He might have been bored, he’d nothing he had to do although perhaps there were things he might do. He had pretty much everything he needed although, perhaps, not everything he wanted. But it seemed there was something vacant, a hole to be filled, either temporally or materially, or perhaps emotionally. Who knew? He knew he didn’t, but still, he felt incomplete, or perhaps, more accurately, uncompleted. But not an uncomfortable lack of completion.
He’d had a full life, too full all too often, but perhaps, not full enough. More than his share of success and friends and lovers, but then, perhaps not the right ones. And more than his share of suffering and tragedy and disappointment, but then again, not enough to have impeded his progress, although progress towards what he knew not. He wasn’t always in stasis or limbo, that was the exception, but then again, the exception was seemingly the now.
Odd. He usually had an abundance of feelings, an enormous capacity to feel both the positive and the negative, perhaps an aspect of bipolarism. His life tended towards highs and lows with few plains of tranquility. But not now, now he seemed stuck in a comfortable sort of mire, too comfortable from which to seek escape although oases formed all around him, or perhaps they were just mirages and illusions, but in any case, lethargically out of reach.
Colors had faded, as had odors and flavors; as had sensations, both physical and mental, but his imagination was fine and filled the gaps. It was like a vortex leading to a black hole, or perhaps just a wormhole, but he was trapped in the event horizon, spinning around and around, faster and faster, but seemingly static. He felt a need to explore the other side, the white hole, or whatever the opposite of a wormhole might be, just … not yet.
He might have been bored, he’d nothing he had to do although perhaps there were things he might do. He had pretty much everything he needed although, perhaps, not everything he wanted. But it seemed there was something vacant, a hole to be filled, either temporally or materially, or perhaps emotionally. Who knew? He knew he didn’t, but still, he felt incomplete, or perhaps, more accurately, uncompleted. But not an uncomfortable lack of completion.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Continuing my rereading excursion, last week I started with Tom Robbins’ awesome “Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates” but Amazon, which I loathe and ought not to patronize (as I ought not to patronize Facebook), facilitated my recuperation of a bunch of Robert Heinlein philosophical novels (they really are more philosophical than science fiction) which had been lost to me many decades ago when a former friend’s now ex-wife decided they were demon inspired and confined them to the pit. And so I’ve ordered duplicates, mostly used (for some reason I like them more when they’re used) and they’ve started arriving.
I really wanted to delve back into Lazarus Long (as I approach the three quarter of a century mark) but somehow, I got confused and “I will Fear No Evil” came first. I hope Heinlein`s writing style is not catching. What was a delight in my youth frequently seems lacking polish and seems tedious now as I too have embarked in the writers’ art, but the themes remain challenging and fascinating and daring, and every once in a while, … a relevant pearl of wisdom drops. In this case (excuse the long prelude; … I hate long preludes), in the middle of page 174 of an extremely well worn, possibly fifth hand paperback copy, Ace Edition, 1987, the phrase:
“Nobody knows how memory works
except that everyone is sure he knows
and thinks all others are fools.”
That seems so relevant today, perhaps more than ever.
I know the memories my children and my ex-wife share keep getting more and more strange until they’ve become completely divorced from those I recall. To some extent, I believe that is based on the deliberate falsification of memory (see “Purportedly Recovered Memories”), now a science engaged in by former spouses (male and female) with the assistance of purported therapists, and of course, on a societal level, by the corporate media. Political differences translate from the civic into the personal and into irreconcilable pasts that break up families, something I’ve experienced.
My kids blame me and Trump, I opposed but did not hate him, at least, not enough for their “awoke” tastes. So now I too am (and apparently always have been) a horrible human being.
I don’t blame them, or hold it against them, but the consequences are the same. And since we no longer communicate, the consequences seem unlikely to change. The truth is not something to be explored lest it not agree with what they or I recall, or what they’ve been told over and over and over and over again.
Something to think about as everyone around us, including those once most dear to us, morphs into very different beings.
One ought not to be criticized for wondering just where distemperate individuals obtain their supply of “rats’ asses” from which they decline to be parted even over things for which they seem not to care.
Where are they kept? Do they have any uses other than with respect to pejorative declamations? If those who decline to dispose of them have none but still claim an unwillingness to surrender them, is that an example of actionable fraud or has it become acceptable deception, as in “selling stocks short”.
Are rats asses in short supply? Given all the rats that populate most parts of the world, one would think not, but where can rats asses be obtained? Are their specialized dispensaries? Do they have uses other than in conjunction with morphological metaphors and similes?
