Why We Forgot How To Feel | Dr Gabor Mate

EXCELLENT. Such a beautiful, moving, wise, and heartfelt video. How have we humans become so lost? This illuminates the greater truths of our deepest needs. To heal and transform ourselves and grow into the wholeness of the sacred beings we are, we need to understand the truth and wisdom embodied here. Bless us all. Molly

Has anyone ever asked you how do you feel about something and you don't know? This could be the reason why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGnf4c7cxq4 

About 70,000 Lives Could Be Saved in Near Future if People Wear Masks: Researchers

I am beyond horrified and heartbroken with how many thousands of lives have been severely impacted or lost due to the utter failure of this administration to address the epidemic. It is also true that this insanity didn't rise out of a vacuum and that it's important to remember that 45 and all the devastating tragedies and suffering in our midst has been building for a very long time. All the signs and symptoms point to that we are now late stage in the decline of the American Empire. Out of all this death, may a new world be born, one grounded in compassion and love, consciousness and wisdom, generosity and justice, and a reverence for all of life. — Molly

The U.S. could save nearly 70,000 lives by December if the country implements universal mask mandates, according to a projection by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

Researchers from the institute also found that an estimated 134,000 people could die in the U.S. from COVID-19 by December if the country takes no further safety measures. That number, they said, could worsen if mandates are relaxed.

The U.S. has reported 5.6 million cases and more than 176,000 people have died from the virus as of Saturday night, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.

IHME that if the U.S. keeps mandates as-is, the death rates would dip in September then rise later in the fall, and the total would reach about 310,000 by Dec. 1.

However, a federal universal mask mandate before the fall is highly unlikely, and President Trump has expressed support for reopening businesses and schools. 

Public health officials have changed course on their recommendations for face masks as scientists learned more about how the virus spreads. 

In July the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that everyone "should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public, for example to the grocery store or to pick up other necessities." The guideline came after several studies showed universal mask wearing could effectively contain the virus.

Please go here for the original: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/513257-about-70000-lives-could-be-saved-in-near-future-if-people-wear-masks

Rabbi Michael Lerner: What and Whose Violence? My Personal Experience

This is an excellent article by Rabbi Lerner. I also appreciate the illumination of deeper truths and larger pictures by Henry Giroux. Both are visionaries whose wisdom, consciousness, and courageous voices of truth are vitally needed in these dark times. — Molly

* * * * *

From Henry Giroux: "Many people on the left are decrying some of the violence on the part of protesters taking place in the face police assaults on unarmed Blacks. Nobody should justify assaults that lead to needless suffering and the destruction of neighborhood property. As a tactical issue I have always believed it fails, but to make this point in the face of state violence, which often sets up a false equivalency between the massive violence suffered by people of color, undocumented immigrants, poor youth and others is indefensible. People are desperate. They find it almost impossible to put up with the massive injustices and assaults on their dignity, ability to survive, and to live without fear. Why shouldn't they revolt--is it really that hard to understand? The different contexts that produce violence, and the scale and order of it as part of a network of capitalist institutional violence is what should be focused on, not the minuscule acts of violence committed by protesters. State violence comes in many forms and extends from the criminalization of social problems and the horrors of the carceral state to the militarization of the police and the increasing violence against undocumented immigrants and anyone who is not white and viewed as expendable, if not disposable. The violence committed by protesters against property shrinks in importance compared to the 180,000 dead because of Trump's belief in conspiracy theories rather than science. The thousands of children who die in the US every day because of poverty. The elderly thrown into nursing homes that have become the new funeral homes. Violence of this scale is what should be addressed and it should be addressed not through the lens of moral righteousness but political insight and conviction. My friend Michael Lerner addresses this with great insight and analysis:

 By Rabbi Michael Lerner

Ever since large numbers of people spontaneously took to the streets in wake of the police murder of George Floyd, large sections of the media have focused on the destruction of windows and in some cases actual looting of stores, and media pundits have agonized over the alleged tendency of “the Left” to be wedded to “violence.” Now the NY Times says that the looting in Wisconsin in response to the cold blooded shooting of yet another African American by police may be scaring suburban voters back into support for Trump’s camp just before the election. 

