A gadfly upsets the status quo by posing different or novel questions, or just being an irritant.
Socrates pointed out that dissent, like the gadfly, was easy to swat, but the cost to society of silencing individuals who were irritating could be very high.
Catholic Church Issues
I recently posted a piece about the Catholic Church and its miserable failure of accountability related to sexual abuse, highlighted by the report from the Pennsylvania Attorney General. There has been a lot of coverage since I first wrote about this, including the Pope's recent visit to Ireland to address sexual abuse in that country and the internal battle within the church over conservative vs liberal approaches to teachings as well as a power struggle as old as the church itself.
Sadly there are those within the Catholic Church among clerical leadership and the laity who want to use this scandal to place blame on homosexuality and some fairly feeble attempts at inclusiveness within the church. I want to be clear that, in my opinion, the sexual orientation of priests has nothing to do with the the issue of sexual abuse in the church. In addition, the LBGTQ community that has had to struggle for acceptance in the church should not be used as a scapegoat in any of these discussions.
Sexual abuse is sexual abuse and it occurs within and across all forms of sexual orientation. The church has failed in its own understanding of power, authority, accountability, abstinence and the lack of including women in positions of authority. There has been a culture of acceptance and coverup related to all of this and that's what the church needs to deal with if it has any chance of surviving this latest episode.
The conservative vs liberal battle taking place in the church is a different discussion but is taking place in the environment of these abuses and is in fact using these abuses to make arguments for and against a power shift. But lets be clear, this is all about power in the clerical leadership of the church. The clerics opposed to Pope Francis and his messages of social justice, peace, and inclusion but most importantly his views on clerical reform want him gone. This power struggle has gone on for centuries and again, is part of the church's struggle for any real relevance in today's society. Who gets the power, the fancy vestments and hats, the best real estate, is what we see happening before our eyes and its pretty unseemly to say the least.
The Shame of Puerto Rico
We should all remember that deaths in Hurricane Katrina numbered somewhere around 1000 people. At the time our country was horrified at what was witnessed in that natural disaster. President George W. Bush and FEMA were held to account in both public opinion and the world of politics. But here we are, a year after Hurricane Maria and new reports indicate that 2975 people died in Puerto Rico as a direct result of not only the storm itself but as a direct result of the US government's poor response. What a shameful thing this is and it goes on. We have become numb to the reality of people dying and suffering. The other example is of course Flint, Michigan and the lack of clean water for children and families that still continues. There is something wrong with us and our government that all of this is accepted while billions are being spent for weapons of war.
And Speaking of Weapons of War
Not many discuss whats happening in this area. The most we hear about it is from D. Trump who reminds us and the world that US weapons are the best. Missiles and Jets are the best in the world he says and we're selling them to everyone. Yes, these missiles are showing up in Yemen where school buses of children are bombed by Saudi Arabia. US drones continue to do their damage too and are either being sold or duplicated throughout the world. I'm afraid there will be a day when we will see the results of our own technology and weaponry flying near or within our shores and we will be startled and wonder how this could happen. On another weapons front, cybersecurity and cyberattacks seem to be on a back page. We will see how that plays out I'm sure.
Donald Trump Unhappy With Google Search and Internet News
More humor from the President as he gets upset about the negative stories that show up about him and his administration in search engines and in internet news. Perhaps he should think about the things he does like separating families, putting children in cells, attacking people at rallies and on Twitter, making white nationalist statements, and so on. Yes, Mr. Trump, these things will show up as news stories and in search engines. Wait till he reads the history books.
The following is David McReynolds Obituary from the New York Times on August 18, 2018. David was a friend, fellow protester and resister. He and I reconnected about three years ago after fifty years. We continued to be in touch through email and facebook, enjoying each others conversations and information. He was an important leader in the anti war and progressive movement.
David McReynolds, Socialist Activist Who Ran for President, Dies at 88
David McReynolds, right, explaining plans to protest the draft at the University of Denver in 1970.Denver Post, via Getty Images
David E. McReynolds, a pacifist, socialist and sometime political candidate whose activism spanned many decades, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 88.
The War Resisters League, where Mr. McReynolds had been a staff member, confirmed his death. He was taken to Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital after falling in his Manhattan apartment, a friend, Bruce Cronin, said.
Mr. McReynolds was best known for his demonstrations against the draft during the Vietnam War, his advocacy of pacifism and denuclearization, and his two bids for president in 1980 and 2000 as an openly gay man running on the Socialist Party USA ticket.
“He’ll be known for the lifetime of leadership and the pacifist movements that, to a large degree, he defined in the post-World War II, Cold War era,” said Professor Cronin, the chairman of the political science department at City College of New York. “But what I think helped to define him was that he was as much a humanist as he was an activist.” He had met Mr. McReynolds at a denuclearization rally in the 1980s.
