Here’s an interview posted last week by Rob Kall on OpEdNews, where Rob is the editor in chief and where I’m now serving as a senior editor. The exchange took place at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic. As you’ll see, I’m speaking from my basement office in our home in Westport, Connecticut. (I’m thinking that I should do something to make the venue seem less like a basement. . .) Anyway, it’s the third time Rob has had me on his show.
Tag: OpEdNews
My Confusion & Fear of Walking on Water
Readings for 19th Sunday in ordinary time: I KINGS 19: 9A, 11-13A; PSALMS 85: 9-14; ROMANS 9: 1-5; MATTHEW 14: 22-23
In today’s Gospel, we hear Matthew’s iconic account of Yeshua walking on water – and of his invitation to Peter to follow the Master’s example.
The story is relevant to our times filled as they are with turbulence, polarization, and uncertainty. Those were the disturbing characteristics of Yeshua’s time as well – and of Matthew’s early church. In both contexts, there was turbulence everywhere. But despite it all, the early followers of Yeshua were asked to do the impossible – to walk on water themselves.
Before I get to what that might mean, here’s a reminder of how our own tempestuous times mirror those of Yeshua and Matthew.
My Own Confusion
If the truth be told, I must admit that I hardly know what to think anymore. The polarizing spirit of the day has me pretty upset. I can barely listen to the news each day. And the mere images of the politicians I have come to despise cause my stomach to churn. I can’t stand to hear their voices – or those of their ever-harsher critics. And besides that, I see no alternatives. (How much better is Joe Biden than Donald Trump?)
However, the immediate cause of my upset and confusion is the video I posted here last week – an interview by Jason Dean of Sacha Stone, the founder of the International Tribunal for Natural Justice. It generated a lot of controversy when it appeared on OpEdNews on Thursday.
Subsequently, a whole ZOOM meeting of the site’s editors, contributors, and readers had everyone arguing about the interview’s truth claims. Is the coronavirus a pandemic or a “plandemic?” Does wearing a facemask make sense? There was wide disagreement during the call.
Those questions and emotions generated by the video were rooted in the polarizing figure of Sacha Stone himself. He’s charismatic, articulate, extremely outspoken, and given, I fear, to hyperbole. On the one hand, he is deeply spiritual and reflective of the best of the mystical traditions shared by all the world’s great faiths. His passionate concern about and energetic action against the trafficking of children for pedophilic purposes is unmistakable and genuine.
On the other hand, he somewhat off-puttingly fills his discourse with references to evil, Satanic cults, the deep state, and to ruling class rituals devoted to drinking the blood of fear-adrenalized two and three-year-olds.
Obviously, then Stone himself is controversial. He illustrated, I said, the difficulty of classifying people today on the basis of the traditional categories of “left” and “right,” liberal and conservative.
For instance, he is a supporter of President Trump. But he has long despised, he says, all politicians as liars and sell-outs to the rich 1% that govern our nation through the lawmakers they have long since bought and sold. Nonetheless, Stone sees Trump as one of the two modern-era U.S. presidents of true human worth. The other one? John F. Kennedy.
In all of this, Stone finds prominent support in a former CIA operative, Robert David Steele. Steele was described by one OEN ZOOM call participant who knows Steele well, has corresponded with him, and has interviewed him formally as “a brilliant guy.” In fact, as an elite insider, Steele not only backs Stone’s claims about cults and blood, he serves as Commissioner and Chief Counsel on Stone’s International Tribunal for Natural Justice. Steele says 22,000 children are disappeared each day for purposes of pedophilia and employment in those blood rituals.
Is all of that disturbing and confusing enough for you? It’s almost more than I can bear. It has my head spinning with questions I thought resolved long ago about Trump, his portrayal in the media, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Even more seriously, it makes me wonder if our world is indeed controlled by sexual perverts who seem (in Stone’s words) “soulless” and as if they were aliens from another planet.
My only hope is that despite Steele’s endorsement, Stone’s claims about trafficked children are false or exaggerated. Failing that, my hope is that the truth of Stone’s accusations will all unmistakably come to light in the context of the explosive tip-of-the-iceberg saga of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Such revelation has world revolutionary potential.
Yeshua’s & Matthew’s Confusion
In the context of this Sunday homily, my thoughts about national and personal upset and about revolutionary solutions return me to the social and political circumstances of Yeshua’s own day and of the Gospel writer, Matthew some fifty years later. Both contexts were no less turbulent than our own. As a matter of fact, they were even more so.
Yeshua, of course, lived under Roman occupation. As a good Jew, he surely hated that. The four Gospels are filled with indications of his antipathy towards Rome. However, as a reformer of Judaism, the Master was even more upset about the collaboration between Rome and the Temple Establishment’s scribes and priests. In his estimation, they were even worse sell-outs than our own presidents, congresspeople, judges, media, police, and military.
I’m sure that Yeshua along with his inner circle and his poor and oppressed audiences hardly knew what to think.
The same was true for Matthew’s audience. More than fifty years after Yeshua’s death, tensions with Rome had exploded just as Yeshua had predicted they would. In the year 70, Rome had finally punished Jerusalem’s Jews for their insubordination. In fact, the genocidal Romans had attacked and brutally destroyed the Holy City of Jerusalem, killed more than a million of its inhabitants (including the entire leadership of the emergent Christian community) and razed its temple to the ground. Fifteen or 20 years later, when Matthew wrote his Gospel, his community was still reeling from that defining act of devastation.
It’s in that context that Matthew spins his iconic story of Yeshua walking on water.
The story goes that following Yeshua’s feeding of the 5000 (last week’s Gospel focus), Yeshua forces the apostles to get into their boat and row to the other side. [The text says, “Yeshua made (emphasis added) the disciples get into a boat and precede him to the other side.” Perhaps these experienced fishermen (as opposed to the land lubber, Yeshua) saw a storm was coming and were reluctant to set sail despite Yeshua’s urgings.] In any case, a storm does come up and the apostles fear they are all about to drown. You can imagine their cries for help.
Then they see a figure walking on the water in the midst of high threatening waves. At first, they think it’s a ghost. Then they realize that it’s Yeshua. He’s walking on the raging waters.
Peter, ever the impetuous leader of the apostles, doubts what he sees. So, he says “Prove to me that it’s you, Yeshua; let me walk on the waves just as you’re doing.” Yeshua says, “Join me then over here then.” So, Peter gets out of the boat and, like his teacher actually walks on water for a few steps.
