Tag: Current Events

A Trump Off-Ramp for Republicans

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Republicans – even as abnormal as the party has become compared to the good old days of say, Bob Dole, John McCain and Sarah Palin – oh, wait, skip the last one – have a problem. The problem they have is a very common one for human beings: how to recognize that you are dead wrong, change your view 180 degrees, and yet never admit you were wrong in the first place. This is the hardest thing for human beings to do. Our most basic instinct is to preserve our good view of ourselves, or save face, as Eastern cultures conceive of it – at all costs whether to truth, justice, reality, or sanity.

     Republicans have gone all in on the contractor-stiffing, pussy-grabbing, burger-munching, toilet-tweeting Trump and he has turned out – not all that surprising, really – to be worse than a dud. He has been revealed to be – how do you say this in dispassionate terms? Well, many might say that his ideas and actions are idiotic and even bat-shit crazy! Even the normally sedate Hillary Clinton has called this administration “dumb” and “dangerous.” (1)

     Marco Rubio, in a stunning admission of bad faith and haplessness, has just announced that the administration is ready to “walk away” from a “deal” on Ukraine. This comes, obviously, from a president who repeatedly promised to have a peace deal within twenty-four hours of taking office. (2) The economy, with on-again, off-again reckless and pointless tariffs, is turning into a shipwreck. (3) Well-educated and knowledgeable economists are crying: “wait, what?!” On Wall Street and Bay Street, the stock markets have turned out to be fun house carnival rides with the lights off. On Main Street, car dealerships are offering to accept first-borns as down-payments, and retirees are once again considering what flavour of Purina dog food to choose for dinner. Dollar Stores are considering having literal fire sales. Even Kansas farmers are posting, “WTF?” on their Instagram and TikTok accounts .

     The psychopathic Musk and his Dodgy team, given licence to destroy, are on a mindless rampage, ripping apart the structures of good government and civic well-being that have taken decades to build. Even old grannies and grandpas like myself are taking to the streets with protest signs that say things like Save Our Democracy, You Dirty S.O.B., or Who the F*** Elected Elon Musk? Republican constituents are tarring and feathering paper effigies of non-attending Republican Representatives at raucous town-hall meetings after first castigating those effigies for the failure of Congress to put a stop the shredding of the American Social Contract.

     Trump and his pathetic side-kick Vance have offended and alienated countries that have been loyal allies since the nineteenth century. When Vance visited Greenland, he had to be confined to the base, lest Greenlanders throw him in the ocean alongside an iceberg or two and watch him sink in that snazzy little parka he bought for the occasion. Presently, only about a third of people from Canada, the country formerly the best friend America ever had, consider the U.S. to be an ally,(4) and that one-third doesn’t read the news much and are likely voting for Pierre Poilievre, the wanna-be Trump, the populist candidate for Prime Minister in Monday’s election. His supporters seem to think Pierre is a wellspring of great ideas, such as investing Canada’s pension funds in unregulated cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, China has agreed that Trump’s pressure is just too much, and have admitted that he is too strong and too great a man, and so they are going to do whatever he wants, if they can just figure it out what that is. Ha, ha — NOT! Fooled ya!

 

And so, it is apparent that Republicans need a way to abandon Trump, to get out of their predicament of supporting the president, who, one might say appears to be, as the English so politely put it, a nutter.

     The problem they have is the cognitive dissonance they will have to contend with given that they were all in for a ride on the Trump-train, and now realize that the train is going over a cliff. Cognitive dissonance can be described as a state of holding “two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent.” (5) This occurs when, for example, we know that cigarette smoking will result in your having to walk around with an oxygen tank, if not kill you outright, but we smoke anyway. Fair enough. But the question becomes, how do we preserve our invariably positive view of ourselves as smart and rational, in the face of such obviously irrational and destructive behaviour? We must justify our self-esteem at all costs. It is in our nature.

     In his original participant-observation study of cognitive dissonance, the psychologist Leon Festinger studied a cult who believed that the earth was about to be destroyed by a flood on a particular day. They quit their jobs, gave away their money, possessions, and homes, and went to wait on a hilltop for a flying saucer with Jesus in it to show up and rescue them (something like that, I forget the details of the story). Needless to say, the flying saucer did not show, nor did the flood happen. One might expect them to say: “Damn, I was wrong. I am an idiot! I wonder if I can get my money and job back?” But no, most did not do this. In fact, the more committed they were to the prophecy, the more firmly they held on to their belief. They even went out and proselytized, trying to get others to believe in their nonsensical ideas. The rationale that protected their self-esteem at all costs, was that their very faith and commitment had prevented the flood. They were heroes! They had saved humanity itself because of their faith!

     This is how our so-called rationality works: when our rosy picture of ourselves is threatened by the dissonance between reality and our beliefs, rationality operates to provide self-justification that keeps our positive view intact. We almost never say: “I made a mistake,” or “I was stupid” or such.

     We, of course, believe we are rational beings but the truth is that we are far from it. (6) We are one step up from monkeys. The only difference is that we have developed more frontal lobe rationality, which has the major function of providing a rational explanation after the fact, for actions already taken, carried out on an emotional, monkey-like basis. Our rationality follows our behaviour, saying: “There! Yes, that is why we did that. For sure. Yes, that’s it, alright. We sure are smart. Smarter than average, definitely.”

     Almost no one admits that they are wrong or stupid etc. The extremely rare exceptions are remarkable and stand out. One such example occurred while I was sitting on a jury. Details are changed here to protect privacy and so that I can avoid jail time for revealing jury proceedings. But this Sad Sack was being charged with burglary in a big city neighbourhood; he was the hapless grand-nephew of the complainant, who out of compassion, was tying to help the fellow out by employing him in his submarine shop, even though the chap was inept and nearly useless. In any case, this fellow had arrived at the sub-shop in the middle of the night, gone in, and staggered out a few minutes later carrying a cash register. The problem was that the entire episode was recorded on CCTV, including a full view of his face, his taking the key from the special hiding place, coming back out the door lugging the cash register and loading it into the back of his beater of a car, and driving off. Of course, he was subsequently arrested, still in possession of the cash register, which he had not figured out how to open. When asked why he did all this – that is, trying to rob his great-uncle who had taken pity on him, and that he knew that the CCTV was in operation and he did it all in full view and would be easily identified – he did not justify himself. He did not provide a rationale that would leave his dignity and self-esteem intact.

     Instead, he said, in his transcribed confession: “I know. I am a moron.” In fact, he said: “I am an [expletive] moron,” where the expletive starts with “f,” has a “k” in the middle, and ends with”g,” which the city officer faithfully recorded.

