Artwork © Richard Spisak

 

Chapter 17

Just as transporting Kamala Harris from wherever she now happens to be on the mainland, coronating her, and placing her on Queen Lilokoulani’s throne at Iolani Palace in a categorical Hawaiian secession from Trump-land is never to be, so all ideals within the mind and externally in society are fanciful unless popularity (determination in the case of the individual in shaping his or her character), and some degree of plausibility become the momentum leading to their eventual actualization. But even then the actuality of this less fanciful mental construct is dubious.

That which we determine as “reality” in this plain of existence in which electromagnetic energy and mass convert into each other interchangeably in a state of flux, making them essentially the same, and thus, all things in a state of flux despite humans expending energy to get a stable job, a stable home, a stable set of friends, and a stable set of ideas to thwart this process–the old Heraclitus idea that no man walks into the same river twice all too true–is, as Parmenides suggests, antithetical to solid reality which would be non-changeable, that being God himself if there were such a creature, so far from mere mortals who are always in the formation of being one thing or another and so never are much of anything at all, and with impulses that are instinctively savage even in sublimated dosage, which means present human beings who are rarely humane, and within a hundred years as much as never having been at all. Thus, if the more solid aspect of ourselves is so fluid, so insubstantial, what then, we have to ask ourselves, are our notions, even the “real” ones that are actualized in popularity and momentum; and yet sometimes–often we might say– men eagerly go to war risking life and limb for the sake of their patriotic ideas and emotional fervor–so fearful of being of no purpose whatsoever beyond the brevity of personal attachments that they easily become juggernauts ready to plow down anything in their relentless determination to at least have “real” meaning for themselves collectively and to “know” something absolutely instead of plausibly.

One of the more absurd notions is patriotism, especially when it is a form that goes beyond pride in one’s country, not that there really is such a thing as country–just useful fabrications of the masses and mass hysteria. This is especially true if it is predicated on the misguided and odious concept of manifest destiny the way missionaries in Hawaii thought it their sole purpose to convert Hawaiian heathens to all things American like parents hoping to control their recalcitrant children and shape them into themselves. If America (a name that was taken from the Italian cartographer Amerigo Vespuchi, so hardly American at all) is exceptional and singular as we are led to believe–and yes we, no matter our age, are still like indoctrinated school children in front of flags, mere pieces of cloth, pledging allegiance, and like Israelites believing ourselves as the favored people, but more so than them with a belief that we are in possession of complete truth entailing New Testament with the Old mixed with democracy, and capitalism in a bizarre conflation–why is its Declaration of Independence and more lofty ideas of the Constitution an appropriation of John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government the way the Noah and the Ark story is a plagiarism of a later canto in the Epic of Gilgamesh (Sumerian literature), Psalm 104 more than just parallel to the Great Hymn of Aten (Egyptian), and the parting of the Red Sea similar to parts of a story that is referred to as “The Boating Party” (Egyptian). Likewise, if we are this beacon of democracy–the lack of feasibility in putting 400 million people in a true democracy notwithstanding–why do we have only a representational democracy instead of the full democracy that was had in Athens, although theirs, admittedly, was problematic in its exclusion of women and slaves. It would seem to me that only a functional neo-Athenian system of democracy in which every man is a senator and a voter by referendum could be justifiably touted this way. Furthermore, why did we, this beacon of democracy, exclude women and those of color from suffrage and levers of power for so long or fell American Indians, indigenous Americans, as we did their trees, in expansionist goals, and have the audacity to utter that all men are created equal when enslaving people of color. And if our present is so hallowed, why is out past so tainted by an Independence war fought largely to not have to pay a stamp tax justifiably imposed on us to pay back England for the expenses that were incurred when pushing back the French in the French and Indian Wars, the War of 1812 for, among other reasons, territorial expansion into Canada, the Mexican war largely to get the Southwest, and the Spanish American War for arrogating world hegemony and island property. That does not even bring us into the twentieth century let alone the twenty first century. No doubt, horrendous acts like Japanese internment camps domestically and brutal assaults on Vietnamese villages pale next to German atrocities in the Second World War, but no other country has exploded atomic bombs on metropolitan areas the way we did on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is no wonder that in the communist museum in downtown Vientiane in Laos one large area is devoted to French and American atrocities in photographs that are difficult to look at and difficult to deny.