Then, despite the evidence, he begins to doubt. And as he does so, he starts sinking below the water line. “Save me, Lord!” he cries out again. Yeshua stretches out his hand and saves Peter. Then he asks, “Where’s your faith? Why is it so weak? Why did you doubt?”
Of course, this whole story (like last week’s “Loaves and Fishes”) is one of the dramatic parables Matthew composed. If we get caught up in wondering whether we’re expected to believe that someone actually walked on water, we’ll miss the point of this powerful tale. It’s about Yeshua’s followers doing the unexpected and irrational in the midst of the seriously threatening crises life forces upon us.
You see, Matthew’s Jewish audience shared the belief du jour that the sea was inhabited by dangerous monsters – Leviathan being the most fearful. And courageously walking on water was a dramatic way of expressing what Matthew’s community believed about Jesus, viz. that he embodied the courage and power to do the completely unexpected in the midst of crisis and subdue the most threatening forces imaginable – even the most lethal they could think of, the Roman Empire.
Yeshua’s invitation to Peter communicates the truth that all of us have the power to confront monsters if we’ll just find the courage to leave safety concerns behind even in the most threatening conditions, to confront life’s monsters, and join Yeshua in the midst of its upheavals.
Problem is: we easily lose faith and courage. As a result, we’re overcome by life’s surging waves and by the monsters we imagine are lurking underneath.
Conclusion
So, what does it mean to confront today’s angry waters and invisible monsters. What are we to believe before those who tell us that everything’s fake, there is no truth, and that the world is run by leviathan beasts hiding below the waves boiling all around us? What are we to think for instance, when the police and military we were taught to trust, betray us utterly? What do we make of the fact that there are no leaders we can follow – when we fear that talking heads, pundits, and even the spiritually astute are only sowing confusion, spin, falsehood and doubt? What’s entailed in stretching out our hand towards our Great Teacher inviting us to walk on water and ignore the threatening confusion and fear engendered by our uncertain times dwarfed by those he himself and his followers endured?
Frankly, I’m not sure. As I said, I remain more confused than ever.
However, I do think that walking on water today means desperately grasping Yeshua’s hand in the sense of getting back to the basics of our Great Master’s message about the Kingdom of God. That’s the anchor for many of us. He told us that despite all appearances to the contrary – despite the engulfing waves:
- We humans are not truly in charge. Life Itself is working things out in an evolutionary pattern that is beyond any of our thought categories (Matthew 6:25).
- A New Era is in the process of birthing – a new heaven and a new earth is about to dawn (Matthew 3:2, 4:17; Mark 1:15).
- In that order, empires of all kinds (including our own) are doomed (See the entire Book of Revelation).
- The new heaven and earth are destined for everyone – not merely for the 1% (Luke 4: 14-22).
- In fact, the present reality will be turned upside down. Those now considered “first” will be last (Matthew 20:16).
- The dawning Kingdom will prioritize the needs of widows, orphans, immigrants, the poor and the oppressed.
- It will be governed by a politics of love (not fear or hate).
- There, the identity of those now despised (the poor, hungry, thirsty, houseless, naked and imprisoned) will be revealed as embodying Yeshua himself (Matthew 25: 40-45).
Embracing those truths promises to save us from being overwhelmed and drowned. No matter what the “informed” or “experts” might say, living by those convictions represents what it means to walk on water in these uncertain times.
Do the Terms “Left” & “Right” Still Have Meaning? The Case of Sacha Stone
At last week’s ZOOM meeting of OpEdNews contributors, editor-in-chief, Rob Kall, noted that some people have questioned the continued relevance of the terms “left” and “right” to designate positions on the political spectrum. Rob asked, have those categories outlived their usefulness?
Appearing to be in accord with Rob, one ZOOM contributor recalled that even Ralph Nader seemed to agree that the terms no longer serve. According to Nader, “left” and “right” classifications even impede concerted action for meaningful political reform by polarizing debaters and blinding them to the areas of agreement that they share.
All of that took on high relevance for me, when I came across Jason Dean’s YouTube interview of Sacha Stone.
Stone is a Zimbabwean blogger, activist and founder of the NewEarth Project whose purpose is to “create a new way of conscious living.” His International Tribunal for Natural Justice focuses on human trafficking and child sex abuse. Stone is also a close colleague and collaborator with CIA whistleblower Robert David Steele.
In Dean’s hour-long, wide-ranging interview, Stone’s dynamic, articulate and intriguingly faith-centered statements exemplified a thinker one would be hard pressed to classify. I finished wondering whether he was left, right, conservative, liberal, radical, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Trumpian, apolitical, Christian, New Age, anti-Catholic, ecumenically religious, irreligious, or simply an anti-vaxxer and anti-mask provocateur (both of which he certainly was).
In any case, however, Stone came across as a potential ally and thought leader that someone like me (a progressive left-wing activist and spiritually based critic of the corporate establishment) could learn from and work with. And this despite Stone’s many initially questionable assertions including his description of Donald Trump as “absolutely perfect.”
So, I suggested that at the following week’s ZOOM meeting, we might discuss the Stone interview. Rob agreed. The interview’s highlights follow.
A Hippie or Libertarian?
Stone began with a description of the world’s ruling class as completely degenerate. And that included the leaders of national states, financiers, and religious establishments like the Catholic Church with its corrupt popes and hierarchy. (Stone was particularly hard on the Jesuits and the Catholic practice of sealing off women in convents and sending young, innocent boys to seminaries.) All of those institutions, along with their secret intelligence agencies (especially the CIA, Mossad, mi6, etc.) represent the world’s obscenely rich who comprise no more than 10% of its population.
Those positions seem “left,” don’t they? But there was more.
The hell of it is, Stone continued, that the policies of such miscreants prevent humans not only from meeting their physical needs. Their unquestionable dogmas and programs, rules and regulations also make it impossible for most of us to realize our human vocation as self-determinative creators of community, beauty, meaning and art.
And so, Big Pharma has us consuming poisons instead of respecting our bodies’ own natural healing processes. Big Ag leaves little alternative to ingesting similarly poisoned non-foods in place of our growing gardens and eating locally and only what is good for human health. Official state educational institutions indoctrinate all of us into thinking that what’s natural is harmful, while artificially produced products are preferable.
