Lawrence Davidson on what your community point of view can make you feel and do.
Jerusalem after Israeli soldiers entered the Temple Mount, 2009. (Synne Tonil, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
By Lawrence Davidson
TothePointAnalysis.com
Who Are We?
It might come as a surprise but the answer to this question derives from influences many of which are beyond our control.
For instance, most of us experience attitudinal changes along a spectrum from day to day or maybe even hour to hour. This has to do with our individualized reaction to all manner of hormonal and other secretions in your body. These, in turn, are influenced by epigenetic factors triggered by both internal and external environmental conditions.
A lot of these factors are inherited. You did not choose your genetic makeup or the parents who gave it to you and they did not choose their parents, and so on. This unchosen heritage sets your body up for all sorts of possibilities.
Some might turn out to be good for you: nicely working immune system, relatively stable and positive mental disposition and acuity, etc. But it doesn’t have to go like that, and a propensity for illness and instability might be your inherited lot.
Nor did you choose the sort of environment in which you were born. I might tell you to avoid being born into poverty, but you can’t do that. Nonetheless, statistically, the chance for a “prosperous and productive” life is low if early poverty is your fate.
I might suggest that you avoid parents who are neglectful or physically/emotionally abusive. Do not grow up next to a “super fund” contaminated site. Just so, you should avoid being born in the middle of a raging war.
Despite the fact that all of these outcomes would certainly affect your behavior, none involve choices you can make. It is amazing how much of our history and condition is beyond our control.
What Do We Believe?
Just as we are arbitrarily centered in a body we did not choose, we are arbitrarily centered locally in time and space. That is, in a culture. And, here too, much is beyond our control.
One of my frequent themes is something called “natural localism.” That is, most people tend to settle down in a local community. It is within this locale that they work or go to school, live within a family and friendship network, and come to feel a community identity.
That does not mean that people don’t travel (mostly to visit friends and family) or relocate within that same cultural realm for work or school. However, the natural inclination of most is to find a place to settle down.
There is even an evolutionary aspect to this. Natural localism provides a time and space that maximizes familiarity and predictability. That is why it usually provides a sense of security.
There is, of course, a downside. Natural localism ties one to a community worldview that mitigates against independent questioning and fact-checking. Over time established communities and groups socialize members into views supported by traditions, the interests of whatever passes for a ruling class, and often an ideology that idealizes the community’s raison d’être.
Most who live within the range of such an aggregation will, almost habitually, see the world through the community’s lens.
That means, for most of us, our belief system encompassing our notion of what is right and wrong and who is friendly and who is unfriendly, is not something we have independently chosen. There are endless examples of this.
Take the Cold War between the U.S. and its allies on one side and the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact countries and China on the other.
If you are old enough to remember this time (roughly 1945 to 1991) you should recall that the majority of adults in the U.S. and Western Europe had a hostile outlook toward the U.S.S.R. and its allies.
Berlin 1961. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
Most had no direct contact or experience that would provoke this hostility. They got it in an osmotic way. The culturally negative messages in one’s external environment shaped their perceptions so that they conformed to a community-wide point of view.
Of course, just as bodies react differently to hormones and other secretions, individuals have varying reactions to the inherited belief systems of their cultures.
A bell curve results — most people will be within an average range of cultural compliance. They will readily accept what they are taught at home and in school, hear from their teachers, leaders and media. There may be differences of opinion on the details, but most will buy into the overall message.
At the edges of the curve will be found those who, for whatever experiential reasons, ignore or reject the message. The majority will see this minority as weird. At the extreme, they will be seen as a threat to social stability.
The Pathological Potential of Belief Systems
The negative feelings generated during the Cold War were felt by populations that were, for the most part, geographically separated. What happens when this inherited fear and negativity runs between populations sharing the same immediate landscape? What can your community point of view make you feel and do then?
Here are two examples.
No. 1: The United States prior to the 1960s
U.S. culture prior to the 1960s was characterized by an institutionally and legally sanctioned racial divide between white and Black Americans. Racism relegated Black Americans to an inferior status enforced by legal segregation and discrimination. This resulted in an impoverished economic and social environment.
