Category Archives: American Politics and Life

On Choosing Our Leaders – D’var Torah Pinchas

11 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics

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Is American Democracy, our tradition of free elections and our advancement as an enlightened society being compromised by big money in politics and an aversion to facts and rational discourse?

I believe it is, and so what constitutes “enlightened leadership” becomes a central question as we anticipate going to the polls in November. Ever the optimist, I believe that good leaders can make a difference.

In their book “A Hidden Light: Stories and Teachings of Early HaBaD and Bratzlav Hasidism,” Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi and Netanel Miles-Yepez have written:

“If we think in terms of Rupert Sheldrake’s morphogenetic field and Carl Jung’s collective unconscious, we can see how individual shifts in consciousness may have an impact on the greater field of consciousness…as major shifts occur in the thoughts and feelings of individuals or groups of individuals, a ripple-effect is sent through the entire field, causing tiny adjustments and adaptations throughout.” (p. 72)

I mention all this because in this week’s Torah portion Pinchas we learn of the first significant transference of leadership and power in Jewish history. Aaron and Miriam have died, and Moses is fast approaching the end of his life. God singles out Joshua to assume leadership from Moses (Numbers 17:16-18). In verse 16 we read:

“Yifkod YHVH Elohei ruchot l’chol basar ish al ha-eidah – “May YHVH, God of the spirits of all flesh appoint a leader over the community.”

Note that ruchot (spirits) is a plural form, not singular. It is not written Elohei ruach l’chol basar, “God the SPIRIT of all flesh”, rather the “spirits” of all flesh.

The Talmud offers this famous story to explain:

“Rabbi Abba stated in the name of Shmuel: For three years there was a dispute between the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel, Shammai asserting, ‘The law is in agreement with our view,’ and Hillel contending, ‘The law is in agreement with our view.’ Then a bat kol (a heavenly voice) announced, Eilu v’eilu divrei Elohim chayim (‘The utterances of these and those are the words of the living God, but the law is in agreement with the rulings of the School of Hillel.’ Because they [Hillel] were kindly and modest, they studied their own rulings and those of the School of Shammai, and they were even so humble as to mention the opinions of the School of Shammai before their own.” (Talmud, Eruvin 13b)

From this we derive four principle characteristics of the enlightened leader:

[1] Acknowledgment of Diversity of Opinion – No one human being can know the complete Truth, which is why Rabbi Abraham Isaac Cook, in emphasizing the importance of argument and debate among the sages, cited Talmud Berachot 64a, “Rabbi Elazar said in the name of Rabbi Haninah: “Chachamim marbim shalom.” Torah Scholars increase peace in the world.”

[2] The Importance of Kindness and Modesty – The opinions offered by the School of Hillel were followed because Hillel’s disciples (emulating their mentor) strove to personify the virtues of kindness and modesty towards their adversaries thus enabling compromise and the development of consensus for the sake of the common good.

[3] The Endorsement of Tolerance – Rashi comments on Numbers 27:16, saying: “Appoint over them a leader who will be tolerant of everyone, each in accordance with his understanding.”

[4] The Need to Transcend Partisanship –Talmud B’rachot 58a says: “If one sees a gathering of 600,000 Jews or more, [the leader] must recite the blessing – ‘Praised be God, the Wise One of Mysteries.’” (See also Rabbi Shlomo Riskin’s Torah Commentary on Pinchas in this week’s Jerusalem Post – http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=180132). We learn from this that it is impossible to truly know God’s will. Anyone who claims such knowledge is not only a false prophet but an idolater guilty of the worst hubris.

In sum, Jewish tradition requires in our leaders knowledge, wisdom, vision, and the virtues of kindness, modesty, open-mindedness, tolerance, and willingness to acknowledge truth coming even from one’s most ardent adversary.

I believe that there are such leaders currently serving in American politics, and many face tough reelection fights because of the enormous  funding of their opponents, many of whom do not possess the knowledge, wisdom, intelligence, experience, vision, or virtues that our tradition requires of our leaders.

As we move towards November, it would do us well to consider what qualifications for high public office Judaism sets as a standard.

