(A picture from the work, “The Boys’ Book of Battle-Lyrics.)
While the current regime claims we focus too much on the history of slavery, in Oklahoma, the City of Tulsa is continuing its efforts to find the bodies of victims of racial violence.
It’s an effort that could take weeks, Mayor Monroe Nichols said during a press conference at City Hall. Forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield and archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck joined Nichols as he gave an update on the city’s progress.
“This groundbreaking work from our archaeological and genealogy teams is a great mark of success and it tells us where we are, certainly in the right place and on the right track,” Nichols said. “The latest report from the Oklahoma Archaeological Survey gave us very detailed information as to what we believe we have left at the Oaklawn Cemetery.”
The destruction of “Black Wall Street” and the deaths of so many of our black citizens deserve remembrance. That such horrors happened are matters of fact and history which we ignore at our peril.
A free and great people does not fear its history. It embraces its past with a willingness to change and improve.
Ethics and Morality demand that we remember the crimes and mistakes of the past in the hope that we are now a better people who have found a better moral compass and a greater responsibility toward our fellow human beings.
Let us pay attention to the great words of one of our greatest Presidents, Abraham Lincoln:
Lincoln didn’t just talk about having more money but assumed that social and political health were also of great importance. He could not have spoken truer words. While we live in an age of the most disgusting and degrading money grubbing and corruption, he calls us to be a great people with an unwavering committment to doing what is right.
(Presumably over the last dime of profit just like our tech bros.)
Billionaire bosses scoff at the concept of work life balance. Squeezing every conceivable sacrifice from the pitiful workers they exploit mercilessly is embedded in their DNA. The cruelty is the purpose. The cruelty is to instill fear and obedience in their worker drones.
You might say, “James, you don’t seem to like them very much?”
“No, I don’t.”
And I will tell you why. These individuals with their enormous wealth larger than most of the world’s nations’ annual budgets have it in their power to make their workplaces worker friendly, a paradise and continuing benefit to the nation. They could provide day care, scholarships, travel and most importantly, a guarantee of employment as a reward for loyalty. Instead they impose pain and hardship as a means of getting every last dime even thought they have billions upon billions of those “last dimes.”
When I was a young man I read a lot of history. I still do. There is the story of George Pullman. He created the Pullman Car. It is a train car that allows passengers to travel in comfort and sleep while traveling. He made many millions of dollars. Like today’s billionaire bosses, he wanted every last dime. So, he built a “model community” for his workers where they had to live and where every action and every expenditure could be controlled. A horrible cruel dictatorships that demanded moment by moment obedience punishable by immediate dismissal for any failure. He could have built a paradise just like our beyond all human understanding levels of greedy tech bros could but they won’t.
I think they relish the power. The idea of doing good of doing what is right is repugnant to their openly fascist belief systems. They take and they take and they take — and that is all the rationale they need. They want and have created a nationwide atmosphere of fear to keep wages and worker demands low. And in case, we forget for a moment their power they sail their yachts before us, fly their planes above us and buy our politicians cheap.
Am I wrong?? Show me the kindness of these men. Show me at any time where their workers were a priority. Show me.
We should expect more of the wealthy. We should expect more of Americans. We all have duties to each other as citizens and as members of human kind.
It is painful to write about business ethics when the prevailing mood in the business world is crass exploitation.
And I’ll tell you something else. Right now in the halls of power both in business and government, the idea of obeying the law is greeted with merriment and scorn.
But verily, verily I say unto you, they have their reward and it may well be coming sooner than they think.
I found this article online at the Sojourner’s web site. It is called: Can Poems Push Christians to Stop the Suffering in Gaza? The article is written by Ryan Duncan.
The article discusses a book of poetry and its author and what this use of art does. You might say, when we read this we are discussing the power of language and in particular, the power of poetic language.
Below is a link to the story and a short but effective quote.
After reading Forest of Noise, it becomes apparent why Abu Toha’s public appearances are often marked by moments of sorrow and anger. In one MSNBC interview following his Pulitzer win, Abu Toha fell into a tense back-and-forth with journalist Catherine Rampell when she pointed to some of his social media posts and suggested he was questioning the status of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas.
“I’ve never denied anyone’s suffering,” Abu Toha remarked sharply, “I know that everyone is suffering, Israelis and Palestinians, but why are our sufferings not acknowledged? Why are we called terrorists? Why are we called prisoners of war while the Israelis who were kidnapped from Israel are named hostages? Does this give them more humanity, because they are Israeli, while my loved ones are being named prisoners and they are tortured?”
