THE AGE OF FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE – by Gary Smolker

← A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR IMPROVING POLICE CONDUCT IN THE FIELD – by Gary Smolker

LOVE DOES NOT JUDGE

Jun 13

 

 

WE ARE LIVING IN THE AGE OF FAIRNESS

We are living in an AGE OF FAIRNESS, in an age of creativity, social fairness, racial fairness, inclusiveness, diversity, etc. etc.  It is a RENAISSANCE.

We have left the Stone Age.  We have left the DARK AGES.  We have left the ENLIGHTENMENT and the renaissance which followed the Age of Enlightenment and we have left the Age of Secularization which followed the Age of Enlightenment.

We have entered an age of rational compassionate fairness and religious ferocity.

Some people now realize (1) Black people are just people; (2) they are not an inferior race or a violent race of people; (3) they have suffered many grave injustices, including slavery, systematic anti-Blackness, and inequality of opportunity (a) for an education, (b) for employment, (c) for housing, and for health care.

Some people now realize (1) doing the right thing is just, is justice in action; (2) everybody wants justice; (3) justice is eternal; (4) evil is only temporary, evil doesn’t last; its not the light at the end of the tunnel that counts, it is the light within that counts.

WE ARE EXPERIENCING A TIPPING POINT OF SOCIAL CHANGE

Nearly 95% of the counties that have had protests in the past few weeks are majority white, 75% are more than 75% white.  The age group with the largest share of protestors was people under 35 and the income group with the largest share of protestors were those earning more than $150,000.00

THE AMOUNT OF CHANGE PROTESTS HAVE PRODUCED IN THE PAST FEW WEEKS

• In Minneapolis the City Council pledged to dismantle its police department.
• In New York, lawmakers repealed a law that kept police disciplinary records secret.
• Cities and states across the country have passed laws banning choke holds.
• Mississippi law makers voted to retire their state flag, which prominently includes a Confederate Battle emblem.

According to a poll from the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in five Americans said they had participated in a protest since the beginning of the Trump administration.

THE LARGER NUMBER OF PEOPLE PARTICIPATING IN THESE PROTEST MARCHES

In recent weeks, 15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of GEORGE FLOYD and others.

The Women’s March in March 2017 had a turn out of about 3 million to 5 million on a single day.

The civil rights marches in the 1960s all together had hundreds of thousands of participants, not millions

Across the United States there have been more than 4,700 demonstrations, or an average of 140 per day, since the first protest began in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020. Turn out has ranged from dozens to tens of thousands in about 2,500 small towns and large cities.

On June 6, 2020, half a million people turned out in 550 places across the United States to protest against police brutality and for racial justice.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

According to a poll from the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in five Americans said they have participated in a protest since the start of the Trump Administration, and 19% said they were new to protesting.

[This post has been revised four times.  I began typing this post in May, 2020.  The above sections of this post were typed and added to this post on July 13, 2020.]

PRELIMINARY INTRODUCTION

This post is still a work in progress.

I have rewritten this post three times and I am now revising it for the fourth time.

This is the fourth revision of this post.

This post is still a work in progress.

I am still writing, editing, and revising this post because I believe it is vital to be pushing the conversation on the important social issues of (a) racial injustice,(b) racism, (c) protests against racial injustice, (d) law enforcement reform, (e) the shut down of the economy in the Unites States and other countries to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and (e) Russia’s and China’s efforts to dominate the world and to destabilize and to destroy American society and the American economy.

People are feeling the pain of the coronavirus pandemic.

The pandemic effects (a) people’s health, (b) the health of the economy, and (c) how safe things are. and how safe it is to do things.

The pandemic exposed big problems of our time that connect [(a) health care, (b) race, (c) inequality, (d) racial injustice] and foundational personality traits [(a) empathy, (b) dignity, and (c) human decency] each of which have now become political issues

People are working tirelessly to advance civilization.

The Black protestor in the photograph above is carrying a sign which reads:

“Telling me that I’m obsessed with talking about racism in America is like telling me I’m obsessed with swimming when I am drowning.”

On July 4, 2020, at protests and counter-protests, in Richmond, Virginia, White Supremacists, Black Lives Matter people, and armed Black Men sang “God Bless America” together at the same time, at the same place.

TODAY: The citizens of the United States are intensely engaged in a propaganda thought control war – an ideology war about racism.

Getting history right is of great importance in present thought control wars.

INTRODUCTION

In the last two months, people living in the United States have lived through a series of convulsive events.

Before GEORGE FLOYD was murdered on May 25, 2020 the world, including the United States, was being battered by the Coronavirus pandemic.

One part of the world economy after another was shut down: people were literally locked down; people were ordered to shelter-in-place; businesses were ordered to close; businesses closed; schools were ordered to close; schools closed.

People’s lives and the business world was turned upside down in an attempt to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.

This caused people to become extremely stressed out.

Forty million Americans had lost their jobs as a result of the lock-down before GEORGE FLOYD was murdered.

Then GEORGE FLOYD was murdered.

Then a video of the murder of GEORGE FLOYD was broadcast on social media.

Then the same video was broadcast on conventional media and news outlets.

The murder of GEORGE FLOYD, the callousness of the police officers responsible for his murder – their belief that they would suffer no consequences from the authorities – the man crushing GEORGE FLOYD’S neck for almost nine minutes staring straight into the cameras of bystanders who were taking videos and taking pictures of what he was doing – and the lack of an immediate response to GEORGE FLOYD’S murder by the Minneapolis police department was more than the world could take.

Then the local district attorney for the City of Minneapolis decided no crime was committed – that was more than the world could take.

People went into the streets to protest police brutality, social injustice and systemic social injustice.  They went into the streets to protest for racial justice.

After watching videos of GEORGE FLOYD being murdered, and hearing about and seeing additional videos of other black men being murdered while in police custody, it was universally believed – and universally agreed – that police treated black people as if black persons’ lives did not matter.

Intense protests and discussion of policing, racial injustice, racism, and white supremacy followed.

NBA superstar Michael Jordan treated:

“We must never turn our backs on senseless brutality. We need to continue peaceful expressions against injustice and demand accountability.”

People became sensitized to the words “racism” and “protest.”

Currently, the most searched words on Google are “racism” and “protest.”

Currently, the best selling book is Ibram X. Kendi’s book HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST.

People received videos that showed black and brown men and women being killed by a one white policeman or by a group of white policemen, people received videos showing the use of excessive force by police, and people received videos of events that took place at protests that followed.

HISTORY OF PROTESTS IN THE UNITED STATES

The United States has a history of protests – remember the Boston Tea Party.

Before the 13 British Colonies declared their independence from Britain, White Americans dressed as Indians stormed a British ship in Boston and threw its cargo of tea into Boston Harbor as way of protesting “taxation without representation” – taxes imposed on the American Colonials by the British government.

There were massive citizen protests against the Vietnam War during the Vietnam War.

HISTORY OF BEING LIED TO BY THEIR GOVERNMENT

Americans know their government lies to them.

That is what the Pentagon Papers [published by the New York Times and the Washington Post] lawsuit was about.

The American government lied to the American people about the Vietnam War.

The Pentagon papers exposed the governments’ lies.

The Nixon administration tried to stop publication of the Pentagon Papers.

The Nixon administration was unable to stop publication of the Pentagon Papers.

IT IS A TRADITION IN AMERICA FOR  PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IN JUSTICE TO SPEAK OUT

While the Vietnam War was raging, people of all ages protested against the war at protest rallies.

Song writers wrote songs protesting the war.

Popular singers like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby Stills Nash and Young (CSNY), and many other leading song-writers-singers wrote and sang songs protesting the Viet Nam War.

In “Teach Your Children” CSNY warned we’re bound to repeat mistakes of the past if we don’t do our best to “teach our children well.”

“Teach YOUR children/ To believe and

“Make a world that/ We can live in.”

That song asks parents to teach their children to be kind … and to understand the why’s of our values.

“Four Dead in Ohio”, a CSNY song penned by Neil Young, is heralded as the the ‘ultimate protest song’ of the turbulent 1970s.

The lyrics evoke the utter shock and moral outrage felt by the Nation following the shootings of college students protesting against the Vietnam War on the Kent State College campus.

The chorus chant “Four Dead in Ohio,” coupled with the lyric line “Tin Soldiers and Nixon coming” refer to the Ohio National Guardsmen who shot and killed four students during the campus protest.

“Four Dead in Ohio” was banned from some AM radio stations because of the challenge to the Nixon Administration in the lyrics but received airplay on underground FM stations in larger cities and college towns.

WAKE UP AMERICA

In 1833 free black people were banned by the State of Alabama by law from living in Alabama.

Jim Crow laws have been common in the South – separate bathrooms for white people and black people, etc. – even after Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union.

Lynching of Black People was common at the time Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

From 1915 to 1970, almost six million black people fled the Jim Crow South for northern and western states

People in power – such as President Donald Trump – are trying to deny Black People and Brown People and Native American Indians the opportunity to vote by impeding the use of mail-in ballots.

THINGS ARE HAPPENING

LeBron James, NBA team owners, and stadiums are stepping in to make sure that BLACK people will get to vote in the upcoming elections.

Stadiums in which NBA games are usually played will be turned into polling places before elections take place later this year.

Lyft has committed to offering free rides or discounted rides to people who need transportation to get to voting places.

White People, Black People. and Latino People are demanding that police departments be defunded; that police conduct be changed; and even that police departments be disbanded.

People are demanding that police procedures be changed – that when police are deployed what they are allowed to do be tightly regulated.

Law enforcement reform has become a hotly discussed topic.

The City of Los Angeles’ city budget has been changed – the amount in the City budget previously proposed be allocated to the police department was reduced in the current city budget – as a result of these demands.

The County of Los Angeles’ budget has been put on hold while the County Supervisors study what is to be done with respect to the amount of money in the County’s budget that is to be allocated to the Sheriff’s Department.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has cut $1 Billion from New York City’s $6 Billion budget for the police department.

The Democrats in the House of Representatives have passed a reform bill which (a) restricts the use of choke holds, (b) bans no-knock police raids, (c) will create a police officer misconduct registry, (d) lowers the threshold to prosecute a police officer to “if they show ‘reckless disregard for someone’s life.'”

ASIDE: Police Officer Derek Chavin – the police officer who killed GEORGE FLOYD – already had 18 complaints lodged against him before he killed GEORGE FLOYD by kneeling on GEORGE FLOYD’S neck for almost nine minutes.

WHITE PEOPLE WERE SHOCKED TO LEARN BLACK PEOPLE FEARED FOR THEIR LIVES WHENEVER THEY SAW POLICE OFFICERS

A majority of Americans have come to believe that what happened to GEORGE FLOYD is part of a broader pattern of excessive police brutality towards African-Americans.

Information supporting that thesis keeps coming in.

White people have heard from multiple black sources that black mothers tell their children what to do when they see a police officer in order to stay alive.

White people have seen unarmed black men being killed by while police officers – either shot or strangled.

On June 29, 2020, the New York Times reported finding at least 70 people who had died while in police custody over the last decade, after saying [like GEORGE FLOYD said before he died] “I can’t breathe.”

WHITE SUPREMACY

Many people are fed up wit the concept of White Supremacy, the existence of White Supremacy, and the existence of monuments that celebrate White Supremacy.

People have started tearing down and defacing monuments which they feel glorify white supremacy.

People have successfully demanded that many statues honoring white supremacists be removed from public places.

STATUE HONORING THEODORE ROOSEVELT

The most famous statue to be removed is a statue of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt was a eugenicist – a person who believed in the superiority of the white race.

People demanded that the statue honoring Theodore Roosevelt (statue pictured above) of Theodore Roosevelt on a horse and a Black Man and an American Indian beneath him  at the entrance of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan be removed.

The American Museum of Natural History announced that it is going to remove the statute.

PROMOTING RACIAL INFERIORITY AND PROMOTING WHITE SUPREMACY

An intense discussion of the impact of what statues and names represent is on-going – which is a discussion of what constitutes promotion of white supremacy – what promotes the idea that the white race is superior to the black race, and/or what promotes the idea that people who belong to white race are superior to Native American Indians.

People have demanded that statues that celebrate Confederate Generals who fought to maintain slavery be torn down or removed because they glorify and honor the idea that black people are inferior to white people.

Native American People and other people have demanded that the name of the Washington Redskins NFL football team and the name of the Atlanta Braves MLB team be changed.

TREATMENT OF BLACK PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES

Above is a photo of the June 26, 1970 magazine cover of A Midwest Newspaper of Women’s Liberation.

The  quote (1851) in the photo above (copy below) was written by Sojourner Truth:

“The man over there says women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages or over puddles, or gives me the best place — and ain’t I a woman?

“Look at my arm!  I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me — and ain’t I a woman.  I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well? and ain’t I a woman?

“I have born thirteen children and seen most of them sold into slavery and when I cried out with my mother’s grief none but Jesus heard me – and ain’t I a woman?

