The Assault on Youth in the U.S.

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Henry Giroux on:
Youth in an Authoritarian Age: Challenging the politics of disposability:
Following the insight of Hannah Arendt, a leading political theorist of mid-20th century totalitarianism, a dark cloud of political and ethical ignorance has descended upon the United States. (1) Thoughtlessness, a primary condition of authoritarian rule, now occupies a privileged, if not celebrated, place in the political landscape and the mainstream cultural apparatuses. A new kind of infantilism now shapes daily life as adults gleefully take on the role of unthinking children, while children are pushed to be adults, stripped of their innocence and subject to a range of disciplinary pressures that saddle them with debt and cripple their ability to be imaginative. (2)

Under such circumstances, agency devolves into a mind-numbing anti-intellectualism evident in the banalities produced by Fox News infotainment and celebrity culture, and in the blinding rage produced by populist politicians who support creationism, argue against climate change and rail against immigration, the rights of women, public service workers, gay people and countless others.

Editorials & Actions

Michael Nagler on the Gun Culture

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A Very Convenient Truth
by Michael N.  Nagler

Modern scientists recognize the potency of thought…as a man thinks so does he become. MK Gandhi
 

THERE ARE TIMES when you can see a familiar scene with fresh eyes.  I had just returned to the U.S. when I found myself in a definitely familiar scene: a local shopping center. The night before I had been on a transatlantic flight where I kept catching glimpses, despite myself, of four private viewing screens shimmering in front of my nearest fellow passengers on the long flight home. They sat there watching ten hours of uninterrupted violence: fights, machine guns, wild explosions – all four of them.  You have to wonder, what does that do to a person’s mind?  You have to wonder, exactly, because in the barrage of detail that floods over us in response to “the latest massacre” you will never hear it mentioned.

2015

The Problem is that Life is Imperfect

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The best way to achieve Mr. Gabel’s noble goals is, first, to recognize what can and cannot be accomplished by the various decision-making institutions in our society, and then to try to equip them to perform optimally in their areas of influence.

Editorials & Actions

Challenge the Media Trivialization of the Pope’s Radical Message

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Save the Pope’s Radical Prophetic Message from Media Trivialization

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

 

The recent national conference of the Religion Newswriters Association in Philadelphia focused on preparing the several hundred media attendees for how to cover the Pope’s visit to the U.S. this week. But in panel after panel, we were presented with leaders of the Catholic Church who were unsympathetic to the Pope’s message. Too smart to directly critique the Pope, in session after session they presented a single message: the “real story” about Pope Francis is what a great guy he is, how caring he is personally for the poor and the downtrodden. The Pope, they insisted, has no politics—he’s above politics and only a humble servant of Jesus.  

Apparently the right-wingers in the Church hope that the media doesn’t know that Jesus himself was a revolutionary with a powerful call to challenge the way official Judaism at that time, represented by the priests of the Temple, had become assimilated to the values of the Roman occupiers of Judea rather than articulators of the prophetic message of the Torah to “love the stranger” and pursue justice and caring for all.

Culture

A Time for Literary Diplomacy

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Now that recent Senate votes have guaranteed that the agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program will go into effect, what more can America do, beyond the strictest vigilance, to build on this historic breakthrough for peace? Perhaps it is time for the citizens of the United States to experience a breakthrough of their own, to go beyond past prejudices against their enemy and use the occasion to gently plunge into the deepest wells of Persian identity that originate in a civilization preceding ours by many centuries. We can do so by connecting with Rumi, a Sufi master born in 1207, whose luminous, salacious, mystical verses written in Farsi are carried by all Iranians in their hearts, as we do the words of Shakespeare. To read even a small selection of Rumi’s witty poems to his beloved can help shatter the blinding stereotypes that separate us from ordinary men and women in Tehran today, the very clichés of mistrust that the negotiators in Geneva had to overcome in order to reach a solution to what seemed an intractable problem. Indeed, those negotiators may have been listening to Rumi when their positions seemed most conflicting and conflictive.

Editorials & Actions

Mazal Tov on Overcoming the Fearful & the War Mongers on the Iran Nuclear Deal

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Thank you so very much for your help in making it possible for the the major powers of the world, the U.N. and most of the people of the world to confirm the deal with Iran which will prevent them from developing nuclear weapons for the next ten to fifteen years. Your support for the Tikkun position, (a position we articulated in full page ads we bought in the NY Times, the Hill magazine read by most Congressional people and staffers), plus your willingness to share your reasons for supporting the nuclear deal, eventually became part of a powerful surge of voices that created the context critical to the ability of Democratic Senators to feel that they could reject the pressure from the right-wing of the Jewish world, represented by AIPAC, The Conference of Presidents of Major (sic) Jewish Organizations, the American Jewish Congress, and many local Jewish Federations and synagogues and instead embrace a deal which, while flawed in some ways, was far better than any achievable alternative. (See, sometimes us little guys can make a difference if we pool our energies and resources.)