Doesn’t all of that sound like a back-to-nature hippie and home schooler? Or maybe Stone’s a libertarian.
The applicability of that latter category came through in his extremely strong positions on vaccines and facemasks during the present COVID-19 pandemic, as well as on taxes and on signing official certificates:
- Never allow authorities to vaccinate you or your children with serums whose media of transmission are not only harmful but will enable our watchers to even more efficiently track our every move. (In fact, our keepers’ ultimate goal is to similarly mark for identification and tracking every single creature on earth – for purposes of profit and control.)
- Never wear a face mask, he emphasized. Don’t purchase anything from any store requiring masking. Show your outrage and make sure shop owners know why.
- Never sign anything without fully appreciating the meaning of your mark. It’s a sign that you approve of the transaction in question. So many of them are actually questionable at the very least.
- Birth certificates are an abomination – a transfer of your offspring’s future into the hands of the state. And death certificates are only intended to establish actuarial tables for rapacious insurance companies.
- Yes, pay sales taxes. But don’t fill out those 1040s. They are used for purposes no conscientious human being can approve.
So, that’s it maybe. Perhaps Sacha Stone is a libertarian. After all, he admits admiring Ron Paul.
A Trump Supporter?
But maybe not. . . Further statements made him sound like a white evangelical Republican. Get ready: this is where Stone’s designation of DJT as “absolutely perfect” comes in.
Echoing those evangelicals, Sacha Stone affirms that Donald Trump is God’s anointed. He’s doing God’s work, Stone says, through executive orders whose intention is to eliminate the human trafficking that is the focus of Stone’s activism and that he claims represents the very heart of the international economic system. No one knows about those executive orders, Stone said.
Neither has anyone else in government dared to question the foundation of U.S. policy since 9/11/2001. On that very day, Trump alone recognized what happened and immediately said so on camera. He said, “That was a controlled demolition, folks. I know; I’ve built skyscrapers.” In Stone’s words, Trump was the first living soul in America to make that call.
Moreover, Trump has done what no president had done before him – he has reached out in friendship to designated enemies like North Korea, Russia, and China. And you know what? For those heroic acts on behalf of world peace, Mr. Trump has been roundly vilified by the mainstream media, and by TV pundits from MSNBC to Fox, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal!
Trump is doing God’s work, Stone insists. He’s not only signing those executive orders that are saving children’s lives. He’s also laying the groundwork for the complete collapse of the entire system by embodying and thus exposing its unreality, deception and unviability.
And it’s working. All of our false idols: Hollywood, academia, the central banking cabal, along with every organ of government are crumbling before our eyes. That is by definition the grace of God. Good Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and other people of faith and no faith at all should be applauding Mr. Trump, rather than attacking him.
Stone’s Spiritual Grounding
Say what? Trump is God’s anointed? But doesn’t he embody government corruption, lies and deception? Isn’t he mistreating children at our southern border? Isn’t he himself money-driven, corrupt and an inveterate liar?
Despite his earlier statements, Stone seems to agree — in a backhanded sort of way.
It’s here that his self-confessed “inverted logic” and deep spirituality enter the picture – all within the context of COVID-19. Here’s Stone’s line of reasoning:
- We are now living at the greatest moment of civilization.
- In this unique context, COVID-19 is actually a Godsend – but not in the sense that it was authored by the Universal Mind that presides over everything that is.
- Instead, the human soul is forged within that Mind’s dispensation of freedom that allows us to self-harm and then self-heal through our own action — to absolve and resurrect ourselves.
- In this quadrant of the omniverse, there are no rules; only karma and dharma, the laws of cause and effect – what we sow, we reap.
- In the midst of the pandemonium we ourselves have caused, each of us and the entire human community must forge our souls like nuggets of coal pressured into diamonds by our self-inflicted sorrow, pain and hurt which has made us both the poisoner and the poisoned. That’s what causes the Christed light suddenly to emerge.
- At this moment of evolution – through our manufacture of pathogens, through the machinations of the pharmaceutical and agrochemical food system, we are experiencing an “orchestra of evil.” But we must remember that it is our orchestra; and we are the conductors.
- Collectively and at the civilization level, we have reached a fulmination point – where it’s time to absolve all the poisoning at every level.
- A small group of people consciously and intentionally standing in that flame can lift the entire human race. The spark we stubbornly hang on to will eviscerate the now-prevailing darkness. It is only a holographic projection that of itself has no soul – no Christed light.
- The bottom line is that we all must practice right action and pure truth in our own lives.
- We must live in the NOW, because that is all we have. It is always perfect – the point of perfection, absolution and forgiveness, transcendence, and transmutation. “It’s when you choose to forgive the trespass against you, to extend the hand of friendship, to build that bridge and be the mender of broken things in this world.”
- All of us must live in that space.
It is Sacha Stone’s emphasis on the perfection of the NOW that provides the key for his judgment about Donald Trump’s own perfection. Since the NOW is all we have, and since it is always perfect calling us to absolution, forgiveness, transcendence, and transmutation, everything within that moment (including Mr. Trump) is calling us to create the world we all desire – a world of personal responsibility, beauty, art, and love.
Conclusion
So, what is Sacha Stone? Do the categories of “left” and “right” apply to him? And even though he supports Donald Trump, is an anti-vaxxer and rages against facemasks in the midst of a pandemic, can “progressives” dialog with a person like that?
Indeed, is Stone correct that in this extraordinary moment in our personal and collective histories, we are called to at least suspend our judgments, to recognize common ground, and join with brothers and sisters on the “right” to bring down our common deceivers and exploiters?
Join with us next Saturday from 8:00 to 9:30 on ZOOM to discuss it all. (Write to OEN editor-in-chief, Rob Kall at rob at opednews.com and put OEN ZOOM Meeting in the subject heading and he will provide the link.)
America’s “Les Miz” Moment: What’s Really Happening?
I’ve participated in two unrelated Zoom groups in the past couple of weeks where the same pair of probing questions were asked: What’s Really Happening? And What about looting?
One group was composed mostly of editorial board members of the online publication, OpEdNews (OEN). The other was a “Mindfulness Dialog” meeting in my local faith community, the Talmadge Hill Community Church here in Westport Connecticut.
Of course, the shared questions were prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic in conjunction with the general uprising throughout the country (and world) incited by the brutal police murder of yet another unarmed African American, George Floyd.