I share the following story to provide a context that must be taken seriously as we assess what is happening in our streets. I was indicted in 1970 as part of what became known as “the Seattle Seven Conspiracy Trial,” after an anti-war and anti-racism demonstration turned chaotic when dozens of police attacked the demonstrators with clubs and tear gas. 

The demonstration took place a few days after the close of a more famous trial of “the Chicago Seven.” While the jury in the Chicago trial was out (and would return a verdict of “not guilty”) the judge cited all the defendants for contempt of court and sentenced them to prison. I was a visiting  Assistant Professor of Philosophy and had founded an organization that we named the Seattle Liberation Front to challenge militarism, racism, inequality, and many other perversions of what we believed to be American ideals. We felt the need for a new organization because the most popular youth anti-war organization, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), had been taken over by the violence-exalting Weatherman organization, that had a few months before taken over the national office of the SDS and had declared the SDS dissolved. 

We sent letters to the judges at Seattle’s Federal Courthouse and to other public officials declaring that we would be coming to the courthouse to conduct a “teach-in” to the judges on the ways that the Nixon White House was using the courts as a political instrument to undermine the freedom to express dissent and petition our government to stop the war in Vietnam, and release Bobby Seale, the national chair of the Black Panther movement who had been tied up and gagged during the Chicago trial. 

When we arrived for the teach-in, the doors of the courthouse had been locked and we had no alternative plan. After forming small groups to decide what to do next, the police arrived and began assaulting over 2000 demonstrators. At that point, some protestors fought back, some threw paint on the courthouse, and others threw rocks breaking some windows. Most started a spontaneous march chanting anti-war and anti-racism slogans. The police followed them, throwing tear gas. Within two hours, many of the downtown offices had been closed because the teargas made work impossible. A handful of demonstrators broke windows of downtown stores. 

The media asked me to comment on the demonstrators’ violence. I made two points: 1. I regretted the destruction of property but pointed out that the U.S. government that very day was killing hundreds of Vietnamese and destroying far more property than the windows of a handful of stores, and 2. The word “violence” was only appropriate when used to describe acts that caused sentient creatures (animals and human beings) pain and/or bodily injury. It was only in capitalist societies that cared more about property than about people that this term was now being used against those of us who were trying to stop U.S. violence against people of color in Vietnam and in America’s ghettos. (I should have added and against animals.) 

The next night, at a meeting of the activists, a tall young man in perfect hippy attire stood up and shouted in outraged tones: “who gave professor Lerner the right to apologize for what we did yesterday? We should have done more damage to those stores and to cars—they are all owned by people with white skin privilege.” At the trial, he was revealed as one of the many undercover agents who had infiltrated our organization (our meetings were publicly advertised). 

We were charged with conspiracy to destroy federal property (the courthouse) and using the facilities of interstate commerce with the intent to incite riots. The most dramatic moment of the trial came when another witness for the prosecution, a young man who had volunteered out of patriotism and hatred of the Left, testified under cross examination that the paint that had been thrown at the courthouse had been paid for by the FBI and that he, working with the FBI, had brought the rocks to the courthouse the night before (because there were no rocks in downtown Seattle). In response, many members of the jury gasped loudly. The government’s “conspiracy” case had totally fallen apart. The prosecutor asked for a postponement for a day,  using the excuse that the next defendants arrived late to court, the judge declared a mistrial and held us in contempt of court. Another defendant and I were sent to Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary 1000 miles away,  and when the 9th Circuit ordered the judge to release us, he publicly refused their order, President Nixon called him publicly to congratulate him for standing up to the “notoriously liberal” judges (presidential lawlessness was not invented by President Trump).  We were in prison many weeks before the 9th Circuit ordered the prison to release us for at least for a week so that we could appear at the appeal hearing overturned the contempt conviction. 