On January 26, 2020 the New York Times published a op ed piece written by Caroline Randall Williams’ arguing that that statues of Confederate Generals ought to be torn down.

Her op ed piece begins:

” I have a rape color skin,

“My immediate white male ancestors were all rapists.

“I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help.

“I am more than half white and none of it was consensual.

“White Southern men – my ancestors – took what they wanted from the women they did not love, over whom they had extraordinary power and then failed to claim their children.”

Ms Williams’ op ed piece was widely read.

BLACK PEOPLE DID NOT LIKE BEING SLAVES

 

The discipline of art history, with its deeply European roots, framework and model, is the most powerful and enduring apparatus of imperialism and colonization.

Its a brilliant fabrication, it is ethnocentric.

It has an ethnocentric theme, with a perverse hierarchy of objects drawn along a regimental axis which has astonishing implications.

Such objects and their styles are manifest the tastes of the elite and ruling classes.

It is a totalizing scheme in which all human made objects must find their appropriate place and the view of the elite classes becomes what one art historian has called the “brain of the earth’s body: the most thoroughgoing and effective imperialistic gesture imaginable.”

What is configured is an articulation of colonization and imperialism that allows colonization to subsist despite the end of direct colonization.

Hierarchies of race, gender and class are imposed, and the message is that so called natives, indigenous, inferior, subordinate, subaltern, and nonwhite people are to be conquered, catechized, dominated, variously exterminated, variously dislodged.

The question to ask yourself is: “How can we provide, discover and assess histories that are more plural, inclusive, multiple, diverse?

CORONAVIRUS

While the present on-going intense discussion of police brutality, use of extremely excess force in policing, reform law enforcement, and removal of statues of racists has been in progress, a relaxation of steps taken to prevent the spread of coronavirus has recently taken place in many states..

As result of recent relaxation of orders designed to prevent the spread of coronavirus — relaxation of stay in place orders, relaxation of wear mask orders, relaxation of limitations on business operation there has been an unprecedented climb in the number of coronavirus infections in the United States.

The number of coronavirus infections in the United States in the past two weeks surged 65 % – 41,000 cases nationwide, including one day records in Nevada, South Carolina, and Florida.

On Monday, June 29, 2020, Dr. Anne Schuchat, M.D. Principal Deputy Director of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention said, “The coronavirus is spreading too broadly and too rapidly for the United States to get it under control.”

As a result of the coronavirus millions of American who work for state and local governments will be layed off.

State governments, county governments, and city governments will be forced to further cut their payrolls in an attempt to balance government budgets in a time of decreased revenues and increased spending.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who work for colleges and universities have already been layed off due to the absence of students on campus.

Those who depend on the spending of college students in college towns who have not already lost their jobs will lose their jobs if students due not return.

In rural college towns, such as Ithaca, New York, one out of two people’s jobs is dependent upon college student attendance at Cornell University and Ithaca College.

Recently, Cornell University announced in a 97 page reopening report that it plans to reopen.

When college campuses shut down, college student spending stops,

When college campuses shut down, it is a major economic disaster in cities that depend on college student spending.

When college campuses shut down it is a catastrophe for colleges and universities which depend on college enrollment fees and depend on revenue from collage dormitories.

Colleges and Universities which depend on revenue from college football, and other college sports will take a big hit..

The number of Americans who lost their jobs due to steps taken to prevent spread of coronavirus prevention climbed from 40 million at the time of GEORGE FLOYD’S murder (May 25, 2020) to 48 million today (June 29, 2020).

AS CORONAVIRUS RISES THE ECONOMY SINKS

We are no longer in charge of the economy, the coronavirus is.

The coronavirus and the murder of GEORGE FLOYD now govern how we look at things and how may of us act.

On June 30, 2020 the Wall Street Journal reported:

In Los Angeles officials estimate one in 140 residents is infected with COVID 19; a week ago the estimate was one in 400. Christian Ghaly, Director for Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, said the county could begin running out of hospital beds in the next few weeks.

Los Angeles officials have banned all July 4 fireworks displays and ordered beaches closed over the coming holiday weekend.

As Covid 19 rises the economy sinks.

Governors have no choice but to close more businesses as the infections spread.

Florida, Texas and California have reversed reopening measures in recent days, as Covid 19 infection rates and hospitalizations rise.

The State of New York has now imposed a 14 day quarantine on all passengers arriving from California.

SAUDI ARABIA

Out of concern for the spread of coronavirus, Saudi officials effectively cancelled this year’s hajj.

Only about 1,000 people will be permitted to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, compared with 2.5 million who did so last year.

EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE RESPECT FOR THE PEOPLE WHO PROTECT THEM.

Everyone agrees that they should have respect for the people who protect them.

Last week the Tucson Police Department released a video showing Carlos Ingram Lopez, a 27 year-old Latino man, being restrained face down for for 12 minutes by police officers in April.  He died shortly after.

Many Latinos across the United States are calling out police brutality against their communities, echoing similar calls by African-Americans.

Everyone in the United States is now asking:

1. Who protects them?
2. Do the police protect them?
3. How must police act in performing their duties?
4. What should be done to rid police departments of the scourge of racism?
5. What should be done to rid policemen, policewomen, and police departments from using excessive force?
6. How must we, the people and our government, act to protect the police and to protect citizens from the police
7. How must we and our government act to protect us from the spread of Covid 19>
8. How must government act to protect people and businesses from loss of income and other impacts of mass unemployment caused by business shut downs ordered by the government?
9. What restrictions should be imposed on businesses, social and religious gatherings, and protest rallies to prevent the spread of Covid 19?
10. What steps, in any, should be taken to promote (a) equality, and to promote (b) racial equality?

Currently, the Federal Aviation Agency does not require airline passengers to wear masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Currently, the United States federal government does not require anyone to wear a mask to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

United States President Trump refuses to wear a mask to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

People question the leadership, intellectual integrity, vanity and immaturity of the top infectious disease expert in the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

It is widely understood worldwide that the U.S. federal government failed and continues to fail in controlling the spread of the coronavirus.

Forty of the fifty eight states are currently seeing an increase in the rate of coronavirus infections.

The rate of new coronavirus infections in the United States is currently out of control.

IDOLS

The people tearing down statues, attempting to tear down statues, and demanding removal of statues are forcing us to ask ourselves:

1. Who are our idols?
2. Who should be our idols?
3. What does a statue represent?

The majority of American voters support demonstrators against police brutality.

Many Americans see President Trump as being out of touch with the concept of racial justice.

Many Americans see President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as not understanding the difference between rewriting history and adding a new perspective to history by adding the experience of nonwhite people in the historical narrative.

The people in favor or tearing down or removing statues see statues as a standing memory which supports and honors white supremacy ideas and ideals.

They say the monuments must be torn down to strip the people honored of their laurels.

They say the statues are an emotional investment white people have in a legacy of hate.

The people who tear down and/or ask for monuments to be removed, mantra is:

“Do you mean to honor the oppressors at the expense of the oppressed ?

“If so, you have an emotional investment in a legacy of hate.”

People have been awakened through protests, and efforts to tear down or remove statues, to complaints about police brutality, racial injustice and systemic racism.

Protests in the United States have had a significant impact on our psyche.

On July 1, 2020, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department released nine minutes of body cam footage showing police officers laughing and celebrating after shooting protestors with rubber bullets during a May 31, 2020 protest against police brutality after the killing of GEORGE FLOYD in Minneapolis.

Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Rick Maglione said, “our officers were dealing with the chaos of a developing situation.”

The cover of the June 22/June 29, 2020 TIME Magazine bears the headline: “THE OVERDUE AWAKENING.”

The cover of the July 6/July 13, 2020 TIME Magazine bears the headline: “AMERICA MUST CHANGE.”

THE MEANING OF LIFE

Before the events described above took place one out of three Americans were suffering from being in an extreme state of stress and anxiety.

They still are.

At least one out of three Americans are suffering from the trauma of fear of the unknown.

At least one in three Americans are in a state of  clinical depression.

Almost all Americans today cannot tolerate differences of opinion.

Their “nerves have been frayed.”

They are in a highly emotional state.

They are maxed out mentally.

The meaning of their life has been turned upside down by recent events.

Many forces are at play.

The amount and type of trauma being suffered by each individual depends upon such factors as:

• the color of their skin;
• their political beliefs;
• their social beliefs;
• where they are physically located – whether their local businesses have been burned down or looted and/or whether their local businesses are boarded up;
• whether they have personally been victimized by prejudice or bias;
• whether or not they are an immigrant, and if so their status as an immigrant;
• whether or not their parent is an immigrant
• their level of education,
• their social status,
• their income and their wealth;
• their age and whether they are retired or working; and
• whether they are employed or not.

IMPACT OF RACE PREJUDICE

The energy, momentum and motives of the people responsible for the current uproar about social justice differs from person to person.

The reactions to the uproar about social justice also differ from person to person.

If you are a Japanese American it might rub you the wrong way and it might be extremely irritating to you that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR’s) picture is on all dimes in the United States.

FDR was the President who guided the United States through the Great Depression and World War II.

While FDR was president the U.S. government forced the relocation and internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans to detention camps during World War II.

The interment of Japanese-Americans was the culmination of the federal government’s long history of racist and discriminatory treatment of Asian immigrants and their descendants which had begun with restrictive immigration policies in the late 1800s.

At the time of internment, only three percent of Japanese-Americans were considered direct threats to U.S. security.

Two-thirds of the prisoners in the camps were native-born American citizens.

WAR RELOCATION AUTHORITY

On March 18, 1942, the federal War Relocation Authority was established to “take all people of Japanese descent into custody, surround them with troops, prevent them from buying land, and return them to their former homes at the close of war.”

John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, remarked if it came to a choice between national security and the guarantee of civil liberties expressed in the Constitution, he considered the Constitution just a scrap of paper.

HUMAN IMPACT

In the immediate aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, more than 1,200 Japanese community leaders were arrested, and the assets of all accounts in the U.S. branches of Japanese banks were frozen.

On March 31, 1942 Japanese Americans along the West Coast were ordered to report to control stations and to register the names of all family members.

They were told when and where they should report for removal to an internment camp.

Japanese Americans were given from four days to about two weeks to settle their affairs and gather as many belongings as they could carry.

In may cases, individuals and families were forced to sell some or all of their property, including businesses within that period of time.

Nearly 2,00 Japanese Americans were told that their cars would be safely stored until they returned.

However. the U.S. Army soon offered to buy the vehicles at cut-rate prices and Japanese who refused were told that the vehicles were being requisitioned for the war.

Between 1942 and 1945 a total of ten internment camps were opened, holding approximately  120,000 Japanese Americans for varying periods of time, in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Arkansas.

INTERNMENT CAMP SHUT DOWN

On  December 18, 1944, the government announced that all relocations centers (internment camps) would be closed by the end of 1945.

The last of the camps was closed in March 1946.

With the end of internment, Japanese Americans began reclaiming or rebuilding their lives.

RACIAL PREJUDICE

A presidential commission in 1982 identified race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership as the underlying causes of the government’s interment program.

Above information about internment camps obtained/taken from Encyclopedia Britannica.

ACA – 5

Many Japanese-Americans fear that allowing affirmative action (to achieve racial justice) will adversely effect their children.

An amendment to the Constitution of the State of California (ACA – 5) is set to go on the ballot in November, 2020.

The purpose of the amendment is to void a law that makes it illegal to use race as a grounds for admission to state universities.

Japanese American parents have signed a petition against enactment because they fear if admission to UCLA and UC Berkeley is not based on the academic excellence of the applicant, their highly academically successful children will be discriminated against – they fear their children will have a lower chance of gaining admission to a public university in the University of California system.

ACTIVATING REAL CHANGE

While Black Lives Matter leaders and followers are working tirelessly to advance civil society, let’s protect ourselves from doing stupid things because of mindless anger.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Although it is important to put an end to use of excessive force by police it is at least as important to to be protected from violent crimes committed by thugs and for firemen and police to be able to respond to emergencies and to not live in fear..

My research assistant has reported to me:

Before the murder of GEORGE FLOYD, a black police officer Mohamed Noor in the Minnesota police department MURDERED a white woman, Gustine Damond.

Her family was awarded $20 million in damages for her wrongful death in 2018.

Mr. Noor was sentenced in 2019.

A grave danger of being beat up and robbed by black thugs in Minneapolis was well known before Frye (the mayor of Minneapolis before GEORGE FLOYD was murdered by four Minneapolis) was elected mayor of Minneapolis.

While I was writing this post, my research assistant sent me videos of black thugs beating up and robbing white people on a street corner in Minneapolis before GEORGE FLOYD.

EASY CHANGES TO MAKE IN POLICING

It has been reported to me that up to 20% of many cities’ annual city budgets come from revenue generated by fines related to traffic violations written by policemen.

Someone other than an official policeman can write up a ticket for being parked in a parking space after expiration of time paid for at a parking meter.