     Now in my books, this guy is totally unique, and almost unheard of in the history of humanity: an honest person who recognized his true self and admitted it. Who does this? His remarkable honesty should be recognized and honoured for what it is: nearly unheard of in the annals of human cognitive dissonance. I would go as far as to propose a monument – at the U.S. National Mall would be best – of similar scale to the Lincoln Memorial – in recognition of this man’s honesty. I propose that it say:

                         “This memorial is erected to remember and honour Beavis Butthead (not his real
                         name), a man whose radical honesty is a beacon and inspiration to all who seek
                         truth in understanding the self and in speaking righteously to humanity.”

 

And so, Republicans have a problem. They are in a -grand-nephew-robbing-the-sub-shop-caught-on-CCTV moment. Trump said what he was going to do, and now he is doing it, and it as a disaster.

     One might hope that a critical number of Republicans might follow the sub-shop robber and say; “My God, I have made a terrible mistake in hitching my ass to the Trump wagon.” Or they might say: “I supported him because I hoped it would result in my collecting more money off the backs of middle-class and poorer people, but now I see that is not working well.” Or, they might say, “I am just an [expletive] moron who hates everybody, and I thought Trump was my kind of guy.” But no, they can’t do this, because such admissions would risk public exposure of their indecency and more important, threaten self-esteem. They have to come up with something more face-saving. But I am here to save the day and say not to worry – although not always easy, it is done successfully all the time! (7) Fortunately I am a highly trained social scientist, with a thorough understanding of cognitive dissonance and the relationship between self-esteem and self-justification, and so I can advise on this matter.

     The rationale need not be true – there is no relation between self-justification and truth, and in any case, we live in the post-postmodern era, when such things as truth and reality are irrelevant fictions. In the postmodern era, say 1980 to 2010, truth became “truth,” with the idea that narratives were propagated to be, quite simply, plausible explanations for power relationships. Then, the postmodernist could, in knowing superiority, “deconstruct” the narrative and power arrangements and then smugly impart them to the poor uninformed dupe – you, that is. So, for example, you might think that Hamlet is a work of unmatched genius, but the postmodernist will let you know that Shakespeare is no giant of literature, but rather is merely an imposed representation of white patriarchal European superiority and colonial dominance.

     Post-postmodernism (I have originated this term) – our current era – is different. The stories need not have any relationship to anything, let alone an actual power structure. A narrative does not even need to be plausible, or even possible, to be accepted. In fact, in some cases, the stupider the story is, the better, especially in this era of AI. It just needs to be stated, and then repeated on social media, until the algorithms latch on to it, and then it takes on its own reality.

     In our era, we can see this in laughable conspiracy theories that have been propagated and parroted even by those in responsible positions, and have been repeated and believed by thousands, although they are completely ludicrous and bizarre, defying even what is possible. The latter seems to have no effect of believers in these theories. The California wildfires were caused by Jewish lasers in outer space in order to create a burned out corridor for high-speed railroads. The successive hurricanes in the American South were deliberately created by Democrats, in order to destroy Red States. The Los Angeles fires, as shown by houses burning before the trees did, were an inside job, deliberately set…oh, for God’s sake, this is too stupid to repeat, even here, in this post. Even I can’t go that far. My fingers refuse to type further. But you get the idea: reasonableness, feasibility – none of this matters in post–postmodern reality.

     In the case of Trump, all that is needed then, is an assertion that things have changed. History can be disregarded, because in the post-postmodern world, nobody remembers any history anyway. So Republicans: all you have to do is to assert that you were right then when you supported him, but things have changed. Your rosy self-view will remain intact. It is simply a matter of asserting that something has happened that has changed the calculation.

     One suggestion I have is the idea that he got a worm in his brain after he was elected. That has worked well for one of his cabinet members. It could explain a lot. Or, it might be proposed that it turns out that Melania is a deep-cover, mind-controlling android created by Vladimir Putin, with a mission to destroy America, who has brainwashed him and is refusing to hold his hand unless he carries out her orders to perform destructive acts. It could work.

    Probably the best and simplest though, which has already been put forth by some of my Democratic friends, is that Trump has developed dementia since being elected, and that is why he is acting so crazy. (Note that in the post-postmodern era, if doesn’t matter if his original ideas and his post-election ideas and actions are identical – nobody cares.) This does have a degree of plausibility (perhaps that is slightly useful, but again this doesn’t matter all that much), but its big advantage is that it is tested and proven workable. The Democrats already pulled this with great success on their own guy, Joe Biden, although it must be noted that they did go on to lose the election against a convicted felon who already had presided over the goofiest presidency ever.

     In any case, it is not difficult to get the ball rolling: just hire a couple of washed-up celebrities to do what George Clooney did in sandbagging Biden. Hire supporters like Sylvester Stallone, Wayne Gretsky, or Caitlyn Jenner, for example, and get them to beg Trump to resign due to his diminished capacity. Once they do that, then the rest of the Republicans and Fox “News” can pile on. Then simply invoke the twenty-fifth amendment. It is a win-win all around.

     Voila! Problem solved. Cognitive dissonance resolved. Self-esteem preserved. And the crazy guy is gone. (8)

_____________________________

1. Clinton, Hillary. “Hillary Clinton: How Much Dumber Will This Get?” The New York Times, 28 Mar. 2025, https://www.nytimes.com /2025/03/28/opinion/trump-hegseth-signal-chat.htm. Accessed 24 Apr. 2025.

2. Price, Michelle L. “Trump’s explanation for failing to end Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours as promised.” The Independent, 17 Mar. 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ americas/trump-ukraine-war-russia-sarcasm-b2716424.html, Accessed 18 Apr. 2025. 

3. Mannweiler. Laura. “‘Monstrously Destructive’ and ‘Unwise’: Leading Economists React to Trump’s Tariffs.” U.S. News and World Report, 3 Apr. 2025, https://www.usnews.com/news/ national-news/articles/2025-04-03/monstrously-destructive-and-unwise-economists-react-to-trumps-tariffs. Accessed 18 Apr. 2025. 

4. “Harper’s Index,” Harper’s Magazine, May 2025, p. 9.

5. Aronson, Elliot, and Joshua Aronson. The Social Animal. 12th ed., Worth Publishers, 2018, p. 60.

6. For an interesting discussion of this, see: Smith-Ruiu, Justin. Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason. Princeton University Press, 2019.

7. Travis, Carol, and Elliot Aronson. Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. Revised edition, Mariner Books, 2020.

8. Of course, then you end up with J. D. Vance as president. But that is a problem for another day. One thing at a time. 

 

The Worst Thing About All This

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Saturday morning at eleven, as has been the case every Saturday for the last couple of months, we stood on the four corners at the main crossroads in the little village of Salem, New York. We held aloft our handmade signs, cheering each other on, and cheering the cars that went by giving us a friendly horn-toot or wave, and whooping when the occasional Trumper roared by giving us the finger. Stop the Coup! Hands Off Canada and Greenland! We Did Not Elect Musk! Save Our Democracy! Stop the Extortion of Ukraine!

