Martin Luther King had some insightful things to say about power:
We haven't got it right yet. Andrew Nikiforuk writes:
And we in Canada suffer from the same illness:
Many have said that we are at an inflection point. But what, exactly, is it all about? It's about more than police violence. It's about more than racism. It's about how power is bestowed and how it is exercised.
The pandemic has caused great hardship. But it has provided moral clarity. Ultimately, the question we face is: Do we see what we must do? Or will we roll over and go back to sleep?
Image: Smithsonian Magazine
“It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change.”
“Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic.”
We haven't got it right yet. Andrew Nikiforuk writes:
The shameless abuse of power by those that hold power, has never left us.
The ruling class of the United States increasingly exercises immoral power and has abandoned the people, as failing governments inevitably do. An infantile and immoral president, whose father rallied with the Ku Klux Klan, daily illustrates how reckless and abusive power can be. In the shadow of the president’s bullying. the media can’t even ask the right question. How can a narcissist love any other American but the infant-in-chief?
And we in Canada suffer from the same illness:
Canadians, inhabitants of a colonial society in widespread denial about racism, watch like spectators at a car crash as the protests spring from city to city.
The colonials forget that 30 per cent of the young men in our prisons are Indigenous. They represent five per cent of the nation’s population.
Our historical dementia is American in scale. Just weeks before the pandemic, Canada’s divisions displayed themselves as protests shut down rail traffic over racial injustice and the use of militarized police.
Many have said that we are at an inflection point. But what, exactly, is it all about? It's about more than police violence. It's about more than racism. It's about how power is bestowed and how it is exercised.
The pandemic has caused great hardship. But it has provided moral clarity. Ultimately, the question we face is: Do we see what we must do? Or will we roll over and go back to sleep?
Image: Smithsonian Magazine
4 comments:
Many, many uncomfortable questions have been raised during the latest episodes of blatant racism, Owen, but as we are beginning to better appreciate, those overt and ugly events are merely manifestations of a far deeper, systemic poison. Surely, it is incumbent upon all of us to learn as much as possible, look fully into our own hearts, and unflinchingly confront what we discover there.
There are lots of things we choose to ignore, Lorne. But we can no longer ignore what is deeply wrong -- and has been wrong for a long time.
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.
John Ruskin
Simpler said .. 'Walk In Beauty'
from the Hopi & Navajo
Thanks for these, sal. Precisely.
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