From the point of view of many whites, Black disadvantage was an historically ratified “normal” situation. That is, it felt natural and orderly to the White population based on tradition and long practice.
Slave trader’s business in Atlanta, 1864. (George N. Barnard, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons)
Thus, white Americans had been acculturated to a system that periodically pushed Black Americans to rebellion — “race riots.”
These uprisings frightened white citizens who then supported strong police action against Blacks in order to maintain social stability and security. Such a posture only made future uprisings more likely.
This situation did not begin to change until the 1954 Supreme Court decision in the case of Brown v Board of Education, followed by a Black political movement led by Martin Luther King Jr.
King speaking at interfaith civil rights rally, San Francisco Cow Palace, June 30 1964. (George Conklin, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND)
The goal of this movement was to outlaw segregation and other egregious acts of discrimination in the public sphere. This effort was supported by a liberal sector of the white population who recognized the need for change based on a culturally idealized view of American socio-economic potential.
King and his allies were successful in bringing change to the public sphere — essentially creating a new definition of normal based on a more egalitarian United States. However, changing individual laws is relatively easy compared to changing culture.
Since the 1980s the country has experienced what is known as “culture wars.” That is, a political push back by a sizable number of “conservatives” against progressive legislation.
Several things are to be noted here:
(1) U.S. culture, since its beginning, has had a racist character that dehumanized its minority populations. It is in this sense that it was and, in some regards, still is pathological.
George Floyd Protest in Madison, Wisconsin, May 31, 2020. (Ken Fager, Flickr)
(2) For most of its history this toxic environment was, and for some continues to be, invisible because most whites were raised in family and/or local community surroundings that registered the toxicity as normal.
Despite the change that eventually came in the 1950s and 60s, today some are so addicted to the older worldview that they are waging a political battle to return to a “sick normal.”
No 2: Contemporary Israel
Israel’s story overlaps with that of the United States:
(1) A sense of racially/religiously based superiority. While it is white Christians in the U.S., it is Jewish Zionists in Israel.
(2) A claim that the country’s land is divinely deeded or blessed.
(3) The existence of a largely segregated and disadvantaged class of “others.” In Israel the “others” are the Palestinians.
Israeli and other Jews, and many who support them (i.e. U.S. President Joe Biden), have learned about Israel through a biased narrative. The result is an attitude sustained by a customized, pro-Zionist history.
To maintain narrative within Israel itself, education has been turned into a process of indoctrination. What is taught in this process?
(1) God gave the land of Palestine to the Hebrew ancestors of contemporary Jews.
(2) Jews need the state of Israel to be safe in a world where anti-Semitism is widespread.
(3) The world owes it to the Jews to secure this Jewish state.
(4) Palestinians are dangerous interlopers who hate Jews and seek to destroy the Jewish state.
Fortress Nation
For Zionists, the Palestinians have replaced the Nazis as perpetrators of another potential Holocaust. The result has been the maintenance of Israel as a fortress nation — roughly resembling ancient Sparta where an elite population lived in fear of the serfs (helots) they had oppressed.
Driven by that fear, these elites trained constantly for war.
Israeli forces drilling in the Urban Warfare Training Center, simulating fighting in populated cities in 2012. (IDF, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The national and local environment inherited by Israeli Jews is infused with this mindset. Defense against Palestinian and Arab “terrorists” is an important psychological theme of their culture. It is reinforced in the average family setting.
It is detailed out for them in school. It provides a sense of camaraderie among friends and within the workplace. It is capped off by a program of near universal conscription of Jewish Israelis. It is extraordinarily difficult to escape the pressures of such an overbearing cultural climate.
Here too, the toxic nature of this environment is invisible to many of Israel’s Jewish citizens because of having been raised in local surroundings that registered their perceptions as normal.
The predominant rationalization for the resulting Israeli aggressiveness has always been “national defense.” What can be more normal than that?