Even in normal times patriotism, like religion, induces the worst of a person and the worst of a people. To have this “truth” of national supremacy there must not only be reinforcement of the idea by large scale acceptance and embracing of it by the denizens and adherents, the masses, but a denigration of outsiders. And when not only are there demographic shifts occurring in which a majority fears power slipping away while alternative powers threaten long held world hegemony then the times cease to be usual. By every metric of a fascist state, America has become such. Caucasian Americans sense their power and numbers eroding and that hegemony does not rest any longer on a single power economically or politically; and desperate they wish to make the country great again (MAGA Trumpism) as they see it. Like fascist leaders before, Trump, to gain power, continually stokes hatred. He wants to blame immigrants and minority groups for economic woes and seeks their expulsion, wants to expand property to flex power in the world and engender patriotism, seeks to curtail rights of minorities that are thought antithetical to certain preconceived ideas of masculinity, sees news media and government servants of democratic institutions as threats to his authority, bullies other countries instead of attempting diplomatic cooperation, seeks to whitewash history by cleansing America of culpability in its past, and foremost, fears the loss of control of the legislative branch to finance his various anti immigrant initiatives and other divisive projects–his evisceration of government personnel is his way of financing his presidential mandates and government of one man by fiat circuitously.

Aristotle must have thought of politics as a broader, more ubiquitous benevolence beyond the usual ethical considerations that are limited to family, friends, and acquaintances. In these roles of governance, at least in the best of societies, he must have thought that there would be curious and altruistic polymaths like himself carefully adjusting these levers of ethical boundary extensions. This was a failure of the realist to recognize the ambitious and greedy narcissists and megalomaniacs who usually occupy these positions of power to prove their brilliance and importance. If the purpose of ethics is to overcome our instinctual controls, defenses for survival, and solipsism, to become more compassionate and aware individuals, empaths that in time we or our android progeny will become, it is hard to assume that ethics and government are compatible. And conversely, there is nothing good in removing ourselves from ethics, or as Voltaire suggests in Candide, that in a violent world replete with natural and man made disasters, that the best that can be done is to withdraw from it all and tend one’s garden. As for politics being a universal form of ethics, this is contravened by the world itself which is splintered into myriad political units of these imaginary countries in which the ultimate goal is always going to involve weaponization and self-defense.

Exempli gratia of the importance of popular momentum and plausibility in shaping “reality” as much as humans are real, whether or not we ever use robots to construct cities on Mars with synthetic gravitational force, atmospheric pressure, temperature, and ecosystem conducive to human existence, humans will in essence impactfully, albeit vicariously, have an impact there via sophisticated androids barreling and exploiting Martian and other-worldly terrain the way humans have done on Earth in one form or another. And I believe if sophisticated androids exist on these other worlds they will form more ethical and just societies that humans have shown themselves incapable of doing. Mitochondria DNA is an example of how, with enough time, bacteria can form symbiotic relationships with cells and that suggests that humans can do the same toward each other and the ecosystem but that process alone is far too slow for such a smart and menacing creature as humans are.

Rght now retaining democracy is the challenge. We are a nation being lead by a convicted felon and pathological liar, Donald Trump, who exploits the selfish survivalist impulses and bigotry of the masses, exacerbates the hatred of the white majority toward growing ethnic and racial minorities, their complacency and discontent with democracy and status quo, their nostalgia for the past and re-establishing “greatness” once again as though all things including hegemony could last forever, their wish to escape responsibility for egregious errors in its past and to think of themselves and their country self righteously, the ease by which they blame minorities for any economic woes, their discontent with gay marriages and transgender affirmation, and their need to reaffirm their greatness by annexing Greenland, Canada, and gaining control of the Panama Canal. It is a sad time to be an American.

 

Steven David Justin Sills is a poet, philosopher, and novelist living in Honolulu Hawaii. He has a Master’s degree in great books of the Western Canon. Chapter 15 of his column and ethical treatise was a scathing attack on religion in Hawaii. Chapter 16 was a trenchant and poignant examination of family. This particular chapter, Chapter 17, is an unflinching criticism of Donald Trump, MAGA, and American patriotism.

Richard Spisak began his artistic career as a light artist in the Lumonics Studios of Mel Tanner, a legendary Light Artist. After serving under Jack Horkheimer as a planetarium operator at the Miami Space-Transit Planetarium, he left to begin traveling with Lumist Kenvin Lyman, whose show Dazzleland Studios traveled across America. Richard later worked as a Laserist with LASERIUM and Laser Productions, served as a technical producer for the festival company PACE Concerts, and later as operations Manager and Senior Producer at WWHP and WTCN-TV in Stuart Florida.

Richard writes for Theatre, TV, radio, and the web. He published two short story collections, Two Small Windows, in a Pair of Mirror Doors, and Between the Silences. Followed by his poetry collection 7370 Allen Drive and the recently released STONE POETRY. Richard also produces “POETS of the East,” a televised webcast featuring poets from across the globe.

Chapter Guide

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen