This is what's wrong with the UP-DND pact

inally, after all the heehawing about noble aims and good intentions, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana spat it out. The real reason he unilaterally cancelled the agreement between the University of the Philippines (UP) and the Department of National Defense (DND) to keep military forces off campus is because he "wants to protect the youth from the CPP-NPA."  

    As proof, he offers data that in a number of skirmishes between the NPA and the AFP it was notable that some of the slain cadres turned out to be UP alumni. But why stop at educational attainment? If  they had analyzed their data some more, they might discover that some of these rebels were born under the sign of Saggitarius, some Libra, some Aquarius. Some really hate broccoli. Choose your preferred conclusion, there will be no shortage of raw data to support it. 

   Ask no further and say not another word. That is exactly what's wrong about the decision by one man to transform the UP campus into a "live-fire" exercise training ground for military intelligence operatives.  If the UP campus--or any university for that matter--were a recruitment ground for the CPP-NPA, then it is precisely the wrong place to be if you want to protect Filipino students from getting killed in anti-insurgency encounters with the military.  Those encounters do not take place in campuses--not even UP. 

   He is not preventing any crime, either. Granted it is criminal, under the Revised Penal Code, to take up arms  against the government--by rebellion, insurrection, sedition or coup d'etat.  You can commit these crimes practically anywhere in the Philippines, not only in university campuses--as if it had ever been, which it had never been, throughout the entire history of the Philippines. 

  More importantly, these are  crimes when--and only when--actually consummated. There is no such thing as "attempted rebellion" or "frustrated rebellion."  There is only consummated rebellion--and mind, you, if you succeed in rebellion it has no penalty.  Successful rebels become the government. Needless to say, why they would they be crazy to punish themselves? Failed rebels become convicts of an ordinary crime, they go to an ordinary jail to live ordinary convicts' lives for as long as the prison sentences imposed upon them.

   The Revised Penal Code also talks about "conspiracy to commit rebellion", etc. as well as "proposal to commit rebellion," etc. However, do not be misled by the words "conspiracy" and "proposal"--they do not connote stages or phases of execution in committing the crime of rebellion, etc.  They are crimes in themselves, and are also incapable of partial execution. This means there is no such thing, either, as "attempted/frustrated conspiracy to commit rebellon"  etc. or "attempted/frustrated proposal to commit rebellion," etc. 

   If ever UP students get recruited into the CPP-NPA--and I do agree a good number of them have been in the past--at the point of recruitment, they have not yet committed any crime. Although, yes,  they are certainly well on the precise path to doing so. The choice whether to act in accordance with, or in defiance of the existing law is entirely up to them.  It is their choice to make, understanding that if you do the crime, you do the time. 

   So the question is simple: are Filipino students in UP and other universities intelligent enough to make that decision? Do we--can we--trust them to make that decision? Have they learned enough social philosophy, political science, history, ethics and cultural values in the classroom to make an informed judgment of what and how to  contribute to the advancement (or de-propagation) of any political theory or system of thought? Isn't that what school and education mean--to acquire knowledge and then  translate it into policy or practice?

    Before, you can answer these questions, realize first that these questions are rife with arrogant assumptions. For one, when we come evaluating whether they have learned enough in the classroom, we must first ask: were they taught enough to begin with? Or were there restraints applied against any teaching method? Were there academic regulatory filters put in place to sift curriculum content? Did the State handicap the faculty selection method to stack the odds against freethinkers? Are there  factors in  the learning environment that impaired its efficacy  to deliver unfiltered education--or to use academia's favorite phrase "holistic knowledge"-- that they need? This is the essence of academic freedom--not just all that tired and surreal lip service and frivolous motherhood talk about constitutional guarantees, civil liberties yada yada.

   Academic freedom is really as practical a matter as this: have we done everything we can do to enable and empower our youth to know everything so that they possess the competence to make decisions with generational impact on them? The future that they are preparing for in school is theirs, not ours.  

   It's not even a question of do we trust our youth to have learned enough but, rather, can WE honestly say WE have allowed them to learn everything including--or perhaps, especially--some things WE do not want them to know? 

   Or should we all--like Secretary Lorenzana--refuse to let our youth graduate from nursery and kindergarten (no matter how you term it, such as "post-graduate" or "doctorate" if it languishes in ground level basics, it's as advanced as Sesame Street) and decide FOR THEM what we think is GOOD FOR THEM and make sure they only think along concepts and principles SAFE FOR THEM?