Hence, the fact that “Israelis overwhelmingly are confident in the justice of the present Gaza war.” And this support of the wholesale destruction of Gaza is the final confirming factor demonstrating the pathological nature of Israeli/Zionist culture.
Israel has reduced Gaza to ruins. (UNRWA via DeclassifiedUK)
The United States and Israel are not the only sick cultures on the planet. However, as noted, they stand together due to an historical symmetry.
This connection allowed the Zionists in the U.S. to build a powerful special interest organization and easily convince most of the American population to accept the Israeli narrative that, among other things, claimed the two countries held similar values.
This despite the fact that Israel does not even have the framework for an idealized just society. It lacks a constitution and, insisting on a culture of Jewish supremacy, guarantees the absence of equal justice for all.
The connection also sees both nations attempting to deny similar sins while claiming similar virtues. The Israeli claim that it is “the only democracy in the Middle East” covers up the reality that it is an apartheid state.
In the case of the U.S., the claim of exceptionalism due to the practice of high ethical standards covers up a continuing national struggle against racism and a foreign policy that contradicts U.S. claims of spreading democracy.
Bombing of Chilean presidential palace during U.S.-backed coup, Sept. 11, 1973. (Library of the Chilean National Congress/Wikipedia)
On the other hand, over time the United States did create legislative and judicial ideals for itself based on a self-glorifying narrative — that the U.S. was a nation of superior moral-ethical potential. Thus, when the government fails the citizenry you can get civil rights movements and anti-war protests of historic importance.
Significantly, it is this lurking moral uneasiness with their nation’s hypocrisy, felt particularly by the youth, that is now eroding the American alliance with Israel.
The ethnic cleansing and genocide, so acceptable to Israeli Jews, is a behavior that a number of Americans see as indefensible — particularly from an “ally” claiming to hold values similar to their own.
Thus is change possible even in an environment over which we have but nominal control. And, in this case, for the U.S. to get past its own hypocrisy — the sick elements of its own culture — it must finally leave Israel behind.
Lawrence Davidson is professor of history emeritus at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He has been publishing his analyses of topics in U.S. domestic and foreign policy, international and humanitarian law and Israel/Zionist practices and policies since 2010.
This article is from the author’s site TothePointAnalysis.com.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Very good piece. A couple of things that sorta got missed out on.
1. Jews were out cruising the (Roman) empire for a long time. Archeologists have found catacombs with Jewish burials in Rome from the late BC period.
2. Jews have been living in the Levant for time out of mind (along with all the other Semitic tribes who weren’t Jewish) and they continued to live there up to this very day although they weren’t running things and they are looked down upon by their European brethren.
3. The holocaust card played by the Zionists (Note: Judaism does not = Zionism) should be viewed skeptically. The holocaust was perpetrated by Europeans, not by Palestinians. But the Zionists have perpetrated a holocaust on the Palestinians.
You’ve nailed it.
Superb article that explains a great deal, Professor Davidson.
There is a religion of western civilization that grew out of stealing a monotheistic god and its messiah and defamation of the local occupied territory. They went on to continue demonizing this group plus woman as witches and other forms of scapegoats. They also demonized communists and helped a war that actually increased the size of the USSR and allies and Chinese communism and then began a cold war based on the paranoia of what they caused. How sane is that? One good thing is our racial policy had to change in order to keep our cold war freedom propaganda believable. But it is a new cold war all over again because defamation of humanity requires a target for culture war dominance especially with Asia rising.. The culture war for world dominance with a military industrial complex of WMDs is also insane.
Monotheism could be the root of calling everyone else evil, soulless, or evil doers take your pick of scapegoats to fight.
This essay gets to the heart of the matter and should be continuously expounded upon. What are the societal mechanisms in place and how do our political structures exploit those mechanisms to have one’s neighbor, friend or family openly support genocide? How do such transparently manipulative phrases like “Israel have a right to self-defence” not only pass muster, but become the impenetrable ideology in which vast numbers of not only historically illiterate, but thought leaders everywhere see the world? All of the psychological manipulations that make good people do bad things centers around the need to belong and not be excommunicated by the group. CN would do well to keep exploring this topic.