     It was a cold morning, and the falling rain was freezing on the lampposts if not our foreheads. Still, in spite of that, there were easily one hundred of us, mostly old people. Despite the adverse weather, despite the grim news of the week and every week since January 20th, we were of good cheer, and we were not without hope. None of us are fools; we know that such vigils do not, by themselves, change things. But they matter, and we affirm to each other that we are not alone.

     The worst thing about all this – about this administration and its actions – is the cruelty and hatred that it represents. Love, Not Hatred, Makes America Great! read a sign waved by a gray-haired woman on the corner opposite me. Amen. But I’d say that while it could make America great, it is certainly not doing so now: the contempt for other people, the dismissal of minorities, the erasure of those who do not fit the supremacist gender scripts, the rounding up and imprisonment of dissenting foreign students, the precipitous cessation of aid to those around the world who are starving, the abrupt dismissal, by a psychopathic billionaire, of dedicated public servants in valued agencies…well, it is too much. Too ugly. Unspeakable, really.

     I have been planning to attend a Hands Off! demonstration in the State Capital, Albany, next weekend. I was all set, then I realized I had a problem: the site of the protest is in a bathroom desert. At seventy-eight, it has become an issue. I don’t recall having this problem when I participated in the anti-war demonstration at Queen’s Park in Toronto, in the summer of 1968. Let’s see…I would have been twenty-one. No, I didn’t think about bathrooms. Anyway, at that age, I just would have gone in a bush somewhere.

     Years later, I went on a couple of different days to the G20 demonstrations in Toronto in 2010 – more as an observer than anything. I really didn’t have much of an opinion. I was just a young snapper of sixty-three and I don’t remember thinking about bathrooms then either. To be sure, there were some bad actors there destroying property – Black Bloc members etc. – but I did not see them – only later on television, when they showed the same burning police car over and over. I did observe some Neo-Nazi thugs attack peaceful demonstrators. I saw squads of black-uniformed, helmeted police boxing-in law-abiding protesters – “kettling” they called it – and moving them to a containment area, which, by the way, contravened free assembly traditions in the Canadian democracy. I saw an officers without visible identification push people around, pushing some to the ground. Forty-five or so of the officers involved in kettling were later charged, thankfully, but many could not be identified. O Canada. Pete Hesgeth, of course, the former Fox talking head, now the unqualified leader of the U.S. military, has spoken in favour of using that same military against protesters.

     The worst thing about all this is the ease with which this administration is evading, or merely stepping over civil rights and simple standards of lawfulness and decency: rounding up students on the street and shipping them out of state to isolated detention, disregarding judges’ orders, the Mafioso-style shaking-down of law firms in flagrant acts of vengeance, and issuing presidential orders that are blatantly illegal, that is, that should require acts of Congress. Perhaps the worst thing about that is how the Republicans have become toadies and co-conspirators in the systematic dismantling of the American democracy.

     Back when, I remember thinking Ronald Reagan was a shifty character, and a dope: especially following the great, but poorly-understood statesman, Jimmy Carter. I felt I could come to the U.S. because Jimmy was president; it was a shock when the country turned on him and elected the bad actor. It was downright rude and stupid, and paved the way for Trump a few decades later. “Government is the problem” Ronnie Ray-Gun said. Ronnie gave us the gift that keeps on giving, with his trickle-down economics: mass homelessness. I might have left then, but my partner, whom I was mistakenly trying to please, wanted to stay. So it goes. We probably should have gotten divorced before we did. But don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for the opportunities the U.S. has provided me, and for the beautiful friends I have had. And if I had never come here, I would never have met my own heart’s delight.(1)  Good things sometimes come from bad things.

     The worst thing about all this is the epic loss of momentum in the battle to save our natural world and to mitigate climate change. Bad timing. We surely were already losing this battle and in our selfishness, not doing anything close to what we needed to do to stop habitat degradation and global warming. But at least under Biden, the intention and effort were there. Good steps were taken, which Trump and his brotherhood are undoing. It’s a disaster. In fact, under the opportunist Zeldin, all the good work of the EPA is being systematically undone. The Chinese can only be doing the Watusi in glee as Trump works to take America backwards into a twentieth century oil economy, when any damn fool knows the future is in renewable energy.

     The worst thing about this is not that I will suffer; I won’t – I’m too old. In fact, for an oldster, warmer winters and longer summers can be welcome. Those who will suffer will be all the creatures born of our beautiful paradise – the ones that are still here, at least: the spring peepers in the ponds on either side of us, the big honking geese flying above us, the chubby possum who ambles to the compost pile on a Sunday morning, the fox who darts across the dirt road, the little water snake poking its head up in the stream by the bridge, and of course, the sweet black cows that I love, down the hill. And our grandchildren. They will pay the price for our hubris.

     Even though earlier on in life, I could express a hipster’s (or perhaps hippie’s) skepticism and disdain for progress, I have realized in recent months, that I believed in it. Not material progress: though that is fair enough in some ways – I’d rather not be a filthy, disease-ridden, starving labourer in an 1840’s London tenement (2) – although at present, it is clear that our excessive materialism is killing us. Rather, I discovered that I had an underlying and earnest belief in social, humanitarian, and even spiritual progress. I believed that “the arc…bends toward justice.” (3) That is, that despite setbacks, regressive reactions, and blow-back to change, movement would go forward, to greater justice, fairness, understanding, tolerance, compassion, and even peace. Two steps forward, one step back and so on, if you will. This election was a shock, and now I am not sure that my underlying belief is correct at all.

     The worst thing in all of this is the turning away – indeed, the suppression – of knowledge, of understanding, of reason and science, and of hard-won wisdom. It is appalling to watch: the suppression of free speech and research, and extortion of venerable institutions of higher learning such as Columbia. Of course, it was the attack-dog, the nefarious Elise Stefanik, our very-own representative here in Washington County, who got that ball rolling under the phony guise of fighting antisemitism. It is appalling to see the take-down of outstanding institutions of science, public information, and policy advisors like the National Institute of Health, Center for Disease Control, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Soon, Americans will be ingesting beef tallow to prevent measles, and phoning the Bahamas to find out if a hurricane is coming – that is, if the telephones still work then.

     The worst thing is that which underlies these actions: the ignorance, the turning away from reason, the deliberate shunning of knowledge in creating understanding. Blanket, random, round-number tariffs inflicted on long-term allies in a globally integrated economy? Indeed, brilliant. Expecting the people of Greenland to embrace the purchase of their country? My, my, that is stupid. Anticipating that Ukraine would be grateful for a peace brokered, Mafia-style, that requires them to give up stolen territory to one tyrant and to hand over minerals to another in exchange for dodgy security non-guarantees? Fer sure. And that Vance – for a guy who went to a prestigious university and wrote an actual book, he sure seems dumb and creepy, doesn’t he? Especially in that cute little parka outfit worn while speaking to troops at the Pittufik “Space” Base (really, that is the name? Not a joke?) in Greenland. 

     Well, so here I am, an old guy with some bladder issues, living in the country, in love with the world if not humanity, worried for his grandchildren and for the defenceless, the wretched of the earth, (4) watching the larger-than-life aspiring democracy of the U.S. tilt toward fascism. I count myself fortunate to have lived for a time, at least, in two of the great – if imperfect – democracies in the world. The worst thing, at this age, is that I will never trust this country again.(5) I am not alone in that of course: neither will Canadians, Europeans, Mexicans, Panamanians, Ukrainians, Greenlanders…well, hardly anybody. And I wish I were twenty-one once more – not to go through it all again, the thought of that is exhausting. But rather: I’d like to be able to go “down to the demonstration to get my fair share of abuse,”(6) to be able to take whatever comes standing up, and to take a piss in the bush if I need to, and not worry about it.

     And to Mr. Trump? I say: you are the worst. I say: no thanks, you keep it.

     I’m seventy-eight, but I say: Hell, No, We Won’t Go!
____________________

1. …to borrow a phrase from the great Ian Tyson. Tyson, Ian. “Own Heart’s Delight.” Cowboyography, Slick Fork Music/CAPAC, 1987. 

2. Engels, Frederick. The Conditions of the Working Class in 1844. Translated by Florence Kelly Wischnewetzley, Information Age Publishing, 2010. 

3. Smith, Mychal Denzel. “The Truth About ‘The Arc Of The Moral Universe.’” Huffington Post, Jan. 2018, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-smith-obama-king_n_5a5903 e0e4b04f3c55a252a4. Accessed 30 Mar. 2025.

4. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington, Penguin, 2001.

5. For the record, Americans continue to support Trump despite the destruction and the chaos. As of April 3, approval vs. disapproval is about 50-50 on average (with a small percentage expressing neither). Igielnik, Ruth. “Latest Polls: Do Americans Approve of President Trump?” The New York Times, 3 Apr. 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/donald-trump-approval- rating-polls.html. Accessed 3 Apr. 2025. 

6. Jagger, Mick, and Keith Richards. You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Decca, 1968.

Are There No Limits to What Americans Will Tolerate?

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

Are There No Limits to What Americans Will Tolerate?

     I found myself asking this question on a morning last week when the president announced that he was doubling his tariffs (to 50%) on Canadian steel and aluminum, as the markets that Americans hold so precious roiled, and while this unhinged leader, borrowing a line from the Putin rhetorical play-book, vowed to make the “artificial line” between Canada and the U.S. “disappear.”

     I asked myself: how can Americans standby and watch – nay, support – this man systematically trashing decades, or really two centuries of friendship, cooperation, mutual prosperity and support? How can everyday Americans watch dumbly as their leader assaults the best friend they have ever had? Would an invasion that some Canadians are anticipating, (1) an out-and-out attempt at the military takeover of Canada, be the limit? It might be, but I’m not entirely convinced.

     I again asked myself if there is a limit as his minions were abroad, “negotiating” a deal, on behalf of Ukraine, which would require the country to give up territory to a despotic aggressor, and would require them to pay tribute, in the form of minerals, to the U.S. This “deal” can only be described as a shakedown or a protection racket. I continue to ask myself this as the president and his administration attack hard-won minority rights, the free press, and the intellectual freedom of venerable institutions of higher learning. I ask myself as Americans look on as a highly intelligent psychopath is given free reign to tear down administrative institutions and programs that have served the country and the world well for generations. I ask myself as I watch the Environmental Protection Agency and its hard-won improvements and protections are gutted in a single day by its appointed anti-environmental leader.

     Is there a limit to what the American citizenry will tolerate?

     Sorry to say: so far, it appears not.

     Not even the sudden and catastrophic cancellation of over eighty-percent of long-standing beneficial U.S. aid programs has caused much of a stir: nor has the dismantling of the Education Department. It puts me in mind of Germany. As the eminent historian, Richard J. Evans put it: “there were many Germans who were not fanatical Nazis but supported Nazism because it put into practice a sufficient range of their desires and aspirations for them to discount the other aspects.”(2)

     This saddens me deeply. It frightens me, too. And it angers me even more.

     Of course, I realize there is a substantial percentage of people who oppose all this: good people, good Americans, who support what is moral, what is good, what is useful, and what is right. Perhaps they will prevail. But if they are going to do so, they must stand up and be counted soon. There are certainly a number who don’t recognize what the situation is. And it is true that many simply don’t know what to do. This is, after all, an unprecedented situation in the history of the American Democracy.

     The cavalry, in the form of Congress, is not coming to save the day; the slim majorities (that is all it takes) in both the House and the Senate are sycophants of the rogue president and are doing his bidding – the Trumpist poster boy for that being Lindsey Graham, formerly known as The Honourable Lindsey Graham. Nor is it likely that the Supreme Court, having already granted the president broad immunity, will come to the rescue. And so, it appears that it is up to us: We the People.

     There are some positive signs. Good organizations like The American Civil Liberties Union, VoteVets and National Resources Defense Council are standing up, organizing petitions, and suing. Lower courts, at least in part, are acting for what is just. And the people are starting to take to the streets – this latter, as my friend Dr. Dave has commented on previous posts here, looks like what it will take. (3) Perhaps – just perhaps! – we can establish some limits ourselves, and restore decency.

To the Ramparts, then.

 

________________________

1. And the inevitable guerilla warfare that would follow, that some (at least the younger) people are imagining. 

2. Quoted in: Acherson, Neal. “Ordinary Germans.” The New York Review of Books, March 27, 2025, pp. 6 – 10.

3. Last Saturday, our small group of demonstrators on the street corner in the tiny village of Salem, NY, had grown to over 130 people.

The Faces of Fascism

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

We all have a picture, a mental representation, of what fascism looks like, based on experience and images from the twentieth century.

A common representation would be this: Adolf Hitler being greeting and saluted by a loyal and admiring crowd.