Shabbat shalom!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The March to War with Iran

01 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Israel/Zionism

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Jeremy Ben-Ami has written that “Those looking to advance political or communal agendas through pressing militarism and portraying diplomacy as weak are playing with fire. They run the risk of greasing the path to ill-advised military action that could set back rather than advance the interests of the United States and Israel.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-benami/the-right-question_1_b_1634808.html

It is Forbidden to Despair

24 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Health and Well-Being, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Quote of the Day

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My friend Marty Kaplan writes frequently for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal and Huffington Post on media, politics and public policy – and his articles often shine a bright light on ill-fated trends, such as money in politics and its impact on our political system, democracy and the world. The most recent article he titled “The End is Nigh. Seriously” which he published in both The Jewish Journal and Huffington Post – http://www.jewishjournal.com/marty_kaplan/article/opinion_the_end_is_nigh_seriously_20120618/ – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/the-end-is-night-seriousl_b_1606442.html

In response, I wrote to Marty the following:

“I too deal with the dark underbelly of life at the micro level, mostly regarding sadness in people’s lives, as you do on the macro level. My question to you is this: How do you get up in the morning? I have the same question frequently. For me, what keeps me hopeful and balanced are my wife, children, the spirituality that comes through our religious texts, and good people I love like you. What is it for you?”

He responded this way (I share it with his permission):

One of the comments on the Moyers interview [Marty was interviewed at length recently by Bill Moyers on his public television show – see http://billmoyers.com/segment/marty-kaplan-on-big-moneys-effect-on-big-media/%5D that I got most frequently was: “How can you understand all these terrible true things, and still keep smiling?”’

I suppose Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s injunction against despair should be enough to keep me going, but it’s not. My comforts are like yours: my kids, friends, radical amazement*. It’s not the fate of the world that darkens me; it’s the brokenness of the human condition.

Sometimes I try to take refuge in the Buddha’s insight: “Life is suffering.” But I can’t quite achieve the non-attachment — the renunciation of desire — that that kind of enlightenment requires.

All of which brings the absurdism of Samuel Beckett to mind: “You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” That’s me, in 11 words.

I wrote back:

“The exact quote from Rebbe Nachmen is Lo tit’ya-esh – Assur l’hit’ya-esh – ‘It is forbidden to despair. He also said, ‘Remember: Things can go from the very worst to the very best…in just the blink of an eye.’”

It is told that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, among the 20th century’s greatest religious thinkers and teachers, once entered his class of rabbinic students at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York and very excitedly proclaimed – “I saw a miracle this morning! I saw a miracle this morning!”

“Rabbi,” his students asked, “What was the miracle?”

“The sun came up!”

Perhaps overcoming despair each day is as simple as this – that beyond our stupidity, cruelty and insensitivity there is still enough wonder in every moment to lift the heart.

Marty referred to “radical amazement” in his response to me.  Rabbi Heschel wrote about this at some length, as follows:

Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious person’s attitude toward history and nature…Such a one knows that there are laws that regulate the course of natural processes; [and] is aware of the regularity and pattern of things. However, such knowledge fails to mitigate one’s sense of perpetual surprise at the fact that there are facts at all. Looking at the world he would say, “This is the Lord’s doing, it is marvelous in our eyes” (Psalms 118:23).

Radical amazement has a wider scope than any other act of humankind. While any act of perception or cognition has as its object a selected segment of reality, radical amazement refers to all of reality; not only to what we see, but also to the very act of seeing as well as to our own selves, to the selves that see and are amazed at their ability to see.

The grandeur or mystery of being is not a particular puzzle to the mind, as, for example, the cause of volcanic eruptions. We do not have to go to the end of reasoning to encounter it. Grandeur or mystery is something with which we are confronted everywhere and at all times. Even the very act of thinking baffles our thinking, just as every intelligible fact is, by virtue of its being a fact, drunk with baffling aloofness. Does not mystery reign within reasoning, within perception, within explanation? What formula could explain and solve the enigma of the very fact of thinking?

A Weekend with Thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses

19 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Jewish-Christian Relations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life

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My wife and I happily flew to Sacramento last week to attend our younger son David’s graduation from UC Davis. We had booked a few rooms at the more than 500 room Hyatt Regency Hotel adjacent to the Sacramento Convention Center, settled in for a weekend of celebration when suddenly the hotel filled up with hundreds of folks wearing “Safeguard Your Heart” name-tags.

It was a blistering hot at 105 plus degrees, but the men and boys wore suits, white shirts and ties and the women and girls were formally dressed in skirts and pant suits all weekend long. The children were neatly clad and scrubbed. Everyone appeared consistently happy and content.