With this title and beginning it might be possible to move closer to understanding other kinds of “communities” (besides these two covered). Thinking of the ones people join up with vicariously. The subcultures maintained by whatever media. So I’d just humbly ask to leave the comments under this open for a while if possible.
I very recently saw the PBS documentary about the Ku Klux Klan.
An unidentified speaker stated:
“I do not support segregation. I support slavery.”
Truly shocking.
But the programme also stated that J. Edgar Hoover personally sabotaged his own bureau’s investigation of the Alabama church bombing in 1963 in which four African American girls were killed.
Wikipedia states:
“Later the same year (1965), J. Edgar Hoover formally blocked any impending federal prosecutions against the suspects and refused to disclose any evidence his agents had obtained with state or federal prosecutors.
In 1968, the FBI formally closed their investigation into the bombing without filing charges against any of their named suspects. The files were sealed by order of J. Edgar Hoover.”
My parents are buried in the same cemetery just outside Detroit as Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered by the KKK while driving activists in the day of a march in Selma, Alabama in 1965. Per wikipedia: “Also in the pursuit car was an undercover informant working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). His role in this and other events was not revealed until 1978.[1][2] To deflect attention from the FBI, its head J. Edgar Hoover made defamatory claims about Liuzzo.”
Professor Lawrence Davidson shared a valid observation about social behavior that resonates in the mind of any critical observer. Thanks for sharing.
You can always choose your ‘culture’. I know this.
Some Americans once saw the toxic, racist, hateful, and militarist nature of American culture post-ww2, and decided that it was not for them. They decided to invent their own culture. Since this was ‘counter’ to the dominant American culture, this was known as the ‘counter-culture’. Build a better culture was the general idea. The Democrats now like to skip over Dr. King’s later speech where he called for a ‘revolution of values’ that had to include a change from a ‘thing-oriented society’ to a ‘people oriented society’. America put a bullet into his brain, declared a war on hippies (and drugs), and decided that they liked Reagan’s Morning In America so much better. Thus, the path towards today instead of towards Dr. King’s Revolution of Values. There’s a reason why Democrats stop talking about King at Civil Rights.
Don’t forget that you can opt out of a culture, leave it, and build your own to better suit your own ideas and values. You do not have to support genocide just because your culture did. In fact, that’s actually the way to actually stop the genocide. Completely opt out of the culture that creates the genocide. Its been known to stop a war.
Make Love Not War
Who cares what the squares think?
Thanks sister, that is how deep this struggle really is. It is very hard to create a culture where the core value is to treat others as you would be treated. The line that moral precept draws is not outward but inward and it brings a confrontation with a pattern of historic and cultural injuries and practices. These habits and scars from self-centered or group centered values is extensive. A re-examination was going on in the 60’s due to the evidence of cultural self deception from Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, the death squads in Central and South America, a re-examination of how native peoples of the Americas were treated, but also just the emptiness of materialism.
There is a difference also between the US and the Zionist culture of Israel that goes deeper than what is mentioned. The US culture until recently was dominated religiously by a diversity of Christian churches , all of which are exposed to the actual teachings of Jesus. Martin King based his non-violence on these teachings along with their practical exposition and political use by pacifist Anabaptists and Quakers, by Tolstoy, by Buddhist monks in Vietnam and by Gandhi. There were similar anti- imperialist, anti violence ideas circulating in Jewish communities inspiring both the creation of peaceable mystic communities and worker’s resistance movements, socialism, anti war activists. There are many texts in the Prophets that express such values and predict a world where justice, sharing, abundance is universal.