Mr. McReynolds spent almost four decades as a staff member for the War Resisters League, a pacifist organization based in New York City. His activism took him around the world for demonstrations and meetings as a member of delegations in Libya, Japan, Vietnam and other countries.
“There were all these things that made him a giant in antiwar and civil rights and social justice,” his cousin Dusty Kunin said on Friday.
He was also a photographer, a writer and a music aficionado who regularly hosted friends at his home for discussions about art, life and politics.
David Ernest McReynolds was born on Oct. 25, 1929, in Los Angeles. He was raised as a Baptist and was once affiliated with the Prohibition Party, he told The Village Voice in a 2015 interview.
Mr. McReynolds, who was the oldest of three children, described his childhood as “pretty protected.” His father’s job as head of the local water reserve and his family’s access to his grandfather’s farm and livestock helped insulate them from the worst effects of the Great Depression, The Voice reported.
By the time he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, in the early 1950s, he had become an active socialist and an ardent pacifist.
This was during the era of McCarthyism, and the government took notice of his activities. Mr. McReynolds would later write that the F.B.I. had compiled hundreds of pages of files on him, which he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
His work spanned myriad issues. He demonstrated in favor of civil rights and against the Korean War in the 1950s, so that by the time widespread antiwar sentiment had gripped young activists during the 1960s and ’70s, he was an experienced protester.
Mr. McReynolds was known as a mediator with a human touch, and much of his organizing work took place behind the scenes. But he occasionally appeared in news reports, including the time he publicly burned draft documents during Vietnam War protests in 1965.
He first gained wider public attention as a candidate for Congress in 1958. He ran as an openly gay candidate for president in 1980, and again in 2000, although he did not make gay rights a central issue in either campaign.
By the time of his last presidential bid, he was 70 and technically retired from his position as a field secretary with the War Resisters League.
“I think we have a title for me,” he said at the time. “I’m an emeritus of some kind. I’ll have to ask someone up front what my title is.”
Mr. McReynolds resigned from the Socialist Party in 2015 after he was censured for two comments he had made on social media. In one, he expressed concern over Islamist extremism following a terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, a newspaper in Paris. In the other, he used the word “thuggish” in reference to Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo.
“The failure of the Socialist Party, its tendency to substitute a kind of left rhetoric for serious analysis, is to be regretted because if ever we needed a democratic socialist movement it is today,” Mr. McReynolds wrote after his resignation.
He is survived by a sister, Elizabeth Gralewski, and a brother, Martin McReynolds.
On Friday, the War Resisters League said in a statement that Mr. McReynolds was on its staff until 1999 but had remained a member of the league’s community throughout his life, adding that he “will be remembered for living radical pacifism.”
As news coverage continues over the Pennsylvania report about years of sexual abuse of thousands of children by 300+ priests and the coverup by leaders of the Catholic Church, I'm reminded of this quote by Dorothy Day:
“As a convert, I never expected much of the bishops. In all history popes and bishops and father abbots seem to have been blind and power-loving and greedy. I never expected leadership from them. It is the saints that keep appearing all through history who keep things going. What I do expect is the bread of life [the eucharist] and down thru the ages there is that continuity.” (Dorothy David,Letter to Gordon Zahn, October 29, 1968)
Blind and power-loving and greedy. Yes, she says it well. I grew up as a Roman Catholic, went to Roman Catholic schools and spent two years at Maryknoll Seminary studying to become a priest. I have had all of the Catholic experiences including devotion, guilt and questioning. I viewed priests as leaders and teachers and for many years, I respected those who chose the religious life, nuns, priests and brothers. But all of that changed at a certain point in my life as I questioned and saw things related to social justice, peace and poverty. At some point I left the Church or the Church left me.
My experience in the seminary was interesting. I had close friends. We broke rules, raised questions had some fun along the way. I did realize eventually that the priesthood wasn't for me. There were lots of reasons but one of the biggest ones had to do with the immediacy of problems in the world and the Church's foot dragging on many of those problems. There was also my struggle with what I began to see as a structure of unquestioned authority within the institution of the clergy. Parishioners and seminarians were pretty low in that structure.
The report from Pennsylvania is disgusting and shameful. It is an indictment of the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. The damage that was done and has been done to children and families is astounding and unforgivable. All of this coming from an institution that has hurt people in so many other ways relative to sexuality, from the treatment of the LBGTQ community to the pressures put on women and men relative to birth control and abortion. Judgmental men, purportedly speaking for God, about the role of women in their sacred institution.