But there are other possible faces and looks of fascism. For example, a face could be as bland and benign-looking as this:

This is the billionaire founder of a gigantic online retailer, who owns the venerable Washington Post, long known for its investigative reporting and vigorous defence of democracy. This man instructed his editorial staff to write only articles favourable to free markets, and that opposing viewpoints “will be left to be published by others.” (1) Of course, in a good newspaper, articles favourable to free markets are desirable, but along with articles that are critical of same or aspects of same. A free, unfettered, professional press is, as we all know, one of the pillars of democratic society. Is this a face of fascism? Do monkeys eat bananas? It surely looks like it: one of the first things fascists do is to take control of the press, cloaking their efforts in apparent blandness.

Or consider this as potentially a face of fascism:

This is another billionaire industrialist who in this case has attained authority to dismantle long-standing institutions and service programs of democratic government after donating enormous amounts of money to an autocratic president during his election campaign. This billionaire has been indiscriminately cutting programs beneficial to people and the country and engaging in mass impersonal firings of staff. He was brandishing the chain saw, of course, to symbolize what he was doing to public services. Could this be a face of fascism? One of the things fascists commonly do is to brandish symbols of powerful masculinity, especially phallic ones, for psychological reasons. This guy certainly does that.

Consider another:

In this case, during a diplomatic meeting in the White House, the two highest officials in the land initiated a shouting match, berating and attempting to bully a courageous democratic statesman who was trying to elicit aid in his country’s fight against a totalitarian enemy. The disgusting ambush and bullying session was the culmination of a meeting in which the two officials, acting in a way similar to Mafia “Dons,” had offered unguaranteed “protection” in exchange for tribute payments in the form of valuable minerals. The two acting in the fascistic manner are on the right wearing blue suits, and the statesman is on the left wearing a sweater emblematic of his beloved and threatened country. Psychologically speaking, fascist types, with their psychopathic character structure, commonly bully and attempt to overpower others in an obvious effort to compensate for their underlying weakness and inadequacy along with doubts about the size of their genitalia.

And so, one can see from this that face of fascism is variable.  Fascism can take many forms that are not always obvious. It may be right in front of our eyes, but we fail to recognize it.

____________________________

1. Reilly, Liam. “Jeff Bezos announces ‘significant shift’ coming to the Washington Post. A key editor is leaving because of it.” CNN Business, 26 Feb. 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/26/ media/washington-post-opinion-jeff-bezos-david-shipley/index.html. Accessed 2 Mar. 2025.

2. Liptak, Kevin et al. “Trump and Vance erupt at Zelensky in tense Oval Office meeting.” CNN Politics, 28 Feb. 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/28/politics/trump-zelensky-vance-oval- office/index.html. Accessed 2 Mar. 2025.

I Will Not Be Complicit

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

I have resisted writing about Trump and Musk and the American coup. I did not want to give the bastards and their toxicity any oxygen. Still, it has been hard to imagine anything else to write about, and so the blog has remained dark.

     I expected it to be bad; and so it has been, only it is much worse. There is no need to list or detail all of that here; we all know what has been happening. He has already declared “LONG LIVE THE KING” (written in all CAPS, of course, as a pathological narcissist would do in referring to himself). (1)  Suffice it to say that the psychopathic team is tearing down the good American government administration, trashing over eighty years of morally excellent humanitarian development, along with unleashing indecent cruelty upon the powerless.

     In this initial period I have been doing the things I can do: signing petitions and sending letters to the powers-that-be. I have been giving small amounts of money to organizations here that are taking the Trump administration to court – apparently our last line of defence, as it seems that Congress is missing in action – such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Natural Resources Defense Council, 350 Org, and VoteVets. But it feels like not enough. I feel helpless at times.

      Although I am not a Facebook user, a Canadian friend (Richard) sent me a link that I took a look at. It was an Australian, who, in solidarity with Canadians (and Mexicans) is boycotting anything American that he is able to. (His original post was on TikToc.) Good on him, I thought: after all, it is not just Trump alone. As recently as a week ago, the psychopath’s approval rating among Americans was at 53%. (2)  Most often people laud him for “doing what he said he would do” – as though this is a positive, when what the bully is doing is hateful and destructive.

     Unbelievable, incomprehensible: I have lived here half my life and I cannot express my dismay. In any case, the Australian gave me a gift: encouragement, resolve, and a realization. Most inspiring was his declaration, in so many words, that the futility of his effort did not at all negate it. He said, knowing full well that his personal boycott is ineffectual, “I will not be complicit in the tyranny of the U.S.A.” (3)

     I will not be complicit in the tyranny of the U.S.A.

     I have taken this on as a mantra. I refuse to go along. I will not be silent. I will keep sending my bits of money to good organizations. I will keep on signing the petitions, and sending my letters. If I buy anything, if there is a non-American option, I will get that. While cheering on the Canadian hockey players who whipped the U.S. last night, I put a Canadian flag decal on my car. I have my Team Canada hockey sweater ready to wear when I go into town. I will go to the small anti-Trump protest/vigil in the little village of Salem tomorrow and stand in the cold with the rest of the good, decent people. My poster will read: Stop the Coup!

      I do not know what else I will do, but I am determined to think of things. I will keep myself mentally healthy, and as physically healthy as I can be. I will be ready. I will take refuge – as Buddhist adherents take refuge in the Sangha – in the sanctity of my like-minded American friends.

     Eighty years ago, our parents and grandparents defeated the Nazis. We must do the same.

     They will not win without a fight. My answer to them is: no.

     I will not be complicit in the tyranny of the U.S.A.

___________________

1. Yang, Angela. “‘Long live the king: Trump adds monarch rhetoric to actions.” NBC News, 19 Feb. 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/king-trump-rcna192912. Accessed 21 Feb. 2025.

2. Wolf, Zachary B. “Americans voted for Trump. Did they vote for this?” CNN Politics: What Matters, 13 Feb 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/13/politics/americans-support-for-trump- what-matters/index.html. Accessed 21 Feb. 2025.

3. See: Johnny Cole Public, https://www.facebook.com/reel/2995900423918554. Accessed 21 Feb. 2025. 

A Thank You to Uncle Joe

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

The old news is that Joe Biden, under great pressure, yet graciously and selflessly, has taken himself out of the presidential race.

     I will step around an opinion about whether or not this was the right thing to happen, although it is clear that the Democratic campaign is reinvigorated under the capable and battle-ready Kamala Harris. So be it. The orange-headed bloviator must be defeated.

     I will say that I have been appalled by the public attacks on President Biden over the past weeks by supposed supporters, his fellow Democrats, and press members such as the New York Times and The Economist. Shame. The issue is not whether they were right that he should go; rather, it is about the public disloyalty and the disheartening take-down of this venerable leader. Et Tu, Brute?! As an aside, but in relation to this, I hereby give notice that I have cancelled George Clooney.