In the OEN meeting, the spirit behind the discussion searched for invisible powers (perhaps Deep State?) that have us all under house arrest and why? Who’s benefitting from all this was the underlying theme. Cui bono? And why the general rebellion on a scale that Americans haven’t seen since 1968?
My church group took another tack. There, the questions became what is Life Itself teaching us by the whole process – the pandemic, the uprising, and the violence? What is the Great Inter-Being that some of us call “God” asking us to learn and transform?
As I see it, the framings of both meetings were inseparable. It’s true that Mother Inter-Being is teaching us something. But she’s also calling us to think critically and structurally precisely about what bell hooks has described as the “white supremacist capitalist imperialist patriarchy.” That whole interlocking system is firmly based on violence and looting on a gargantuan scale that makes burning buildings and flaming police vehicles insignificant by comparison.
Pandemic Evolution
Begin with the pandemic. As seen by my church group (and by senior OEN editor, Meryl Ann Butler) it’s a virus and accordingly represents an indispensable part of the evolutionary process directly related to life’s fundamental progressions.
This virus’ name is “corona,” the Latin word for crown. In metaphysical perspective, its message is therefore addressed to our minds where the crown of humanity currently lies so uneasily. “Corona” is also connected with the heart, as in the adjective “coronary.” In this perspective then, the message of the Great Cosmic Mother is addressed to both heart and mind.
And what might she be communicating at such profound levels? Could it be that the way of life we post-moderns have chosen remains at odds with those she has established? That wouldn’t be surprising, given that it’s consistent with the Natural World’s other insistent warnings that humans have chosen largely to ignore. These include human-induced climate chaos, droughts, floods, devastating forest conflagrations, rising sea levels, species extinctions, vanishing topsoil, waste disposal problems, atmospheric pollution, and the human suffering associated with each of those elements. Supported by climate scientists across the planet, desperate Cassandras of every stripe – from Pope Francis and the Dali Lama to Greta Thunberg – have foretold inevitable disaster.
Now it’s happening. The difference this time is that the coronavirus has secured the attention of the entire world all at the same time! Unmistakably, we’re all being told again that the dominant civilization is on the wrong evolutionary track.
Revolt vs. Neoliberalism
That consciousness had already sunk in across the world well before the advent of COVID-19. Remember, it was entirely in flames at the conclusion of 2019.
Recall the inferno of rebellion. Demonstrations and street riots had erupted in Hong Kong, Warsaw, Budapest, Istanbul and Moscow. Angry masses protested in Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. Similar phenomena surfaced in Venezuela, Ecuador, Mexico, and Bolivia. Then there were the Yellow Vests in France, and Brexit in Great Britain, and recurring protests in Greece. The list of hot spots also included Algeria, Argentina, Egypt, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Now, with the murder of George Floyd, the worldwide rebellion has finally reached the shores of the United States. Like the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor in 2010, like the subway fare hike in Chile, the police murder of George Floyd put a torch to the tinder of discontent that’s long been lying around awaiting the first incendiary spark.
The kindling in question included the frustrations of a nation-wide lockdown that has subjected everyone to a strain of cabin fever even more contagious than the coronavirus itself. The lockdown in turn caused the greatest economic downturn since the onset of the Great Depression more than 85 years ago. The resulting unemployment surged towards 1933 levels of 25%, with twice that number unemployed in black and brown communities. Breadlines had sprung up everywhere, and people experienced food scarcity and hunger in a country where even before the lockdown 40 million Americans were described as food insecure.
Government response to the crisis proved even more frustrating. Even in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, it was constitutionally unable to reform its healthcare system. Instead it awarded generous bailouts to the already wealthy and crumbs (if anything) for the working classes. Jeff Bezos, the richest man on the planet, had his income rise by 20 to 30 billion in the first two months of the lockdown. Meanwhile, many workers saw their jobs disappear – some of them permanently.
Those paying attention knew it didn’t have to be that way. As economist Richard Wolff points out for instance, pre-crisis unemployment in Germany stood at 5%. Currently, the rate is 6%. That’s because (thanks to strong labor unions and powerful socialist parties) corporate bailouts there were conditioned on employers agreeing not to fire their workers. As part of the same package, the German government covered up to 80% of the workers’ income. It was similar in France. By contrast, here in the United States there were no such preconditions for the nation’s largest employers. Bezos and others were given carte blanche relief. Their income soared, while pink-slipped workers often wondered where their family’s next meal would come from.
The convergence of pandemic, lockdown, unemployment, poverty, hunger and government’s impotent malfeasance confined working people to a pressure cooker that was bound to explode. Even if protestors were unaware of all its elements, even if they thought it was all about George Floyd and police brutality, there was really much more at work to send the cooker’s gauge beyond the red danger zone. Put otherwise: the explosion we’re witnessing represents an uprising, a rebellion, not mere police riots.
Les Misérables React
With all those pressures at work, it should not have surprised anyone if a small minority of protestors engaged in property destruction and looting. The reasons justifying (yes, justifying) the petty thievery, breaking of windows, burning of buildings, slashing of tires and throwing of stones should be obvious to everyone. Let me list just a few. They include the facts that:
- Charges of looting are highly suspect: Everyone knows that police and other official sources regularly employ agents provocateurs. As others have pointed out, it is virtually impossible to distinguish looters from officials masquerading as such for purposes of discrediting protestors in general.
- Property destruction is the American way: From official statements of “leaders” like Barack Obama, Donald Trump and various police chiefs, you’d think all of them were committed followers of Jesus, King, and Gandhi. You’d think they were all pacifists. On the contrary, our government’s official response to almost any international problem you care to name is that “all options are on the table.” And “all” means bombing, droning, sending in troops, killing on a massive scale, and even threatening nuclear war. Of course, every one of those options includes destruction of lives and property on massive and (in the case of nuclear weapons) total scales. So, it’s quite amusing to see government officials wringing their hands over broken windows and burning police cars.
- The rich have just looted our treasury: The CARES ACT’s immediate response to the coronavirus pandemic prioritized taxpayer-backed loans and tax breaks to the already rich. At the same time it neglected the pressing needs of the poorest among us (e.g. the homeless and undocumented) while offering crumbs to the rest of us. Some have described the measures as those of a fire department entering your burning home, forgetting about the fire and stealing your most valued possessions. That’s looting.