But the Zionist Movement and its counterpart in US settler colonialism and empire building drew on a different Biblical mythos. For them the story of Joshua coming out of bondage in Egypt( no historic or linguistic evidence for this story) and conquering and enslaving the Canaanites( did not happen) and thus fulfilling the promise of Abraham that the land would belong to them became the core premise of Zionism. This was historically reinforced by the ascendance of the Bible as the central text of Western Civilization, and internally Talmudic teachings of Jewish superiority and the lesser status of non Jews. According to the most widely accepted historic research this Joshua-Fit -the -Battle of Jericho story is mostly an imaginary history. There was never a complete conquest or overthrow of Canaanite Culture and Hebrew is a Canaanite language with no Egyptian influence. Jews were a religious group that arose in the region and in the 2000 years before the Diaspora only held actual monarchic rule in the region for at most between 2 and 3 hundred years, comprising the reign of Hezekiah, the later Hasmonean Dynasty, and the last group of rulers under Roman power the Herodian rulers. The rest of the time , rulers were multicultural and practical rather than religious; so either non-religious local rule prevailed, or disputing territorial cultures , or the Levant was under the domination of various empires from Assyria and Egypt to Rome and then was dominated by Islam for 1900 years. Israeli archaeologists Finkelstein and Silberman have found no evidence of the Davidic kingdom; they ascribe the legend of Solomon to Omri. and generally lay out the history I have summarized. The Hasmoneans did not name their kingdom Israel, they named it after themselves and were known for the forced conversion of non Jewish believers and the ascent of the cult of Judah which led ultimately to the loss of identity of other tribes. Today, nobody calls him or her self a Benjamin, or a Naphtalite ; other tribes are gone. In this way real history and culture is forced into a mythic box , and real religious divergence within Judaism as demonstrated by the Samaritans, Christians, Essenes, The Mandaeans( John the Baptist), the Hassidim, Reform Judaism etc. is canceled by the Biblical cult of Judah.
The core of Zionism is conquest by violence and claims to represent the only legitimate version of what we are historically limited to calling Judaism and the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob. Instead of rejecting the ultimate consequence of this ideology of establishing a presumed divine or natural order by conquest, Zionism has embraced this vision and thus is following the pattern most horrifically exemplified in modern history by the mass slaughter of 25 million Russians, 6 million Jews , 7 million found to be guilty of being either homosexual, Romany, communists, or disloyal and millions more national soldiers killed by the 3rd Reich. It is easy to become what you hate , but very hard to hate what you have become.
“The US culture until recently was dominated religiously by a diversity of Christian churches , all of which are exposed to the actual teachings of Jesus. ” See “Praying For the Apocalypse” on You Tube and you will know which Christians are dominating our government.
“And, in this case, for the U.S. to get past its own hypocrisy — the sick elements of its own culture — it must finally leave Israel behind.”
Absolutely. And to get past the power structure allowing the continuance of this hypocrisy, we must leave both of these ossified, corrupt behemoths of anti-democracy called the two major political parties behind. The two of them together don’t even hold a majority of the voters in this country. Only the structure of our political society keeps them in the money and barely breathing. And let’s face it, the military industrial complex and Wall Street won’t care who is in charge as long as they remain under the delusion that they control the strings. Let them believe it, and then cut the strings. Otherwise, our own Praetorian Guard will decide everything going forward. It will make 1984 look like a comic book that hoped to make it as a graphic novel. And believe me, it will be graphic. What we do now to chickens and pigs and cows will be done to us, but more slowly and with even greater impunity. “Exceptionalism” will be a religion only for those who escape a gruesome future, in spite of the misery of others.
” …. to get past the power structure allowing the continuance of this hypocrisy, we must leave both of these ossified, corrupt behemoths of anti-democracy called the two major political parties behind.”
Yup – should have been done some time ago, decades, but we have another chance this time around – why anyone is “afraid” to “spoil” the chances of either “major” party is beyond me – as long as either is in power “nothing will fundamentally change”. The LOTE meme is a joke when neither one is a “lesser”
I noted these similarities between Israel and the USA in a post on this site, I think, and am so glad someone else has written about it much better and in a more learned fashion than I am able.
I also wonder if Israel is testing US weapons on Palestinians since we often do not know what weapons the US is sending them and also Biden’s bypass of Senate approval makes it too clandestine not to wonder. I wish someone would look into the likely possibility.