     That said, let us take a moment to praise and thank Uncle Joe. He has been an exceptional president. He has accomplished the nearly impossible, after inheriting the chaotic mess left by his predecessor. He quickly established administrative order, bringing in many top minds to help the effort. He directed the country to come to grips with the menacing pandemic. In partnership with the Fed, he led the charge against runaway inflation, and pretty much stopped it in its tracks, the best record in the Western economies. Against the great odds of the recalcitrant legislative bodies, he managed to get legislation through that has begun to address America’s tattered infrastructure, while generating jobs, and he set country on a course to address climate change, the first president to do so. He also inaugurated a modernization of the American economy, moving toward high-level manufacturing, for example, in nanotechnology and renewables. And he did all this while restoring America’s position as a respectable, honourable, and trustworthy international partner for the world’s democracies, a position trashed by his hoodlum predecessor. Without being inflammatory or reckless, he took on the autocrats of China and Russia. We could say that, at least thus far, along with the European allies and Canada, he has saved Ukraine. What a record for a short three-and-a-half years!

     Of course, he has not been perfect. Although following a script written by the previous administration, he left Afghanistan in a shambles, and in the hands of the monstrous Taliban. And his – shall we call it ambivalent? – support for  the thuggish Prime Minister Netanyahu, in the face of the Gaza tragedy, has been perplexing at best. He has been between a rock and a hard place with Israeli policy, the situation is hideously complex, and the massacre by Hamas was unbelievably barbaric – but still. More should have been done to prevent the wipe-out of Gaza and so many everyday people.

     But in the end, he has been a good man and an excellent president. He has cared, and has tried to do the right thing as he saw it. He has acted honourably in the face of nearly insurmountable odds and cynical opposition. And he has acted honourably once again, by acceding to the wishes of his party, and withdrawing.

     We owe this man, Joe Biden, immense gratitude. Immense. We are in his debt. Thank you, Uncle Joe.

The United States Imperial Presidency

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

The Supreme Court decision, released on July 1, is abundantly clear to all. There is no need for subtle legal analysis. The president of the United States, from this date forward, has immunity from criminal prosecution for any act undertaken while performing so-called “official duties.”

     Any act. Ordering a vice-president not to certify an election, for example. Directing the burglary of the opponent party’s headquarters, for example. Ordering the jailing or assassination of a political opponent, for example. Ordering the U.S. military onto the streets of an American city to end a political protest or otherwise peaceful assembly, for example.

     Richard Nixon’s infamous (and erroneous then) declaration is now the reality in practice: “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal, by definition.”

 

A most basic foundation of democracy is that no person is above the law.

     The country’s founders would be appalled to find that this principle has been scrapped. They deliberately eschewed giving the president sovereign status.

     Six Supreme Court judges have taken the country back to a time predating the start of our common democratic heritage, best symbolized by the declaration of Britain’s Magna Carta.

     It is just possible that the democracy can be saved from the sovereign presidency. It will take a specific amendment to the American constitution.

It Makes Ya Think, Don’t It! (4)

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

A Harris-Guardian Poll in May 2024, (1) shows that the majority of Americans believe, incorrectly, that the U.S. is in recession (and blame Joe Biden).

     Beliefs:

1. 55% think the economy is shrinking and 56% believe the country is in a recession.
2. 49% believe the stock market, particularly the S&P 500 is down for the year.
3. 49% believe that unemployment has hit a 50-year high.
4. 72% think that the rate of inflation is increasing.
5. 55% say that the economy is “only getting worse.”

     Facts:

1. 2023 GDP for the U.S. grew by 2.5%, (2) real disposable income increased by 4.3%, savings rate increased by 4.5%. (3) GDP growth continued in the first quarter of 2024. The last recession was in 2020, at the height of the pandemic.

2. The S&P was up 24% in 2023, is up 12% so far this year, and this month the DOW hit its highest level ever, over 40,000.

3. Unemployment is at a 50 year low, consistently hovering below 4%.

4. The rate of inflation is decreasing from its post-pandemic high of 9% plus, and is now around 3.4% (above the target rate of 2%, but still decreasing toward the goal).

5. The economy has improved continuously since the pandemic low (of 128 million jobs in the economy). Since April, 2020,  not only did those jobs recover to the pre-pandemic 150 million job level, but we are now at 158 million jobs and disposable income is rising above the inflation rate.

     It makes ya think. All this information is commonly available on regular mainstream news sources – although not on Fox “News,” of course, where such content is suppressed.

     I’m confused. Are we still considered to be in the “information age?”

_______________

1. Aratani, Lauren. Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Biden. The Guardian, May 22, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ article/2024/may/22/poll-economy-recession-biden. 

2. Gross Domestic Product, Fourth Quarter and Year 2023 (Advance Estimate). U. S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, January 25, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.bea.gov/news/2024/ ross-domestic-product-fourth-quarter-and-year-2023-advance-estimate.

3. By the Numbers: U.S. Economy Grows Faster than Expected for Year and Final Quarter of 2023. U.S. Department of Commerce, January 26, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.commerce. gov/news/blog/2024/01/numbers-us-economy-grows-faster-expected-year-and-final-quarter-2023. 

 

In Praise of Luddites

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

A confession: while I was living in Toronto, Amazon announced that it was planning to begin using robots – these would travel along city sidewalks and make deliveries to individual addresses. It was rumoured that they would start very soon in the city. I couldn’t wait. I imagined messing with them in numerous ways: from simply blocking the robots’ paths to see if I could confuse them, to forcing them to drop off the curb into the line of an oncoming Toronto Transit bus. I took pleasure in picturing assaulting the things with a baseball bat if there were no constables around. I mentioned my thoughts to a friend, explaining that sidewalks were for people, not corporate interests, and every delivery robot represented jobs lost for individuals for whom unemployment in the capitalist economy is the great motivating terror. “Luddite!” my friend exclaimed.

     Indeed. Thank you.

     Luddite is a pejorative that we have deep affection for, using it, as we do, to insult those we love, and even relatives. It means our victims are resisting technology pointlessly, or they won’t do what we want them to do, such as wasting ten minutes of their short life watching a TikTok influencer with mauve hair explaining why we should use only organic asparagus butter. Luddites are people who are uselessly anti-progress, negative nay-sayers, inept at using technology, standing against the development of human productivity and well-being. They are a bit stupid, unruly and stubborn, a bit like donkeys, we think. However, we are wrong.

     Our estimation of Luddites is incorrect, as is our assessment of donkeys. What we think about them is not who they were at all.

     The Luddites, in fact, were intelligent and self-controlled craftspeople who correctly foresaw their lives altering for the worse as a result of disruptive technological change. They consciously chose to resist. They wanted to preserve a life that was home-based, autonomous, productive, satisfying, and even artistic.