- In a context of lockdown, looting has been long expected: This is what I refer to as a “Les Miz Moment.” Recall that in Victor Hugo’s play, Jean Valjean is imprisoned, tortured, and hunted relentlessly for stealing a loaf of bread. Hungry desperate people do desperate things. Stealing food or a TV from behind a broken display window is less than nothing when compared with the stealing and looting that historically undergirds our country’s primitive wealth accumulation.
- Historically, our country’s economy is based on looting: It all began with genocidal looting of an entire hemisphere from Native Americans. Remember, African Americans are here in the first place because of the looting of millions of their very lives beginning in 1619. Mexicans had huge parts of their country snatched from them in 1848. And afterwards prosperous Mexican farmers saw whites routinely attack, destroy, and loot their property and homes with impunity. In 1921, white mobs in Tulsa, Oklahoma killed hundreds of African Americans as they burnt down the city’s prosperous “Black Wall Street.” The list of such outrages is long and bloody.
- It is a form of restitution: Looting represents a poor man’s largely unconscious reparation in a country that refuses to entertain the massive restoration that is systemically due our nation’s black and brown inhabitants.
- Looting works: The argument can be easily made that until windows are broken and property destroyed, no one pays attention to “peaceful protestors.” On this, please see the debate on the subject recently moderated by Glen Greenwald.
Conclusion
So, what’s going on?
The murder of George Floyd ignited tinder just waiting for some spark to set it aflame. Obviously, we’re witnessing a rebellion against police brutality particularly as aimed at poor black and brown citizens.
But OEN editors and contributors were also correct: the counter-rebellion involves nefarious forces associated with our government and its armed forces. It’s all part of a last-gasp defense of a quickly disintegrating neo-liberal economic system and the actual worldwide rebellion against its order.
Part of it too is a mostly unconscious, but nonetheless genuine cry for reparations for unaddressed longstanding grievances. And on an even larger (metaphysical) scale, the trouble in streets across the planet can be credibly seen as a desperate response to a message from that Great Interbeing some of us call “God.”
Regardless of what you might call it, we had all better listen and respond before it’s too late.
Doubling-Down on Not Voting
I recently wrote a piece here and for OpEdNews entitled “Why I Won’t Vote in November.” It evoked passionate response from readers I greatly respect. They saw it as conceding the reelection of Donald Trump. It was an exercise, I was told, in elitism. It ignored the plight of children in cages at our border as well as Trump’s mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis. It overlooked what should be the main goal of progressives – the defeat of Donald J. Trump at all costs.
My point however was that the goal of defeating Donald Trump is indeed not enough. It won’t cure what’s wrong in America. And that’s because it’s the entire system we live under that must be replaced. It’s entirely corrupted. Democracy has already been all but exterminated in our country. And I deceive myself if I think otherwise.
The whole system (from the executive office to the Congress to the Supreme Court) is anti-worker, anti-people, and pro-corporation. It must be allowed to fall and be replaced. More specifically, the nation’s voting system is corrupt beyond recall, Democratic candidates (like Biden) are perennially pathetic – only marginally different from the Republicans – and Joe Biden epitomizes the pathos and systemic failure as few have before him.
A Corrupt Voting System
Begin with the voting system.
They don’t even want us to vote! They’re quite clear about that. And I’m not just talking about the Republicans. No one – Republican or Democrat – is taking serious steps towards eliminating the Electoral College, instituting public funding of all campaigns, creating a voting holiday, establishing same-day voting registration, eliminating hackable voting machines, or turning over the electoral process to a bi-partisan centralized commission to eliminate gerrymandering and ensure that the same rules apply to every state. That’s how bad it is.
As a result of all that, voting has become a complete sham. It contradicts the received wisdom insisting that “every vote counts.” That’s a lie. Look at all the electoral shenanigans in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere. The whole point is to remove partisan-threatening voters from the rosters. No wonder fewer than 60% of eligible voters participate. Consciously or unconsciously, the dropouts know the system’s rigged. They have no dog in the fight.
And let’s be clear, it’s not the “elites” that aren’t voting. It’s the poor, minorities, and working classes who long ago came to the conclusion that their votes don’t matter. To begin with, their ballots might not be counted. But even if they are, those elected won’t attend to the concerns of wage workers, the unemployed, homeless and uninsured.
Still, our overseers (and others) want to shame the rest of us into voting, even when the “lesser of two evils” brings us the same tired polices that serve no one but themselves and their rich employers. What I’m saying is that despite those efforts at shaming, I more and more see the point of working-class non-voters. And if nothing fundamental changes, I’m going to join them.
Perennially Weak Candidates
As for the position of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that my not voting equals a vote for Donald Trump. . . How about huge VOTE that the DNC itself has cast for Trump by its absurd choice of yet another milk toast candidate – this one far weaker than their last? She couldn’t beat Trump; so, how can he? He’s weaker than Hillary, Gore, Kerry, Dukakis, or Mondale. And how did those centrists work out for us? No, it’s the Democratic Party that’s voting for Donald Trump. They love Republican policies. In fact, they’d rather have Trump than Bernie Sanders. They are champions of the status quo.
That’s shown by the fact that their “victors” like Clinton and Obama came to represent nothing more than Republican Lite. What disappointments both of them turned out to be! Big promises followed by the same neo-liberalism, the same trickle-down nonsense, the same wars, the same destruction of the planet. Despite Obama’s slogan, there was no hope, no change.
It all makes me wonder why the Democratic Party keeps giving us such uninspiring, self-defeating choices? That’s on them. It’s on them for giving us a candidate this time who, even in the midst of the present pandemic, insists that he’d veto Medicare for All – which the majority of Americans desperately need. He’s also like Trump in wanting us all to go back to work even if it means that many will die as a result – for the sake of the economy and Wall Street profits. And don’t even talk about his positions on the Green New Deal, free college tuition, forgiveness of debt, or Social Security.
The Case of Joe Biden
In fact, have you ever heard Mr. Biden offer a single defining policy initiative of any kind? Even one? I haven’t. And that’s because (Correct me if I’m wrong) he hasn’t given us any. His only claim is that he’s not Donald Trump. That’s it.
I’m asking then: do citizens deserve blame for perceiving that the fight is fixed in favor of the donor class of both parties? Both candidates are their champions not ours. So, are we blameworthy for realizing that we’ve seen this movie before? Should we be ashamed for demanding that Biden actually earn our votes – that he take action to convince voters that he’s worth voting for as someone other than a leering old man marginally nicer than the other imbecile?