Do rats’ asses have any intrinsic values to anyone or anything other than their original owners? Given the frequency of allusions to them, might it be worthwhile to invest in rats’ asses, or perhaps, in rats’ asses’ futures? Are they traded in any commodities exchange, perhaps in the Wuhan markets?
What might rats, were they given to pondering, think of all the attention given to that aspect of their physiogeny? What does such interest say about those humans who seem so invested in them that they will not give them up?
Somewhat queer queries on a Sunday morning during an early spring, floating in the air at slightly more than seven thousand feet in the central range of the Colombian Andes. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Once upon a midwinters eve in a valley set amidst towering glaciers not yet long ago lived a confused soul, not an unhappy soul but not a happy soul either, a very curious soul but doing little if anything to satiate that thirst. It seemed to be waiting, not inactive but waiting, and many things came its way and many people, but time seemed to pass it by, as though something very important, something that dwarfed everything else was on the way but in its mind, it worried that perhaps it had already come and gone, that distracted, it’d missed it. Or her, or him or them, whatever it was.
It felt rather than heard echoes and sensed rather than saw shadows, and waited while not really waiting, wondering if perhaps the thing it sought was inside rather than elsewhere, then it wondered whether there really was an elsewhere, whether perhaps nothing existed except for its imaginings, whether perhaps it was the primal dreaming plant it sometimes imagined, the primal dreaming plant that encompassed both eternity and infinity in a rather small space, kind of like the multiverse it sometimes imagined, as the multiverse might have been in the one quintillionth to the thousandth power of a second immediately after the Big Bang, but then realized that in that realm of possibilities, the Big Bang was also part of the dream of the eternal plant.
Then it wondered whether the plant had flowers, and leaves, and roots, all, like it, seeking; waiting, wondering what they were for and why. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
It had been a lousy Friday. The worst of my somewhat brief physical sojourn what with being whipped, forced to carry a heavy piece of wood all over town, being whipped again, then nailed to a cross, then, as if that hadn’t been enough, stabbed in the ribs with a spear to see whether or not I’d enjoyed the experience. I hadn’t but Dad had refused to give me a hand. Then I’d been taken down from the cross, sprinkled with herbs, wrapped in linen and sealed in a damp, cold cave. At least it was fairly dry. Hell of a place to wake up in but in fact, Hell was where I awoke very early the next day, I think it was just after midnight. For some reason they like midnight there. It was hot! Not the ideal place for a rest after a harrowing day. Interesting people there though, in fact, almost everyone who had ever lived, except for the few Dad had teleported to the penthouse was there.
Lucifer, the old Roman god of light and truth was there complaining that he was being transmogrified into Dad’s prosecutor, Shaitan. A bunch of Dad’s old, discarded servants were there as well asking me just how long eternity was going to last. I did my best to ignore them (which wasn’t easy). Adam and Eve were there of course, with all of their progeny, which, well, included everyone. Cain and Abel had made up, it had all been a misunderstanding, no one knowing about death and all. Dad had sort of forgotten to explain just what and how final it was. Bummer. For some reason, everyone felt I was there to save them but I really had no intention of sticking around. I wasn’t too excited to return topside either, not after the week I’d had, but evidently, before Dad would let me return home, I had to finish off a forty day sentence, make a bunch of vague promises, etc. But after that, I was definitely not coming back, no matter what they expected.
I was thirsty as, pardon the pun, Hell, but no wine was to be had there at any price, just filthy boiling water mixed with Sulphur, and the omnipresent smell of rotting eggs. For some reason I have to stick around until after the Sabbath is completed. It’ll feel like more than one day let me tell you! At least three.
Who can understand Dad’s inscrutable ways? I confess that I can’t. He loves being mysterious and never says things straight out. Hard to know what he wants, which causes a lot of problems because he hates it when he doesn’t get his way! I remember when he blew up this city, then turned one of his followers to stone for turning around, and then, a while later, flooded the whole place for forty days and forty nights. He seems to like the number forty. He stuck me in the desert once for forty days and forty nights to see if I’d break, but after a while, I just kind of blanked out.
Anyway, I’ve got a while to kill here before I’m let out so I think I’ll circulate, maybe chat with Lucifer to find our his side of the story. That ought to take a while.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
A quote from Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown seems to me to capture the political reality under which we live. Perhaps the reality under which we’ve always lived; at least those of us deluded into thinking we’ve lived in a democracy:
“…in this occult soil the seeds of the future are being planted, and the time of the invisible world will come, the time of the altered dialectic, the time of the dialectic gone underground, when anonymous spectral armies will fight in secret over the fate of the earth.”