 

It was sad for us to see the Reform movement in Judaism unable to take a stand on this issue–the movement that had once proudly proclaimed itself a voice for tikkun olam, but we can have compassion for the leadership that feared it might lose some of its support in being in favor of a deal that raised fears among many Jews who had been influenced by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s manipulation of PTSD flashbacks from the Holocaust. Yet this is the same reason why so many Jewish leaders and rabbis fail to take courageous stands countering Israel’s horrendous treatment of the Palestinian people, behavior in sharp violation of the Torah’s commands “Do Not Oppress the Stranger/the Other.” The excuse of fear of breaking your organization apart or losing some of their supporters starts to wear thin, don’t you think, as we approach the 50th year of Occupation (in 2017)?

Editorials & Actions

The Best Way to Deal with ISIS

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Editor’s note:  The two perspectives articulated by Uri Avnery and Rabbi Arthur Waskow below deserve to be well known and discussed. We at Tikkun have a slightly different approach: we believe that the hate-filled and barbarous approach of ISIS will continue to manifest in a world that is fundamentally unjust, creates huge amounts of suffering in daily life for at least 2 of the 7 billion people on the planet, and privileges military power over kindness in its expenditures of money and in the organization of nation states. We have long argued that what we need is to convince the Western powers to privilege generosity over domination, and to launch as a first step in this process a Global Marshall Plan to once and for all eliminate global poverty, hunger, homelessness, inadequate education and health care, repair the global environment, resettle refugees, and eliminate the unjust global trade arrangements (read our proposed version at www.tikkun.org/gmp).  Yet Uri Avnery and Arthur Waskow, both strong allies of Tikkun, have proposals which differ from our approach and from each other, though because they fit into the “realistic” dialogue of power politics both might be achieved sooner than our plan, though Arthur’s seems much closer to us precisely because it does not envision the direct use of force but only the power of the US to implement it.  In my view, it is more likely to get the US population behind a fundamental change in worldview called for by the Strategy of Generosity than to get a piecemeal acceptance of Iran as an ally in the Middle East reconciled to Israel, unless we were simultaneously challenging the notion that their security depends on power over enemies (the Strategy of Domination).

Editorials & Actions

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The exchange below between Uri Avneri and Rabbi Arthur Waskow reflects the complicated issues raised by ISIS and how to respond to its barbarous behavior. We at Tikkun believe in a nonviolent response, which will take longer but is ultimately more likely to last–a change in US and Western countries from their current strategy of domination to  a strategy of generosity reflected in a Global Marshall Plan which could transform the way the world perceives the West and open the mind of even the most cynical to the possibility that love could triumph over fear, slowly melting away thousands of years of conditioning to the idea that only power over others gives us safety or security. . Both Uri Avneri and Arthur Waskow support that kind of approach in the long run, but here present shorter-run ideas that deserve to be discussed widely.–Rabbi Michael Lerner
Uri Avnery
September 12, 2015
 
                                                The Real Menace
 
I AM AFRAID.  
I am not ashamed to admit it.

Education

Created from Man: The Challenges of Bereishit – And How to Teach Them to High School Students

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By the time Simchat Torah rolls around each year, I usually find it refreshing. Back to the beginning: creation and all of the lovely and (comparatively) simplistic themes following the weight of Devarim. Last year, however, I had been teaching Bereishit to ninth and tenth graders at a Jewish high school in Chicago for the eight weeks leading up to the holiday, and by that point, I could barely look at the Torah’s introductory story. It’s not that the beauty of the beginning had been lost. But the perceived simplicity had certainly been ripped out from under my previous romanticism of it all.

Editorials & Actions

Donald Trump and the Ghost of Totalitarianism

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Editor’s note: As a non-profit, Tikkun does not take stances on candidates or political parties during election periods, but our authors and readers are welcome to do so! Henry Giroux is one of the most creative theorists  on the Left these days, so it is an honor to publish him here. Donald Trump and the Ghost of Totalitarianism
 
Henry A. Giroux
 

In the current historical moment in the United States, the emptying out of language is nourished by the assault on the civic imagination.  One example of this can be found in the rise of Donald Trump on the political scene. Donald Trump’s popular appeal speaks to not just the boldness of what he says and the shock it provokes, but the inability to respond to shock with informed judgement rather than titillation.