In fact, Biden’s not that much better. Like Trump he’s a pathological liar. He’s also a worse mass murderer. Remember, Biden promoted the Iraq war. (It was no mistake. Anyone paying attention could see right through his justifications and those of Colin Powell.) That war has killed more than a million Iraqis. Even Trump hasn’t gone that far.
Moreover, the immigration policy Biden cooperated with was overseen by a president who quickly became known as the “Deporter-in-Chief.” Additionally, with the cooperation of the mass media, Biden has managed to evade addressing credible charges of sexual assault.
As I said, the system’s rigged. The Democratic Party is as bought-off as the Republicans. Neither the reigning system of political economy nor the Democratic Party is worth supporting. We’ve got to let them fall and be replaced. And the sooner we all realize that, the better.
Conclusion
Yes, I agree that it might make one feel heroic (in a quixotic sort of way) to pledge standing for hours in a driving rain to vote for a near corpse to save us all from Donald Trump. Still, those in soaking sneakers will surely know that their votes very literally might not count. And even if, by some miracle they do, voting for the geezer in question won’t significantly inhibit the inexorable process of climate change. Neither will it lessen the prospect of nuclear war. (After all, it was the Obama administration that decided to modernize the nuclear arsenal.) And it won’t bring us Medicare for All, forgiveness of student debt, or even guarantee the salvation of Social Security.
But you can bet it will mean millions, billions and trillions for the donor class.
Remember, our savior from Mr. Trump has promised those all-important constituents that “Nothing fundamental will change.” Take him at his word. What’s the point?
“A Summer with Freeman”: A Rollicking First Novel by Dan Geery
Dan Geery is a friend of mine who publishes regularly on OpEdNews. His first novel, A Summer with Freeman, is terrific book — so well written. Its sparkling and hilarious prose seemed like the work of a veteran novelist, not that of a first timer. The dialog is funny and realistic. And the whole story about fourteen-year-old Joey Simpson and his first summer with a new friend, fifteen-year-old Freddie Freeman, made me recall my own coming of age as I’m sure it does for most of Dan’s readers. This is movie-quality work.
Set in the 1950s, the book has all the elements most of us recall:
- Unhappiness at school
- Summers with time to do the unthinkable
- Building forts and get-aways from parents and younger siblings
- Experiencing bullying
- Trying to be tough, despite it all
- Overriding interests in comic books, girls and sex and early dabbling in cigarettes and liquor
- Fascination with cars and driving
- Key friendships with bigger, tougher, older, and wiser guys who were “wilder” and devil-may-care
- Early crushes and idealizations of their objects, who often turn out to be the opposite of what the crushes fancied
- General confusion before the mysteries of life
For me, the most unforgettable moments included:
- Narrow escapes from the local bully and his gang especially in a furious bike-get-away and a concluding showdown at the local swimming hole
- Freeman’s wild ride in the convertible he vengefully “borrowed” from the bully himself
- An encounter with a pretty, flirtatious waitress in the local diner
- Joey’s painful meetings with the women of his dreams, Maggie and Anabelle
- Joey and Freeman’s downing two bottles of gin in the woods
- Catholic Joey’s confession to an overly-inquisitive priest
I must admit that I once tried my hand at writing book-length fiction. And, according to my guide, Writing a Novel and Getting it Published, it transformed me into a successful novelist at least according to the book’s definition. It said a successful novelist is “any writer who has completed a project generally recognizable as a novel.” By those standards, yes: I made it. However, that’s where my success concluded. My novel turned out to be stodgy, moralistic, and filled with “telling” rather than “showing.”
Daniel Geery’s first novel, A Summer with Freeman, has none of that. It’s a rollicking read and an evocative entertaining tale that will have you smiling, if not laughing, from beginning to end.
I Join the Ys Men’s Club in Westport
This morning I attended my first meeting of Westport’s Ys Men’s Club here in our new hometown of Westport CT. I didn’t know what to expect. I was imagining a group of 10-20 men meeting in a church basement.
I was right about the basement part. We met in the Weston Congregational Church equivalent.
But my numbers were way off.
I discovered that the Ys Men’s Club here was founded 42 years ago. It is highly organized, and now has a local membership of over 400 seniors like me. About 250 were present for the meeting this morning.
It was standing room only because the guest speaker was Chris Brubeck, one of Dave Brubeck’s four sons. And, as I’ll tell you below, his presentation was delightful.
The meeting started at 9:00 with coffee and doughnuts. As I was consuming my decaf and half a chocolate doughnut, I met several members, including the membership chair of the club. One man I met told me that 15 years ago, he and his wife had made the same move as Peggy and I have just made. They moved to Westport to live next to their grandchildren and grow up with them. He said it was the best decision they had ever made. He assured me that it would be the same for me.
Everyone else I met had one first question: “What are you interested in?”
I had looked at the long list of club activities. And from them I selected golf and discussion current events as strong interests. I said I was moderately interested in a book club – depending on what the group might be reading.
When I informed the membership chair of my current events interests, he soon had me talking with the convener of that group. I was told it meets Mondays from 8:45-10:00 at a nearby seniors’ center. Next week, the convener said, they’ll be discussing Thomas Friedman’s NYT column on the Yellow Vest Movement in France.
That seemed especially providential, since I had just returned (last weekend) from France, where I devoted a lot of time to reading about and tracking down Gilet Jaunes. In fact, on my return, I published an article on them here on my blog, on OpEdNews, and as my monthly column in the Lexington Herald-Leader. So, I’m really looking forward to Monday’s meeting, where I hope to share some of those just-published thoughts. That will be a good way of breaking into this Ys Men’s club.
As for Chris Brubeck . . . He regaled us with stories of his father Dave, their family, and Chris’ own career.
He played a couple of base trombone solos for us and showed us the amazingly low notes he could hit with his instrument. Chris grew up in nearby Wilton. He studied with jazz and classical masters – including at Interlochen MI, the great summer music camp where Peggy and I had sent two of our children, and where last summer we saw the Glen Miller band and the Beachboys. The summer before last, we attended a Diana Ross concert there as well.