I have listened to commentators and individuals asking over and over, why? Why and how did this happen? What causes the secrecy and the mob like protection of the inside scandals? Why didn't more insiders speak up over so many years, so many children, so many sins? There are a number of answers to these questions, I'm sure, but as we have learned from so many other scandals and crimes, it is always an important practice to follow the money.
Yes, follow the money of an institution that is built on the dependence of individual donors every Sunday to house and feed their priests, build their churches, maintain their properties, etc. Over time that same money has created power and fascination with power and all of its trappings. The vestments, the chalices, the rings and crosses. The pomp and circumstance, the power, the life, the dinners in private homes, all of it depends on willing supporters and believers. The fact is that in most of these powerful men's minds, reporting these scandals would have threatened it all. Interesting how the leadership of the Church became so blind, and power-loving and greedy. We should have never expected leadership from them.
That's where we are in our country - people, including the highest elected official, are encouraging mob reactions against journalists. As others have pointed out, this will not end well. When people are enabled and encouraged to act like goons or to scream and yell at people who are performing jobs reporting on events or the news, we are on the brink of serious violence and intimidation. Many have fought and advocated for leadership in government to find ways to protect the media and journalists. Success in this area has been mixed but the efforts have always been intense.
Writing and reporting are really the essence of the First Amendment. Much of the debate in the founding years of our country were in the written and spoken word. Pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers and soapbox speeches on street corners were how the issues related to the early years and development of the Constitution took place. This should make all of us realize and think about why the First Amendment was thefirst amendment.
I have watched the rallies that Donald Trump has held across the country and in every one of them he points to the press, pointing his finger and waving his hand. He talks about how terrible these people are, what liars they are, how they are reporting things incorrectly and promoting 'fake news'. He shouts it out with anger and bile in his voice and his supporters yell and scream at the reporters who are held in a pen at the back of the event. People jeer, pump fists, give the finger, raise signs and shout obscenities. Donald Trump seems to enjoy it immensely. Mobs are great fun as long as they're not after you.
It has also struck me recently as I've listened to people in these crowds being interviewed by the media they seem to hate, that there are other things going on. Listening, I'm beginning to pick up that a number of these audience or mob members, are regulars. Yes, some of these folks travel from state to state, site to site to attend as many of these Trump rallies as they can. Perhaps someone should do a more comprehensive review of how many of these folks are just repeat groupies and followers.
As I said earlier, this will not end well. Journalists will continue to probe and Donald Trump will continue to call them out as enemies of the people. Someone, somewhere will take his words seriously and interpret that action needs to be taken. I hope it doesn't happen. I hope journalists and writers and newscasters face down intimidation but we should all realize how hard it is and how hard it is going to be if mobs continue to be incited.
This is not an allegation. It's not an accusation. It's a serious question that many in our country have been thinking about or very seriously worrying about, especially over the past few days as more bits of information have come out relative to the midterm elections, interference and in effect cyber attacks.
The question became more relevant in my mind as Facebook announced its latest findings about a serious and continuing disinformation campaign that has been identified on their platform. I would suspect that others like Twitter will follow.
Here, it is probably important to define what we're talking about when we discuss a disinformation campaign. The simplest definition I've found follows: false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth. A disinformation campaign can take many forms but the main purpose is to confuse, build fear, create mistrust of institutions and of each other. Our intelligence agencies do it and all of our perceived enemies and allies do it. Disinformation campaigns have been used for years to influence people's perceptions of political movements on the left and the right. Recognizing that, it is usually people working against a country's interest but can be done internally against those who disagree with a particular point of view.
In hearing about the disinformation campaign aimed at our midterm elections, I began to think about many of the things that have come out of the White House over the past year and a half. Much of it has been contradictory at times, some of it has been hateful with finger pointing and insults and some has been confusing. People are at each others throats. Families and old friends are arguing at best and not speaking to each other at worst. The media has been identified as and called the enemy. The truth comes from the flock or cluster we're part of and lies come from the folks we don't agree with. Honestly people don't know what or who to believe. What all of this proves is that disinformation works and it works well. All we have to do is look at each other and the extreme splits that have been developed among us.
So here's the question - What if Donald Trump and a number of his aides are in fact, knowingly a part of a planned disinformation campaign? What if we find our selves in a situation where the President of the United States is knowingly assisting a foreign power in confusing people in our country about facts and issues? Many can agree that there have been untruths told and spread by the President. The facts about these statements just don't lie. But the question becomes one of purpose and intent. Donald Trump can be either an incompetent person put in charge of a world power or a willing partner in a plan to disrupt political life and balance in the United States. There's not a lot of room in between. So there you have it, the what if question without many answers on my part. In the end, I think this matters a lot. How people react and deal with the potential of a foreign entity disrupting a political system to the point of controlling who a leader is and how they govern is pretty special indeed. But ah yes, we've been a part of it before.