Why indeed.
It’s a pretty piece of writing and I hope you read the whole article.
Now for my take on this.
We live in a period in the United States where words have been weaponized. Our current regime’s leader will reach thirty thousand documented lies in just a week or so. In addition, he has made insults a standard part of his particular brand. He likes “Low IQ,” “Communist,” Marxist”, etc. His pitiful flock hangs on every insult, every lie and every appeal to their lowest and most base instincts like hogs wallowing in mud and excrement squealing in delight.
But words don’t have to be evil and wretched to have power. How about these:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
“By sun and candle-light” is a very pretty little phrase. Words can exalt. Words can heal. And yes, words can heal and guide us.
Let’s try some healing works from history. This is Lincoln’s first inaugural address.
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Good words. Our current’s regime’s leader is incapable of forming those kinds of sentences, of attempting to unite the American people in love and common purpose.
But we can work to make this a united and great nation in spite of our lack of competent, intelligent and spiritual leadership. We can find our own words. America is full of great words and great thoughts.
Try these:
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
Even before this current set of horrors we must endure end and even before our suffering is assuaged, we can still find the great and healing words here in America, in many ways more of a dream and an aspiration.
Let us remember what we are as a nation in our highest and strongest longing.
I haven’t written for several days and I try very hard to write every day. So, what gives?
I heard the President’s speech at the United Nations.
Let me explain.
From the time that I was in my early teens, I read speeches. I found this enormous book of famous speeches everything from Hitler to Churchill I practiced Patrick Henry, Robert Ingersoll and Woodrow Wilson among many others.
I grew up in rural Northeastern Oklahoma and I would go out in the woods and practice public speaking. The art of setting the mood and driving home your point, I studied with relish.
I’ve probably given several hundred speeches in my life and if you count lectures, several thousand.
So, what is it about our current regime’s leader that has me upset?
His speech was crazy, unhinged and total nonsense. I wracked all my knowledge, all my experience and every memory trying to think of anything like it I have ever heard and came up empty, that is, for the first day. The second day, it came to me – where I had heard that speaking style before. It was Uganda’s Idi Amin.
I went and pulled some of Amin’s speeches and there are some similarities although Amin appears to use much more complex sentences and is able to maintain a central theme for entire paragraphs. So, while they share a common theme of despising ethnic minorities and imagined enemies and a certain delight in cruelty, it is fairly obvious that as speech making go, Idi Amin is the superior speaker.
So, the worst speaker I can think of in the history of humankind is not as bad a our current leader. In my estimation no speaker have ever been this bad. I am sure he will be pleased to hear that he is best at something.
I am unhappy about this. I am depressed about the state of this nation that our leader sounds like an escaped mental patient with truly legendary delusions.
If this wasn’t upsetting enough, watching coverage of this speech on various news outlets ,I saw that they “sane washed” this monstrous presentation.
Let me repeat that. A madman uttered completely insulting and cruel nonsense to an international audience and much of American media attempted to explain what he meant as if he was expressing some kind of coherent thought.
So, I haven’t written for a few days.
I read the other day that we have some 400 days to save our democracy. It seems to me that I should write as often as possible during that period. I have a duty to my nation to not take these horrors in silence and I will not.
Often on Facebook, I am asked to pray for a number of causes, often a pet or family member, sometimes a cause. I usually comply. When someone or a pet is ill, I would very much like them to get better.
Those prayers are private and I hope they do some good. But you and I both know that much public religion is little more than grandstanding. And here in the United States, many politicians wish the mantle of Christianity. We often, very often, see them fail to uphold the behavior of a follower of Christ.
The Pharisees are one of the earliest practitioners of the “public” prayer. They would go out on the street and pray publicly and loudly to demonstrate their piety. Jesus Christ called them out for their false religion and said they would have their “reward.”
But we have in our modern age, “Thoughts and Prayers.” This is a media strategy to divert criticism from a total and complete lack of action most often in regard to firearms. While children are being stacked up by so much bullet riddled cord wood, the solemn intonation that they have the thoughts and prayers of a prime recipient of National Rifle Association votes and money are solemnly reported by a compliant media.
Do the children, dead and wounded, deserve prayer? Yes, absolutely. What kind of prayer? Why don’t we see what a professional says?
The first US pope in history, a native of Chicago, spoke in English as he prayed for the victims of last week’s shooting during a Catholic school mass in Minnesota which saw two children killed and others seriously injured.