On the elevator I asked a young man, “What is the name of your group?”

“We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses!”

As it happened, thousands of an estimated 5.7 million American Jehovah’s Witnesses had come to Sacramento for their annual national conference.

Though I had met some of these folks over the years when they would come to my door to teach and preach to me, I really knew little about their beliefs and practices. After sharing a hotel with so many happy followers, however, I became curious. Here is some of what I learned plus my thoughts about the meaning of their seeming “happiness” and sense of certainty in their faith.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are unlike most Christian denominations. They follow first century New Testament texts, reject the doctrines of the trinity and immortality of the soul, and do not observe Christmas or Easter because they are post-testament holidays. They do not celebrate birthdays or observe national holidays claiming that such phenomena are inspired by Satan to draw unsuspecting Christians away from the True faith.

Jehovah’s Witnesses read the Bible literally, but at times also symbolically. They place their emphasis on God rather than Jesus Christ, and believe that Jesus is the only direct creation of God as his “only begotten son.” Everything else was created through the Christ.

They believe that the end of days is fast approaching and only those will be resurrected who follow the “true faith.” Every other religion is false.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are morally conservative and politically non-aligned. They stay clear of politics, forbid sexual relations outside of marriage, consider homosexuality a grave sin, and equate abortion with murder. They eschew gambling, drunkenness, illegal drugs, and tobacco. They teach that the Bible requires true Christians to be kind, good, mild, humble, subservient, and reasonable. They refer to their body of beliefs as “the truth” and see themselves to be “in the truth.”

Their families are patriarchal and their denomination is autocratically led by an all-male religious leadership that maintains discipline, demands obedience, compels commitment, forbids independent thinking, and insists on conformity. Those who violate communal belief and behavioral norms risk “disfellowship” and “shunning.” However, if an individual is judged adequately repentant, he/she can be reinstated.

One has to ask why would so many people would subject themselves to such dogma and strict doctrine?

Kathryn Schultz, in her book, Being Wrong, describes the basic human need that yearns for this kind of a lifestyle. She says that

“…[certainty] feels good. It gives us the comforting illusion that our environment is stable and knowable, and that therefore we are safe within it. Just as important, it makes us feel informed, intelligent, and powerful. When we are certain, we are lords of our maps: the outer limits of our knowledge and the outer limits of the world are one and the same…Seen in this light, our dislike of doubt is a kind of emotional agoraphobia. Uncertainty leaves us stranded in a universe that is too big, too open, too ill-defined…facing our own private uncertainty can … compel us to face the existence of uncertainty in general – the unconsoling fact that nothing in the world can be perfectly known by any mere mortal, and that therefore we can’t shield ourselves and our loved ones from error, accident, and disaster.”

Rabbi Leonard Beerman offered these thoughts on the occasion of his 90th birthday last year:

“I live with uncertainty and doubt. But what I have learned is that doubt may be the most civilizing force we have available to us, for it is doubt that protects us from the arrogance of utter rightness, from the barbarism of blind loyalties, all of which threaten the human possibility.”

To those who conclude that doubt and faith are incompatible, consider the words of Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

“There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.”

Oh – by the way, our son’s graduation was a peak moment in our lives, and I feel a measure of certainty when I say that Satan had nothing to do with it!

An Emerging One-State Israel-Palestine Reality

11 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism

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A resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not look promising, though it is still possible. The window for a two-state solution is rapidly closing, and conversation is shifting to consider the meaning of an emerging one-state reality. Though polls show that both Israelis and Palestinians still favor a two-state solution, facts on the ground and politics are allowing the status-quo to take root, and the status-quo supports a one-state reality. This will be good for no one!

The two articles below spell out in detail how time is running out, and describe the dynamics now operating in and around this conflict. They are both worth reading.

The Problem

The Palestinians are trapped by their own politics in refusing to sit down with Israeli negotiators thus suggesting that their motivation is to wait and let events and demography undermine Israel as a democratic Jewish state.

Israel is trapped by the most extreme right-wing government in its history that gives lip-service to the two-state solution while at the same time developing policies and facts on the ground that undermine the path to a two-state solution.

The United States is distracted by our presidential campaign, and nothing of significance is expected until after the election, if at all. Both political parties and candidates are striving to show that they are the most “pro-Israel” thus playing to the most extremist and fundamentalist forces in American and Israeli politics.