It involves an observation set in 1968, that magical year when everything seemed possible and we were set on changing the world for the better, when we profoundly believed that in our time, the phrase “idealistic utopian” would cease to be a pejorative; the time before the 70s and then the 80s when most of us were tamed by the traditional responsibilities of family life and children and all that that entails and we unexpectedly and suddenly became our parents and grandparents and other things less positive, the things against which we once thought we fought.
Perhaps, based on his own all too interesting life, Rushdie may have been reflecting on that unstructured structure that constantly strives, as do memeplexes of diverse flavors, to survive and grow and amalgamate everything around it, and, as around becomes grander, perhaps merely everything. Perhaps, even unbeknown to himself, that is what he felt when he published Shalimar the Clown in 2006. During that 2006 when a deep state within a state within many states, ironically already feeling itself all powerful, or at least more powerful than ever (after the convenient events of September 11, 2001), still concealed, was extending its tendrils through shadows and echoes and deep, dark smog.
Shalimar the Clown focuses on a paradise gang raped and despoiled by rising powers but mirrored in other places today. It tastes and smells of divided India invading the body of divided Kashmir and there planting its seed of mixed Jewish and French and American chromosomes in a metaphorically paradisiacal womb generating a disturbing progeny, kin to disturbing progenies planted in too many elsewheres. Too many times.
As in all of Rushdie’s books, it is rife in sensorial splendor with sights and sounds mixed with flavors and aromas and caresses and blows in a stew of historical facts and philosophical speculations spiced with peppers and in this case, Himalayan salt. A book in which to lose oneself and wake wiser.
A book certainly worth reading and rereading and rereading again, as I’ve done, as are all of Rushdie’s gifts to us. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
The Deep State’s relentless efforts to destroy Mr. Trump remind me of several other instances of successful destruction of once popular populist leaders. The link is populism but “populism” defined, not in the pejorative manner now being used by the corporate media and deluded academics, but in the sense of democracy unrestrained by the institutional fetters that make it little more than an illusion, a concept useful for those who really control the reins of power, but nothing more. Of course, populism comes in many flavors and some are not only wrong, but horribly wrong. That is the nature of real democracy, and of liberty, and of pluralism. None are inherently good or inherently evil. What the four media orchestrated Deep State campaigns I have in mind have in common is only that they involved populist rebellions against the status quo, and that they were, in their time, and even now, singularly squashed. Given what is happening with Mr. Trump today, I ask myself, as I frequently have with respect to others in the past, how much truth is there in what we have been taught and in some cases, why have contrary opinions been criminalized. In my experience, criminalization of thoughts and opinions almost always (perhaps always), means that something meaningful is being hidden. Probably something that might again resonate among the deprecated masses as it had before.
Of the four personages to whom I refer, the first was Napoleon Bonaparte, now to some extent, if not rehabilitated, at least the subject of some historical perspective. Not only was there an organized and well financed attempt after his final defeat to assassinate his character, successful for a time, but he was in all probability actually assassinated as well. Perhaps because Latin Americans, especially in Chile, perceived him as a possible champion and leader. Still, he is remembered for his military prowess rather than for having developed the modern legal and educational systems. And populism in his case, while it started in the context of a democratic revolution, “The” revolution, morphed into a non-democratic variant, as dis the second on my list.
The second shall remain nameless as any attempts to view him in more than one dimension is punishable as anathema, an abomination and perhaps, if society has its way, always will be. Perhaps deservedly so but, for those interested in unabridged truth, perhaps we’ll never know. Yet seemingly, like a zombie, his echoes refuse to stay dead although, who can know whether those who still admire him admire naught but the golem created by his enemies. Kind of like “Satanism”, a straw man creation of the Catholic Church all too useful as a means of maintaining control.