So when I hear radio or television claims that the anti-racist, environmentalist, and pro-economic justice demonstrators are violent extremists (and demonstrators pointing out that the destruction of property was mostly done by others who were not really part of their demonstrations), I wonder why the media focused so much on the few lawless among the hundreds of thousands around the country who took to the streets. I have witnessed agitators sometimes succeed in recruiting sincere anti-racist demonstrators into acts of property damage, and I’m aware that some people living in or near poverty will “loot” when given a chance, perhaps the only way one they can slightly redress the wild inequalities of wealth they face, hoping to sell some of what they looted and not even imagining that in so doing they are giving credibility to those who want to dismiss the larger anti-racist and pro-justice causes that brought so many people to the streets. Yet, as I learned as a defendant in Seattle, it is a huge mistake to underestimate the conscious and illegal behavior of some police, undercover government agents, and, as in Portland, overt and transparent agenda of the Trump administration to incite a new civil war by inciting violence and the destruction of property, which sections of the media falsely identify as the doings of the demonstrators for justice and an end to racism.  

We spiritual progressives should do all we can to stop the looting. It is wrong because it causes damage to Americans (white and Black) who have not been the source of American racism. And it has a destructive impact politically, pushing people into the arms of the racist police forces and racist politicians who, using the promise of “law and order,” win people whose interests would be better served by progressive policies. Looting is a gift to right-wing extremists and detrimental to the struggle against racism–which is precisely why right-wing politicians are making looting a central part of their fear-mongering strategy in American politics in the months before the 2020 elections.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.tikkun.org/what-and-whose-violence?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=54365f6a-2ccc-44ae-9536-e444d7b83a07          

David Sirota: Why Is It Always the Wrong Time to Criticize Democrats From the Left?

Such an excellent, important, and absolutely 

spot on article! — Molly

Disgraced former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel on May 9, 2018 in New York City.

 Progressives are being told by the Democratic Party to shut up until after the election. Meanwhile, corporate Democrats are trumpeting how far right they are — a message that could demoralize Democratic voters and depress turnout.

By DAVID SIROTA

No doubt, you have been told to keep quiet. Just put on your big boy pants, they say, and find the impulse control to at least muzzle yourself for the next seventy-one days until the election happens. After that, fine — then and only then will you maybe be permitted to speak your mind and politely ask the Democratic Party to match its rhetoric with its policy agenda.

But until then, you are told to “shut the hell up and grow up,” as former Barack Obama and Mike Bloomberg pollster Cornell Belcher put it during an emblematic MSNBC segment berating progressives.

This kind of hectoring has become a defining part of the Democratic Party’s culture. As the late great journalist Bill Greider lamented in this must-watch clip: “The way the Democratic Party is run now for quite a number of presidential cycles is they pick a nominee in a kind of half-assed process that doesn’t really represent much of anybody, and then they tell everybody to just shut up — don’t bring up anything that will complicate life for your nominee . . . shut up, turn off your brains.”

There’s a superficial logic to this call for omertà — after all, Donald Trump is destroying everything and he must be defeated. But here’s the problem: the demand to shut up is only being aimed at the progressive base of the party, while the corporate wing floods the zone with rhetoric that could de-motivate voters.

Indeed, at the very moment many good progressives are blunting their criticism and making clear that defeating Trump is of utmost importance, corporate Democrats aren’t being asked to wait or hold their tongues. In fact, they are doing the opposite: Rahm Emanuel — who has been advising Joe Biden — just went on television to show that the corporate wing of the party is intent on using the stretch run of the Most Important Election of Our Lifetime™ not to doggedly focus on actually winning the election, but to instead try to predetermine postelection policy outcomes.  

Emanuel and his ilk depict themselves as evincing a nonideological “just win, baby” attitude. But they are most decidedly pushing a very clear corporate ideology — and they are doing so in dangerously divisive ways that could depress the big turnout that’s desperately needed to defeat Trump.

