Silence from the masses is not consent to the abuse of power by the "1%"

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote a prophetic insight in these words:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.

But the line dividing good from evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

Universality, however, is neither a justification for the torrent of evil acts flooding the screens and the front pages, nor it is an explanation. It is merely an acute, and searingly accurate truth! Unlike physics, through which and in which highly intelligent researchers continue to probe its depths, evil and both its opposite and its many corollaries continue, almost like a vacuum, to draw into its orbit, psychological, theological, criminal, medical, legal and sociological scholars, readers and engaged persons from every culture. No matter how much money, nor how many doctoral theses, are thrown at, or birthed from, the study of evil, we continue to struggle as if, somehow, those demons that have plagued humans from the beginning are alive and well, and feasting on the current crop of human psyches, souls, bodies and nations.

Myannmar, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine (as Russian troops engage in a build-up on the eastern border), labour unions fighting their own members (OPSEU in Ontario), Canadian Green party executives undermining the new leadership of Annamie Paul, a proud black Jewish woman of laudable accomplishments and values, police violence against arguably innocent black men in too many American cities, while a court case against one passes to the jury in Minneapolis…Whether the situation poses a single person (or a team of two) attempting to arrest another single person, or a military attempting a coup to overturn a democracy, or a proxy war between two intransigent enemies (Iran and Saudi Arabia, in Yemen), or a school-yard bully bludgeoning the frail psyche of an adolescent peer, too many situations are sucking the life force out of tribes, families, cities, and political and cultural leaders.

From a distance, some are able and ever so willing to hide behind the anonymity of a militia, or of an internet, or of a ‘systemic racism’ diagnosis that infects all institutions levelling their hate for the “other” as either normal or an act or attitude for which no one needs to accept responsibility. With the demise of “shame” as a cultural value, (even among despicable men like Congressman Gaetz, former president trump, and even “respectable” men like Senators McConnell, Graham, Cruz and Hawley), how can we not come to accept (not tolerate) but accept that others, like power-hungry dictators, highly neurotic despots, or even macho boys and men will find psychological and perhaps even ethical cover for acts of hate, many of them never before even contemplated. We are left with a social, political and cultural (as well as economic, cyber, and even military) playing field, in which ever formally designated referees no longer appear to warrant or to maintain the respect of their “players”.

It may seem to some a miniscule, insignificant and innocuous notation that referees have become ghost-like. And yet, the United Nations, the WHO, the ILO, even NATO, and EOCD, as well as the International Criminal Court, all seem to lack either the jurisdictional and legal framework to exert muscle in the discharge of their responsibility. And weren’t such institutions established as agreed upon and consented to “international referees” in order to attempt what appears to be a quixotic Sysiphean* charge to level the playing field, making it more fair, more just, more trust-worthy and thereby more reliable and sustainable. And as the moral injunction of the Sisyphus story contends, that we must never give up, no matter what circumstances beset our path, there continue to be those who subscribe to a commitment and a conviction that “we can do better” both as human beings and as towns, cities, health departments, hospitals, provinces/states, and even nations.

There is another aspect to the notion of detachment (in addition to both physical distance, and digital distance, and the separation from the enemy of a general directing battle-field manoeuvres from a clinical, perhaps sub-terranean bunker, or an officer carrying out those orders from another desk, in front of a laptop). And that is the distance, the separation, and perhaps even the alienation of our private personal existence from the notion of a god, or the notion of a higher set of ideals, ethical principles, moral expectations, and the expectations of a community, even one in which we work or reside. Rules, laws, and the enforcement of those boundaries, are the prime vehicle for the embodiment of those expectations, boundaries, conformities, and compliances. And while there is a little-expressed notion that no unjust law needs compliance, there is a far more potent implication in the separation from those who have “written” or passed, or “enforce” those laws, from the individuals, or groups, or nations upon whom or which those laws apply. History is replete with the stories of people “under” rules finding their voice, their support, their courage and their means to confront the perceived injustice of those laws/rules, and especially the manner in and through which those laws/rules have been administered, adjudicated, interpreted. These protests have in many cases resulted in amendments, over-turnings, trimming, or even re-interpretations depending on the persuasive impact of the compound evidence on those in positions to effect change.

The river that runs sometimes underground, sometimes emerging to our conscious awareness, that continues to energize the tension between those in power and those over whom those in power attempt to rule, is one overflowing with the too-often-unacknowledged insecurity of those in power. Slaves built pyramids to their rulers, in ancient times. Asian slaves built railroads in Canada. Black slaves built the economy, not to mention also the White House, of the United States. Racially repugnant Jews (to the Third Reich) were sacrificial lambs to the empty ego of the Fuhrer, as were hundreds of thousands of both allies and enemies of that same Fuhrer. The capacity and the willingness to acknowledge fear and insecurity by those perched, nervously and temporarily, and certainly transitorily on the top of political, military, ecclesial, or institutional pyramids of power and influence is one of the most under-reported, under-documented, and under-researched features of the civilized nations of the world. And in the developing world, those models of denied and dismissed neurosis among leaders, serves only to embolden others perhaps new to the game of governing.