The highlight of Chris Brubeck’s presentation was a couple of performance tapes he shared with us. One was of a piece he had written for three violins – with each violinist playing a different music style. That was just amazing for a Suzuki parent like me to watch.
The best one, however, was of the celebration of his father’s career at the Kennedy Center just before Dave Brubeck died at the age of 91. President Obama and Michelle were in attendance. Chris told us that in the run-up to the event, Dave had asked that his four sons (each, of course, a great jazz musician in his own right) might play together at the event. Chris said that Dave (that’s how he referred to his father) was crestfallen when he was told “No, we just can’t do that.”
Well, those who made that refusal had other plans. They wanted to delight and surprise the Great Man. So, on the night in question, the Army jazz band, along with Herbie Hancock and other jazz stars did a stunning performance of “Take Five.” One after another three groups took up the theme. Then, as the piece de resistance, Brubeck’s sons were introduced. The old man was dumbfounded. When the curtain went up on his sons, he blurted out in surprise “Son of a b__tch!” Luckily, he was un-miked. But watching his lips form the words was both hilarious and charming.
The prospect of working and playing with Westport’s Ys Men is an unexpected bonus on top of the wonder of growing up here with my grandchildren.
God’s Gift Economy: Food w/o Overwork
Readings for 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Ex. 16:2-4, 12-15; Ps. 78:3-4, 23-24, 25, 54; Eph. 4:17, 20-24; Jn. 6:24-35
Allow me to set up this Sunday’s reflections with three items connected with the topic of over-work and wages. I believe all three are linked to today’s readings.
(1) Bonnie Ware, an Australian nurse working with Hospice International has written a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Nurse Ware worked in palliative care for 12 years. And during that time, she recognized an unmistakable pattern especially in dying men. As they talked of their past lives many of them expressed similar regrets. According to Ms. Ware, at least among men, the top death-bed regret was, “I wish I hadn’t spent so much time working.” They regretted not spending more time with family and doing the things that make life enjoyable and really worth living.
(2) There was an interesting article in The New York Times few years back. It was about happiness and its connection with money. The article was entitled something like “How Much Money Does It Take to Be Happy?”
What do you think the figure was? The Times article said that while everyone recognizes that money can’t buy happiness, levels of contentment stop increasing once households reach a level of $75,000. As incomes increase beyond that, more money and the consumption it allows do not actually make people more content.
That’s surprising, isn’t it? It suggests that six figure salaries and the incomes of millionaires and billionaires might in the end be rather pointless – and not worth protecting (as many of our politicians seem so hell-bent on doing). Am I correct?
(3) In 2012, I published an article in the on-line news source, OpEdNews. The piece was called “Thank God for the Jobs Crisis.” Calling on authors like Jeremy Rifkin, J.W. Smith, and Juliette Shor, I argued that replacing workers with robots is actually a good sign. It indicates that the promise of what used to be called the “Cybernetic Age” has finally come true. Computers and robots have taken over the job market to such an extent that the only way to solve the “jobs crisis” is to share the work. That means that none of us has to work that hard unless we want to. Thanks to the new technology, we could all share the work and put in four-hour days or three-day weeks. Alternatively, we could work for only six months a year, or every other year and still make a living wage. We could retire at 40. And this would be possible world-wide.
We’d pay for all of this by cutting back the military budget 60% and by taxing the rich and corporations. Remember the 91% top-level tax bracket that was in place in the United States following World War II? We could reinstate that, I said. We could boldly restructure the economy and share the wealth that is there in abundance.
__________
Please hold those thoughts if you will. They are about spending too much time working to reach income levels that don’t really make us any happier, and about the possibility of a whole new way of life that disconnects consumption from the type of employment many of us resent.
All three of those considerations turn out to be closely connected with this Sunday’s liturgical readings. All three readings are about God’s economy of gift and abundance – unbelievable gift and abundance with no work required. The readings are about work, consumption and the power that faith supplies to break away from overwork, competition, scarcity, and fear that have most of us spending too much time on the job.
Consider that first reading. The Israelites have just been liberated from Egypt. It was an economy where God’s People were even more literally enslaved by their work than we are. (Can you imagine how many Hebrew slaves died with regrets about working too much?) But their slave labor, unsatisfying as it was, at least provided food.
In fact, the Hebrews were so bound to Egypt’s enslaving economy that they could hardly conceive a reality outside it. Who would feed them now that they were without work? At least they had something to eat in Egypt. The Pharaoh ran a tight ship there but put food on their tables. But who, after all, was this rebel leader, Moses? How would he feed them out there? Today’s Exodus reading says that the Hebrews actually resented Moses and his “false promise” of a better life.
And the story’s response? Through the provision of manna, God suggests the new order God has in mind not only for Israel, but for all of humanity. Unbelievably, God rains bread down on the people. No work needed. The main requirement: don’t take more than you need. Don’t hoard.
It was like Jesus’ desert feeding of 5000 in last week’s readings. The message: everybody deserves food whether they can pay for it or not, whether or not they work, whether or not they want to work. There will be enough for all, as long as no one takes more than he needs. (Actually, Gandhi said something like that: “There is enough in the world,” he said, “to satisfy everyone’s need, but not to satisfy everyone’s greed.”)
When you heard my proposal this morning about sharing the work, did you react like the Hebrews? “Yeah, right,” you might have thought. “When’s that gonna happen?” I mean, we find it almost impossible to break out of the mindset of overwork. We can hardly allow ourselves to imagine that God is so generous that overwork is not required to enjoy the good life. We can’t conceive of what we’d do if our needs were met without enslaving ourselves to those who would convince us that scarcity rather than plenty and abundance represent God’s way – God’s will for us.
Consider today’s second reading as well – still in the context of our work lives. There Paul tells the Christian community at Ephesus that the lives of those without faith are (in Paul’s words) “futile.” That’s because they are deceived by what Paul terms “desires” for more than they need. Those desires, Paul implies, always make promises beyond their capacity to deliver.
I don’t care what The New York Times says, the better off among us might tell themselves, $75,000 per household is not enough. Others say neither is a million or a billion. More is always needed. But, Paul points out, despite what our unbelieving culture tells us, beyond the point of satisfying basic needs, more actually adds little to our happiness. In fact, it can greatly increase unhappiness. It seems The New York Times agrees.