There's No New Green Deal, There's No Medicare For All" 

The larger dynamic at play was exemplified by Emanuel’s television appearance on a CNBC segment dubbed “Democrats’ 2020 Agenda: What’s at stake for business?” As progressives are being told to keep quiet and not even so much as tweet their concerns, Emanuel used the platform to demand that during this health care and climate emergency, a prospective Biden administration must reject the two major initiatives that polls show are popular.

“Two things I would say if I was advising an administration,” said Emanuel, who left the Chicago mayoralty in disgrace after his city officials suppressed a video of the police murder of a teenager. “One is there’s no new Green Deal, there’s no Medicare For All, probably the single two topics that were discussed the most. That’s not even in the platform.”

Emanuel is hardly a disinterested observer here. As Obama’s chief of staff, Emanuel helped kill the idea of a public health insurance option. Now, he works for a Wall Street firm that advises big health care and fossil fuel companies on mergers, acquisitions, and bankruptcy restructuring. Earlier this year, Emanuel was set to be part of the featured entertainment at an oil lobbying group’s annual meeting, during a $125-per-plate luncheon with GOP strategist Karl Rove, before the event was canceled due to COVID-19. 

Emanuel also isn’t just some random blowhard pundit spewing a corporate line. The Chicago Tribune in May reported that “Emanuel is having regular conversations with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his top advisers about economic policy.”

So when Emanuel is refusing to self-censor in the name of “unity” and making these kinds of divisive declarations that stomp on progressive voters, he’s speaking from a position of real power. And he’s not just tweeting these comments, which could depress voter enthusiasm. He’s making them to a giant national television audience.

Corporate Democrats Are Not Holding Their Tongues

Now sure, you could try to write off Emanuel’s rhetoric as just the anomalous bloviations of a notorious super-villain who pushed NAFTA and anti-immigration policies and who famously called progressives “F–ing retarded.” But sorry, this isn’t a one-off — this is part of a larger pattern over the last few weeks and months.   

As progressives are told to keep quiet, Democratic Party officials engineered a convention light on policy proposals, but one that gave prime convention speaking slots to the anti-climate-science, anti-union former Republican governor John Kasich of Ohio and to Colin Powell, who lied America into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. In his CNBC interview, Emanuel said, “This will be the year of the Biden Republican” — and he noted that promoting these figures was designed to help Biden deliberately send an anti-progressive message to voters because “John Kasich and Colin Powell don’t exactly endorse (or) support big-P progressive policies.”

This is the kind of move that is potentially disillusioning for Democratic voters who were previously told that a Democratic victory isn’t just a return to the status quo — but a step forward in strengthening the movements for climate action, workers’ rights, and a more sane foreign policy.  

Similarly, as progressives are told to shut the hell up, Democratic aides on Capitol Hill leaked word that the party’s lawmakers may immediately replay the 2009 debacle and block a public health insurance option after the election — a move that is potentially de-motivating for millions of Americans currently losing their private health insurance.

As progressives are told to mute themselves, Team Biden last week publicly signaled that a new Democratic president might prioritize deficit reduction and budget austerity in the middle of an economic crisis — a move that is potentially deflating for millions of voters who have previously been told that President Biden’s agenda makes him the next FDR.

As progressives are told to keep quiet, Biden’s campaign leaks to Politico that the transition team building Biden’s prospective administration is being advised by Wall Street pal Larry Summers and former corporate super-lobbyist Steve Ricchetti.

And as progressives are told to muzzle themselves, corporate Democrats went scorched earth and spent $15 million to intervene in primaries, stymie progressive Democratic candidates, and tilt intraparty contests to business-friendly candidates. Meanwhile, House speaker Nancy Pelosi works to unseat Democratic senator Ed Markey, one of the Senate’s few progressive lawmakers, and to crush a spirited primary challenge to Rep. Richard Neal, who has used his committee chairmanship to block even modest health care reforms.

Please continue this article here: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/08/joe-biden-rahm-emanuel-democratic-party-election