LIKE NOTHING YOU’VE EVER SEEN BEFORE

Bad behavior is running rampant in these United States of America - the terrible violence in Charlottesville, Virginia this weekend being the latest example. Behaving badly has become the new normal, the new “politically correct.” A lot of people still can’t believe this is happening. Many people are concerned while others are downright frightened. Investigations are under way, opposition is being voiced, protests are being organized and law suits are being filed. But what isn’t happening is, nobody is actually fighting back.

Make no mistake about it, we are in a war – a war over values; and our enemies are desperate. They know this is their last chance. If they lose this war “white supremacy” is finished. Rich, white men of European ancestry will never again rule this country as they have since it was founded. Right now they have all the power. They control “the system” (all three branches of the federal government and two thirds of the state legislatures) and they control all the money. There is no way they will walk away from that power. In fact, there is nothing they won’t do to keep it, including, but not limited to, instigating a major riot or terrorist attack and using it as an excuse to postpone the 2018 election and/or declaring Marshall Law, which would suspend habeas corpus and shut down the media. Or they will just start a war with North Korea or Venezuela for no good reason other than to hang the threat of nuclear annihilation over us in the hope it will frighten us into submission. They are already tampering with voting rights, civil rights, immigration, the social safety net, the environment and public education. Do you really want to wait until they come after you personally before doing something to stop them?

The good news is people who behave badly can be stopped from doing so. Not everyone. Not all the time. But it can be done. I have spent my entire professional life doing it and I can assure you that you don’t stop people from behaving badly by complaining. You stop bad behavior by imposing consequences on the people who are behaving badly. It you can’t get to them directly, you target the people who are enabling and supporting that behavior and you “hit them where it hurts,” preferably not physically, but wherever they are most vulnerable – financially, professionally, socially, emotionally, etc.

What do you think would happen if the tens of millions of Americans who are so concerned about Donald Trump’s behavior reduced their non-business related consumption of gasoline and other petroleum based products by 50% for the next three month and made it clear to the oil industry that they will not return to their normal consumption levels until Congress starts doing its job?  Do you think the loss of that much revenue could persuade the oil industry that it might be in its best financial interests to encourage the members of Congress it owns to restore the rule of law and the protections guaranteed to the American people by the Constitution? 

What if the tens of millions of people who are appalled by Mr. Trump’s behavior and have Twitter accounts, closed their accounts and made it clear to Twitter that they will no longer support a service that allows itself to be used by unscrupulous people, like Donald Trump, to spread lies and foment hate? Do you think the loss of that many subscribers might put some pressure on Twitter to close Mr. Trump’s Twitter account?

What about a series of National Strikes? Everybody in the United States who wants Donald Trump’s removed from office stays home from work on the first Monday of every month until reason and dignity are restored to Capitol Hill and the White House. If even half of all working Americans did that, the Nation would come to a standstill. And just think of the message that would send. We gave you, Mr. and Ms. Elected Official, the authority to give the orders, but we, the people, are the ones who actually do the work, which means we still have the power, because nothing you want done will get done unless we choose to do it.

Will these kinds of aggressive tactics work? The truth is we can’t be certain they will. There are clearly risks involved. People would have to make sacrifices. But these kinds of tactics worked for the Labor Movement in the 1930’s; and civil disobedience, which is a similar aggressive tactic, worked for the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Besides, nobody ever won a war, or any type of conflict, by just playing defense. All that does is delay losing. You have to pose a threat to your opposition. They have to have “some skin in the game.” They have to understand and believe that they could and might lose something they value if they come after you. Otherwise they will just keep coming, and coming, and coming until they crush you. Don’t you watch Game of Thrones?

Seriously, these are the kinds of actions we need to be thinking about, talking about and putting into practice – actions that impose serious consequences on the people who are behaving badly and on the people who are enabling and supporting that behavior. We need to fight back because that’s what it takes to stop people from behaving badly. We gave them the power; we can take it back. But we are going to have to “take” it back because they will never give it back.

Everyone who cares about our future needs to be involved in this dialog. That’s why I started this blog – to serve as a platform for that dialog and, hopefully, as a springboard for action. Please get involved and try to get everyone you know who cares about the future involved. Use the Comment section of the blog to tell us what you think each of us can do now, in our own lives, to tell Mr. Trump and his enablers “[We’re] as mad as hell and [we’re] not going to take it anymore,”[1] and to make it perfectly clear to them that we are through complaining, petitioning and protesting, that we are ready to take action, action “like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”[2]

---

[1] Paddy Chayefsky, from the movie Network, 1976

[2] Donald Trump, repeatedly, 2016-2017

A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME

I think we all know that our opposable thumbs and our large brains are what distinguish humans from all other life forms on this planet. We didn’t have claws or fangs so we built spears. We didn’t have fur or leathery hides so we made clothes. We weren’t very strong so we developed levers and wheels. And we weren’t very big so we learned to work together. So far, we have overcome every threat to our survival as a species and now dominate the planet we call Earth. We have even traveled to the moon and have sent satellites beyond that. It’s amazing. What isn’t amazing is that, while we did learn to work together, we never really learned how to live together and, as a result, we have become our own worst enemy.

There have always been wise people among us called prophets who understood that we humans need to live together in harmony with each other and the natural world around us in order to survive and thrive on this planet over the long term. Whether they were given that wisdom by some supreme being, or created the illusion of a God or Gods in their own image to add an incontrovertible degree of authority to their teachings, is still subject to debate. What isn't subject to debate is we humans developed belief systems that we call religions, which are really just a collection of stories about our origins and a set of rules to live by, around the prophets' teachings. These religions were a response to our tendency to mistreat one another. They were the first systematic attempt to stop people from behaving badly. The problem is they haven't worked. In fact, there is some empirical evidence that strongly suggests religion has actually caused more bad behavior than would have existed without it.

There are several reasons for its failure.

First, the consequences for breaking the rules set out by the various religions are not tangible or timely. They are theoretical and most of them don’t go into effect until after we die. Since no living person has ever actually experienced any of those consequences, we don’t really take them seriously so they never have and still don’t have their intended deterrent effect.

Second, religions were, and still are, easily compromised. If prostitution was the first profession, religion was the first business. Enterprising people called priests have always managed to set themselves up as the “authorized distributor” of a particular God’s wisdom or the “exclusive representative” of a particular prophet’s teachings, and they have used their position as the “middle man” to manipulate their God’s wisdom or their prophet’s teachings to their own advantage.

Third, priests also happen to be human so they are susceptible to, and often demonstrate, the same bad behavior as everyone else (i.e. greed, cruelty, lust, prejudice, etc.), which undermines their authority and their value as role models.

Finally, as human knowledge has expanded it is has often conflicted with various religions' origin stories, and that has undermined the credibility of those stories and, in turn, those religions.

In retrospect, religion was probably a good idea at the time. It was definitely worth trying. But as a way of stopping people from behaving badly, which was its intended purpose, it just doesn’t work. It’s time to set it aside, or at least set aside the belief that religion stops people from behaving badly, and focus our energies on creating a systematic approach to bad behavior that has tangible and timely consequences, cannot be compromised, has legitimate authority and is consistent with current human knowledge. We have given religion all of recorded history, and then some, to prove it can stop people from behaving badly and it hasn’t been able to do that. Isn’t it time we tried something else?