     The Luddites took their name from a “Ned Ludd,” a mythical figure in the Robin Hood tradition, who, legend has it, fought for justice in the same area of Nottinghamshire as had Robin and his merry band. “General” Ludd was said to be more or less up to the same devilry: protecting the poor and powerless from arbitrary exploitation, oppression and debasement, as carried out by the powers that be – Kings, Sheriffs, land owners, and the wealthy.(1)

     They were mainly skilled weavers, combers, and dressers of wool, along with cotton trade artisans, who worked as independent craftspeople in their workshops in homes and cottages. As a group, they were described as highly disciplined, organized and effective. They were also well supported; despite bribes and threats, no one ever betrayed them to the authorities. Given that they operated merely for a fifteen month period in 1811 and 1812, in an area that included only parts of five counties around Nottinghamshire, it is remarkable how well they became known and how long they have been remembered.

     The accurate view of them has been buried in propaganda propagated by authorities of the day, and perpetuated by the corporate and technology interests of our own time. Our current Techno-Nottingham Sheriffs would have us believe, in a form of false consciousness, that, for example, watching a video of nature online is the same as being in nature, or that we should be enchanted with the prospect of artificial intelligence.

     Yet, despite all the efforts to discredit the Luddites and our use of their name as a deprecatory label, their call echos still, if mostly in the subconscious level. I believe we know that they were on to something. Their cause, in fact, is one that resonates in all of us: our humanity itself. They were not fighting against machinery; rather, they were fighting for what it means to be a human being.

     But were they not violent, you ask? If violence can be committed against inanimate objects, I suppose that we have to say yes, they were. They attacked the new factories at night and destroyed the power looms and other machinery. In some cases they burned buildings, including factories and in a few cases, the homes of owners. However, there were no known instances of Luddites attacking or killing human beings. (There were instances of personal violence during the period, when members of the starving general population rebelled against the terrible conditions of the time but these killings were not carried out by followers of General Ludd.) Despite the actions of the Luddites being directed at machines and not people, authorities responded with everything they had, including shooting, imprisoning, transporting and executing people who they believed were part of the cause. In less than a year and a half, their resistance collapsed, although the broader unrest noted above continued because of the dreadful social conditions of the time.

    On a most basic level, the Luddites were just protecting their livelihoods, but you could say they were prescient. They did not hate machinery as such. What they hated was the life that the new industrial age devices was bringing, and they saw that life with clarity. Workers in the new factories quickly became near-slaves, held to their work hour after hour, day after day, in dirty, hot, and dark conditions. Foremen walked the aisles with whips, to ensure absolute focus on the mind-numbing and body-damaging toil. Women were abused, sexually and otherwise, and children who did not perform up to standard were beaten. The prevailing industrial theory of the day – not so far removed from the ideas of some of our present titans of the gig economy (2) – was that one should pay enough so that workers would not starve, but not so much that they would not be hungry, literally speaking.

     The result has been well documented: gruesome factory conditions, ghastly tenements, increasing crime and corruption, starvation, disease, addiction and alcoholism, demoralization and mental illness. Descriptions are nearly unbearable to read:

Not one father in a family of ten in the whole neighbourhood has other clothing than his working suit, and that is as bad and tattered as possible, many, indeed have no other covering for the night than these rags, and no bed, save a sack of
straw and shavings…

On the occasion of an inquest held Nov. 14th, 1843, by Mr. Carter, coroner for Surrey, upon the body of Ann Galway, aged 45 years, the newspapers related the following particulars concerning the deceased: she lived at No. 3 White Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London, with her husband and a nineteen-year-old son in a little room, in which neither bedstead nor any other furniture was to be seen. She lay dead beside her son upon a heap of feathers which were scattered over her almost naked body, there being neither sheet nor coverlet. The feathers stuck so fast over the whole body that the physician could not examine the corpse until it was cleansed, and then found it starved and scarred from the bites of vermin. Part of the floor of the room was torn up, and the hole used by the family as a privy. (3)

     Who would not want to resist this?

     But of course, over time things did get better, at least in part of the world. In the Western world conditions did improve over the course of more than a century. Working conditions got better, wages grew, and health, housing and living circumstances improved to the point that it can be said that the industrial revolution resulted in a standard of living and personal longevity that was beyond the most fantastical imaginings of everyday humanity. And so, were the Luddites mistaken?

     Not exactly. Such working conditions remain in many areas of the world: the clothing factories of Bangladesh, for example. Aside from that, the changes for the better were a result of decades and decades of struggle by workers, by unions of people, by individual humanitarian champions, by agencies and governments who saw the plight of people and responded to it with regulation and legislation. The Luddites were not wrong in what they were seeing.

     However, we could say that the Luddites could not see the bigger picture, and so were shortsighted – that change is always disruptive, and technological improvement will ultimately lead to a betterment of life for humanity, if we give it time. But is this true?

     I would respond: not necessarily. First, all technological improvement comes with a price tag. The automobile was instrumental in getting rid of the mountains of horse manure on city streets, but now the planet is choking on the exhaust fumes. Cell phone technology resulted in instantaneous, full-time communication among people, but also has resulted in a distracted, misinformed population with their noses stuck in their devices at the dinner table, uninterested in communicating directly with one another. Our rivers, our lakes and oceans, our land, and even our bodies are full of plastic. Reefs are bleaching, birds are dying, animals are disappearing. And overall, we seem to believe that the meaning of life can be found in what we own. To be human, it has become, is to consume. Meanwhile, this wealthy Western world is in a crisis of meaning, wherein thousands, addicted to opioids, are dying in streets and alleys, and where, at least in America, automatic-weapon-carrying young men in a state of anomie are murdering children with great regularity in their school rooms.

 

There was a more recent span of Luddite-ism in the twentieth century: the short-lived Hippie period and its back-to-the-land movement. The Hippies have been denigrated too, and perhaps some of that is deserving. But at the heart of the movement was a rejection of materialism, a resistance to the conversion of human beings into consumers. The Hippies were opting for a life that was more generous, loving, sharing and made of authentic experience rather than possession of material goods. Of course, pampered Baby-Boomers were ill prepared for the hardship, complexity and skill requirements that life on the land entailed, and so mostly they failed. In addition, it is extraordinarily difficult to try to live outside of mainstream culture; to do so, your customs and ideology have to be very strong, as is, for example, the ethos of the Mennonites. The Hippies did not have this cohesion of practise. Finally, corporate powers recognized the threat and mobilized powerfully during the period to counter the movement and to complete the colonization of the culture. One can see this clearly in the co-opting advertisements of the nineteen-seventies. Consider these paint colours offered for your new Ford Maverick in 1970: Freudian Gilt, Hulla Blue, and the best one, Anti-Establish Mint. It was completely successful of course: the Hippies and anti-materialism became an inside joke. We capitulated and the Baby-Boomers became the most materialistic generation of humanity ever in history.