I too feel that this genocide is a prelude to what is to come if we can’t get past the MIC, AIPAC, and religious fanaticism that wants to bring on the Apocalypse. I keep saying the way to do it is cut off the head of the snake, which are the Central Banks funding every side of any war. Five US presidents and a single senator were assassinated for trying to do so. That information should be widely taught in public schools but of course it is not. What we don’t know of our history is killing our nation’s promise.
The good professor Davidson makes some interesting points regarding the psychological racist bias inherent in both the US and Israeli cultures, both of which are currently portending to be democratic societies while functioning as bigoted theocratic cults.
America is theocratic, but only if you define the state religion as “Money” and its associated vice Greed. In that case, the fact that America is ruled by the high priests of Wall Street would indeed make America a theocracy.
Quite right. I’ve forgotten who is credited with the pronouncement that: “The business of the US is business.” Forget the “city on the hill,” moral superiority, ethical clarity, manifest destiny, and whatever other crapolla we have been spoon-fed. It is all about money – wealth and power – it always has been and always will be.
The quotation is from Calvin Coolidge. Although he did not use those exact words, the sentiment is the same.
No, not “always has been and will be.” Those of us old enough to remember before the late ’70s can testify of an era with financial regulations that worked and when the D party still cared about labor. Even more so for the elders like my mother who were around during the New Deal. The difficult political battles by which the regs and the agencies that enforced them were established in the ’30s were deeply resented by Wall Street. Which fought back; including sponsoring the neolib D elite. Deregulation happened under Clinton. Never mind the S & L crisis of the late ’80s or the Great Recession of ’08. Never mind what this same egregious behavior came to in Oct. 1929.
The plutocrats are back. This time when the crash happens, the horrific destruction will not be just financial, but ecological, too. Never mind those irrelevant “externalities.”
//There is an invisible force said to rule all else; a force omnipotent and inerrant. Its commandments are interpreted for us by mostly older white men who urge obedience, promising wonderful rewards at some future point. While deviance brings only disaster…// From a talk I gave at a teach-in just before the 1999 anti-WTO protests known as “the Battle of Seattle.” Several academic theologians have written books on capitalism as deity. And in his 1932 nomination acceptance speech, FDR called Wall Street worshipers of Mammon.
Applause for confronting the story behind the story here.
Another large factor probably ought to be regarded as important in this mix. Trauma constrains cognition, and therefore belief. Trauma is communicated between generations in upbringing; the beliefs it occasions are passed as are others.
Zionism grew of antisemitism, Israel from Holocaust. American pioneers were farmers dispossesed by aristocracy. The slavery of Africans in the United States was a heritage of a serfdom that was mostly European.
This does mean that our own abuses will receive blowback over generations–something that ought to be calculated as part of return on investment. This is not so level and orderly as a Karmic law, however. Responses fall on individuals who may not have occasioned them. And the student often outdoes the master.
Jewish Israelis appear to be mostly those Jews who were driven away by prejudice and Holocaust. Apparently they regard themselves as abiding in a world wherein extermination is a fairly normal option.
Prejudice against “jews” has been largely suppressed in the ‘western world’. The Holocaust was 75 years ago. Anyone under that age is not fleeing the Holocaust, and not many from America or Europe in the last 40 or so years can be said to be fleeing discrimination or even prejudice. The old Christian hatred of “the people who killed Christ” has largely been suppressed in the ‘western world’. The current generations native to Israel grew up in the Homeland of the Jews created (and armed) in order to make sure the Jews knew they had a safe space. That supposedly was what the previous killings were all about.
What you are seeing is people who regard themselves as ‘chosen people’ getting rid of the Arabs they view as sub-humans and human-animals who are in the way of the chosen people by ‘squatting’ on some great beachfront property that the Trumps’ are eyeing for a hotel, not to mention that comes with a natural gas field offshore. Its a very old American-European formula …. Steal The Land = Get Rich.