There is no need for policemen to write up parking meter expiration of time violations.

Running traffic lights — going through a red light — can be monitored and “caught” with cameras located at intersections instead of by a policeman stationed near a stop sign or traffic signal.

Traffic stops routinely made by policemen and policewoman riding in patrol cars need to be regulated.

Traffic stops by a police officer should not be allowed to escalate into a police officer killing an occupant in the vehicle stopped.

But they do so often that black parents instruct their children what to do if they are stopped by a policeman while they are driving a car in order to avoid being killed by that police officer.

People should not be afraid when they see a policeman in a police vehicle.

Do you know anyone who is not frightened when they see a police car near their own car while they are driving their automobile?

All police officers should be required to attend a six hour course, at least once a year, in which “racism” is defined, in which it is explained in no uncertain terms that racism is bad, in which it is made abundantly clear that racial profiling is not permitted, and in which it is made clear that police are supposed to treat people in as friendly manner as they would like to be treated by their neighbors..

AMOUNT OF TRAFFIC FINE

The amount of the traffic fine assessed for a traffic citation should fit the crime.

Poor people should not be required to pay a fine beyond their means.

Fines should be related to means.

THE BURDEN OF PROOF

The burden of proof to obtain a conviction in a criminal trial is “it must be beyond a reasonable doubt. that the accused committed the crime charged.”

The burden of proof required for a plaintiff to prevail – to obtain a judgment – in a civil trial is “that it is more likely than not the defendant caused damage suffered by plaintiff.”

The burden of proof to obtain a finding of police misconduct against a police officer involved in traffic-stop shooting ought to be “it was unreasonable for the police officer who shot the victim to believe his LIFE was in jeopardy.”

DEFUNDING THE POLICE WOULD BE A TRAGEDY FOR BLACK PEOPLE

According to FBI Crime Statistics, Black People are responsible for 50% of all murders and 50% of all strong armed robberies.

The vast majority of violent crimes (murder and armed robbery) are black on black crimes.

Black victims are most often the victims of violent crimes committed by black people.

Black people need to be protected by policemen and policewomen from violent crimes perpetrated by black criminals on them in their neighborhoods.

Police departments shouldn’t be de-funded unless necessary to implement a viable alternative system.

FBI VIOLENT CRIME STATISTICS

There are 500,000 violent crimes between people of different races per year.

In approximately 450,000 of those 500,000 violent crimes the victim is white and the perpetrator is black.

In approximately 50,000 of those violent crimes the victim is black and the perpetrator is white.

Although the black population is only 13% of the population, the black population is responsible for 50% of all murders, and 60% of all strong arm robberies.  The vast majority of these are black on black crimes.

Although 13% percent of the population of the United States is black, black people are responsible for between 24-26% of all hate crimes according to FBI statistics.

Information from FBI Statistics.

Information provided by my research assistant.

BLACK PRISON POPULATION

The number of young black men being arrested is going down.

Compared to 20 years ago, there are now half as many black men under the age 25 in prison.

Prison numbers come from Department of Justice.

Information from my research assistant.

WHAT EVERYONE TAKES FOR GRANTED IS OFTEN FALSE

Although almost everyone takes it for granted that there is systemic bigotry in America.

That is not true.

The fact that two and a half times as many black men are killed by police while in police custody than the number of white men killed while in police custody does not mean there is systemic bigotry in America.

It is inflammatory and self-destructive to claim that the majority of people in America are bigoted.

The majority of people in America are not bigots.

America is a county where capitalism flourishes.

That is one of the reasons immigrants immigrate to America.

America is a nation of immigrants.

Most people in the United States are highly ambitious.

All the people I know personally are highly ambitious individuals.

People can go from rags to riches in America.

For example consider Steve Jobs.

He was an orphan.

He had to drop out of college because he did not have the means to pay tuition.

Today the stock of the company he founded, Apple, is worth more than the entire net worth of the entire oil and gas industry,

Minorities are highly successful in America.

I personally know a number of spectacularly successful minorities.

I personally know that a high numbers and a high percentages of the graduates from the most elite universities in America are minority students.

Myself and my daughters attended elite universities in America.

When I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley in 1964 – 1967, over 75% of the students in my chemical engineering classes were students who were – immigrants or foreign nationals – not born in the United States.

When I attended the graduation ceremony of my daughter at Cornell University, an Ivy League University in Ithaca, New York, about 25 years ago, it seemed to me that over 80% of the students receiving MS and PhD graduate degrees in scientific disciplines and in engineering fields had Asian names.

When I worked on a graduate degree (MS degree in biochemical engineering) in the Olin Hall School of Chemical Engineering at Cornell University in 1967 and 1968 the Dean of the School was a White man.  Today, the Dean of that School is a Black man.

A high percentage of the people earning the the most money working for tech companies in Silicon Valley are minorities; a high number and a high percentage of the most successful start-up companies in Silicon Valley and their founders are minorities-immigrants.

A high percentage of the managers of high tech companies in Silicon Valley, and elsewhere, are minorities.

Recently, the United States has had a Black President and a Black Attorney General.

Mayors and Chiefs of Police throughout the United States are Black.

In a big city like Los Angeles, more than 50% of the residents are either an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.

More that 200 languages are spoken in the City of Los Angeles.

POLICING NEEDS TO BE HUMANIZED

Recent events shown on social media show unnecessary brutality and excessive use of force by policemen.

Policing needs to be humanized.

JOHN GRISHAM’S DESCRIPTION OF POLICE

In John Grisham’s latest novel “Camino Winds”, as three characters are approaching a bridge to get back on an island that has been pounded by a hurricane, the following discussion takes place:

BRUCE “You are not going to believe this. The cops have the road blocked this side of the bridge and they’re searching each car with dogs.  Can you please tell me why?

BOB: “Because they can.”

BRUCE: I mean, these people just had their homes and businesses blown away, so why would they want to sneak explosives onto the island? These cops are out of control.”

BOB:  “For the same reason they send SWAT teams to arrest people for bad checks. Because they can and it’s far more dramatic. These guys think they are as tough as Navy Seals and they have to prove it.  Look at all the military gear they wear. Why does every Podunk police department have a tank these days?  Because the Pentagon has too much stuff and sells it cheap.  Why do they send canine dogs units to sniff around the country fair? Because they have the damn dogs and need to use them. Don’t get me started.

BOB: “Why does every fender bender need three cop cars and four fire trucks?  Because these guys are bored, sitting around the station and they get their jollies racing up and down the streets with sirens screaming.  Tough boys in action.  They like to block traffic in all directions, makes ’em feel powerful.  They control the situation. Sniffing dogs.  Unbelievable. It’ll be midnight before we get there.”

NEWS MEDIA

There are many ways to weave together facts to tell a story.

News media compete with other news media for eyeballs.

Media sell a product (advertising) to advertisers based on the number of viewers that view what they broadcast, who those viewers are, and how much and what type of attention their viewers give them.

In July, 2020 over 100 brands that used to advertise on FACEBOOK will not be advertising on FACEBOOK as their protest against FACEBOOK for FACEBOOK disseminating misinformation and hate on its platform.

On Friday, June 26, 2020, Honda of America announced it will not advertising on FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM because it has “chosen to stand with people united against hate and racism.”

Levi Straus & Co., said it will suspend advertising on FACEBOOK through the end of July because of FACEBOOK’S failure to stop the spread of misinformation and hate speech on its platform.

The North Face said, We’re in. We’re out.” — will stop posting content and advertisements on FACEBOOK through July.

Coca-Cola, Starbucks and others have temporarily stopped advertising o FACEBOOK in protest of FACEBOOK spreading misinformation and hate speech.

THE SAME INFORMATION IS REPORTED DIFFERENTLY BY DIFFERENT NEWS MEDIA

News is reported in a way that supports the views and desires of specific audiences.

That is why news/information is reported differently by different news media.

Each news outlet broadcasts information that supports the particular set of political/religious views/values of its audience and its advertisers.

POINTS OF VIEW PROPAGANDA

People in social organizations, business organizations, religious organizations, political organizations, political parties, politicians, and highly specialized special interest groups, as well as governments, use social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to provide propaganda – information and disinformation.

So called “educational institutions” [Kindergarten through high school, colleges, universities, and specialized schools] provide information [which they call education] which fits the agenda of the people in charge.

Like the picture below of two wolves fighting to the death, social media and the so called news media and educational institutions tell stories (report information) differently.

HISTORY

Mary Beard reports in her book ‘HOW DO WE LOOK” that people have been engaged in wars and fights to the death about how to think, in which each side claims it is on the side of God and claims the other side is the devil.

THE MEANING OF SYMBOLS

People write history (and the news of current events reported by the media is) slanted to favor the values of a particular audience.

We have reached a place in human social evolution where you may now purchase your choice of color of Band-Aid from Johnson & Johnson.

INTELLECTUAL VALUE LANDSCAPE

Today, the most searched words on Google are “protest” and “racism.”

   

HOW WE LOOK AT THINGS

Saturday morning, June 13, 2929), I was sent a video titled ALL BOARDED UP.

The video consisted of a man talking as he is taking a video as he is driving on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

The video showed one boarded up high end retail store after another.

In the video the narrator says, “The media doesn’t show us this.”

The narrator went on to say that the media does not want us to know that all the high end stores on Fifth Avenue were looted during the “protest rally” in Manhattan; the media does not want to wee all those broken windows, or that all the expensive merchandise in those high end stores was stolen.

That doesn’t fit with the narrative the media is selling.

The media is selling the narrative that the protests were all about injustice, the protests were all about the tragic violation of a black man’s (George Floyd’s) civil liberties.

Q: WHERE ARE WE NOW? A: WE ARE NOW LIVING IN GEORGE FLOYD’S AMERICA!

For the past two weeks,  whether we like it or not, we have been living in GEORGE FLOYD’S AMERICA.

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Will there be a statue of GEORGE FLOYD erected in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House?

Will there be a statute of George Floyd erected in parks in every city in the United States?

Will the will of the people expressed in who they vote for as next president of the United States be based on what has been happening with respect to COVID 19 pandemic and what has been happening as a result of the murder of George Floyd?

DO WE WANT TO VENERATE GEORGE FLOYD?

THE PROTESTORS HAVE LEVERAGE

Who do we want to venerate?

Do we want to venerate George Floyd?

Will the protestors force us to venerate George Floyd?

Nobody’s back ground is perfect.

I’ve been told George Floyd spent years in prison for armed robbery.

I’ve been told George Floyd was sent to prison for having pointed a loaded gun at a pregnant woman’s stomach, then robbing her.

I’ve also been told that George Floyd served his time and went to Minneapolis got a job as a night security guard and wanted to turn his life around and to redeem himself.

ITS A REVOLUTIONARY TIME

People are tearing down statues, removing statues and defacing statues which they consider to be emblems of white supremacy – which they consider to be powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism.

Police have been using tear gas on protestors protesting police brutality and systemic racial injustice.  Police have shot rubber bullets at protestors and have senselessly roughed up protestors.

People not associated with the cause of racial justice have joined protest marches. Those people have set fires which burned buildings, and burned police cars; they have been looting and destroying stores, generally causing mayhem.

Let’s hope we don’t go to the next thing.

VISUAL IMAGES SHAPE OUR ENVIRONMENT

RACIAL SENSITIVITY, CAPITALISM, BAND-AID/Johnson & Johnson, AND CRAYONS/Crayola Company

When I grew up Band-Aids came in only flesh color.  See photos below.

    

Now Band-Aids come in many flesh colors.

Band-Aids now come in many tones of color so that once a person puts one on it is the same color as that person’s skin.

Many years ago, 30 years back, the Crayola Company in an act of racial sensitivity, pulled the flesh colored crayon out.

Many years ago the Frito Lay Company did away with the Frito Bandito.

These acts of racially sensitivity came about without the enactment of any laws or the filing of any lawsuits.

About that band-aid, why not just make it clear so everyone’s true color shows through…because isn’t that what it is all about.

We are all unique.

Embrace the beauty of that.

A HISPANIC WOMAN’S IDENTITY CRISIS

I know a Hispanic woman who had an identity crisis when she transferred from a community college to UCLA.

When she arrive at UCLA, as a minority student, she was told she “had to join” a Chicano Club.

She attended one meeting.  At that meeting she was told her skin tone wasn’t dark enough; that she could pass as being “white” and therefore she wasn’t wanted, she wouldn’t be welcome as a member in the club.

When she told people she wanted to be a corporate lawyer, she was told not to do that.

Instead, she was told to get a PhD in Chicano studies, and learn in her PhD studies how oppressed an victimized Mexicans and other Latin people are in the United States of America.

They told her she would be selling out her “people/her race” if she went to law school and became a corporate lawyer.

She had an identity crisis. She had never thought she would be selling out her “people” if she went to law school to be a corporate lawyer.

She couldn’t relate.