“Our prayers for the victims of the tragic shooting during a school mass in the American state of Minnesota,” he said. “We hold in our prayers the countless children killed and injured every day around the world. Let us plead God to stop the pandemic of arms, large and small, which infects our world.”
Michael Sainato writing for the Guardian reports in an article entitled (and quoted from just above this passage) Pope Leo demands end to ‘pandemic of arms’ after Minnesota school shooting
The Pontiff didn’t just offer “Thoughts and Prayers,” he addressed the root cause of all these small dead bodies. He’s calling for action, constructive and intelligent action to stop this kind of violence.
Let me explain about meaningful prayer. If you want children to be fed and they are nearby – like outside your door, feed them. Prayers is just spoken nonsense when you know what needs to be done and you don’t do it.
Prayer is never to be used as an excuse or substitute for action. We are justified in the eyes of God by what we do or fail to do. Your faith in God is demonstrated by works. What you do shows what is in your heart.
And using “thoughts and prayers” as political cover is horribly impious and wrong. James Alan Pilant
(The Great Seal of the United States is a public domain image.)
Several articles have been written about what comes after the current regime ends. One recommended that we create a “truth and reconciliation commission” in the manner of South Africa to restore civility and union. I deeply appreciate the sentiment but I do not believe that is possible in the United States, not any more. Another one I read called for mass prosecutions and prison sentences for the massive fraud, self-dealing, and law breaking that is a daily part of our news perpetrated by this administration and its sympathizers. That is very likely to happen and I expect it will happen.
Before I write any further, I want to make it clear that I do not believe that victory over these neofascists and their dim-witted followers is in any way guaranteed. I have to admit there are days when I think they just can’t be stopped. The lies, the impudence, the confidence and their unrelenting attitude of righteousness would cause all the saints of history to lose their composure. Some days it certainly ruins mine.
But let us assume for a few moments of optimism that we, the good guys, prevail over this scum. We know that we must act whenever and wherever possible to protest and throw barriers in the way of this regime. But let us talk just now of what comes after victory, after Trump is done, perhaps condemned and imprisoned.
I have been reading a book pictured below, a picture which I have borrowed from the internet. I believe this is okay under a fair use exception and since I am mentioning both that I read it and recommend that others buy it and read it, that I may perhaps be forgiven for using it.
This book by Daniel Todman is a very detailed history of Britain at war before the entry of the United States.
Why mention it here? Because just after the British had stopped the Germans from gaining air superiority over England, a number of people from the labor party as well as a group of the intelligentsia began to agitate for and develop a plan for after victory.
And that plan was very largely enacted and put in place when victory was won.
Can you imagine?
Great Britain stands alone. They are being bombed nightly by the Luftwaffe. Hitler has not yet invaded the Soviet Union and the United States seems to see no urgency in joining the conflict. And yet they assumed eventual victory. They had faith. I wish I had that kind of faith now. I wish we all did.
But in any case, what their example shows is that planning for after the struggle is vital and every bit as important as the struggle itself. There must not only be a cause worth fighting for but a set of goals to be achieved, a further set of purposes beyond simply prevailing.
I have some simple suggestions. But I want you to know that I am going to research and think about what is possible and what can achieved, so I may very well return to the topic on multiple occasions.
But here goes –
Fix the mess at the Supreme Court. Add six justices, impose term limits and a code of ethics – it has to be fixed.
Raise the minimum wage.
Universal Health Care, it’s time.
The end of the Imperial Presidency, a comprehensive set of laws and perhaps a couple of constitutional amendments to prevent this kind of power grab from ever happening again.
A complete overhaul of campaign law and among many other things no dark money ever again.
A National Guaranteed enforceable right to vote. No more of this gerrymandering nonsense.
A graduated income tax
Free college education
Free vocational training
And as 8. and 9. imply, a national never ending focus on the development of human capital in American.
We should be building a society devoted to the development of each individual so they they can live a full life of achievement.
At least, that is my poor opinion about what is necessary.
I am going to write about this more at length.
You may share your thought if you wish, but I have approval on all comments so post accordigly.
(This picture of the Liberty Bell is borrowed from Wikipedia with my thanks!!)
Embrace Your Rage!
You have decided to resist the current regime.
One of the strangest things that I continually encounter is that we must be civil, kind and forgiving of our opponents.
Not only that, but we must also be careful not to exaggerate the threat. We are told over and over again that such “exaggerations” play into the hands of our enemies.
And so instead of saying that a man who tried to violently overthrow the government was a threat to democracy, we should admit that there are two sides to the argument and spend endless hours on television news shows interviewing his devoted followers in the hope of understanding their grievances.