    In short, should we all--as Secretary Lorenzana would like us to--THINK FOR THEM?

   It's important that we all understand the significance of our answers. Because if we don't, we will unwittingly throw our country, our society, ourselves back to the Joseph McCarthy Era. We have not erased from memory that shameful period in post-modern American political history--when lawmakers held Congressional investigations to smoke out   people in the entire government apparatus, civil service, business community, industry and commerce (and, yes, even the armed services, police and military) who are alleged communists and closet-communists.  

   Joseph McCarthy--that discredited Republican US Senator from Wisconsin channeled by latter-day demagogues such as Donald Trump--would have a new persona: Delfin Lorenzana. He would be the one vetting  who is "Red," who is a "Communist." And just so he doesn't have to do all the work--for it is truly a gargantuan task--he would be the one to draw up the criteria for identifying a "true Communist."    

    Instead of finding common ground as a people, and having our sentiments and opinions resonate into an inclusive  national philosophy, should we just conveniently surrender a destiny and future that is not ours to the judgment of one man? Shall we sit in the sidelines as disinterested spectators watching that one man apply his value system alone, and trusting him to "protect the rest of us"  from our own apathy? 

   As in the McCarthy persecution days, everybody would be pointing fingers at each other, going ape crazy over who is patriotic and who is not. But it will not be an orderly or equal exchange of accusations. It will be 89-million Filipinos accusing, and one man pronouncing judgment. Soon  enough, we will get fed up with that one man, and will depose him, substituting in his place another man with fresher pontifIcations, a bigger halo above his sanctimonious head. Round and round we go. Believe me, the last thing it will achieve, if at all, is ending the insurgency. On the contrary, a chaotic free-for-all like that is the slippery slope towards a full-fledged civil war that would make the   insurgency problem look as harmless as a children's birthday party.

   We  cannot let one unelected official  think for all of  this generation, and skew the academic prospects for future  generations yet unborn. One appointive executive official cannot anoint himself protector  of millions of capable intellectuals   who, by plurality alone,  possess a sum total of knowledge and understanding greater than his.   

   This is not a denunciation of Secretary Lorenzana. I'll give you another example of what happens when only a few self-appointed geniuses full of good intentions try to think for others. That Agreement itself between the UP and the DND to keep military forces off campus is a totally useless superfluity. I'm wondering why Secretary Lorenzana is even bothering himself with it. Or even UP for that matter. 

   An agreement is a contract and no contract is permanent. If you reduce the issue of protecting academic freedom into  a simple contract that is not immune from abrogation,  then you admit that under some circumstances it should be possible and defensible to stop protectng that freedom--"if the price is right" philosophically speaking. 

   That's what's wrong with that overrated Agreement, both in the construction and deconstruction. 

  You cannot ASK for academic freedom, and no one can GIVE it to you. The moment you ask permission to think freely, you just bargained away the very freedom you seek. 

   So how do you avail of academic freedom? You just go ahead and exercise it --unreserved, unqualified, unfettered, undiluted and uncompromised--and be ready to defend yourself when challenged.  Not every right is created by the 1987 Constitution. That should shock no one--similarly, the right to life, liberty and social justice is not created by the 1987 Constitution--or any constitution.  The  right to life has existed long before law itself. Universal good--authored by the Universal God -- in fact, requires that all constitutions throughout the world GUARANTEE these rights, which they did not create. Defining it is not creating it. Sometimes defining something is just an acknowledgement that it precedes you existentially.  If rights can exist before--or even without--a constitution, with as much reason academic freedom can and does exist with or without that UP-DND Agreement.  

   So you see, restoring the UP-DND Agreement will do UP no good--and no worse. No academic community could  know better than UP. All the time that agreement was in place, UP was crawling with undercover military spies. They probably even outnumber CPP-NPA recruiters if there were any. And these military spies cannot complain that their job of collecting "intel" is hard. 

   You have to be the dumbest military intelligence agent to encounter difficulty soaking in all the free-thought discussions in academic circles all around the UP System.  It's all over the place--in their theses, term papers, classroom reports, school organs, organizational bulletins, plastered on their walls, silkscreened on their shirts and quite commonly  in this day and age probably even tatooed somewhere on their bodies.    If that much information torments your brain, they  summarize them in shorter phrases in their rally slogans, protest placards--and even bumper stickers if your maximum word absorption limit is five. How dense can you get?  