Her parents are immigrants from Central America.

She had never in her entire life felt underprivileged or oppressed or victimized.

She had always felt privileged and still feels privileged to be living in America.

She had always thought, and still thinks, it is wonderful that in America she could/can borrow money to go to UCLA, then borrow more money to go to law school.

A WHITE SUPREMACIST’S IDENTITY CRISIS

Consider the fact that Jesus Christ was not a White Man.

The divine body of Jesus was not white.

There were no white men in the Middle East when Jesus was born, or when Jesus was alive.

Jesus did not have blond hair, or blue eyes, or white skin.

Jesus was either black or an Arab with dark hair and darker skin.

Photo below is a mummy portrait from Roman Egypt.

Mummy portraits were painted in late first – early second century CE.

Photo above is taken from the coffin of a young man called Artemidoros, who died in the early second century CE, excavated at Hawara in Central Egypt.

His mummy is a wonderful combination of the traditions of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and a brilliant example of the cultural mix of the ancient Mediterranean.

His name is Greek and is written in Greek across his front.  “Artemidoros, farewell’ it reads. His face is a Roman portrait.

What will happen if and when White Supremacists realize that Jesus was black, that Jesus was not a while man?

What would happen to the psyche of all Americans if all the Jesus’ in all the churches in America were black or a shade of black?

What would happen to the the collective psyche of Americans if all the crucifixes in the United States of America had a black Jesus?

Would things be calmer or more peaceful in America?

Black is celebrated as being being beautiful in the Torah.

The Torah tells us Moses’ wife was black.

The Queen of Sheba, also, was black.

ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW

Jesus was a Jew and would have looked like the Jews of 1st century Judea at that time.

How Jews looked is not abundantly clear as Jews tended not to paint pictures of themselves and there was no photography.

At or about the 1st century — there were two main locations where Jews were located: Judea/Galilee and Babylonia.

There were also thriving diaspora communities in Byzantium (Istanbul), Alexandria (Egypt) and, of course, Rome.

Following the two failed Judean revolts against the Roman Empire of 65 and 135 most of the Judean Jews were dispersed in the diaspora.

The conventional wisdom is that the majority of Judean Jews stayed within the confines of the Roman Empire and ultimately were the forebears of the Ashkenazi diaspora.

Therefore it is most likely (an another point of view is) that Ashkenazi Jews with the more traditional Semitic features – such as Adam Sandler, Jeff Goldblum, or Jerry Stiller – are probably closer in appearance to Jesus than is a blond haired, blue eyed white man.

FURTHER REFLECTION ON THAT OTHER POINT OF VIEW

The only people who drew a lot of pictures were the Egyptians.

When drawing themselves they usually colored themselves in medium reddish-brown tones.

When drawing Semitic people — they would typically draw them as bearded with black and often curly hair, almond eyes, and either tanned or olive skin.

They also depicted black skinned Nubians as blond haired slaves.

The Egyptians artists were sensitive to skin tone when drawing subjects.

The Songs of Songs

A description of a Jew is found in the “Song of Songs” as follows:

“10. My lover is radiant and ruddy.

“11.  His head is gold, pure gold, his hair like palm fronds, as black as a raven.

“14. His arms are rods of gold adorned with gems; His loins, a work of ivory covered with sapphires.

“15. His legs, pillars of alabaster resting on golden pedestals.”

Alabaster and ivory are typically white.

Gold and ruddy could describe tanned or olive skin.

Black as a raven is black as a raven

Hair like palm fronds — in an imaginative person’s imagination could be a colorful simile for a Jewfro.

While this is not conclusive it is not consistent with a person that looked African or Southern Arabian.

MORE MUSINGS

The Bible doesn’t pay much attention to skin color, but there are inferences here and there.

So we have “Simeon who was called Niger,” (Acts 13:1) who may have been black, or else just a nickname, paired with “Lucius of Cyrene,” who may or may not have been black, being from Cyrene.

THE BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE

The Bible is much more interested in cultural differences, which to some is more fundamental and pertinent than race or skin color.

We’re all one human race, after all, but many cultures that overlap across races and skin colors.

All of us are the “skin colored people,” whichever color that might be.

SACRILEGIOUS

One person (BEN) I spoke to told me:

“I think he was probably the exact same shade as Barack Obama. Apparently, there is something about that shad that can convince Jews to follow any idiocy.”

Another person (JOE)) I spoke to told me:

“If it’s sunny and bright in heaven – perhaps one’s spirit would get sunburned and be darker?  If it’s dark and no natural light in hell, one should be as white as snow.

“But no matter what color you are or skin tone if you figure out you are either in heaven or hell.”

EXPRESSIONS OF AN OPPOSITE POINT OF VIEW

Veronica:

Who cares? Race is an invention of the industrial era to divide and conquer people.  It is being used as such now to distract the populace and keep our minds enslaved.  Let’s not play their game.  I’d rather talk about Jesus’ philosophy of how to treat others than the color of his skin. If they want to paint him black, let them. If they want to make him into a cartoon, sure! Let’s just keep the conversation about what matters and let go of division.  Let’s elevate!

Richard:

The image of God is a concept and theological doctrine in Judaism, Christianity, and Sufism of Islam, which asserts that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God.  If you believe in the Word of God, then you believe that we all can find something of ourselves in Jesus; so Veronica is correct.  There are no true images of Jesus because it is irrelevant because the artist would have only have chosen to place emphasis on the things important to the artist.  The Word of God therefore forbids us to make those images; yet we persist because like Sinatra, we all want to do it “my way.” As Veronica said we should be emphasizing the Words of Jesus, which I personally consider to be of great importance, rather than His appearance. God bless all of you. You might even consider reading the Bible to learn  what it says about this subject and many other things that affect our lives, I do each day!

Dan:

Veronica you are absolutely right.  The importance is the philosophical and moral teachings not his complexion.

In many ways this is an angels on the head of a pin type argument.

But, its one relevance is that for centuries the image of Jesus was Europeanized in order to disconnect him from his Judaic roots.

I think this was psychologically necessary in order to justify the persecution of his religious and ethnic kin, along with so many other non-Europeans.

The Europeanizing of Jesus was not merely a means of better identifying with him and his teachings, but to claim him for yourself in much the same way that so many people claim God to be on their side hence, any opposition to our way of thinking is not merely a difference of opinion but also an affront to God and God’s will — thereby justifying my resorting to violence against those who would blaspheme.

To Africanize or Arabize Jesus would be doing the same thing.

Keeping him a Jew puts EVERYONE on exactly the same footing – he is no more European than African, Arab, Indian or East Indian.

You can partake of his philosophy and teachings but not on YOUR terms, but on his.

My gut instinct is that the rejection of Jesus’ Judaic roots is one of the reasons why Christians around the world for so many centuries have such an inglorious record of acting in every way but Christian.

Some people think the only thing that matters about a person – or the most important thing about a person – is the color of a person’s skin.

The more important thing is Jesus’ philosophy of how to treat others, which has nothing to do with the color of their skin.

In this time of civil unrest in the United States let’s be much better than wolves.

LET’S BE BETTER THAN WOLVES

Wolves are intelligent, adaptable, fierce, and playful.

 

When strangers meet it usually results in a fight to the death.

Although a model of animal cooperation a wolf pack is not wholly harmonious.

Members are constantly being tested by more lowly wolves trying to rise up the ranks and such subordination must be dealt with quickly.

A wolf pack must defend its territory.

Without it, the pack cannot find food, cannot produce young, and will be forced to disband.

The pack patrols its borders regularly; if it encounters outsiders then its members have no choice but to attack.

Up to one fifth of all wolf deaths occur during these inter-pack bottles.

In this time of civil unrest, and new political realities, many persons are mustering the moral courage necessary to confront and solve problems with effective, honest and emphatic dialogue that seeks solutions rather than sowing seeds of division and disunity.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL U.S. ARMY DARRYL A. WILLIAMS

In connection with President Donald Trump giving the graduation address to the cadets at West Point, General Williams wrote a letter staking out the U.S. Army’s position on sowing seeds of division and disunity, a copy of which is set forth below.

The cadets who had been quarantined at home were ordered to come back for a graduation ceremony once President Trump informed the Army he would be giving the graduation address.

They sat six feet apart during the graduation ceremony.

 

  

President Trump caused an uproar of concern in the media and on social media about his health when he was photographed having difficulty walking down the ramp from the podium after having just given his graduation address to the graduating cadets.

 

  

WE DO NOT HAVE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN CALIFORNIA!

WE DO NOT HAVE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES!

THE COLOR OF A PERSON’S SKIN MATTERS IN CALIFORNIA, IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN THE ENTIRE REAL WORLD!

An Assembly Constitutional Amendment relating to governmental preferences is pending in the California Legislature.

It states that Equal Opportunity is deeply rooted in the American ideals of fairness, justice, and equality.  It states that as a result of the passage of Proposition 209,  women and people of color continue to  face discrimination and disparity in opportunities to participate in numerous forms of association and work that are crucial to the development of talents and capabilities that enable people to contribute meaningfully to, an benefit from the collective possibilities of national life.

It states that disparity still exists, particularly for Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Black Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans, and women, which should be rectified.

You should read the full text of ACA 5.

Here are some of the statistics cited in ACA 5:

• Women, particularly women of color, continue to face unequal pay for equal work.  White women are paid 80 cents to every dollar paid to white men doing the same work.
• Black women are paid 60 cents for every dollar paid to white men doing the same work and would theoretically have to work an extra seven months every year to overcome that differential.
• Since the passage of Proposition 209 underrepresented groups at the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses of the University of California immediately fell by 60 percent and system wide enrollment fell by at least 12 percent.

In this bill state, is stated, “Underrepresented group high school graduates faced substantial long-term declines in educational and employment outcomes as a result of those changes.

The California Legislature has forcibly stated that the color of a person’s skin matters in the real world.

IN SOLIDARITY, STRENGTH – AND ALWAYS, LOVE:

TIMOTHY LAW SNYDER, PH.D., PRESIDENT LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY

MAKES THE DIVINE VISIBLE IN THE HUMAN WORLD THROUGH WORDS AND DEEDS

In a letter, dated June 16, 2020, to the LMU Community, President Snyder stated up front, “The killings of Black people – Rayshard Brooks, Tony McDade, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and many others – resulted from anti-Black racism.”

He dedicated himself and LMU “…to eradicating systemic racism at LMU and addressing the histories and systems of injustice perpetrated against people of color, while also taking responsibility for LMU’s institutional complicity in the perpetuation of white supremacy.”

In his letter, President Snyder, listed ongoing and imminent actions at LMU including a review and change of the art and images in the University Hall:

“We will change the art and images in University Hall as part of a broader effort to ensure that LMU reflects more inclusive and diverse representations of our shared history and community, under the guidance of the Committee of Public Art and Images.”

In the last paragraph of President Snyder’s letter, President Snyder states:

  “As is so with all of America society and culture, our pathway to justice, and its clear goals, will require renewed and reformed reflection conversation, commitment and action.  We must be sure that each of us holds each entity of our community – person, organization, program – accountable.  We need to be open to calling out what needs to be called out and accepting what others witness in our behaviors and actions as loci for revision.  As actors within our larger society, we must do the same.  Let us champion dignity.  Let us champion justice. Let’s get to work.”

In his letter he mentioned participating in a “Black Lives Matter” demonstration organized by LMU students.

“On June 6, while participating in a Black Lives Matters demonstration organized by LMU students, I was reminded that the police violence and systemic racism that infects our society by killing Black people is a system in which I, as a white person of privilege, am complicit.”

He went on to say:

“I am grateful and humbled by our Black community’s leadership and willingness to impart its experiences, pain and anger; I am not in a position to understand fully how exhausting and burdensome it must be, especially given the persistent nature of experience in a racist society. Amidst this understanding, LMU’s duty to our Black students, faculty, and staff is, and will remain, steadfast.  We are committed to a process of institutional transformation that addresses systemic racism and oppression.

EUGENICS

Eugenics is a science that deals with improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed.

Famous people in recent history were eugenicist – advocates of eugenics.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Winston Churchill – the Prime Minister of Great Britain in World War II – and Adolf Hitler – Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party – the leader of Germany in World War II – were eugenicists – advocates of eugenics.

Winston Churchill had great energy and pugnacity.

Not everyone appreciated Churchill’s energy or brilliance.

Lord Halifax – the man the King of England wanted to be Prime Minister, but who refused the position – was skeptical of the wild energy Churchill seemed likely to bring to office of Prime Minister.

The office of the Prime Minister was at 10 Downing, which was both the Prime Minister’s residence and official office.

Halifax grumbled that  Churchill’s new cabinet appointees lacked intellectual heft. Halifax likened them to “gangsters,” the chief gangster in his view, being Churchill.

On Saturday, May 11, 1940, the day after Churchill was appointed Prime Minister by King George V, Lord Halifax wrote in his diary, “I have seldom met anyone with stranger gaps of knowledge, or whose mind worked in greater jerks.”