Such considerations have relevance to today’s political scene. So-called “experts” argue that there are not enough resources to feed, clothe, house, and cure the earth’s seven billion people. But, of course, that’s not true. Remember my reference last week to the U.N. study that said that a mere 4% tax on the world’s richest 225 men (They are men almost without exception) could meet all those needs.
What if $100,000 or even a million were set as the highest income anyone was allowed to earn in a single year? If the Times is correct, no one would be any unhappier for it. And think of the resources that would be released to enrich the lives of those for whom today’s cybernetic economy can’t supply jobs. (Keep that in mind the next time you hear a politician resisting tax increases on the world’s richest.)
For Paul, it’s a matter of faith – yes even questions of taxation, I’d say. (And that brings us to that third point about a new future of abundance with greatly reduced hours in the workplace.) We used to believe in the world’s promise of unlimited more, Paul reminds his readers. But that was our old self listening. The New Self which we’ve adopted through faith in Jesus has learned God’s way from the Master not to mention Moses and the manna in the desert. And of course, God’s way is the way of the Kingdom – a world with room for everyone. That’s what Paul tells us.
The gospel of today’s liturgy completely supports Paul’s point. John the Evangelist has Jesus say “Don’t work for bread that perishes. Work for imperishable bread – those relationships with family and friends, time with your spouse and kids, the fruits of creative self-expression in tune with your unique gifts,” Work for those, Paul suggests, and avoid the “top five regrets of the dying.”
Don’t we all wish we could do that? However, to do so we must ignore that old self Paul refers to, and make room for the New Self to emerge. And what a struggle that is! It means actually believing that there is a Giver who will provide for us the way the Great Provider did in the desert with Moses and in the desert with Jesus when he fed the 5000.
Do we really believe there is such a Provider? Think about it in the context of work, deathbed regrets, money’s inability to make us happy, and structural unemployment connected to the digital revolution. What are the implications of that belief for our personal, familial, political and work lives? (Discussion follows.)
My Interview on Rob Kall’s “Bottom-Up” Podcast/Radio Program
Press Release: The Critical Thinking Manual Progressive Teachers Have Been Waiting For: My New Book
Mike Rivage-Seul has just published the book progressive teachers have been waiting for to ground their post-secondary courses on critical thinking. Available on April 17th from Peter Lang Publishing, the book is called The Magic Glasses of Critical Thinking: seeing through alternative fact and fake news.
Rivage-Seul is an emeritus professor of peace and social justice studies at Berea College in Kentucky, where he taught for more than 40 years. He publishes a monthly column in the Lexington Herald-Leader.
His approach to critical thinking – to education itself – should be familiar to progressives. It starts from the position that the purpose of such process is not primarily to interpret the world, but to change it. Therefore, critical thinking and education should not be neutral. It should equip students with the tools they need for social activism.
Magic Glasses summarizes what Rivage-Seul considers the most important insights he gathered over his years of travel and study throughout Europe and especially in the Global South – specifically in Brazil, Nicaragua, Cuba, Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and India, as well as in Israel-Palestine.
“As you can tell by the title,” Mike says, “The Magic Glasses could hardly be timelier. The concept comes from the great comedian and social activist, Dick Gregory. He spoke of critical thinking as functioning like a set of spectacles. They confer special insight enabling their wearers to see things quite differently from what is considered ‘normal.’
“However, Gregory warns that the glasses come with three rules. The first is that once you put them on, you can never take them off. The second says that once you put them on, you can never see things the way everybody else does, but only as they truly are. And the third is that you can never force anyone else to wear them.”
In other words, Rivage-Seul’s book might be a dangerous read. For instance, he echoes Global South scholars by seeing sinister intent in the Declaration of Independence’s celebrated statement that “All men are created equal.” With those same scholars, he refers to World War II as the “Second Inter-Capitalist War,” and sees the United States as currently occupying the same global position that Adolph Hitler aspired to attain – with similar effect.
“I’ve been wearing Gregory’s magic glasses for years,” Mike says. “They’ve shaped my all my teaching and have often got students mad at me – at least at first. And you should read some of the comments my newspaper columns get! It’s all because I constantly apply the ten rules for critical thinking that my book explains.”
Those rules include: (1) Reject Neutrality, (2) Reflect Systemically, (3) Select Market (as the root of political differences), (4) Suspect Ideology, (5) Respect History, (6) Inspect Scientifically, (7) Connect with Your Deepest Self, (8) Quadra-sect Violence, (9) Detect Silences, and (10) Collect Conclusions.
As a result of employing those guidelines, Rivage-Seul understands U.S. history, terrorism, the renewed nuclear arms race, world hunger, trade agreements, immigration, Black Lives Matter, and other hot button issues in ways that end up being 180 degrees opposed to the mainstream.
“I’m in good company though,” Mike observes. “I’m trying to channel the spirit of the world’s great critical thinkers. Think about it. None – not Jesus, the Buddha, not Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, or Helen Keller – was neutral. They weren’t worried about ‘balance’ or offending anyone. For them, speaking truth to power and living with the results were all that mattered.
“I’m hoping that my book falls into that tradition.”
That social activist tradition is indeed developed in The Magic Glasses. And each point is illustrated with movie clips from films such as Traffic, The Post, Avatar, Sausage Party, The Distinguished Gentleman, Good Will Hunting, American Sniper, Captain Phillips, American History X, War Dogs, Bulworth, and even with the Broadway musical, Hamilton.
In sum, The Magic Glasses of Critical Thinking represents and attempt to supply secondary and post-secondary teachers with a complete syllabus for a course on critical thinking that will help students radically revision their world in ways that inevitably challenge all of their preconceptions.
As such, Rivage-Seul’s book on critical thinking is not only the one progressives have been waiting for, it’s a page-turner as well. As Rob Kall, the editor-in-chief of OpEdNews puts it in his endorsement:
“I love this book. It’s brilliantly written by a very wise man who’s been serially enriched by spending time with some of the world’s greatest visionaries. And he shares what he learned from his conversations with them. The book is addictively readable. I started to skim the book to see if it was worth putting my time into and found I couldn’t stop reading. Michael Rivage-Seul brings sparkling vivacity to the potentially dry topic of critical thinking. As one who has interviewed hundreds of visionaries, I found this book to offer new perspectives and ways of seeing-which is what building critical thinking skills is all about. This book offers so much more than what its title, at first glance suggests. Have a taste and you, will like me, find yourself wanting to consume all the courses of this delicious meal.”
About Things That Matter 