   Military intelligence--long held to be a contradiction in terms--needs to realize that student activism is not a clandestine activity in this community of academics and intellectuals. They wear it on their sleeves.

   Asking for a little more leeway to operate within the university campus, on the part of the DND, is more an admission of incompetence and lack of imagination than a grievance against operational restrictions.  Really, Secretary Lorenzana shouldn't care if there was that agreement or not--and UP should care even less.    

   That said, arguably, reinstating the agreement would do some good for Secretary Lorenzana. It will give him an opportunity to shed off the Superman costume he accidentally donned because, frankly, it is not growing on him. All it is doing is making him look like a fish teaching birds how to fly. Ⓒ 2021 Joel R. Dizon

NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It  is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:

 Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON

The Darkside ethos of Trump Politics

have been challenged to consider the deeper underlying possibility that erstwhile-US President Donald Trump's astounding, if shortlived, political success in the last four years is not accountable for by skillset, nor cunning instinct but by his core human nature. 

    Specifically, it could be the  primitive pre-rational brain that might account for the Trump phenomenon that many political academics can at best only describe but could barely explain.

   The difficulty presents itself when you can't divorce Trump from Trumpism--that is, separate the man from his followers. Trump is such as he is because of his followers and vice versa. So to really understand Trump, you need to look away from him and study, instead, his effect on people. Then you must double back and look to him again to analyze what enables this causation. I have done this and have come to the conclusion it is not so much a matter of what attributes Trump uniquely possesses but of what attributes he shares in common with them.

   It's not as simple as  saying the man is "certifiable" crazy. Americans would be  too self-conflicted to make that judgment. To pronounce Donald Trump truly a deranged person, they must admit to being enablers of a mad man themselves. How can 62-million Americans (in 2016) make the rational decision to elect a crazy individual to the highest office in the land--with the rest of that nation of 330-million tolerating the idea?  Worse, how can this number even grow by 12-million to 74-million in November 2020?

  Of course, with a grain of levity, that is some  explanation in itself. Insanity is doing the same thing twice expecting to obtain a different  result. However, mass psychosis is rare and improbable. But behavioral resonance is much more probable and occurs commonly in nature..

   When you look at a Trump political rally--and the January 6, siege of the US Capitol for all intents and purposes is just another Trump rally on steroids--you can draw a parallel between that and a colony of red Army ants. Each individual red ant is impotent and vulnerable, having no capacity to accomplish a complex task.   But when the whole ant colony is on the march on the forest floor, all other animals better stay clear off its path because the intractable red ant colony cannot be stopped. They will climb over, go around of, burrow under or eat their way through any obstacle, living or non-living.

   Renowned naturalist David Attenborough described a red ant colony   not as a biological community of many individuals, but as a single super-organism. He uses the same description on a colony of bees, termites, wasps, locusts--on most any organized biomass in nature. In all instances, you cannot eliminate the colony by killing single members no matter how many. You have to  exterminate the whole population  in true genocide. You cannot even kill off just the queen insect of the colony--because they keep and maintain special "stem cell" larvae that they can hyper-nourish to produce a new queen. 

   What's interesting is these are insects, having no brain complex enough to process reason. They don't need a rational brain. They don't live complicated lives requiring much  decision-making. They have no individual interests beyond to keep belonging to the colony. Their existence finds meaning only in the survival of the colony itself. Therefore all their instincts are oriented towards total sacrifice for the colony's well-being. It's hard for anyone to imagine a purer kind of loyalty to species--except for Donald Trump, the quintessential political "queen bee."  Being with and, especially, working for Donald Trump requires only one thing, second only to competence: blind loyalty.

   But how does one explain the behavioral template that controls the brain of the stereotypical Trump radical supporter?  Channeling red ant colony behavior, the attitude and persuasion among Trump Republicans is so universal and identical from one individual to the next, it makes you wonder: how is such behavior programmed? 