The relative calm out of Gaza and the West Bank, due to the exhaustion of the Palestinian population to violence, the positive effects of the Israeli security fence in stemming terrorist attack against Israeli civilians inside Israel, and the intensified security cooperation between Fatah and Israel in the West Bank, give the illusion to Israelis that the status-quo is not so bad after all.

Israeli and international pre-occupation with the Iranian nuclear threat has distracted America’s and the Quartet’s attention away from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As time passes the dozens of small illegal Jewish “outposts” that dot the landscape of the West Bank are solidifying and a significant portion of the settler population is becoming more radicalized thus making the peaceful emergence of a contiguous Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state of Israel difficult to imagine.

Many moderate Palestinian and non-violent two-state advocates have come to the conclusion that a one-state reality with a one-person, one-vote democracy represents the best way for Palestinians to get their Palestinian state on the one hand and to undermine the Jewish state of Israel on the other. For Jews, a one-state eventuality either means the end of the Jewish state or the end of a democratic Israel.

Analyzing the Problem

The articles below describe and analyze the various alternatives:

  1. Sit and Wait;
  2. Unilateralism;
  3. Transitional arrangement towards a two-state final status solution;
  4. Imposed solution;
  5. The Jordanian solution;
  6. Regional Solution.

The conclusion to the article written from an Israeli perspective published in the New York Times (“Israel-Palestine: Policy Alternatives given the Infeasibility of Reaching a Final Status Agreement”) is:

“The Israeli interest dictates operating in two parallel yet at the same time integrated, complementary main policy efforts. The first is to strive energetically to an agreed solution, even partial or gradual, with the Palestinians, based on the two states principle. The second one is to initiate policies and actions that will create a reality of two states for two peoples. We recommend making progress along these two parallel tracks, in agreement and coordination with the Palestinians if and when possible, and unilaterally, based on an Israeli independent decision.”

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/2012/Israeli-Palestinian-Research-Group-summary.pdf

The conclusion of the second piece by Khalil Shikaki, a moderate Palestinian analyst, published by the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (NOREF) (“The future of Israel-Palestine: a one-state reality in the making” – May 2012), states in its Executive Summary:

“With no agreement on a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in sight, one-state dynamics are gaining momentum – a development that will be difficult to reverse or even contain. In the medium and long term, no one will benefit from such a development. Indeed, all might lose: an ugly one-state dynamic has no happy ending, and such a solution is rejected by Palestinians and Israelis alike. Instead, the emerging one-state reality increases the potential for various kinds of conflicts and contradictory impulses. The international community too finds itself unprepared and perhaps unwilling to confront this emerging reality, but in doing so it imperils the prospects for peace in the region – the exact thing it seeks to promote.”

http://www.peacebuilding.no/Regions/Middle-East-and-North-Africa/Israel-Palestine/Publications/The-future-of-Israel-Palestine-a-one-state-reality-in-the-making

After the American presidential election it will be necessary for the United States to move forward with a muscular diplomatic effort to bring all parties to the table and settle this conflict once and for all before it is too late.

Peter Beinart and David Suissa Debate “A Crisis of Zionism” – Jewish Journal Web-site Live Stream

17 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Social Justice

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Last night (Wednesday, May 16) Peter Beinart (author of A Crisis of Zionism) and David Suissa (President of The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles) debated before a crowd of 450 people at Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles the role of the American Jewish community vis a vis Israel, the arguments left and right relative to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the challenges to democracy and the Jewish character/demography of the state that a non-resolution of this conflict present. I was honored to moderate the discussion.     

You can watch the entire conversation on the Jewish Journal web-site by clicking here –   http://www.jewishjournal.com/live_broadcast/article/live_broadcast_suissa_vs_beinart_-_is_zionism_in_crisis_20120511/

I recommend reading Peter’s book as it spells out clearly, factually and historically what has become of the Zionist enterprise and how the American Jewish establishment (i.e. AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the ADL, and AJC, among others) and community have changed and evolved over the course of the past 64 years since Israeli statehood.

Though vilified by some on the Jewish and Israeli right for the positions he takes in this book and in other writings, others have praised Peter’s book including President Bill Clinton, philanthropist Edgar Bronfman, former Congressman and Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission Lee H. Hamilton, and Naomi Chazan, former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and President of the New Israel Fund.