US Politics

Apples, Honey, and Centrifuges: How to Talk to Your Jewish Grandmother about the Iran Deal

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Next Monday is Rosh Hashanah, and from Brooklyn to Boca Raton, Jewish families will come together to mark the New Year with lavish feasts and stilted conversations. No Jewish holiday ever goes by without a family argument and no Jewish grandchild is in any doubt about this year’s topic: the Iran nuclear deal. With a nationwide run on Prilosec and other excuses to skip this year’s holiday, anxiety in Jewish communities across the country is palpable. But there’s no need to worry—with a little preparation, you can survive the conversation with bubbe and leave her kvelling about her genius progeny. Although it isn’t Passover, if you want to convince her, you’ll need to have good answers to these four obvious questions about the agreement.

Editorials & Actions

News Flash: Native American Council Offers Amnesty to 240 Million Undocumented Whites

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Native American Council Offers Amnesty to 240 Million Undocumented Whites
The Native American National Council will offer amnesty to the estimated 240 million illegal white immigrants living in the United States. At a meeting on Friday in Taos, New Mexico, Native American leaders weighed a handful of proposals about the future of the United State’s large, illegal European population. After a long debate, NANC decided to extend a road to citizenship for those without criminal records or contagious diseases. “We will give Europeans the option to apply for Native Citizenship,” explained Chief Sauti of the Nez Perce tribe. “To obtain legal status, each applicant must write a heartfelt apology for their ancestors’ crimes, pay an application fee of $5,000, and, if currently on any ancestral Native land, they must relinquish that land to NANC or pay the market price, which we decide.

Editorials & Actions

Mourning the Suffering of the Refugees

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Editor’s note:  The poem below presents the most authentic understanding of the situation of the world’s refugees in the contemporary world. They are  momentarily in the consciousness of the world’s humanity, but will too soon fade. People have momentarily been moved by the great suffering of these refugees, and particularly their children, but politely ignore the role that the US and other “advanced” industrial societies have played in creating the economic and political conditions which have led to the vast increase of refugees in the past twenty years. For the U.S., that responsibility includes both the economic devastation wrought in South and Central America, Africa and Asia by the trade agreements (championed by the Clintons and more recently by Obama) that destroyed subsistence farming and forced millions of people into the barrios and slums of the big cities where they were often forced to choose between armed opposition to ruling elites or selling their children into slavery or sexual exploitation rather than see them starve to death; and also the devastation created by the U.S. wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and drone strikes in Yemen all of which gave rise to the Islamic State of Iraq & Syris (ISIS) with its brutality now spreading through populations driven crazy by the violence that the US and its allies intensified in the Middle East. So while Americans sit around looking in shock at this situation, deploring the growing xenophobia that not only is growing in Europe but which is being played to by the Trump candidacy and other candidates for the Republic Presidential nomination, many wilfully ignore the role of our own country in creating the preconditions for this growing horror show.

Editorials & Actions

Two more Brilliant Articles by Henry Giroux

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Editor’s note: Henry Giroux is one of the most brilliant analysts of the humanly destructive impatct of global capitalism as it plays itself out not only in the economic sphere, but in every aspect of daily life. It is an honor for us that he writes for Tikkun and gives us permission to post on our website articles that he has published elsewhere. Whatever he addresses he manages to pull together a coherent and deeply insightful overview that illuminates and deepens our understanding of the world. So even if the ostensible topic of any given article may not interest you, as you read through his articles you will learn so much about the way to think about our world that it’s almost like being back in the very best college course you ever had!–Rabbi Michael Lerner

SEPTEMBER 2, 2015
Global Capitalism and the Culture of Mad Violence
by HENRY GIROUX

 

Email

Mohsen Abdelmoumen: The concept of  “disposability” frequently returns in your writing, whether speaking of youth, politics, the future, etc. Why do you insist on this theme?

Culture

The Short Crappy Life of Walter J. Palmer, or, The Oddities of American Wealth

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Anyone who has followed the demise of Cecil, the African lion, and Walter J. Palmer, his American slayer, can’t help but be struck by the parallels with Hemingway’s classic story, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” where a wealthy but timid American bumbles around the African savannah under the protection of a guide, procures a few hides, and ultimately meets his demise.