   The answer for insect colonies, according to Attenborough, is quite simple: it's mimicry and pheromones.  An adult red ant performs an act--say biting off a leaf morsel--in front of baby red ants and then releases a particular odoriferous pheromone that is never used again for another act. The baby red ants mimic the act and form a permanent association with the odor. Each odor is unmistakably paired off with only one act. All growing up ants accumulate this library of "specific-odor-for-action" codes--and there couldn't be too many of them given how simple an ant's life is.  Other naturalists criticize this view because it means ants pass instructions among one another by choosing a specific pheromone to trigger a corresponding response. It may look simple, but that's still communication and education--which the ants' non-rational brains isn't supposed to be able to handle.

   However, Trump followers are humans--having intelligence capable of putting a man on the moon. So everything's on the table, so to speak.  

   In 1960 a neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean proposed a controversial new theory that took Darwinian evolution concept one step further.  He wasn't a rash or reckless Dr. Frankenstein trafficking in sci-fi fantasies. He was  a widely-respected expert on psychology who took more than thirty years to bolster his theory first  before publishing it in a book entitled, "The Triune Brain in Evolution" (1990).  

      In summary, Paul MacLean's theory is that we humans have a brain that functions on three levels: that of a "reptilian" or primal brain, "paleo-mammalian" or emotional brain and the "neo-mammalian" or rational brain. 

   Although hesitantly at first, medical doctors now largely accept this taxonomy. They have even assigned parts of the brain to each sub-brain, calling the reptilian brain the "basal ganglia," the emotional brain as the "limbic system" and rational brain as the "neo-cortex." More interesting is what each sub-brain is chiefly responsible for. The reptilian brain controls everything we don't control--breathing, digestion, body temperature, orientation in space, etc. The emotional brain enables our "fight-or-flee" reflex essential for survival, and defines  our emotions to regulate our relationships. The rational brain handles all higher abstractions like language, planning and creative perception. 

   Under extreme stress, the three brains switch off in the order of decreasing complexity. That means the planning brain switches off first (having to work deliberately, it consumes a lot of time thinking) to give way to our faster-reacting reflexes driven by self-preservation and emotion. 

   But if all hell breaks loose and we're too stressed we can't "think straight anymore," reptilian brain takes over. It doesn't even have to think. It just guides your behavior to whatever action supports the objectives of  aggression, dominance, territoriality, and ritual displays.

    I submit that these three brains do not actually swtich off at all, except on death. They just exchange predominance, but they actually support each other's thinking processes in real time. For instance, reptilian brain worries about dominance. Dominance in what?  Dominance in the competition for basic things like food, clothing, shelter. That's why it triggers aggression to defeat any competition for these things--especially by keeping competition out of the territory.  But rational brain knows that we do not live in the caveman days anymore. Food is not just gathered from trees, or hunted down with bow-and-arrow. Food is procured with a medium of exchange--money--which is obtained from dominance in the field of  competition called work.    Defense of habitat has levelled up to defense of state territorial borders and virtual boundaries of economic systems..

    

    In other words, what reptilian brain knows as aggression for territoriality is defined by rational brain as border control to halt the inflow into the country of immigrants. These immigrants  saturate the employment market by accepting substandard wages.  Trump Republicans complain about laxity of immigration control causing job displacement for privileged whites. 

   Some, of course, are forced to accept the migrant-fueled diverse legacy of America. They  have done well enough for themselves to be employers rather than job-seekers. So they just grumble against having to comply with a federally-mandated high-wage policy. More often, they grouse about inadequate defense of "economic habitat" in the form of limp protectionists trade regulations.  Emotional brain enables them to deliver impassioned speeches for the repeal of those policies. They don't really need a comprehensive overview of the policy--to see the "larger picture" as it were. That's the job of rational brain which took off on vacation already four years ago.

     All the talking points of Trump Conservatism are the unaddressed grievances of the Trump Republicanism's reptilian brain, amplified by the MAGA media's emotional brain, unchecked by genuine Republicans' rational brain.  

    The beauty of all this, for Donald Trump, is he did not need to program these behavioral responses into anyone. Everyone was born with them. So, in fact, Trumpism as a political philosophy is nothing new, it is reptilian and primal at its core. Neither was Donald Trump reinventing the wheel--he is totally clueless. He is just a good observer and an excellent opportunist. He sees a choir singing in perfect four-part harmony, all he does is start flailing his arms in front of his face and claim he was a conductor coaxing the music out of everyone's mouths. 

   To his reptilian brain, that is dominance, pure and pleasurable. For four years, no one could make him out--at least, not as loudly, or as aggressively as he is willing to contend with any challenge.