The third person, the one I think about most frequently today, was former United States president Richard Millhouse Nixon. In light of what is happening before our eyes, perhaps he deserves another look. But what a successful hatchet job was done on him, novel then, not so much today. He cursed, like so many political leaders then (and probably now), was racist and perhaps xenophobic, but certainly no more so than his predecessors, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. Nor, … if he was corrupt, … any more corrupt than either of them and certainly less corrupt than his successors: William Jefferson Clinton, Barrack Hussein Obama and Joseph Biden. Indeed, the “Watergate scandal that thrust him from office was tame compared to the machinations of the Obama administration in the elections of 2016, but then, times have changed (albeit old perceptions have been cast in stone). I lived through the Nixon era and remember it well, and I recall how much the Deep State hated him, not for the foibles attributed to him, but for having broken the “solid South”, for having ended the War in Vietnam and much more for his unforgiveable opening to China and rapprochement with the Soviet Union, for having ended the military draft and succeeded in obtaining the vote for eighteen year olds. For having proposed not only universal healthcare but also a guaranteed minimum income (something he referred to as the negative income tax). For having established the Office of Management and Budget, the Domestic Council, the Environmental Protection Agency and for having signed the Clean Air Act of 1970, the initial Clean Water Act (although he vetoed the second) and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. While portrayed as a racist and closet segregationist, he desegregated more schools than all previous presidents combined, approved a strengthened Voting Rights Act, developed policies to aid minority businesses and supported affirmative action. He promoted passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act which established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) as well as the Consumer Product Safety Act. Finally, at least with respect to this reflection, he also endorsed the never passed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. Hmmm, hardly the monster the Deep State, Democratic Party and corporate media have imbedded in the national conscience and in our history books, but Hell, he was a trouble maker with no respect for the status quo. He was horrible in a bipartisan manner in Latin America, especially with reference to a real 9/11, the one that took place in Chile in 1973, but the Deep State was much more than fine with that, and with the War on Drugs, but those bipartisan accommodations were not nearly enough. And he is dead, finally!!!
So, about the fourth person on my list, the Donald (as he perhaps likes to perceive of himself). It’s hard to believe that the Deep State and its minions would launch a campaign more virulent than that launched against former president Nixon but yet, here we are. I do not support his policies, they treat symptoms and not causes, and his personality, pompous and abrasive, is off putting to say the least, but then again, in context, perhaps no more off putting or abrasive than that of the leaders of the Democratic Party or of the corporate media. It is clear that the populist nerve he touched with his astoundingly unexpected triumphs in 2016, not only in the presidential election but in the GOP primaries, terrified the powers that be in both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Contrasted with the ruthless efficiency with which the Democratic Party destroyed its own populist insurgency and turned its leadership into tame puppets, it is no wonder that the Deep State came out of the shadows and did whatever it took, unrestrained, to destroy Mr. Trump in a scorched earth, no holds barred, damn the costs campaign, one that did not end with the manipulated if not necessarily “stolen” elections of 2020. Another truth we’ll never find.
Now, as in the case of the other three subjects of this analysis, political defeat is not enough, destruction is essential, and as in the case of Napoleon, assassination, if necessary, does not seem out of the question. That is at least as true among traditionalist Deep State Republicans as it is among Democrats, after all, he is the instrument through which the populist Tea Party movement wrested control of the Republican Party from the Deep State, and they are terrified that, even having helped overthrow him, they are unlikely to regain control, and if they don’t and he returns, there’ll be Hell to pay. So you have where we are today. Without any good options at all, not that there have been any since … hmmm, I don’t seem to have a “since” in real American History.
As in all four cases, truth today is utterly irrelevant, hypocrisy a positive rather than a negative, and consequences, well they’re something to be dealt with when the populist problem, both from the left (the Sanderistas) and from the right (the Tea Party) has been put to rest and the masses of the Bernie Bros and the despicables utterly defeated. The obvious fear that these four persons enjoyed popular support too widespread to be tolerated needs to be assuaged so that the denizens of the Deep State and their elitist masters can continue to feed in peace. Still, like weeds, their sort keeps popping up.
An interesting observation is that, as in the case of the Trump policies, ruthless as these tactics and strategies are, they only treat the symptoms that give rise to populism, leaving the causes, like the roots of weeds, all too alive and ready to sprout anew. Causes like institutionalized inequity and injustice, institutionalized income inequality, minimized welfare services and rare opportunities for real upward mobility. Causes like the manipulated divide and conquer polarization caused by identity politics that exacerbates rather than resolves social ills such as racism, misogyny, xenophobia and sexism: the causes, issues and realities that give rise to populism on the left as well as on the right, and keep its dying embers alive.
Of course, perhaps “give rise to populism” is an incongruous phrase in a purportedly democratic society. Perhaps, in a non-virulent strain like that found once upon a time among the left wing of the Democratic Party led by the likes of Tulsi Gabbard and Dennis Kucinich, populism might still provide hope. But that hope is safely and helplessly mired in the Democratic Party quicksand that keeps its populists immobile and prevents the development of a viable left wing populist movement in the United States.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
It’s a pretty day in late January, but in a world largely devoid of joy, full of hate and fury, injustice and deception joyfully triumphant, the future shrouded in malodorous mists. But still, … rays tinged in amber shades of joy break through.