One staff member at 10 Downing said Churchill was a lackluster student at Harrow (AN ELITE HIGH SCHOOL FOR BRITAIN’S UPPER CRUST) who exhibited “phenomenal slovenliness.”

Many in Whitehall considered Churchill to be capricious and meddlesome, inclined toward dynamic action in every direction at once.

Churchill’s appointment enraged the wife of one member of Parliament, who likened him to Herman Goring, the obese, brutal chief of the German Air Fore, the Luftwaffe, and the second most powerful man in the Third Reich. “W.C. is really the counterpart of Goring in England,”  she wrote “full of the desire for blood, Blitzkrieg,’ and bloated with ego and over-feeding, the same treachery running through his veins, punctuated by heroics and hot air.” – information excerpts from pages 22 and 23 of “The Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larson.

But ordinary people loved Churchill.  One diarist wrote, “If I had to spend my whole life with a man, I’d chose Chamberlain, but I think I would sooner have Mr. Churchill if there were a storm and I was shipwrecked.” – quote from page 23, of “The Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larson.

“My wish is realized,” wrote Violet Bonham Carter, daughter of H.H. Asquith, the former Prime Minister, who died in 1928. “I can now face all that is to come with faith & Confidence. I know as you do that the wind has been sown, & that, we must all reap the whirlwind. But you will ride it — instead of being driven before it — Thank Heaven that you are there & at the helm of our destiny — & may the nation’s spirit be kindled by your own.” – quote from page 23 of “The Vile and the Splendid” by Erik Larson.

May 1940 Onward

“Everywhere I went in London people admired [Churchill’s] energy, his courage, his singleness of purpose. People said they didn’t know what Britain would do without him. He was obviously respected.  But no one felt he would be Prime Minister after the war.  He was simply the right man in the right job at the the right time.  The time being the time of a desperate war with Britain’s enemies.” – Ralph McAllister Ingersoll.

“The responsibilities which are his now must be greater than those carried by any other human being on earth. One would think such a weight would have a crushing effect upon him.  Not at all.  The last time I saw him, while the Battle of Britain was still raging, he looked years younger than before the war began… His uplifted spirit is transmitted to the people.” – Hubert Knickerbocker

The people of Great Britain loved Winston Churchill during World War II because they thought he sincerely loved them.

He demonstrated in word and deed that he sincerely cared about them.

He was flamboyant and electric and had an indomitable spirit.

When he gave his first speech before the House of Commons, on May 13, he said “I have nothing to offer, but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” and vowed to achieve victory.

On Tuesday, June 18, he addressed the House of Commons to address the French debacle, France had just been overrun by the Nazis.

“The “Battle of France” was over” he said, adding, “I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin.” At stake was not only the British Empire but all of Christian civilization. “The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.  Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war.”  He then said:

“If we can stand up to him, all of Europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands; but if we fail the the whole world, including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more prolonged, by the lights of a perverted science.

“Therefore let us brace ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.'”

INFO ABOUT CHURCHILL – PROVIDED BY DANIEL J. CHEREN

As a young politician, Churchill was staunchly against votes for women.

While Home Secretary, there was an incident where politically motivated burglars holed up in a house that subsequently caught fire – Churchill ordered the Fire Department NOT to put out the blaze preferring that they die than water be needlessly wasted on them.

However, very much unlike Trump, Churchill knew how to be tactful. Indeed, Churchill defined tact as “the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way, that they look forward to the trip.”

Despite being lauded during WW II as the right many for the job and the right time, he was promptly voted out of office in 1945.

ADOLF HITLER

The Nazis persecuted those they considered to be racially inferior. Nazi racial ideology primarily vilified Jews, but also propagated hatred for Gypsies and blacks. The Nazis viewed Poles and other Slavs as inferior, and stated them for subjugation, forced labor, and sometimes death.

The Nazis viewed Jews as racial enemies and subjected them to arbitrary arrest, internment, and murder. Jewish prisoners received the most brutal treatment in Nazi concentration camps.

Among the first victims of persecution in Nazi Germany were political opponents – primarily Communists, Social Democrats, and trade unionists.  Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to serve in the German army or to take an oath of obedience to Adolf Hitler and were also persecuted.

Prisoners in concentration camps were identified by a colored inverted triangle sown onto their prison uniform. Political prisoners wore a badge consisting of an inverted red triangle.

ATTEMPT TO USE NAZI SYMBOLS ON FACEBOOK

On Thursday, June 18, 2020, Facebook removed 88 ads that had using an Nazi symbol – an upside down red triangle – posted by Trump, the Trump campaign and Vice President Mike Pence that Facebook said were “violating our policy against organized hate.”

The red triangle is a symbol that Nazis used to identify Communists and other political prisoners in concentration camps.

The removed ads warned “dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem.”

The ads began running on Wednesday.

Before their removal they gained more than one million impressions on the Facebook pages of President Donal Trump  and Vice President Mike Pence.

QUESTION RAISED: Is it difficult to criticize a political opponent without using Nazi era imagery?

The red triangle was “the most common category of prisoners registered at the German Nazi Auschwitz camp.

Mr. Bark Bray, a historian at Rutgers and the author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” said: “This is a symbol that represented the extermination of leftists.  It is a death threat against leftists.

ATTEMPT TO USE MANIPULATED MEDIA ON TWITTER

On Thursday, Twitter added a “manipulated media” warning to one of Mr. Trump’s tweets that featured  a video about a supposed “racist baby” that had been altered to appear as if CNN had broadcast it.

FAILURE OF CHURCHILL’S AND HITLER’S PRACTICE OF EUGENICS

BECAUSE YOU ARE WHITE DOESN’T MEAN YOU ARE SUPERIOR

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Winston Churchill’s attempt to practice eugenics was a failure.

Winston Churchill’s son, was a failed effort at breeding a super race person.

Winston Churchill’s son Randolph Churchill was a complete failure and screw up.

He was a gambler. His ineptitude at gambling was legendary.  He was always awash in debt.

He was loud, lacked tack, drank too much, spent beyond his income and gambled with particular ineptitude.

He was a drunkard. Once drunk he had a propensity for making horrible embarrassing scenes.

His father once wrote to him, “Your idle and lazy life is [very[ offensive to me. You appear to be leading a completely perfectly useless existence.”

There was no way his marriage was going to work.

To Randolph, fidelity was a fungible  condition.  He loved sexual conquest, whether his target was married or not. He once bragged that he would enter the rooms of women without invitation, just in case his presence might be welcomed.  He told this to a female friend, who quipped sardonically “You must get a lot of rebuffs.”  He said, laughingly, “I do, but I get a lot of fucking too.”

ADOLF HITLER

Hitlers attempt to practice eugenics – to create a master-race, was a failure as well.

When Germany lost World War II, Hitler committed suicide.

Hitler’s effort to kill all the “impure people” in the world, and to have the Aryan Race, with himself as its leader, rule the world ended up being a failed effort as well.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Statues of famous people are being taken down, torn down and defaced all over the United States.

On June 22, 2020, The American Museum of Natural History decided the bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt on a horse flanked by a Native American Indian and a Black Man on foot (photo above), that had presided over entrance to the museum since 1940, was coming down.  Currently it is being protected by police in two police cars.

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the Unites States, was a racist and eugenicist who thought African Americans to be inferior to white citizens.

His election in 1904 marked one of the first Presidential  administrations opened opposed to civil rights and suffrage for blacks.

He believed in racial hierarchy, and endorsed sterilization of the poor and intellectually disabled.

That was the common thinking of the elites in the United States at that time.

in the early 20th century American eugenicists used forced sterilization to “breed out” traits considered undesirable.

They believed in “survival of the fittest” and thought they could help nature along by planning who reproduced and who didn’t.

They were frightened that unintelligent people were taking over, reproducing more quickly than intelligent people.

SUPREME COURT JUSTICE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was raised to believe that he and his “well-born” wealthy neighbors in Boston were the best people in the country, or the world.

He believed in eugenics, and wrote about eugenics, which he supported.

He wrote the majority opinion in a case [Bell v. Buck, 274 U.S. 208 (1927] in which the majority upheld a state’s right to forcibly sterilize a person considered to be unfit to reproduce – unfit because they were mentally deficient.

In his opinion, Justice Holmes, urged America to do more eugenic sterilizations.

He wrote that it is better for the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crimes or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit for continuing their kind.

A FEEBLE MINDED HEARING

It was very hard to prove at a feeble minded hearing that you were not feeble minded.

Feeble minded was a broad term used to define large categories of people that were disliked by someone in charge of the decision making position.

AN ARIAN THEORY

Only Nordic types were considered good.

Jews from East Europe and Italians and Asians were considered to be mentally deficient and were discriminated against.

This was the belief of those who enacted the IMMIGRATION LAW OF 1924.

The Immigration Act of 1924 created quotas for the number of different groups that could immigrate and required that immigrants pass a mental feebleness test.

BUCK V. BELL

Buck v. Bell upheld eugenic sterilization.

It is still good law,.

It has never been overturned.

The decision in Buck v. Bell led to 70,000 forced sterilizations.

The woman in Buck v. Bell was not feeble minded.

She was set up to protect her foster parents son who had raped her and to get a court ruling that forced sterilizations are legal.

Her appointed lawyer believed that forced sterilizations should be legal.

He wrote arguments in his briefs that supported forced sterilizations.

THE EXISTENCE OF A SUPER RACE

The Nazis adopted American eugenic theory.

The Nazis took American eugenic theory – that there exists a racial hierarchy that requires breeding a super race – and ran with it.

THE CODE OF HAMMURABI

The guiding objective of the 3,500 year old Babylonian Code of Hammurabi is to protect the weak from the strong to create a rule of RIGHTEOUS JUSTICE.

DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS

While writing this post I couldn’t help comparing U.S. President Donald Trump’s thinking to Nazi ideology.

POST ON INSTAGRAM @garyspassion

Earlier today (Tuesday, June 23, 2020) I post on Instagram @garyspassion the picture above “DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS.”

In my post I compare President Trump to the little boy (the major star) in the movie JoJo Rabbit.

JoJo Rabbit is a farce about Nazi thinking, Nazi ideology, Nazi conduct, and worship of Adolph Hitler.

THE RULE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

 

The wild popularity, even today, of the 1862 French novel ‘LES MISERABLES’, shows us something.

LES MISERABLES is the story of Jean Valjean, a handsome young woodcutter, who is cruelly sentenced to nine years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread he took to feed his starving family.

Javert, an ice-cold Inspector of Prisons, relentlessly persecutes Valjean, determined to keep him in prison for life.

It is tear-jerking feel good story, that has been made into a movie several times.

I strongly recommend seeing the movie.

That movie should help even the most rabid law and order person understand the outrage after watching the video of a police officer murdering George Floyd by putting his knee on George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes while George Floyd was handcuffed and pinned down by two other police officers while a fourth police officer directed members of the public away.

George Floyd was suspected of having used a counterfeit $20 bill. Nobody knows if the $20 bill was counterfeit or how George Floyd came to have it.

George Floyd lost his life because four police officers thought nobody would mind if they took his life.

Nothing happened to any of the police officers until AFTER world wide street protests erupted.

ONLY after protests against the police brutally murdering George Floyd erupted in 150 cities in the USA did the police officers involved get charged and arrested for breaking the law.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT IV’S, age 77, great grandson of 26th President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, PLACE IN THE MOVEMENT FOR RACIAL JUSTICE

The grandson of President Roosevelt felt it necessary to remove the statue of his great grandfather from the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History.

He recognized that statue was a powerful and hurtful emblem of “patriarchy, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism.”

That statue was a symbol of systemic racism; that statue was a narrative of white racial superiority and domination.

Theodore Roosevelt IV said, “The world doesn’t need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice.”

The image of that statue is too offensive to stand as a monument to American History.

That statue is clearly a narrative of white racial superiority and domination.

That statue implicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.

JOE BIDEN’S, PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, PLACE IN THE MOVEMENT FOR RACIAL JUSTICE

At a meeting on Monday, June 21, 2020, Joe Biden said,

“Hate just hides. It doesn’t go away, and when you have someone in power who breathes oxygen into the hate under the rocks it comes outs from under the rocks

“I really do believe that the binders have been taken off.  I think the tidal wave is moving.  I realize we’ve got to do something big, we can do it, and everyone will benefit from it.

Information taken/obtained from AOL news.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S PLACE IN THE MOVEMENT FOR RACIAL JUSTICE

On the same Monday evening (June 21, 2020), President Donald Trump declared himself, “the president of law and order” from the White House as military police and law enforcement fired tear gas and cleared protestors from nearby La Fayette Park.  La Fayette Park is located directly across the street from the White House.

After President Trump’s speech, one mayor complained, “President Trump has offered us military support to address violent protestors while denying mayors federal support to address the coronavirus fall-out.