And then there is the notion of “repugnancy” of some individuals and/or groups to every human being. Whether stemming from early life experiences of family, community, school, or workplaces, many of these “repugnancies” are deeply embedded in the cultural psyche of both individuals and groups who consider such denigration necessary to their safety, security, and even prosperity.

What is it that makes another “repugnant” anyway? Start with those incidental off-hand comments from a parent or a teacher, doctor, preacher, that show contempt for some individual (e.g. an alcoholic, an unwed mother, a poor student, a co-worker who does not understand or accept the rule of a boss, the son or daughter of an ‘irresponsible’ parent….the list is endless) Moral, social, perhaps even intellectual, and certainly fiscal “superiority” lies inside each of these off-hand remarks….and that superiority, itself, is another indication of insecurity. To be sure, the superiority is cloked in a mask of “encouragement” or of “motivation” of the other. ‘I was just trying to bring out the best in him/her, when I criticized and put him/her down.’ “What are you going to be when you grow up?” is a question that, depending on the speaker and his/her relationship to the young person, can be an invitation to explore options, or perhaps a scornfully interpreted, ‘s/he thinks I am not growing up fast enough’. Power, like acceptance, tolerance, respect, dignity, has a way of slipping almost imperceptibly across the table of a café, between friends or colleagues. And, like an elixir, the gold pursued by prospectors in the Klondike, any opportunity to “feel” power, in whatever form it happens to take at the moment, (better student, better athlete, better sex-object, better social status, better family heritage, better religious affiliation, better moral code, even something as basic as “better-looking” and/or its opposite, ‘fat, ugly, blind, awkward, or worse, handicapped, or disadvantaged,) draws millions of every ethnicity, religion, geography and education onward, outward and into a discipline to pursue one’s own image of one’s own assumption of power.

After all, only with power, it seems, comes a degree of respect, especially from those who, themselves, have already perched themselves near the top of the social totem pole. Power, at the most basic level, begets power, and the pursuit of power. And the pursuit of that power is the perceived “drug” that has a permanent hold on the hearts and minds of those who currently hold it, irrespective of the locus of their power and influence.

The other side of power, its capacity and certainty to corrupt, is a rare nugget of consciousness, and certainly of conscience, among the contemporary political class. Having to ‘put on a face to meet the faces that we meet’ (to borrow from T.S. Eliot) is not merely a way to ‘dress for the occasion’. It has become a defining principle of most people in positions of leadership, given the compound high expectation of perfection on their shoulders, and the equally potent risk of a single, even minor, mistake…failure, ‘excommunication’ not necessarily from the church, but certainly from the office, and inevitably also from the social connections of the office. We are living in a culture in which the appearance of perfection, especially from individuals in high office, is considered the sine quo non. Nothing less is acceptable. And we have developed a full quiver of arrows with which to ‘slay’ those leaders at the moment ‘we’ (whoever comprises the effective, potent and ambitious, and perhaps even vengeful “we”) deem it necessary.

Unwilling as we are to look at our own responsibility, including our imperfections, and our capacity to ‘screw-up’ even given the best of intentions, and also our shared unwillingness (or incapacity) to tolerate, to forgive, and to attempt to reconcile, even with those who have profoundly failed us, whether they are family members, or public servants who have failed to live up to the letter of whatever code operates in their workspace. Litigious, dismissive, filled with hubris, unwilling to share responsibility even when the situation clearly requires a much more complex and comprehensive analysis than one that effectively “terminates” an available target, we risk having our own “penchant for revenge” turned on us without notice, and certainly with impunity.

Elevating power and influence to a miniscule class of people, in every theatre, only exacerbates and grows the number of individuals who ‘serve’ (and suffer) under that kind of structural mandate. And, just as in income disparity, with the top 1% having a disproportionate amount of a nation’s wealth, (and influence), so too the number of dispossessed, (without power and influence) grows.

Can it not also be obvious to that 1% that the other 99% will not accept the perceived and actual powerlessness that is being imposed, often imperceptibly and surreptitiously, through shifts in the expectations of those at the bottom of the social pyramid imposed by those at the top.

And that kind of abuse of power cuts across gender, race, ethnicity, age and income levels, with impunity, so long as we at the bottom remain silent.

Silence, in this case, is not consent; nor is silence bigotry, or hate. The survival of the 99% is at stake…and our silence serves only to incarnate our complicity!