I’m plodding my way through Norton’s anthology of English literature, Volume 2 after fifty or so years, I’m only on my second Poet, William Blake, someone deeply inspired by religion but who contrasted innocence with reality’s depravity, and as so often happens with almost anything, it made me think of my second son, Alex. Ironic given Alex’s current views, But Alex, unlike so many now, is still open to other views.
Nothing in my life has ever been as beautiful as Alex as a young child. Generous, full of love, and reveling in delight at the smallest things, almost no matter what. A cry so beautiful no music compared in stirring my heart and motivating me to succeed. So sharing and generous he set an example for me which I’ve always tried to follow. His faith in me, the greatest reward I ever received. He is very far away and I love and miss him very much.
He’s grown and changed a great deal, at least externally. He’s a father now, and a husband, and an aspiring author. His writing is mostly of battles and monsters and gore but I wonder if somewhere there isn’t a beautiful fragile flower full of hope waiting to be born. Little Alex is still there, not all that far from the surface. I wonder how he’d enjoy writing poetry instead. Not in verse, he’s too free, too independent for that. But his empathy has saved many a friend, and sometimes, a dad as well.
I recall that little children always loved him, and animals did too. And friends always trusted him even if they’d once been antagonists and treated him poorly. It’s hard not to come to love Alex: ask Salo and Paula, and now Missy too. Layers upon layers and dreams upon dreams. Trials upon trials I wish I could have spared from him, but life’s like that, the best laid plans too often go astray. But still, Alex is Alex and nobody else, which is as it should be.
Reflections and dreams, rays of sunshine on bitter days, memories to warm the heart. That was, is and always will be, … Alex to me. _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
Incoherence and hypocrisy seem in total control today. Truth has been vanquished, at least for now. Intolerance in the name of tolerance is the order of the day. Censorship in the name of liberty has become the rule.
Sigmund Freud, perhaps in the throes of depression, seeking solace once wrote “in darker times there was a person who thought as you do”. In the United States these are clearly such darker times and it is time to take stock as to who the real antagonists are.
The civic crisis in the United States today is not between purported fascist right wing extremists and radical leftist communists. That is the scenario that has been drawn to divide and polarize us by those who seek to maintain complete control over us. Today’s battle pits the populist wings, both left and right, against the Deep State and its minions, and, as should now be obvious, there is nothing the Deep State will not do, is not doing, to grasp and maintain power. It does so through Identity Politics which politicizes serious social ills, not in order to resolve them but as a tool to distract us and set us at each other’s throats, to divide us, to divide our families, to generate hate and vanquish empathy. Empathy leads to discourse, to open minds and to solutions, and that is intolerable to the Deep State.
The portion of our populace involved in empowering the total takeover by the Deep State is magnified by its minions, but they too are victims, manipulated emotionally by a constant barrage of propaganda where truth has no place, nor does constancy nor logic. Hypocrisy rules. The sane still exist, they exist on the left and on the right wings of the political spectrum, differing as to policies but with a profound faith in democracy and dialogue. Things seem hopeless today but the United States is not the whole world, nor is today eternity. If we on the left and on the right, those who have woken to the reality that the government is not our friend and that the major political parties, like the corporate media, are all too efficient tools of the worst among us, if we keep dialogue open and seek what unites us instead of what divides us, someday we may prevail and this dark night will witness a new dawn.
To many who have been deluded by centuries of propaganda presented as history, perhaps the injustice they face today, the frustration and impotence in the face raw power, will lead to a metamorphosis in our dealings with the world at large, with recognition that tolerance for differences and the choices of others in other societies must be respected and not merely eradicated. That while terrorism exists, those whom we have labelled terrorists are merely desperate people who have been flagrantly denied access to justice and served up hubris instead. Like the hubris we face today.
Let us not be like those enthralled with power who believe they can change minds through ridicule and belittling while keeping their own minds tightly shut. Today is their day but it needn’t last forever. Don’t isolate and withdraw. Find those with whom you do not agree and with kindness and diplomacy and reason and examples, engage in dialogue; willing to listen as well as to preach, and someday this too will be behind us.
“Someday”, as the beautiful African American anthem proclaims, “We Will Overcome”.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently a strategic analyst employed by Qest Consulting Group, Inc. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.