During the protest on Monday (June 22, 2020) protestors attempted to topple a statue of President Andrew Jackson in La Fayette Park.

President Jackson has a record of owning slaves and oppressing Native Americans.

The next morning, President Trump tweeted that he had ordered the arrest of anyone tearing down a statue on federal land.and threatened such protestors with a long prison term and a large fine – imprisonment of up to ten years and a fine of up to $250,000.00.

Information taken/obtained from AOL news.

 

MAKING THE DIVINE VISIBLE IN THE HUMAN WORLD THROUGH ART

                   

Art symbolizes and instructs what it means to be a civilized human being.

Art challenges our senses and provokes our senses.

Just imagine the effect having a black or brown Jesus in every church and on every crucifix in America would have today.

Above photos taken by me while I was viewing the art in one church after another and viewing the interior design and exterior design of one church after another while spending a summer vacation in Sicily.

All the paintings, all the statues, and all the decorations in the churches were of and about white people.

In “HOW DO WE LOOK” Mary Beard shows how making the divine visible in the human world has never been easy.

In her book HOW DO WE LOOK” she points out all religions have destroyed art as well as creating it.

“Iconoclasm” comes from the Greek word meaning “image breaking.”

Below is my recap of Mary Beard’s many poignant stories of destruction of religious art in the name of religion.

CHRISTIANITY

Throughout the history of Christianity there have been violent and sustained clashes between ‘image-lovers’ and ‘image-breakers” – the destruction of religious art has gone almost hand and hand with the appreciating and adoration of it.

In the past lurid stories were spread about the evil of the iconoclasts, which went so far as to suggest that the wickedness of those who destroyed images of Jesus was second only to those who crucified Jesus in the first place.

One of the first examples occurred in 726 in the capital of the Byzantine empire (modern Istanbul) when – so it is said – the emperor ordered the image of Jesus be removed from the facade of his imperial palace.

Whatever the reasons, the removal of that one painting has come to represent the beginning of an official ban on all kinds of images of the divine – painting, sculpture, mosaic – that lasted on and off for more than a hundred years.

Almost a thousand years later, thousands of miles away, during the fight between Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians fought out in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ‘idolatrous icons’ and other ‘excesses’ associated with Catholicism were destroyed or removed by ascendant Protestants.

During the religious schism, the splendor of Ely Cathedral – a jewel of Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages – fell victim to one of England’s most determined Protestant reformers.

On January 9 1644, Oliver Cromwell, who was then governor of Ely, marched into the Ely Cathedral in what is one of the most mythologized and probably highly embellished incidents of those English religious wars.

The story goes that Cromwell went up to the priest who was conducting evening services, told him to put away his (Catholic) version of the prayer book and to stop the choir singing ( a ‘turn off the music’ moment).  On the following days, it is said, he actively encouraged – or at least did nothing to stop – his troops turning on the fabric of the building, on the images and on the glass.  As they made their way through the vestry and the cloisters, they smashed the place.

Above photo is a photo of Ely Cathedral, looking up into the great ‘lantern’ and down the nave (whose colored ceiling is part of the nineteenth-century restoration).

Decades before Cromwell, in the Lady Chapel (the chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary), remains evidence of widespread destruction wreaked on another occasion decades before Cromwell.

The iconoclasts also attacked the sculpted figures of saints, kings, and prophets, and scenes from the life of the Virgin. Sometimes the whole sculpture was removed, but often only the head and hands, leaving the body in place. Above is a photo of one of the sculptures.

This was not just a series of random acts of vandalism but destruction that was targeted, even thoughtful, and set against a background of debates about the power and potential dangers of religious images.

HINDU IMAGES

In the late 1100s Muslim armies from Afghanistan invaded northern India. By all accounts, they were horrified by what they found. This was home to the Hindu religion, whose people worshiped not one god but, on some counts, millions.

Muslim writers as far back as the tenth century CE often presented India as a place of image worship gone mad.

The Muslim invaders smashed the idols and destroyed the Hindu temples.

The first mosque to be erected in Delhi, the Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque, constructed in the 1190s, was once known as the most imposing mosque in the world.

But in this mosque various elements of earlier Hindu structures and images have been reused and incorporated into the fabric of the mosque the human figures often defaced. It is striking that, even when they have been defaced some aspect of the humanity of those figures have been preserved.

The simple fact that the builders of the new mosque have chosen fairly consistently to place the reused figures the right way up suggests a respect for the human form and itrs image.

It betrays a certain appreciation for the very images that Islam condemned.

THE HAGIA SOPHIA

Does God dwell in hand-made temples? The correct answer is that he does not, but men have always been inclined to believe whereas He is present everywhere, He is nevertheless more fully present in some places than in others.

I have been to the Hagia Sophia.

It is magnificent.

God is obviously more fully present in the Hagia Sophia than in other places.

It has such grandeur.

      

The historian Procopius said about the Hagia Sophia:

“Whenever anyone enters to pray, he understands at once that it is not by human power and skill but by God’s will that his work has been so finely finished.  His mind is lifted up to God and floats on the air, feeling that God cannot be far away, but must especially love to dwell in this place, which He has chosen.”

The present Hagia Sophia is the third church built on the same site.

The present church was built by Justinian between 532 and 537.

Justinian was a military expansionist and ambitious civil reformer (his law code still lies at the foundation of many modern legal systems).

The second church was built by Theodosius and consecrated in 415.

But who built the first and why? Constantine according to legend and Constantius II (337-361) according to historical evidence.

Constantine was the first Roman emperor to have become a Christian.

With the exception of of the short-lived Julian (361-363), all Roman emperors after Constantine were Christians.

Like wise, Constantinople continued to be an imperial city for the next eleven centuries, before becoming the seat of another, Muslim, empire.

To describe all the events that took place within the Hagia Sophia would almost be tantamount to writing a history of the Byzantine Empire.

The name Hagia Sophia means Holy Wisdom or God’s Wisdom, a designation which by the fourth century was applied to the second person of the Trinity, i.e. Christ.

Early Christians believed – and perhaps Christians today believe – that Wisdom was a separate entity created or engendered by God before the beginning of time, an entity that guided or informed the act of creation.

The Ottoman Turks converted the Hagia Sophia into a mosque in 1453.

The Muslim, Ottoman Turks, retained that name.

They did not considerate the Hagia Sophia as an alien entity, the temple of a hostile if conquered religion.

They took steps to incorporate it mythically into the Islamic tradition.

The very word Ayasofya was interpreted to mean ‘house of worship’ (ibadetgah).

As strange as it might seem, in light of Muslim usage, the figural mosaics representing Christian personages and Byzantine emperors were not systematically covered up as soon as Hagia Sophia was converted to into a mosque.

       

The Ottoman conquest ensured not only the Hagia Sophia’s preservation but also its continuing maintenance and repair because it became the chief imperial mosque, amply endowed and often visited by the sultan.

FIRST CONCLUSION

What is going on – the Pandemic, the new George Floyd World, marginalized groups and women getting the short end of the stick in money earned for the same work etc. etc. etc., police brutality, stay-in-place orders, mass unemployment, the economy in shambles, extreme income inequality, extreme wealth inequality, climate change, mass protests, unequal opportunity, rioting in the streets, wide scale looting,- is scary.

You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what the problem is.

SECOND CONCLUSION

People love art.

Art conquers all.

What we see depends on how we look.

Gary Smolker, Social Commentator, Values Critic

 

 

 

Copyright © 2020 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved

 

THE POWER OF MUSIC ACCOMPANIED WITH A LIGHT SHOW by Gary Smolker

Values

Music is about our values.

Music is about our values as a country.

Music is about our values as an individual.

Our music is about who we are.

Friday Night June 15, 2018 Performances of

Chicago and REO SPEED WAGON at the Forum in

Inglewood, California

Friday night, June 15, 2018, I went to a Rock & Roll concert at the Forum in Inglewood, California.

   

REO Speed Wagon and Chicago each put on outstanding shows/performances.

Spiritual Power of Music

Throughout the concert the psychological and spiritual power of music was palatable.

Each song REO Speed Wagon and Chicago performed was performed with the emotional oratorical power of an outstanding preacher determined to resist oppression preaching a sermon re-reinforcing the strength of the human spirit reflected in the slave spirituals:

“Go down, Moses

Go down to Egyptland

Go tell ol’ Pharaoh,

Let my people go!”

Psychic and Spiritual Sustenance

• Music gives people psychic and spiritual sustenance.
• Music always fuels a rising tide of conscience and consciousness – social consciousness and racial consciousness.
• Music is a mighty force for social reform.
• The Music Performed at this concert promoted a personal sense of dignity, self-respect and pride.

Grace and Speed

REO Speed Wagon played meat and potatoes Rock & Roll with a message: “Don’t give up. Press on!” with “Blue Lights” and a blue light show going on in the background.

While performing, the REO Speed Wagon bandleader commented, “Listening to Rock & Roll keeps you young.”

Colors convey feelings, values, relationships, contrasts, dramas and tensions.

The REO SPEED WAGON Light Show

Color is a means of expression.

Color effects us.

Goethe wrote that “… a blue surface seems to recede from us … it draws us after it.”

Blue is linked with eternity, the beyond, supernatural beauty, religious transcendence, the spiritual and mental as contrasted with the emotional and physical and with detachment from the earthly.

Blue draws us into a meditative mood.

Blue cools and calms. It is the color of moonlight.

The Mind and Mood Altering Show Put on by Chicago

      

After the psychedelic images above were put on the screen other images which told a story in pictures which reflected what was going on and the mood of a strong active majority of young people and the public at large that prevailed in the United States during the 1960s.

Everyone over the age of 70 ought to go to a modern day rock concert, like the one I went to on Friday June 15, 2018, and reflect how things have changed and haven’t changed in the United States since the 1960s.

Everyone under the age of 70 ought to ask people over the age of 70 who lived in the United States in the 1960s what life was like in the United States in the 1960s, what the mood of the people was with respect to (1) the Vietnam War, (2) the Civil Rights Movement, (3) with respect to segregation, race relations, and Freedom Riders, (4) with respect to Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., (4) with respect to President John F. Kennedy, (5) with respect to the Space Program, the Moon Program, (6) with respect to the assassination of President Kennedy, (7) with respect to the assassination of Dr. King, (8) with respect to the Civil Rights Act, (9) with respect to the Voting Rights Act, (10) with respect to social reform and (11) with respect to America’s dissenting tradition.

I am a visual person.

My personal reaction to seeing the light show put on by Chicago while the Chicago band members were playing their musical instruments was that I felt like was in a time machine that had transported me me back to the United States in the 1960s when the Beatles invaded America, when I watched the Beatles perform, when I listened to newly released Beatles’ songs, what was going on in my mind while I was watching the Beatles’ movie “The Yellow Submarine”, how I felt and where I was and what I was doing when I heard that JFK had been assassinated, vivid memories of watching Vietnam Protestors protest, the light show reminded me of what it felt like to be fully personally aware of racial segregation, my feeling as I was witnessing non-violent civil rights protests, how I felt upon hearing that Martin Luther King had been assassinated, what I felt while I watched President Nixon resign, etc. etc.

The 1960s in America was a time of civil unrest but also a time of feeling we (Americans) could fix anything.

For many Americans (myself included) the 1960s was a time of hope, a time of optimism, a time of being idealistic and a time of idealism, social activism was rampant, massive public protests were ongoing and there was rising prosperity.

The light show put on while the band Chicago played its musical tunes, brought back all those memories to me.

Below are some of the scenes flashed on the screen behind Chicago as Chicago performed at the concert.

 

    

Dr. King delivered the historic keynote address we know as his “I Have A Dream” speech before the nationalized televised March on Washington on August 28, 1963. He received the 1964 Nobel Prize for Peace. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

The alternative to violence is nonviolent resistance, made famous by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who used it to free India from the domination of the British empire in 1948 and made more famous in the 1960s by Martin Luther King’s leadership in a concentrated drive against injustice.

Laura Bush Speaks Out: Separating Children from their

parents at the border ‘breaks my heart.’

Laura Bush is a former first lady of the United States.

The following is my quotes of something written by Laura Bush on Father’s Day, June 17, 2018, which I read today in the “Washington Post.”

“I live in a border state.  I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel.  It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.

“Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso.  These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history…

“We Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation, on being the nation that sends humanitarian relief to places devastated by natural disasters or famine or war.  We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin.  We pride ourselves on acceptance.  If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite those detained children with their parents – and to stop separating parents and children in the first place.

“People on all sides agree that our immigration system isn’t working, but the injustice of zero tolerance is not the answer.  I moved away from Washington almost a decade ago, but I know there are good people at all levels of government who can do better to fix this….”

“In 2018, can we not as a nation find a kinder, more compassionate and more moral answer to this current crisis? I, for one, believe we can.”

Laura Bush, the performers and audience at the Friday, June 15, 2018 concert at the Forum, in Inglewood California, which I attended believe AMERICA CAN NOT ONLY BE GREAT BUT ALSO GOOD.

