress are always imminent and there is no safety.
The lived experience of a Genocide is a situation where masses of people are forced to endure continued imminent threat to their lives, in an unpredictable way, without end. Every minute presents a potential threat, many live wounded and maimed, and they endure.
And we witness from a distance, living in the States enabling all of that. We know we are safe, and that the Palestinians, the Congolese, the Sudan, the Royhuinga and others are not safe at all, they are millions upon millions of innocent people, families, communities, towns and cities of people who are enduring warfare, caught in the crossfire, and worse facing a clear genocide.
What can we do to stop all of this?
What part of our State must we rein in to cease this activity within our polity, our country?
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs misleads.
Another Icon on Western thought turns out to be a deliberately misleading ideal. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is a logical fallacy, an inversion of the reality about culture and human needs. Maslow spent time amongst the SikSika or Blackfoot Nation of Turtle Island, and found a highly functioning egalitarian society where personal possession of wealth was not considered superior, rather it was considered inferior.
Sharing what one has was deemed the normal and healthy behaviour by all, and the more one shared, the better in that everyones physical and cultural and habitual needs were always met.
Furthermore the way they related to their children was not about what the children would become, it was all about the children as they are, as they present, already fully a person, already self actualised.
This tiktok talks us through the basics.
I invite you, dear reader, to also read the full article, from www.resilience.org , for more detail, it really is quite fascinating and makes for some healthy common sense, from a decent persons point of view, in any language or culture.
Regulating how I relate to, how I treat those feelings and emotions matters because it helps me to center myself, it helps me sustain whatever little effortI make in a more balanced manner. It reduces the likelihood of burn-out. I hope it makes my efforts more sustainable.
This is true doe all of us witnessing and dissenting and resisting and organising and not turning away.
We need to take our own self care, and that of our friends, family, neighbours ours and communities, apply it gently and firmly as part of the overall effort. Solidarity within our communities. A solidarity of compassion, heart, warmth and intelligence, feeding our efforts.
Perhaps this is another spring from which a trickle of active compassion can maybe become a river, with lakes and feed the sea of humane organised living, a healthy human species. Humane Solidarity is our superpower.
The Peace Protests continue, the environmental protests continue, people are mobilising at pace, it all takes time, and that time between witness and action and resolution is painful precisely because we are witnessing the harms and our human empathy is intact.
Know that the most human and humane will to be free from oppression and dominance behaviour is inextinguishable.
Corneilius
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