    This is the darkside ethos of the politics espoused by the Trumpian cult. Channelling the super-organism dynamics of a red ant colony, they act in resonance under minimal central leadership.  Everybody just follows everybody else, moving as one pulsating mass compelled by common self-interest. They have a "queen bee" at the heart of the colony who they don't really need. If Donald Trump vanished today, the MAGA base he leaves behind will create another Donald Trump in no time.

 

  But Trump realized, unwittingly for sure,  that his three brains are not all working at the same time--his emotional brain is the most active. This explains why his weapon of choice is emotional trash-talking--calling everyone names and just generally getting into everyone's nerves, bringing out the worst in people with his lack of empathy. Is it possible he actually understands that if his detractors were hobbled by an angry emotional brain they cannot think rationally? 

    My answer is YES, if we go by how, for four years, Donald Trump was able to drive everybody up the wall in anger and frustration, causing otherwise intelligent people to give away their advantage of a rational brain against somebody who couldn't even find his. Ⓒ 2021 Joel R. Dizon

 

NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It  is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:

 Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON

  

Redeeming the democracy Trump destroyed

he real damage caused by the January 6, 2021 "Trump Insurrection" is not on the physical premises of the US Capitol. The aftermath of that  vandalism only took a few hours to clean up. The riot did not paralyze the federal government or significantly interfere with its institutional processes. In fact, Congress was able to certify the election of Joe Biden as the 46th president within fewer than four hours after the riot dissipated.

    If you take away all the sensational drama of media's coverage of the riot it will become apparent that the uprising never had a chance to succeed. Even if   the rioters had found Vice President Mike Pence, succeeded in hanging him or abducted all present members of Congress and held them hostage, what would that have accomplished? Pull up the most extreme scenario--even if  the rioters had massacred all the Members of Congress--would that have resulted in Donald Trump being declared as "re-elected" president?

    Of course not. Not even a total takeover of the US Capitol building would have birthed a functional government run by the insurrectionists, let alone Trump.  Even if they had announced that Donald Trump shall  be POTUS for four more years, would America--and the whole world--recognize him?  If then "revolutionary president" Donald Trump issued an order, would the entire government apparatus lift a finger to execute his command? Would anybody?

   You cannot hijack democracy to serve any purpose other than what democracy exists for.  The simplest analogy for democracy are three people submitting to the rule of the majority--which is two. If two of them decide that there shall be no more democracy, ironically they just exercised it. The only way for democracy to vanish among these three is for one of them to menace the other two enough to coerce them into obeying him, out of self-preservation albeit against their will. The antithesis to democracy is authoritarianism--not partial or pseudo, not one with an iron fist behind a benevolent face--just plain good (or bad) old indefeasible thuggery.  The authoritarianism must be total--totalitarianism.

    Granted, in the short term a small aggressive force  can launch a blitzkrieg assault--oftentimes behind a self-centered charismatic leader--against an institutional symbol of government power. The shock and awe of the initial strike could bamboozle the rest of the population into spellbound acquiescence or coerced submission. But that is just Chapter One of an uprising. The upheaval must quickly gain widespread acceptance from the general populace, or it won't persist too long.  The gyroscopic dynamics of social balance will eventually catch up to the rebels  and  status quo ante will be restored   That is why the quick agenda of all insurrection  is to restrict movement, impair .communication, and put into place draconian measures to obliterate or  prevent the rise of opposition. If it cannot do that quickly enough, the upheaval itself dies a natural death, its promoters possibly by firing squad.

    In small banana republics hobbled by all manner of more pressing economic crises, insurrections work because government is largely irrelevant to the daily struggle for survival of the people.  Most of the people lack competence to run government anyway. Therefore holding the reins of power is a mere abstraction to them. Few aspire for all-encompassing power, and even fewer mind seeing it go to the hands of the daring.  

   Insurrections only work in countries where there is an organized force unbound by the laws, led by a shameless leader unaffected by public disaffection towards him, and a generally-apathetic populace. They could be apathetic because they are engrossed in the daily business of survival or, as in the US scenario, because people are living comfortable lives they are loathe to disrupt.

   Nevertheless, pocket riots, irrespective of magnitude, can only succeed in triggering a free society's immune response. Unless all essential elements of a true revolution can be obtained, a coup d'etat (literally a "strike against the State") can only be as impactful as a multiple-car pile up on the interstate highway, with lots of blood and carnage but otherwise only capable of holding up traffic for a few hours.