President Clinton said the following:

“Peter Beinart has written a deeply important book for anyone who cares about Israel, its security, its democracy, and its prospects for a just and lasting peace. Beinart explains the roots of the current political and religious debates within Israel, raises the tough questions that can’t be avoided, and offers a new way forward to achieve Zionism’s founding ideals, both in Israel and among the diaspora Jews in the United States and elsewhere.”


In Memorial – Howard Epstein – 20 Years Ago Today

30 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Stories

≈ 4 Comments

Note: See updated memorial titled: “In memorial – Howard Epstein – 30 years ago this week” published in April, 2022

The day after the Rodney King verdict twenty years ago I received a call from long-time Temple Israel members, Lillian and Marty Epstein, that their son Howard (who was about my age) was missing. As soon as the rioting began, Howard flew from Oakland Airport near his family home in Orinda to attend to his business located in South-Central Los Angeles. He had owned and operated a factory there for a number of years and employed 20 workers. These were people he knew and about whom he cared. He knew all their families, and so, when the riots erupted Howard felt it his duty to be with them.

He landed at LAX in the late afternoon, rented a car, and commenced his 15-minute drive to his place of business. Along the way, somewhere, he vanished. By evening no one had heard from him. Given the tumult in the city, his wife Stephanie and parents were worried.

The following day, exactly 20 years ago today, the police contacted Lillian and Marty with the news. At a stop-light Howard was approached by two men who murdered him at point blank range and took everything of value in his car. The police were able to identify Howard only by tracing the car to the rental agency.

Howard deliberately moved a couple of years earlier with Stephanie and their two small children out of Los Angeles because he felt the city was no longer safe and he did not want to raise his children in this environment.

When the rioting stopped, we honored Howard’s memory in a memorial service in our synagogue Sanctuary where he became bar mitzvah. His family and friends described Howard as among the most kind, community conscious and caring of men, a true rachaman ben rachmanim, a compassionate son of compassionate parents.

I remember Howard every year at this time, and especially today, 20 years and a day after his tragic death.

Zichrono livracha. May his memory be a blessing.

On Peter Beinart’s Call for Limited BDS of West Bank Settlements

29 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism

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I wrote several weeks ago on this blog about the BDS movement and its essentially anti-Israel and anti-Semitic delegitimization back-drop. (see “There You Go Again – The BDS Movement and Israel Apartheid Week – The Truth Can Set You Free” – February 24, 2012).

Since then the journalist Peter Beinart has called for a boycott of West Bank settlement products in an op-ed piece in the NY Times on March 18 (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/opinion/to-save-israel-boycott-the-settlements.html?pagewanted=all).

While I agree with Beinart’s analysis that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, as opposed to democratic Israel, is non-democratic and often brutally oppressive on Palestinian residents of the West Bank, I do not agree that we should support a boycott of Israeli West Bank settlement products as doing so feeds anti-Israel sentiment and is fodder for anti-Semitic voices around the world.

Having said this, ad hominem attacks on all progressive Zionists (i.e. J Street, Israeli NGOs and human rights organizations) claiming that we all support boycotts of Israel is grossly inaccurate and unfair. Such attacks make sincere and intelligent debate and dialogue about what is ultimately in Israel’s own best security interests and long-term viability as a Jewish and democratic state much more difficult.

For the record, J Street, as articulated clearly by J Street’s President, Jeremy Ben Ami, in interviews preceding the recent J Street Conference in Washington, DC and reported widely in the American and Israeli press, said clearly that Beinart’s boycott call of west bank settlements is ill-advised. Beinart, by the way, was a featured and honored speaker at the J Street Conference. He is a long-time Zionist and supporter of Israel, and his voice is critically important whether one agrees with him or not.

Profile of a Right Wing Extremist – A Book Recommendation

21 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Book Recommendations

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Why do Right Wing Extremists (RWE) act the way they do? Why do they accept the flimsy excuses and obvious lies that their leaders proclaim and cling to them so dogmatically? Why do their leaders so often turn out to be crooks and hypocrites?

These are the questions that Psychology Professor Bob Altemeyer (University of Manitoba, Winnipeg) addresses in his book The Authoritarians (Amazon.com). While his profile of the RWE follower might appear obvious, Dr. Altemeyer’s insights come after years of research.