Prejudice and holocaust is just the cover story, claims on old history to cover up a crime. Just like ‘save the heathens and lead them to Jesus’ was the cover story for other genocides and thefts. A bedtime story to help the guilty sleep at night.
Say what? Zionism predates the Holocaust, and is used as an excuse for Israel’s “right” to brutalize the Palestinians, displace them, and now exterminate them. And, American pioneers were farmers dispossessed by aristocracy? Really? The “pioneers” were actually settlers, just like Israeli settlers who felt and feel they have a God-given right to settle wherever they please, and have no qualms at all about using force to displace indigenous people who were already there. Most Israeli jews were in fact encouraged to go to Israel as if they had some special dispensation. No one has the right to be ignorant about these things at this point!
Short clip of how impossible it is for this particular leopard to change its spots.
hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbCri0gQ2Yc @ min. 14:45
A prime expose of Joe Biden, esteemed Senator, epitome of duplicity.
As a proclaimed Christian, from where/whom did Joe Biden beget his bigotry?
The formation of collective attitudes in this essay appear to occur in a vacuum – in the USA. Absent is the governmental use of domestic propaganda and the reformation of media platforms by their corporatization into companioning the government’s narrative that serves existing financial-power leadership dominance and corporate profit and power interests. A society – free of corporate and governmental propagandizing – that cares for itself would not :employ a genocidal president, tolerate one sided policies and programs that benefit the rich and powerful at the people’s’ expense, turn on the station enriching rabidly out of balance “influencers”, allow machine guns in private hands nor other guns without strict licensing requirements and enforcement reflective of nature adults, tolerate any weak kneed response to a climate catastrophe spelling major extinction of life on earth, view other nations from a bullying position nor make up fictions about them to advance a parochial interest over collective health or tolerate an obscene wealth concentration in the hands of the few that is destructive to the whole social-environmental fabric/organism. The corporate response to the Powell Memorandum was to flood the ears of the populace with its ethos Ayn Rand style, to methodically break up and depotentiate bodies like unions that threatened the corporate thrust.To destroy groups corporately and governmentally viewed as threats to their power. See the Black Panther party.
settler colonialism destroyed indigenous American culture and Israeli policies are doing the same. why can’t we abide by, or even just acknowledge and respect the moral compass embedded in the Ten Commandments?
Miko Peled interview with rabbi David Feldman (Neturei Karta; jan.2024) – hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSd_eZ5qcbo&t=676s
Actually I do think at least one of the Ten Commandments is wrong, namely the commandment to honor your father and mother, which in the biblical text is unconditional and makes no exceptions if one’s parents are abusive or not worthy of honor.
It should be obvious, if one thinks about it, that it is very insensitive and actually wrong to tell somebody with abusive parents that that person has a duty to honor such parents.
If anything there ought to be a commandment to.parents to earn and be worthy of the love and honor and respect of their children. And another to parents to treat their children with dignity and respect, so that they (the children) might come to treat themselves and others with dignity and respect.
And really the commandment serves and gives legitimacy and backing to bad parents. Any controlling, narcissistic, or just plain bad parent can invoke the commandment and shame their children by so doing, in order to get their way or to avoid dealing with any issues the parent might have, or just to have power over one’s children. I would think that any good parent would be able to deal with any issue without any need to bring in God or any alleged commandment from God.
This is one of these things that is generally accepted in our society without question that I think ought to be questioned. And I had a very difficult father so the matter is personal with me. The difficulties I had with him are a big part of the reason I am no longer a Christian. I detail this in my write-up linked to by my screen handle.
MikeH:
In support of your thesis, I urge you to read poet Philip Larkin’s “This Be The Verse.”
And this has some political ramifications. If a person has learned from childhood that one does not dare to challenge or question one’s parents, under threat of punishment (physical or otherwise) and always reminded to “honor your father and mother”, then it would seem very obvious that that person might later be very likely to be afraid or at least very reluctant to question or challenge other authorities (religious, political, and otherwise) later in life. And of course the advantage to those in power is obvious!
The concept of a Loving Father God who loves and cares for you must be difficult for you given your experience with a human father.