Muslim Ban: Shock Event?

A family member passed this on through a Facebook 'Copy & Share' message from Heather Richardson, professor of History at Boston College. I felt like sharing it with you, because it does ring true for many reason. The main thing to remember is not to be frozen in our shock, anger, fear, or confusion. Now is the time for all of us to come together and find commonality. We must not let the current Trump regime divide us.

Heather Richardson writes; "I don't like to talk about politics on Facebook-- political history is my job, after all, and you are my friends-- but there is an important non-partisan point to make today. What [Steve] Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night's ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries-- is creating what is known as a "shock event."

Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order.

When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event.

Last night's Executive Order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counter-terrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it. Predictably, chaos has followed and tempers are hot.

My point today is this: unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one's interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won't like.

I don't know what Bannon is up to-- although I have some guesses-- but because I know Bannon's ideas well, I am positive that there is not a single person whom I consider a friend on either side of the aisle-- and my friends range pretty widely-- who will benefit from whatever it is.

If the shock event strategy works, though, many of you will blame each other, rather than Bannon, for the fallout. And the country will have been tricked into accepting their real goal. But because shock events destabilize a society, they can also be used positively. We do not have to respond along old fault lines. We could just as easily reorganize into a different pattern that threatens the people who sparked the event.

A successful shock event depends on speed and chaos because it requires knee-jerk reactions so that people divide along established lines. This, for example, is how Confederate leaders railroaded the initial southern states out of the Union.

If people realize they are being played, though, they can reach across old lines and reorganize to challenge the leaders who are pulling the strings. This was Lincoln's strategy when he joined together Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, anti-Nebraska voters, and nativists into the new Republican Party to stand against the Slave Power.

Five years before, such a coalition would have been unimaginable. Members of those groups agreed on very little other than that they wanted all Americans to have equal economic opportunity. Once they began to work together to promote a fair economic system, though, they found much common ground. They ended up rededicating the nation to a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."

Confederate leaders and Lincoln both knew about the political potential of a shock event. As we are in the midst of one, it seems worth noting that Lincoln seemed to have the better idea about how to use it."

Plato Warned Us of Trump

I have been frozen in my thoughts, words, and actions for what seems like eons, but is actually just over a week. The monstrous cabinet of the new President of the United States seemed like the biggest threat to progress, but it was the least of what should have concerned me. I never realized that 'Executive Orders' and 'Memos' could literally bring a thriving Democracy to the teetering edge of collapse in a matter of a week. I was ignorant, lulled by years of shadow actions hidden from view, pretty words for the public, reassurances of business as usual, and relatively kind if largely inept politicians.

I always assumed that the big decisions of Governments, done in 'peacetime', or what we have been told is peacetime while more than half a dozen wars involving Allied Forces rage around the world, are slow moving and involve constitutional lawyers, teams of people that plan implementation of such new legislation, after passing both the house and senate. I guess I didn't understand, I was ignorant, and I fear my own lack of knowledge about the machinations of American Politics. Quite simply, I was wrong.

I heard Trump rant on about his bigotry, his proposed Muslim ban, his cruel and erroneous characterizations of Mexicans and Latinos, his ancient and rigid descriptions of the Black Community and inner-city ghettos and crime, and his mocking of those with less affluence or different physicality. I was always struck by the sheer inanity of his words, hoping against hope that not one voter would embrace his message. Yet, I always knew there were those who did. What I did not count on was how many supporters, enablers, and defenders he had. I assumed that bigotry could not be legislated in a country that embraces it's Constitution, that even a party that has refused to separate church and state would have an ounce of Christian good will and kindness. I have never been so wrong, and that is a shocking awakening to meet at my age, I assure you.

His election was sobering, his inauguration a funeral for progress, but I thought that it would take time for someone as inept and unaccustomed to the working of government to actually get any traction, get his wrecking-crew cabinet approved, and manage to do any serious work. I was right about many of those assumptions, but what I did not imagine is the sheer power of the office of the presidency being used as a bully pulpit to push through an agenda of almost entirely unconstitutional orders. So much has happened so fast, I can hardly remember each order amidst the whiplash of photo-ops and media spin.

And I keep asking, how this has happened? Why now? What has made this entire debacle possible? Then my sister shared an amazing short video clip from BBC Newsnight, and it all suddenly coalesced into this awful cold and empty feeling in my gut. The writing has been on the wall since it was possible to capture political thought, and as someone who did not study political science in my wide yet relatively focused years upon years of post-secondary education, I now want to know it all, to know more, I want to understand.

Please do watch this short clip about what Plato can teach us about Donald Trump. If it doesn't hit you directly in the gut, then perhaps you are one of the few that has the knowledge I so desperately seek. I am not sure if I envy you, or if I am all the more saddened by those voices who tried to speak out, or could have, but were not heard or listened to, now to our mutual peril.