    It's clear to see  that true insurrection has no chance in post-modern America. Donald Trump, of course,  doesn't know this because he did not school himself on politics and governance with an understanding of American history or its sociopolitical traditions. He is simply trying to copy successful despots in what he calls "shit-hole countries"--like much of the fledgling republics in Eastern Europe, especially those newly-seceded from the defunct Soviet Union.  

   He drools at the sight of Vladimir Putin's unfettered and limitless dictatorial powers. He envies the almost genetically-encoded loyalty of the North Koreans to Kim Jong Un. Most of all, he envied that these two dictators were accountable to nobody.  So in Donald Trump's school of politics,  those are the only three elements needed for a power grab: paramount force no matter if illegitimate,  no accountability and a docile citizenry.  Unfortunately, his taxonomy of politics does not jibe with genuine political theory. 

    What Donald Trump lacks none of is audacity of error. Take "Make America Great Again."  This is not just random Trumpian coinage, he simply couldn't stop using the word "great" enough. It happens to be the favorite word of both of his role models. Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un could never profess more patriotic pride in their "great" peoples. Both of them hearken back to the halcyon days of past glory-- Putin in the old Soviet Union and Kim Jong Un in the historical myth of his ancestors' diety.  

    Donald Trump wanted Americans to feel sentimental about the past. History is like a grammar lesson, where you find the past perfect and the present tense.  History is always remembered with fondness--even its ugly parts become precious cautionary tales.  That's why Donald Trump did not find it difficult to connect with a base consisting of Americans unsatisfied with their present lives who wistfully recall the "good old days" when everything was perfect.   

   For Americans, this mass hallucination under the spellbinding popularity of Donald Trump lasted four years. It's lucky the term of a US president is short. It is not enough time to achieve political herd immunity from the excesses of a mad man sitting behind the Resolute Desk.  With time running short, Trump had to contend with a minor seasonal inconvenience prescribed by the American Constitution--free elections. 

    Unfettered power he can usurp, as he has done since 2016. A docile citizenry he can finesse with Twitter. But electoral accountability--that is entirely out of his control. He cannot eliminate the institution, but he can attempt to damage its credibility to a degree that no one would object to its results being replaced by manufactured mandate.

   With this framework, you can see that the American response to the Trump Insurrection is comprehensively wrong. You can arrest every participant to the siege of the US Capitol but that does not prevent the rise of another Donald Trump in the future.  Treating the insurrection as a mere criminal disturbance will, no doubt, slake the public thirst for "accountability."

  But that is not the kind of accountability the US Constitution endeavors to exact from the American people. The Constitution speaks of the accountability of leaders to the citizenry, no the accountability of wayward citizens to their leaders. They've got it the other way around. 

   The severity of the US Capitol siege notwithstanding, it did not even dent the electoral system. In fact, this system is the only safeguard that held its ground, the only guardrail  that didn't give way to Donald Trump's belligerence. Everything else--abuse of executive powers, disregard for genuine public opinion, assault on press freedom and freedom of assembly, even the handicapping of the supposedly fail-safe remedy of impeachment--Donald trump simply bulldozed his way through all of these. America would do well to take stock of these aspects of democracy that were profoundly damaged by four years of silent but creeping underlying malignancy caused by Donald Trump. The repair and redemption of American democracy must focus on these quickly forgotten aspects.

   For instance, America can not afford to ever allow another US President to bar any member of the press from the Whitehouse.  The press can never again allow the Whitehouse to dictate the terms of public reportage. Under Donald Trump, the practice of "not taking any questions" from the media became institutional. Next time, if the president does that what media should do is withdraw ALL coverage of him. How potent of a check-and-balance is deprivation of the bully pulpit? The answer can be easily seen in how Trump's efficacy instantly plummeted to zero the very same day he was banned permanently from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

   Wouldn't that leave the American people "in the dark" so to speak? It would and it should raise the level of public anxiety so high that THAT is what could lead to an authentic insurrection. 

   Presidents should fear insurrections, not start them. Ⓒ 2021 Joel R. Dizon

NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It  is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:

 Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON

This man led America back to Civil War

onald Trump has led America back to Civil War.