He says that RWEs are highly submissive to the established, legitimate authorities in their society, highly aggressive in the name of their authorities to those who are outside their group, highly conventional, far more afraid than those in the general population, and less concerned about process and reasoning because the conclusion, as defined by the leader(s), is the end game. Facts that contradict the leader’s vision are discounted as irrelevant. The leader’s Truth is simple and clear.

High RWEs see the world in terms of in-groups and out-groups, are highly loyal to the in-group, and more ethnocentric than the general population. They believe, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” and if members question the group’s leaders and beliefs the questioners can quickly become regarded as traitors.

High RWEs are dogmatic and stubborn. They think in black and white terms, are relatively unchangeable, and are possessed of an unjustified certainty.

Religious fundamentalists score high on Altemeyer’s RWA scale and mix easily with the authoritarian personality. Such fundamentalists glean little purpose and joy in the exploration and discovery of new knowledge and ideas. They stand firm in their faith/beliefs, feel that they are in personal touch with the all-good Creator of the universe Who loves them and takes a special interest in them, and are certain that they will enjoy eternal happiness. In America they say, “Our country should always be a Christian country, and other beliefs should be ignored in our public institutions… All people may be entitled to their own religious beliefs, but I don’t want to associate with people whose views are quite different from my own.”

Professor Altemeyer surveyed RWA lawmakers in 50 state legislators to determine their approach to governing and policy, and received 682 responses from Democrats and 549 from Republicans. Though high RWAs tended to be mostly Republican conservatives, there were some Democrats who fit the profile.

High RWA legislators supported conservative economic policies, and rejected a law to raise the income tax rate for the rich and lower it for the poor. They held a much higher degree of racial and ethnic prejudice than low RWAs, opposed a law requiring affirmative action in state hiring, favored capital punishment, opposed gun control laws, favored a law giving police fewer restrictive rules regarding wiretapping, search-and-seizure and interrogation methods, favored a law requiring Christian religious instruction in public schools, did not think that wife abuse was a serious issue, favored restrictions on abortion, favored a law restricting anti-war protests, and opposed a law extending equal rights to homosexuals in housing and employment.

Dr. Altemeyer noted that fear exacerbates latent right wing extremist and authoritarian tendencies and brings them mightily to the fore.

And so, what do we do about this?

Dr. Altemeyer suggests five strategies: [1] While protecting ourselves from legitimate threats is necessary, we should avoid stoking the embers of fear to unjustifiable levels; [2] We need to eschew self-righteous posturing. [3] We should resist ethnocentric self-justification and denial of the legitimacy of the “other.” [4] We should teach our children to question all authority while at the same time noting that authority legitimately granted to institutions necessary for the perpetuation of democracy and to duly elected leaders or properly appointed officials should be respected and supported. [5] We should do everything we can to educate our people to think so that they will not be taken for suckers and susceptible in the hands of charismatic and dogmatic extremist leaders.

The upcoming US presidential election has already brought the RWEs into the public eye in a big way. RWAs are also operating in Israel, the Arab/Islamic world and Europe.

Dr. Altemeyer has done us a service with this study, and I recommend it.

 

The Revolutionary Impact of the Technology Explosion Explained!!!!!

20 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life

≈ 1 Comment

Barcelona Media, an interdisciplinary center of research and innovation, hosted the Norman Lear USC Annenberg Center director Marty Kaplan to speak at its 10th anniversary celebration on March 6, 2012.

A disclaimer – Marty is a dear friend, but I was under no obligation to post his talk – I offer it to you because it is that good!

Marty’s talk is titled “From Attention to Engagement: The Transformation of the Content Industry.”

Consider the following:

Today there are 600 channels, 175 million active internet sites, 200 million blogs, 845 million users of Face Book, 300 million users of twitter, 2 billion videos streamed on Netflix, and 800 million viewers/month on YouTube. None of this had been invented 7 and 8 years ago.

The use of information is more pervasive and intrusive than ever before. Every time we swipe a credit card, record on our DVRs, use our Target, Ralphs, or other credit card or ID, use our cell phones, visit an internet site, etc. etc. etc. that information is available to marketers, politicians, entertainment companies whether we like it or not.

Marty is brilliantly comprehensive in explaining not only the phenomena of what has occurred but the impact it has made on our lives, politics and every other dimension of contemporary life. I highly recommend watching his 54 minute video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvTj5y9voSw

For those with less time, here is a skimmable pdf:  http://www.learcenter.org/pdf/Barcelona2012.pdf