 

COPYRIGHT © 2018 by Gary Smolker

 

Creativity and the Power of Women – A Movie Review of “Belle”, “Chef”, “Million Dollar Arm” and Commentary on The Role of Good Taste, The Status of Women and Points of View by Gary S. Smolker

 

Copyright © 2014 by Gary S. Smolker

Updated June 12, 2014

Introduction

Each of these movies is a vibrant movie which has broad appeal.

Watching each one of these movies moved my mind and heart and will move the minds and hearts of other viewers too.

“Belle”

“Belle” touched my emotional sensitivities and political and social beliefs I am passionate about as an American who cares about race, gender and “affirmative action” issues that impact social, educational, and business affairs in the United States which are subject to a multitude of laws and impactful governmental and institutional gender and race related actions and practices.

“Belle” is an intriguingly profound movie of broad appeal because the story told in “Belle” touches emotionally laden sentiments among white people in America about black people and also touches extremely emotional issues about the status and treatment of women in modern day America.

Watching “Belle” was an intrinsically dramatic experience for me because of “Belle’s” direct and forthright portrayal of ideals about gender and race that are important to me.

The story told in “Belle” directly, truthfully and dramatically portrays common place cruel and unfair treatment of women and black people in 17th and 18th century Great Britain.

It is clear to me that the release of “Belle” to the general public is going to have social, political and economic effects beyond immediately observable economic consequences.

Although I am not a Millennial or a member of Generation X, I am 68 years old, it is clear to me America’s Millennials (people aged 18 to 33) and Generation X (people aged 34 to 49) who watch “Belle” will become enraged because they care deeply about justice, fairness, and equality.

They yearn deeply to live in a world where it is truly and wholeheartedly believed that all men are created equal by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.

Where their hearts and minds lie on issues of race and gender is not a secret to me.

By the way, where Millennials’ minds and hearts lie on issues of race and gender is a big deal in the United States because there are more Millennial voters than Senior Voters in the United States.

In the United States there are 46 million eligible Millennials voters and 39 million eligible Senior (age 69 to 86) voters.

I am constantly in the presence of and interacting with Millennials.

Two of my three daughters and many of my young entrepreneurial friends and colleagues are Millennials.

I know from my own personal experience that Millennials are sincerely concerned about inequality, women’s rights and the status and treatment of women in society, the environment, health of the planet, their own health, education, educational opportunities, jobs, job opportunities and making a living.

Millennials are educated, concerned and “enlightened.”

They have $1 trillion in Student Debt.

Fifty percent of them consider themselves to be Independent; that is to say, 50 % of them consider themselves to be neither a Republican nor a Democrat.

Sixty five percent of them say losing their phone or computer is WORSE than losing their car.

Millennials in the 18 to 29 year old age group make up one-fifth of the eligible voting population in the United States.

Women are also a big voting block in the United States.

Black and Hispanic Females were Obama’s strongest Millennial supporters in 2012.

The group that had the largest turn out in the last presidential election in the United States was “Young Married Females.”

That being said, the rage against prejudice and bias engendered by watching the cruel and unfair treatment of blacks and women portrayed in “Belle” will impact which candidate wins the next election for President of the United States.

Watching “Belle” will make women and black people of all ages, and Millennials mad, and will spur them to support and vote for Hillary Rodman Clinton to be the next President of the United States.

Very simply put:

• Hillary Rodman Clinton does a better job of connecting and communicating with the average American voter than any other person likely to run for President of the United States in the next presidential election in the United States.

• Watching “Belle” will spur people who care about women to become even more fed up with the lack of respect shown to women every day.  Watching “Belle” will ignite an urge in young people to be energetically and actively involved in the already existing widespread groundswell of support for the election of Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States because young people care passionately about fairness and the status of women.

• The emotionally laden messages delivered in “Belle” will compel women and men who have daughters and grand-daughters to actively support the campaign to elect Hillary Clinton President of the United States.

In the United States elections are won by the candidate who best relates to the average voter.

That being said, Hillary Clinton’s message (“she gives a damn about the average person”) talks to a wide range of American voters.

The average American voter decides which candidate to vote for by asking himself or herself the following questions about each candidate:

1. Is the candidate someone who relates to people like me?
2. Is he or she someone who can handle a crisis?
3. Is he or she someone I can trust?
4. Is he or she authentic?
5. Does he or she have good character?
6. Does he or she care about people like me?

The inflammatory portrayal of the treatment of slaves, slavery, black people and of women in the movie “Belle” emphasizes the need to have someone on “your side” if you are an average American voter because the average American truly and strongly believes the phrase in the Declaration of Independence, “…we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…”

The Declaration of Independence is the heart and soul of America.

That being said, the movie “Belle” speaks directly to the “Spirit of America” because it reminds the average American voter that fairness, the status of women, inequality, gender and race bias, their health and the health of the environment are among the things they care most about.

That phrase in the “Declaration” … “we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights,” makes the United States different than any other country in the world.

People of all ages in the United States, especially young people, care strongly about inequality.

The story told in “Belle” directly makes the point that that is a virtuous point of view.

ASIDE: In 2008, a whopping 66 % of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for President Obama.

Recent trends reveal that voter participation among young voters is steadily increasing.  They represented 18 % of all votes cast in 2008 and 19 % in 2012.

Put in perspective, 46 million Millennials were eligible to vote during the last presidential cycle compared to only 39 million senior citizens, and that figure is projected to skyrocket by 2020.

“Chef”

“Chef” is a story about commonly experienced conflicts imbedded in the human condition.

“Chef” is a story well and tastefully told about the conflicts men everywhere have between (a) the demands of their “job”, (b) their need to make a “living” and to be a “provider”, (c) their desire to be a good parent and “family man”, (d) their need to take risks and their need for security and (d) their need to only do work they believe in 100% with all their heart and no hesitation.

Women, of course, also have those conflicts.

Additionally, the story in “Chef” in dramatic fashion shows the sixth sense that women have that men don’t.

“Chef” is a “how you feel about your work catches on” story which takes place in the larger context of a multidimensional interrelated set of mutually supportive love stories.

Everyone will enjoy watching “Chef” because “Chef” is a joyful and charming story about family, friends, feelings, creativity, work and personal and professional success.

“Million Dollar Arm”

“The Million Dollar Arm” is based on a true story.  The characters it portrays are real life people and the story it tells is a true story.

“The Million Dollar Arm” tells a fun, vibrant and joyful true story about a creative man’s endurance, inspiration, intensity, poise, perseverance and eventual humanity as he goes from being “broke” to becoming tremendously successful in business and in his personal life.

“Million Dollar Arm” is full of beautiful and dramatic and vibrant and educational images and humor.

“The Million Dollar Arm” portrays a journey like episode in the real life of an extremely creative sports agent.

The sport’s agent’s creativity, openness to new ideas, experiences and perceptual space portrayed in this movie are “over-the-top.”

While watching “Million Dollar Arm”, I wanted to hire the main character (a sports agent) to be my personal agent.  I still want to hire that man as my agent.

 

The Impact of Good Taste in Movies

Men should never underestimate the “power” of women, nor should women.

People should never take women for granted or ignore the power, intelligence, character, talents and status of women.

Women are “smarter” than men.

Women have a sixth sense that men don’t have.

Women deserve a lot of respect.

The movies “Belle”, “Chef” and “Million Dollar Arm” prove those points in a tasteful way through the actions of the main female characters.

Each of the main female characters in those movies is even more brilliant than the lead male character; acts with poise and gracefully at all times; has a sixth sense that the main male character lacks; and, steals the show.

Taste, Talent and the Ability to Emotionally Connect Are A Winning Combination

In communication, talent and taste matter:

Here is what Pablo Picasso had to say on that topic:

“There are painters

who transform the sun into a yellow spot,

but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence,

transform a yellow spot into the sun.”   — Pablo Picasso

Watching movies that engage our minds become part of the wealth of our lived experience.

That is the reason I predict the movies “Belle”, “Chef” and “The Million Dollar Arm” will have a strong influence on the political future of Hillary Clinton and on the “woman rights” movement.

How something is said – if it connects emotionally to your heart and mind –  will great impact.

Consider the influence of the following two alternative ways of talking about whether or not it is okay to smoke – which is demonstrated in the following two scenes:

“A monk asks a superior if it is permissible

to smoke while praying.

The superior says certainly not.

Next day, the monk asks the superior if it is permissible

to pray while smoking.

That, says the superior, is not merely permissible, it is admirable.”  — George F. Will

The talent of the movie maker as a communicator of ideas matters a lot.

Our relationship with a movie, the characters in the movie, and the message delivered in a movie transforms us to the extent they touch our heart and/or our mind by becoming a beacon which influences the way we engage with people and everything else we do.

The messages and characters in each of these three movies will touch people’s hearts because each of these movies was made by an extremely talented movie maker.

Inevitably, people will be inspired, given hope and taught good lessons by embracing the stories told and the thoughts, processes and ideas presented in these movies.

If you see any one of these three movies and if you are a direct, intense and hardworking person highly motivated both to work and to produce, and motivated to produce entities and things that are both new and valuable and always on the lookout for new and valuable ideas and thoughts and processes and inspiration and solutions to problems, you will recommend to your friends that they see these movies too.

Each of these movies tells a story which proves that it is hard to beat a person who never gives up.

 

“Belle”,”Chef”, and “Million Dollar Arm” Are Masterful Movies

Each of these movies is about the power of an idea.

Each of these movies is about the power of women.

The main female character in each of these movies has a “true eye”, a penetrating perceptiveness, a seamless sense of order and perspective, and is a fully realized human being in every way throughout the movie.

In each of these movies each of the male main characters becomes a fully formed adult and a more fully realized human being under the influence of the main female character.

The story in each movie is masterfully told.  Each story is so masterfully performed that it is impossible for an audience to avoid building an emotional relationship with each character.

Emotional tension begins with the first scene in each movie and never abates.

Things never settle down.

You just have to know what will happen next.

The Main Characters in “Belle”

Belle, the main character in the movie “Belle”, is a woman with practical and penetrating intelligence, curiosity, and an independent spirit.

Belle is broadly educated, very sophisticated and has fantastic intuitive decision making skill.

She is a whole brain thinker. She is a “beauty” in every sense of the word “beauty” and excels at everything she does.

Belle’s beau, in this movie, is a man who has the conviction that all people (black and white) should be treated “equally”  as human beings under the law.  He has Herculean persistence in advocating (speaking out) and standing for the point of view that slavery is immoral.  He is a man of conviction who fully believes that slavery is an abomination.

He not only allows himself to feel his feelings, his feelings emote from him.

His is controlled by his aesthetic and moral sensibilities; he lives his life controlled by moral considerations.

He “walks the walk” and he does what he wants to do the way he wants to.  This creates tensions.

The Issues of Slavery and Social Status in “Belle”

The underlying tensions in “Belle” revolve around the issue of the social status of black people.

At the time the story in this movie takes place slavery exists.

At that time, people thought of slaves as being part human and part beast at the same time.

“Society”, the gentry, people of all colors and all levels of society live in a world where “black slaves” are not thought of as being “people” but instead are thought of as being beasts of burden and no different than cattle.

The story in this movie takes place in a pre-industrialized world in which heavy manual labor is performed by black slaves who are used as beasts of burden.

At the time in history in which the story in this movie takes place black people are “caught” in the “wild” and then shipped to slave markets across oceans and seas on slave ships.

This movie follows what happens in a legal case.  The audience is told at the beginning of this movie that a shipload of black slaves was thrown over board while being “shipped”/transported by sea to a slave market in London to be sold.

The owner of the cargo of slaves made a claim on its insurance carrier for recovery of damages based on total “loss” – a loss due to all slaves having been thrown overboard during the voyage.

At the time this story takes place, a cargo of slaves could be insured just like a cargo of cattle.  A cargo of slaves could be insured as “cargo”  just like a cargo of any other goods being shipped by sea.

The insurance company denied the slave-owner’s claim of loss and refused to pay the slave owner anything.

A lower court ruled in favor of the slave owner, ruled that the insurance company had to pay for the total loss of cargo.

As this movie takes place, this “insurance claim” case is now on appeal before the Lord Chief Justice of Great Britain.

The Lord Chief Justice must decide whether this is a fraudulent insurance claim, i.e. was it necessary to throw the cargo of slaves overboard in order to save the ship or, alternatively was the cargo of black slaves thrown overboard because the slaves had become sick during the sea voyage.

If the slaves had become sick/diseased during the voyage they would be worth more to the owner of the cargo of slaves dead (via receipt of payment on an insurance claim for total loss of cargo) than the slaves would be worth to their owner if they arrived in port alive, i.e. were alive when the shipped docked in port to be off-loaded and then be sold at the slave market.

Diseased slaves would be worth nothing at the slave market.