No more. I’m not interested in their point of view. They are violent, foolish and a threat to American democracy. That is all the analysis I need. It is all the analysis you need.
And yet I look on my internet feed and I see people who voted for the new regime who lost their jobs or their homes and their businesses and now they are sorry. They are on podcasts and network news and many other places. I don’t care and no one should.
It took a massive amount of moral and ethical indifference to vote for the current president. They wanted to “shake up” the system. They wanted to “own the libs.” They did this to themselves with their indolence and stupidity. Victims of this regime deserve sympathy, not the enablers and cheerleaders of the regime. Their just reward is what is happening and what will happen.
Our intelligentsia, our ruling class and business executives across America have walked us into the hands of a lunatic and his barely rational associates. The intelligentsia assured us that at all times our words must be measured and academic. Our ruling class is almost completely absent even the tiniest shred of moral authority or for that matter any interest in any form of morality of any kind as long as they are protected from the great unwashed masses. And above all, you have to admire the complete absence of intelligence and judgment in our business class who signed on with a madman in the hope of a crypto profit bonanza and a juicy tax cut.
If you feel that the nation that you love is being devoured by a deranged lumpen pile of carnivorous maggots, you are not alone. And it is not surprising that you feel enraged about it.
You are entitled to your anger.
Be enraged. Every day a band of foolish narcissistic clowns is making policy for the United States. What has been called the “Cradle of Liberty,” a great powerful and respected nation now appears as international source of humor, ridicule and satire. Everywhere we are pitied and the absence of what we were is lamented.
Any good, God fearing, patriot would be angry.
Our enemies are rejoicing and our friends planning on a world without us.
Yes, you are entitled to your rage.
We must act.
We must resolve to never allow these neo-fascist goons access to our government and its powers.
We must resolve never to allow the foreign nations that hate and fear us access to our elections.
We must resolve to end the corrosive influence of money in our elections and restore the power of the American voter.
We must resolve to end forever the revolting, rotting sewer pit of social media that poisons every aspect of our lives.
We must resolve to live our lives with wisdom, resolve and righteousness while facing the incoherent ravings of madmen and fools, knowing that this will be hardest of all.
God bless you for your willingness to join the cause of freedom and liberty. God bless you for courage and bravery. And God bless you for continuing the creation of democracy for our generation and all generations that follow.
This is a shorter, more carefully revised version of my earlier “My Students” posting.
One of the things I like to teach my students is that they have no intellectual inferiority in regard to the Ivy League schools.
On the face of it, that may sound ridiculous, but it is not.
A great many of these heavily lauded (and immensely well paid) graduates of the schools blessed by the establishment have participated wholly and happily in the greatest financial debacle in history. Their well honed degrees disguised their incompetence, their stupidity, their lack of intellectual depth and their overwhelming sense of entitlement.
The fact that so many of these Ivy Leaguers journey off to cash in their degrees and their honor in various financial firms is a black mark against our educational system. You see, we depend on this system to produce the scholars, the politicians, and all those various professions which make nations function with honor and purpose. Instead we get a rush of graduates toward a predatory system of financial institutions.
My students would try to take care of their fellow citizens never forgetting where they came from and the struggle they must make to simply get a job in the current market. They deserve better. Nevertheless, from this crop is my hope, that these people, these individuals working to better themselves will be the leaders of tomorrow, not the children of the elite, not the well favored few, but my students.
It is not a matter of free will or gumption that keeps my students from being as successful as those. It is a well ingrained attitude, a lack of expectations, and a consistent contempt and suspicion of the educated. We can do better. We, the citizens, have a responsibility to our children to act the part of guides and supporters. I do not mean the blind support given whatever the merits. I mean a willingness to encourage excellence and the hard, difficult job of not submitting to the idea that some people are better. They are better when they prove it. My student can prove their excellence.
But learning is not just a matter of schooling. It is a life long endeavor. Most people stop when they put that piece of paper on the wall. But that is all they are, paper, wood pulp. If my students are to change this state, this country, and this world, there must be support and dedication to a lifetime of learning. A person who continues the task of development, of becoming, is inferior to no learner on earth, whatever their degree.
There are books and as long as there are books – as long as the great works of mankind – are readily available, any human being can become educated and developed. Any individual can build the power of understanding, a basic command of the ideas that govern this society, and a sense of purpose in their lives. But we have to believe. My students need that. My students need to walk in a community where people believe they are just as good, just as smart and just as capable as students from anywhere in the world.
All they have is the power of their minds and the determination of their hearts. If they only believe.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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