   There is now raging in the United States of America a full-blown civil war--a battle among civilians of the same country. But this post-modern version can prove to be more devastating because it is not a battle among states over geographical boundaries. It's an intramural between tribes, pitting one social class against another, stoking deep-seated antagonism between citizens and immigrants,    whites and people of color, industry versus labor unions, LGBTQ and mainstream genders, even authentic versus fake media. 

   When the unrest dies down--if it dies down--Americans will have to learn to live in a fractious society compartmentalized by so many virtual boundaries. They will realize that the United States of America is a gumbo of snarling social beasts of all species and temperaments forced to eke out an existence in an extremely tight and congested common cage. It will not be unlike a 21st-century technological version of the state of nature. 

   Little by little each day, freedom-loving nationalists will chip away at the tenuous relationship between government and the governed. One day, they will not even be mindful of the social contract anymore. It's going to be every strongman for himself: survival of the fittest--just like in the state of nature.

   Ironically, that is civil war in the truest sense. When citizens, by overt acts or implicit attitude, disown government because they don't control its leadership, the whole concept of government itself erodes. This is particularly dangerous when the polarization is so even--like roughly half and half--that the dominant opinion is not dominant by much. There is no more compulsion to yield to the surrender of individual rights and self-interest in exchange for protection by a central terror, the State. Who else would care the moment minority opinion is no more coerced into civil obedience  by the supposedly invincible central authority. What happened in the January 6, 2021 siege of the US Capitol is a teaching moment, not only for American lovers of democracy but for everyone else around the world trying to copy the American model.

    Make no mistake about it. Civil war in America is not coming--it has come.

   Don't look for opposing columns of rifle-toting soldiers in colorful distinctive uniforms lined up in firing squad formations. That's no longer how wars are fought these days. But if you're thinking columns of M1-Abrams tanks backed by F-14, F-15 and F-16 tomcats bristling with heat-seeking missiles locating one another by radar, you are just as antiquated. That is no longer how wars are fought these days, either.  

    Wars of the future, which has arrived in America, will be wars over control of the political leadership, interested parties ranging from foreign, domestic or Russian.  Why bother invading a country, when you can have the whole country by a cakewalk if you can just grab the reigns of power.  The opposition you will encounter is not a modern armed force with technologically-advanced weaponry--just a naive American public most of whom derive their political philosophy from bumper stickers.  With digital cajolery, it's fairly easy to win over the hearts and minds of the general populace.  

   It is not without its unique challenge, of course. The US has sponsored many wars in the theaters of regional conflict around the world--from Afghanistan to Vietnam--where its declared mission was to "win the hearts and minds" of the local community. Now the US will learn that doing so was always easier said than done, when the hearts and minds to be won are their own--and they cannot use bombs as persuasive tools anymore. 

    America's right-wing militias are evidently a step ahead. They have been waging war for years on the internet. It was only in the last four days since the January 6 siege of the US Capitol that America woke up to this reality. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media have all closed down right-wing accounts including Donald Trump's for promoting violence. 

    Again, they are wrong--in the sense that they are a day late and a dollar short. Violence erupts from the collective will of a radicalized right-wing community whose central organizing principle is violence to begin with. Violence did not need to be embedded in their consciousness, all social media did was  provide the means to channel the sentiment and allow for its widening circulation. Social unrest is like a brewing storm that grows and strengthens out of its own inertia.   

    Donald Trump is the eye of that storm, the vortex if you will. I don't credit him with the capacity for ideological advocacy. He is probably the one man in America who has the least clue of what's going on around him. All he understands is   that if he played along well enough the outcome could be his remaining in power.  He is no Mao Zedong whose social philosophy was the moral compass that guided the actions of the throngs of revolutionaries who bore him on their shoulders. He is no Mahatma Gandhi whose personal demonstration of sacrificial forbearance showed Indians how to bring imperial Britain to her knees by wearing out her muscles.

    Donald Trump is, in many ways, like his comical namesake Donald Duck--popular, appealing, capable of assembling a huge cult-like fan base and most of all a quintessential simpleton. 

    You don't need a sociology degree to identify with Donald Trump. You just need to believe whatever you already believe in. Be assured that so long as you will vote for him Donald Trump will endorse your belief.  In his own words, "This QAnon, these white supremacists and ultra-nationalists people, I don't know what they are about, but I heard they like me, and so I like them!"