The Chief Justice had to decide if the slaves thrown overboard became sick during the voyage or if as claimed by their owner the ship ran out of drinking water during the voyage which necessitated throwing the slaves overboard in order to save the ship.

Getting back to Belle.

• Belle is the daughter of a black Caribbean slave who was married to an Admiral in the British Navy.  Her father was a white man and member of the highest level of British society.

• When the movie begins, her father (the white Admiral) is picking Belle up to take Belle to live with the Admiral’s uncle in England because the Admirable is about to embark on a long sea voyage and he doesn’t know if he will ever return from this tour of duty alive.  Belle’s mother has passed away.

The Admiral’s uncle is the Lord Chief Justice of Great Britain, the man who will decide the insurance claim case described above.

During the course of the movie, the Lord Chief Justice, who was childless, falls in love with Belle, loves her as he would love his own daughter if he had a daughter.

The Genius Use of Opposites to Make The Social Point Made in “Belle”

Part of the genius in the making the sociological point that blacks are not stupid beasts being made in the movie “Belle” is the choice of scenes to tell the story being told in “Belle”.

The movie maker chose scenes in which Belle interacts with members of the highest level of society in Great Britain, the idle gentry, to deliver the message that black people are as smart, talented and educable as white people.

In each of those scenes, Belle is far more intelligent, far more educated, far more sophisticated, far more poised, far more graceful, and far more polite and generous than the male and female members of the gentry with whom she interacts.

Proactively Disrupting the Status Quo

The main character in “Chef” and the main character in “Million Dollar Arm” proactively disrupted the status quo.

During the course of each of these movies the main character went from being “broke” and “down and out” to becoming a great business success who realized his full potential as a human being.

These stories illustrate the potential benefit of listening and that “listening” is the ability to be changed by “hearing” what the right person says to you.

In each movie the main character listened to what a special woman in his life told him, changed what he was doing as a result and became a great success by doing what she let him know would be a good thing for him to do.

In each of these movies the main character reached his full potential as a result of listening to a woman in his life who gave him guidance.

Each of these movies demonstrate their is wisdom in the advice “Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.”

Also each movie demonstrates the benefit that can be derived from following Napoleon Hill’s advice: “Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’  Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”

Although pennies don’t drop from heaven, they have to be earned here on earth, these movies show how much fun making a fortune can be if you do what you love do to and that no man can make a success of a business he does not love.

Each of their businesses caught fire because their businesses had a purpose beyond making money and beyond making them look “good”/effective.

They genuinely loved what they were doing.

The Main Women in “Belle”, “Chef” and “Million Dollar Arm”

The main women in these three movies have no rough edges.

They are mellow, friendly, gentle, balanced, multidimensional, smart and easy to enjoy role models.

Listening to them speak will aid the flowering of your spirit and continue to expand your perspective long after you are done watching them perform their roles in these three movies.

Passionate Heroic Actions & Great Accomplishments

The source of great accomplishments is passion.

Behind the success and driving the success accomplished on a great adventure is a tenacious believing individual.

Behind the success each of the main male characters  accomplished in “Chef” and Million Dollar Arm” were passionate believing women who “stuck by their men.”

Each of these women was a balanced understanding person who could see “nuances” which the men couldn’t see.  Each of these women had a “subtly-appreciating-intelligence”, a sixth sense, an intuition, that enabled them to see an infinity of things the men couldn’t see.

These women were 100% present in everything they did.  They understood the emotional connotation of what was going on while the main male characters in these movies were lost in thought without a clue of what was happening to them in their lives.

It takes a team to accomplish something significant.  It takes an effective brain team.

The main male character in “Chef” and in “Million Dollar Arm” had a brain team which worked with them in a highly effective fashion.

Each of the main female characters in “Chef” and “Million Dollar Arm” were a critical and crucial and essential part of the male main character’s brain team.

Without them on their teams, the men would not have been able to accomplish the great things they accomplished.

“Chef”

The movie “Chef” is a demonstration of the rule that there is no passion in playing it small.

At the beginning of this movie we see that the main character, a chef, has settled for living a life that is less than the one he is capable of living.

He has descended from being a creative chef and gastronomic guru to becoming a mainstream chef supervising a crew of kitchen helpers preparing and cooking the same dishes day after day – dishes which he creatively created ten years ago.

Supervising the cooking of a kitchen crew of the same dishes day after day is driving him crazy.

As the movie begins, the “chef’s” boss (the owner of the restaurant where the chef works) will not allow the chef to create any new dishes.

The chef is about to die from boredom.  The chef is a tortured soul as a result of being a “creative chef” who has not been allowed by the owner of the restaurant where he works to actualize his creative potential or even to engage his creative impulses for the past ten years.

This “creative” chef is no longer a gastronomic influence, a gastronomic guru or pacemaker.

He has become a “hostage of his own success”/getting a regular pay-check working for a restaurant owner who does not want to take the risk of placing any new unique creative “untried dishes” on the menu.

His life is full of negative tension.

He no longer looks forward to going to work each day.

He is no longer living a fulfilling life.

“Million Dollar Arm”

The movie “Million Dollar Arm” is a demonstration of the fact that “all” great ideas are traceable to a “tenacious believing individual.”

The most difficult thing in running a value creating business is having a good creative idea and then making the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity.

 

Slavery

The interrelated topics of slavery, power, money, monetary interests, sex and social identity are on everyone’s mind.

Those forces unleash a tsunami of heart centered emotional tensions in the movies “Belle”, “Chef” and “Million Dollar Arm”, and are the forces driving the pending actions the National Basketball Association (NBA) is taking against Donald Sterling to strip him of his ownership of the Clippers basketball team,

Without awareness of the power of sex we are reduced to a sort of self-contained void without accurate awareness of the space around us.

Being a slave is not sexy or powerful.

Being powerless is not sexy.

Being “trapped” is not sexy.

Being powerful is sexy.

The superstar professional basketball player athletes in the NBA had to be willing to boycott the NBA Playoffs and to refuse to play in the NBA if Sterling was allowed to maintain ownership of the Clippers basketball team in order to be able to maintain their swagger and sex appeal.

If the superstar professional basketball players were not willing to boycott the NBA women would think of those superstar athletes as being “slaves” – those superstar professional athletes would lose their aura of power, their sexual attraction would diminish, they would have lost their swagger and the desirability of being seen with them and/or identified with them would have disappeared.

People would think they were losers, instead of thinking they are super human beings – they would lose the aura of  “he-men-super-star winners if they didn’t act like the heroic-action-hero-men they are in the public’s imagination.

They had to act like their image, live up to their image, in order to keep their image.

They need to maintain that image in order to maintain their swagger and in order to increase their “drawing power.”

The National Basketball Association league, the TV stations that broadcast their games and the advertisers who had paid to have their advertisements shown during those games would be devastated if the play-offs didn’t happen.

The basket ball team owners’ in the NBA see the big economic picture.

Their decision on how to vote in an upcoming vote on whether to take the Clippers NBA league basketball team away Sterling’s right to own an NBA basketball team and to force Sterling to sell the Clippers is simple.

Major consumer goods advertisers have made it clear that they do not want to be associated with slavery.

Advertising revenue from TV contracts, revenue from collateral advertising contracts, revenue from endorsements and collateral merchandise contracts and a host of other gigantic cash flow big ticket money contracts were put on the line by the comments Donald Sterling made to his once upon a time “girl-friend” which were recorded then published on social media and afterwards in the the general media.

That revenue has been in jeopardy, has been on the line and  and has been in play since advertisers began fleeing from the Clippers, pulling their sponsorship from the Clippers and increased further when prominent black basketball players declared that there is no place for Donald Sterling in the NBA, Sterling must go.

The NBA as we know it would have been destroyed if the basketball players boycotted the playoffs. The NBA as we know it will be destroyed if black basketball players refuse to play in the NBA.

Business 101: Make It A Rule to Not Bore or Annoy Customers

From a marketing perspective, Donald Sterling is a genius.  By annoying “everyone” Donald Sterling has made himself “the man everyone loves to hate.”

Donald Sterling now gets more unpaid newspaper coverage and news media coverage that the President of the United States and the President of Russia, all as the result of Donald Sterling’s “annoying conduct.”

Meanwhile, the value of Donald Sterling’s basketball team, the Clippers, has gone from $12.5 million dollars when Donald Sterling bought the Clippers basketball team in 1981 to $2 billion dollars today.

Donald Sterling has made himself the most talked about person in the world and his “basketball team” (the Clippers) the most talked about enterprise in the world.

Donald Sterling’s annoying actions prompted some of the richest businessmen in the world to compete with each other for the “bragging rights” of being able to say they “own” the Clippers.

Donald Sterling has created a series of unique experiences/”shows” for all of us “spectators” to watch play-out by pro-actively disrupting the status quo.

Donald Sterling understands the “big picture” perfectly, is fully present living in the present moment, and has shown the rest of the world, through his annoying conduct, how to make money by disrupting the status quo by disrupting the status quo and by not following the standard business school rule, “don’t annoy your customers.”

Experiencing Success without Experiencing Fulfillment

It makes sense to choose the best role models to guide and inspire us towards the realization of our potential.

But recent lawsuits brought by professional football players against the National Football League (NFL) which cast professional football players as enslaved drugged workhorses tarnish the image of professional football players as heroes.

Recent print media, broadcast media and social media comments on profession sports make it clear that professional sports are such a big money maker for all involved that league matches are not games being played for “fun.”  They are business enterprises in which star athletes in some cases have sold their bodies and themselves into slavery to team owners.

In that regard, eight former professional football players (including legendary Chicago Bears quarterback Jim McMahon sued the National Football League (NFL) on Tuesday, May 20, 2014, in a class action lawsuit.  In their lawsuit they claim they were injected with drugs hundreds or thousands of times to keep them on the field despite being injured and in great pain.  They were forced to ignore their medical condition, their medical histories and present physical injuries and ailments so that the business enterprises that “owned” them could make more money by having them play football instead of recuperate.

In their complaint they allege their stories are not unique and are part of a immoral reprehensible out-of-control money obsessed “culture of drug misuse, substituting players’ health for profit.”

Their lawyer has stated, “The NFL has made billions of dollars as a result of drug use that would be prohibited for horses.”

According to their class-action complaint the potential class of injured professional football players could stretch to 5,000 retired NFL players nationwide.

This lawsuit comes on the heels of a $765 million settlement between retired professional football players and the National Football League over head injuries suffered during their careers.  More than 4,800 professional football players joined in that lawsuit.

The case has been assigned to U.S. Magistrate Judge Kandis A. Westmore in Oakland.  Dent et al v. National Football League, CV14-2324 (N.D. Cal., filed May 20, 2014).

The complaint accuses NFL doctors of giving opioids, localized anesthetics and excessive anti-inflammatory drugs to cover up players’ injuries regardless of the athlete’s medical history.

The complaint states that many of them became addicted to the prescription pills over their years of playing, sometimes turning to street dealers to feed their habit after leaving the league.

In short, professional football players sold their bodies; they made a lot of money. But, the daily quality of their lives, the flowering of their spirit and their ability to enjoy life was ruined by being drugged so that they could continue to “play” professional football while they were in injured and in great pain.

The tortured lives of the most severely damaged/ injured professional football players, in my opinion can be thought of as being equivalent to being buried alive and then living out the rest of you life moving around and breathing under ground in your own grave.

Shift of Consciousness

It is well known that people can get head injuries including traumatic brain concussions from playing football.

However, that has not stopped youths from  violently playing football in high school and college football leagues.

A national tracking systems for tracking brain injuries in youths is about to get off the ground at UCLA with $30 million from the National College Athletic Association, a new pledge of $25 million from the National Football League a a $10 million gift to UCLA from New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch.

It has been reported that Tisch’s donation will sustain and expand a UCLA program that since 2012 has treated 600 young patients with brain injuries and studied the after-effects of concussions in middle school, high school and college athletics.

Reports that concussions may set the stage for learning problems, mental health issues and even dementia have made some parents wary of allowing their children to play in organized sports.

According to the latest available figures about 250,000 people under the age of 19 were treated for concussions in 2009, up from 150,000 in 2001.

A NCAA survey of 15 college sports recently showed that between the 1988-89 and 2003-04 academic years, the overall rate of reported concussions doubled from 1.7 to 3,4 per 1,000 “athletic exposures.”

Privacy

Thanks to revelations about government snooping made by Edward Snowden and facts about Donald Sterling learned by listening to recorded private statements made by Donald Sterling to his girl-friend we now know that where there are cell phones there is no privacy or reasonable expectation of privacy.

In a recent interview conducted by Brian Williams, Edward Snowden revealed that smart phone can be accessed and used (like a camera, a microphone and an audio visual recording device) by governmental agencies to see and hear what people in its presence are doing and saying.

These revelations are a warning to be careful of what you say and do in private.

Think about your privacy before you speak.

Think before about your privacy before you act.

Think before you speak or act.

Orchestrate your life carefully.

Things are not going to settle down.