     Given all that, is there any relevance left to consider, if not for the Hippies, at least for the Luddites? I think: yes. I don’t think I am alone in this. Many people are concerned about the quality of our technological life and the associated problems of meaning. Many are disturbed and frightened by what we are doing to the planet and our fellow species with our uncontrolled spewing of fossil-fuel emissions. Many are simply dissatisfied with the state of things: the bombardment of twenty-four-hour-a-day marketing and the ever-titillating yet desolate wasteland of most television, the phones, screens, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok.

     In a sign of cultural health, some groups of teenagers have emerged, in more places than one, who are rejecting the smart-phone lifestyle for something more substantive, including sketching together, discussing Dostoevsky or Kerouac, or simply listening to nature in a park. “Social media and phones are not real life,” one said, correctly. (4) Further, educators are – surprise! – discovering that children learn better on paper than on screens (5) and that banning cell phone use in school improves concentration and outcomes. (6) Who’da thunk?

     I think, when remembering the Luddites, that the story of their struggle challenges us to ask: must we accept every technological invention, every change, even when there is a chance it will degrade or debase us? Short of that, must we necessarily accept something new when it will result in our losing something old that we love? The answer is no, of course. The continuing popularity of physical books over electronic readers shows that many are willing to make such a choice. Computer word processing programs are wonderful tools, without a doubt, but is there not something satisfying about starting in writing on a yellow legal pad with a freshly sharpened pencil? Is not selecting, then taking an record album out of its sleeve, and stopping to read the liner notes, a greater pleasure than catching half a song in your Spotify stream as you go about your other business? Of course, these are trivial and we are merely talking about preferring an earlier technology to a newer one, which is a common leaning, especially for those of us with more than a few miles on us.

     But what about more profound and far-reaching change? What about genetic editing or artificial intelligence? What about a million of us living on Mars, in SpaceX City, as Elon Musk would have it? What about living in a Meta-verse designed by a Zuckerberg?

     One can say that it is futile to resist technological change: after all if we choose not to do something, someone else will do it. We might not want to select our children, through gene-editing, to become blond, blue-eyed Aryan ideals, but someone will. We may not want Musk’s chip planted in our brain so that the internet can be directly connected to our precious consciousness, but some will pay for that. We may prefer to read and research the history of Western Civilization for ourselves, but others will prefer a summary generated by AI. We may find pleasure in producing a poem or other piece of writing, a song, a painting, a photograph – but there will be others that would rather have AI do that for them, and they will see it as the same thing.

 

It is hard not to observe that we have become slaves to our technology. We, in our fun-land Western Civilization live a life of unbelievable wealth, health, and comfort, without a doubt due to our technology. There is a lot to be said for light bulbs, television, and central heating on a cold winter’s night. And yet…personally, I cannot help but feel sad when I see a group of adolescents sitting on a stoop, each one of them a gorgeous bundle of vibrating life, yet all of them with faces buried in phones, while the sun shines, and the street flows by. The birds that are still left sing directly to them, but they do not hear.

     Convenient technology can become our master. Mary Shelley, writing about science and technology, saw that likelihood. Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, his creation, says, near the end of the story: “You are my creator, but I am your master;- obey!” (7) In this, do we not hear the ghostly and premonitory whisper of artificial intelligence?

     The lesson of the Luddites is to question. They challenge us to discern and to resist if we do not like what we see, and to opt for the richness of authentic experience. As Marguerite Duras put it, “Everything seems to be done in order to spare man the effort of living, both in his work and his daily living. It’s terrible.” (8) Or, as Lao-tze said, centuries earlier: “Let there be labour-saving devices that are not used.” He was speaking, even back then, to the tendency of technology to distract us, even to alienate us, from the natural flow of life, from that the directness of experience that is our birthright. (9)

     Even if Luddite resistance is futile in the big picture, is such resistance not fundamental to who we are? Do we not have a right to say no? Is there not nobility, dignity, in refusal?

     I think so. I believe we should take courage from our Luddite brothers and sisters and resist, where and whenever we feel it, whether such resistance is futile or not in the bigger picture. Eschew the electric scooter, and take a slow walk along a city street on a sunny day. If you do see an Amazon robot, try not to get arrested, but you will have my blessing if you knock it off the sidewalk. Close the Facebook page, and call up the real friend whom you actually care about. Turn off your TikTok feed and dance a little jig yourself. The effort of being a living, breathing human animal is worth it.

_____________________________________

1. Sale, Kirkpatrick. Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution. Persus Books Group, 1995.

2. Greenhouse, Steven. Major US corporations threaten to return labor to ‘law of the jungle:’ Trader Joe’s and SpaceX are among businesses challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board. The Guardian, March 10, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/10/starbucks-trader-joes-spacex-challenge-labor-board. 

3. Engles, Frederick. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Translated by Florence Kelley Wishnewzky. Information Age Publishing, 2010. See particularly pages 29-40.

4. Vadukul, Alex. ‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes: When the only thing better than a flip phone is no phone at all. New York Times, December 15, 2022. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html?searchResultPosition=1. 

5. MacArthur, John R. A groundbreaking study shows kids learn better on paper, not screens. Now what? The Guardian, January17, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/kids-reading-better-paper-vs-screen.

6. Root, Tik. What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation. The Guardian, January 17, 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/cellphone-smartphone-bans-schools. 

7. Shelly, Mary. Frankenstein (1818 text). Oxford Wold’s Classics, 1994, p. 140.

8. Duras, Marguerite. Me & Other Writing. Dorothy, A Publishing Project, 2019, p. 82. 

9. Cathart, Thomas, and Daniel Klein. I Think, Therefore I Draw: Understanding Philosophy Through Cartoons. Penguin Books, 2018, p. 86.

A Letter to the Editor, #2

Posted on by Peter Scott Cameron

February 22, 2024

Editor
The Washington County Free Press
P.O. Box 330
Granville, NY 12832

Dear Editor:

I am responding to the article, Stefanik demands NYS attorney general be disbarred or suspended, which appeared in the February 23 edition of your paper.

I want to say: on the contrary. It is Elise Stefanik who should step down or be removed, for her failure to uphold her constitutional duties in refusing to certify the presidential vote of 2020. And further to that, her support for a candidate who has openly expressed his desire to be a dictator in our democracy should disqualify her from public office. This is shameful backing of the presidential candidate who, it is now legally established, committed sexual assault and defamed the victim, and who committed fraud in his business activities, and who is further charged with election interference in both Federal and State cases.

Letitia James on the other hand, has carried out her duties with dedication and ability; she is a credit to her profession.

Yours truly,

Peter S. Cameron

CC: Representative Elise Stefanik