    This makes the Trump insurrection  more dangerous. It is not organized around any kind of leadership structure. Donald Trump may be its symbolic head but he controls nothing within the  movement he claims to  spearhead. All he knows is that there is a resonance of pro-Trump opinion among 75-million Americans who voted for him. He assumes all of them to be card-bearing rank-and-file mercenaries in the Trumpian Army.  That is a myth, of course, just like the myth that he has 88-million followers on Twitter. 

    I am one of those followers but I'm no fan of Donald Trump. Just because people "follow" what he's doing, or even approve of what he's saying, does not mean they subjugate their own views and interests under his control.  I follow him on Twitter because it saves me time having to wait for mainstream media to report what he said. Other people follow him for their own selfish reasons. 

    Organized fringe groups like the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists group Proud Boys or the Ku Klux Klan follow him because it serves their interest best. They have been forgotten, but Trump's endorsement of their sinister agenda made them suddenly relevant again. More than that, Trump acts like scatterred chaff that attracts the incoming missiles. All of a sudden, they can do maximum mischief and have Trump take the blame. The more blame Trump gets, the more he thinks he controls the blame-causers, which Trump media baptized as "The Base." Once they have cemented that commensal relationship, the dye was cast. Trump would have his monster to ride, the monster would have a lightning rod on its back drawing all the fury of the lightning at no injury to the beast.

    In my December 12, 2020 article here, I posited the question, "Will enough Americans follow Donald Trump to Civil War?" My answer was YES, it still is.

    Americans who deny this have not studied, or refuse to understand their own history. Although the reasons behind the American Civil War are many and complex, it really boils down to racial prejudice and control over the means of economic exploitation.  Industrial Revolution-fueled North forged ahead with mechanization, slowly losing appetite for slave labor. But agricultural South couldn't conceive of any machine that could pick cotton. Black slaves were the backbone of its labor force. A government system that threatens to legislate slavery out of existence was a threat. The Civil War was all about whether political leadership should perpetuate slavery and social division. Ironically, the Unionist northern states and the Southern Confederate states fought against each other reciting the same provisions of the US Constitution--just like the Trumpian Republicans are doing now.  

    Donald Trump labels himself the most inappropriate title of a "wartime president" for the COVID war refused to fight. He likes to draw a parallel between him and Abraham Lincoln who was a  real Civil War-time president.  Donald Trump, of course, understands nothing about American history.  But he just knows that whichever side wins the war gets to install the president they want.

    Donald Trump's modus operandi is that simple--whoever wants him, whoever is loyal to him--those are "his people." They are the people he was addressing in his Rose Garden remarks, "I feel your pain, I feel your frustration...go home, we love you, you are special."

    I really doubt that these people number 75-million. But enough of them are willing to respond to Donald Trump's dogwhistle call to help him help himself. After studying their double-blind relationship I have no doubt  in my mind that Donald Trump can lead enough Americans to a newer more dangerous civil war. And that is not the bad news.

    The bad news is, he can lead them into civil war. He can't lead them out of it. 

I dread the limitless and unstoppable carnage that will follow.  

    All of a sudden, America has the beginnings of a unionwide insurgency that is difficult to turn back because it's almost impossible to localize and locate. Having no leadership structure, there is no central command system to disable. There are no personalities to track and prosecute--except Trump. America will be faced with a situation not unlike the long-running rebel movement in Northern Ireland, whose primary militia consisted of highly-motivated but largely unorganized "lone wolf" dissidents with access to advanced technology in the making and deployment of weapons of mass destruction.

    Moreover, this emerging homegrown insurgency is not itching to acquire territory--they are citizens already of the country they want to take over. And should they be successful in installing their own president, he can--as brazenly illustrated by Donald Trump--instantly erase  by simple pardon all crimes they committed on their way to grab power. 

     When I used to teach political law, I liked  asking this question in my students' final exam: "What's the penalty for rebellion?"  Many grappled with explaining the various degrees of the penalty stated in the Revised Penal Code, missing the whole point of rebellion. Very few got the correct answer which was: "It depends. If the rebellion succeeds, it has NO penalty."   

    That, I suspect, will be the first lesson that the Trump insurrectionists will teach all new recruits. This notwithstanding the fact that  clearly, the first salvo of the Trump insurrection--however sensational it looked on TV--was still a failure, but no one seems to be lined up to suffer any penalty so far. Ⓒ 2021 Joel R. Dizon

NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It  is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:

 Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON