Hunger

Bloodshed grows on this earth, famine

Is everywhere, and life is getting harder.

Let's wake up, all together, and take action before it's too late.

Bloodshed grows and hunger is upon us

It's late, in the night, the stars Sparke

I wake up suuddenly because I cannot sleep

So much I am suffering for humanity

   - Hunger, Baaba Maal

Two stories.  The only two stories there are, really.

In the United States, Donald Trump is successfully using the politics of division to build a tribe.  Like all tribes, his excludes others and incites his people to violence in defence of what they either feel is theirs or they have decided to claim.

Look to the former Yugoslavia, or Rwanda, or Syria to see what happens when brothers are divided and told they are mortal enemies.  

Trump is not the first, nor will he be the last.  He is a symptom, a manifestation of the most base, limbic aspects of our species' psyche.  The tribe is uniform, it is closed, it is static - and it is doomed, always, to fall.

That's story one.  Here's the other one.

“This is so unusual; the newest people to the country and the oldest peoples never get to talk to each other,” she said. “Here, it’s happening organically.”

What is the opposite of tribe?  It's community.  Throughout history, people have travelled in search of community, of some common thing that connects them with others.  In the end, though, the thing in the middle is never anything more than a centre of gravity, a stone in the soup that brings people together.  Community isn't what they join, it's what they build together.

This is something I feel is hard-wired into so many First Nation traditions, and yet it's only now, after centuries of trying to wipe out or oppress this wisdom that we're realizing the only way to move forward is to think laterally and embrace the best of what we once wrote off as valueless.

There is so much hunger out there - hunger for something we feel we don't have.  When we mistake this hunger for anger, we are vulnerable to the dempagogues and would-be tyrants of the world, like Trump.  Men like these don't know how to build - they only know how to destroy.

The hunger is real.  It's a yearning for something more, something greater that feeds our souls.

We've been through this cycle before; doubtless, we'll go through it again.  

The trajectory is set, though; if you can look beyond the shadows of fear and individual or tribal understanding, you can see that beyond the light at the end of the tunnel - the cave entrance - lies a garden.

It's a space where we all belong, where collaboration and co-creation allows us to innovate and build nourishment that sustains rather than being trapped in a "eat what you kill" mentality.

Hunger keeps us competitive, helps us get ahead - but only so far.  To go the distance - to get to where we're going - we have to get there together.

Only then can we be free of this hunger that starves are souls.  Only then can we nourish each other and be more than the sum of our parts - a community, a concious society, a manifestation.

"(He) should really get up and say to his people, 'stop,'" he said.

Not Trump talking about supporters of his like David Duke, of course.

Everyone that thinks Trump is great is smart, clearly, and exercising their free speech.

Anyone disagreeing with him, though - they should be locked away and worse than water-boarded.

If Trump wins, he will govern exactly as he campaigned.  

Don't say anyone didn't warn you, America.

Sunconsistencies

It's your prerogative, it's your right, it's your CHOICE! Is the government now going to shut down strip clubs?

On the other hand:

On the subject of accommodation, it's not unreasonable to expect the niqab wearer to be the one to do the accommodating.

I think I see a pattern here.

Private space - dress like your employer tells you.  Private space - dress like the Sun tells you.

It's all about choice, don't you know.

One wonders how the Sun would feel about a restaurant that demanded employees wear veils.

What about a strip club where the body was naked but the face covered?

Trump's Hammer: The Most Frightening Thing The Donald has Said:

"I'll work on it with the general," he told Cooper.  He added, "We have to play the game at a much tougher level than we're playing it now."

To reiterate - waterboarding, which has been discredited as useless in getting accurate information as well as being inhumane, isn't far enough for Trump.  He feels the US needs to get "much tougher" on the people who threaten the security of the nation, including Islam (a religion, not people).  Oh, and the Mexican rapists, and women who think they have a voice in political debate, so on and so forth.

There are precedents for this.  When national bosses turn to the military as their key advisor on matters of foreign affairs or social policy, this thing happens where every problem starts to look like a nail.  

How do you get tougher on groups like ISIL? You bomb them and the countries they are in.  This fosters perfect recruitment opportunities, as the only reason groups like this can exist is because there are legitimate concerns militant groups (religious, political, it doesn't really matter) can tap into.

Then you look at threats internally and apply the hammer at home as well - to the criminals, regardless of what led them to be criminal, and then "special interest" groups that get in the way of the president and their military cabinet doing what they feel is their right, which is whatever they can get away with.  What about homosexuals, who he detests?  Or political dissenters, or even academics just doing their job?  How about people of different political parties who vocally challenge his rule? What about any minority group he feels stands in the way of making America great again, like it was... when? When the Confederate flag hung on state buildings?

This is the approach Bashar al-Assad has taken in Syria.  Study carefully the results.  It's the approach Mussolini took in Italy - understand what happened.  Pinochet got "much tougher" in Chile, how did that work out?

The greatest threat to democracy is never external - it is always the one-note populist who things violence and threats are the only way to get what they want.

What they want is never, never what's good for the people.  Which is why we have democracy in the first place - only the people, with carefully collected, curated and analysed information - know what is best for themselves.

Trump is telling the whole world exactly how he would govern.  If he wins, it's clear exactly what sort of response he would generate, here and abroad - it's a story we have seen time and again and are seeing play out now in extreme form in Syria.

It's time his supporters turn inwards and ask themselves if that's the America they really want.  Their entire generation and the country as a whole for generations to come will be judged by the choices they make at the ballot box.

Stumping Trump: Ender's War Room

To beat Donald Trump - and, rest assured, we need to, because he is currently winning - we need to dramatically change the focus.  We need to stop over-reacting to every loathsome utterance he makes, because our over-reactions help him.  We need, instead, to start focusing on changing the hearts (such as they are) and the minds (ditto) of the angry old white men who support Trump.

Yes to everything Kinsella says, with a bit of a shift where it comes to research and implementation.

Warren Kinsella - author of some decent political strategy books based on his decades of experience in political war rooming - wants the focus to be on finding the things about Trump that will really piss off the Trump base and send them running to someone else.

I respectfully disagree.

Such an approach is cutting off a manifest symptom without looking at the disease.  It does this, in no small part, because of the general assumption of politics - that whoever gets in power wields the levers of policy and can shape the landscape as they want.  It's an unspoken truism that any self-respecting politico would deny if questioned because they know, consciously, that it rings false.

I'm a firm believer that the increasingly top-down political approach has fuelled the frustrations of the masses, Trump constituency and otherwise.  Politicians present themselves as the only one who can make things right and their opponents as ticking time bombs.  The people have only one simple choice to make - who will make choices for them?

It's a mentality that has its roots in traditional hierarchical models, like feudalism; there's someone at the top who calls all the shots, and then people who argue against those calls and want someone else to make the calls.  

There's no small irony that those who are the most anti-government, anti-authoritarian invest so little agency or social capital in their broader world so that a top-down government is really necessary. Sometimes, it's a matter of historical reality - they've never been listened to before, no matter how many marches and protests get media play, and they're not truly being listened to now.  For the Trump constituency, it's more a matter of people like them always having been the decision-makers in the past; there was general comfort that whoever was headman of the tribe would still be of the same tribe.

Such is no longer the case.

Trump's constituency is getting behind and staying behind Trump because it is in their nature; they want to be as passive as possible yet still have the world function in the privileged way it did before. That means privileged access to everything (except from their perspective, the frame is that their legitimate entitlements are being taken away and given to less-deserving demographics), the right to treat the world like a Boy's Club, making racist jokes and having people applaud, not chastise them, to cat-call with abandon, so on and so forth.

What they don't realize is how weak their position makes them.  

Survival isn't, never has been about strength.  These would-be Alphas are nursing stone clubs and beer bellies in an age when the opposition has design thinking and nudge theory at its disposal.  They can't win in a fair fight, but then they've never had to engage in a fair fight.  Privilege has always been their privilege.

Here's where I suggest an approach that's different from Kinsella's, full-well realizing that he's won more battles for the throne than I have played even a peripheral role in.  I'm not interested in the throne, or the next win.  I'm interested in changing the game, period.

Don't view Trump as the champion of WASPy men.  View him as the embodiment of all their weaknesses.  He's boorish, self-absorbed, thin-skinned, combative, ignorant, bigoted, all the rest of it. His wealth was inherited; his only skills in life are bullying people into doing things for him and building his brand through standard divisive tactics.  That's it.

Trump has never created anything.  He's never innovated anything.  Trump has never inspired anyone to be a strong leader - he hasn't the slightest clue what leadership is.  Above all else, Trump, like all Alphas and especially the colonialist-mentality Alphas, is completely dependent on other people (which is why he's a bully).

Trump cannot make America great again, because greatness is a concept beyond his grasp.

He relies on a system that enforces pacifism among the people.  He needs to be top dog, with everyone else orbiting him.  Trump sucks up energy and weakens the systems in which he exists. 

Take a look at Syria's Assad - his ego and his strong-arm tactics have devastated a country.  His inability to lead has decimated a proud nation and turned its people into victims.

America is currently on that spectrum; so too is Canada.  Responsible governments have recognized this, which is why there's been such a strong push for Open Government and new forms of civic engagement.

Trump doesn't know how to engage - he only knows how to shout.  He's a one-note bully, a parody of a man.

Not exactly the image we want for ourselves, is it?  

Making Trump the enemy only vindicates the self-narrative of his core constituency, which is why attacks on him only reinforce their narrative.  He is "their guy", the head of their tribe, and any attack on his person is interpreted as an attack on their tribe.  

Kinsella's approach is to create a wedge between the tribe and their head man; it's an approach that can work, but the tribe will find a new head man.  As Kinsella states, there are always men like Trump out there, ready to step in.

Trump is not a disease - he's a mere symptom and should be treated as such.  The system that makes passivity possible, that enables colonialist mentality - that's the problem.  

The goal isn't to beat Trump, then beat the next Trump, then the one after that - it's to fix the system so that there is no need nor space for a Trump, period.

Which means Trump isn't the focus - the people are.  

This is where Trudeau has, in some measure, gotten it right; he didn't use military analogies and put Harper in his crosshairs.  Instead, he focused on society as a whole, a vision of what this country can be and how people can disrupt and gain from the process.  Even the white males, because in giving up a bit of power, giving up a bit of their perceived entitlements, they can become something more than Head Men - they can become leaders.

You'd be surprised the difference people feel when they are respected rather than feared, are thanked rather than resented.  Today's true leaders already know this.

You will never beat Trump, or Trumps by playing the game that favours them.  We don't want to do that, anyway, because their game is part of society's current failings.

Instead, we need to change the rules of the game.  The best way to do that is to admit there's another player at the table and help them be at their best.

What does this mean in practice?

It means talking to and about Trump like a symptom.  He deserves no more than that, and the people who've bet on him deserve a lot more.

They should be the focus.  Helping them recognize that the social changes that are occurring cannot be reversed, nor do they really want them to be.  Why?  That's the tricky part.  This is where true leadership is necessary.

Fortunately, the story of America provides ripe fodder for those leaders to pull from.  America has been great, and done great things.  Smart people from around the world have moved to the US and disrupted the global status quo, innovating in science, arts, policy, process, etc.  Understand who America's greats are and what shaped them and the story becomes clear.  At its best the US is a home and spring board for anyone who wants to do great things.  Anyone, no matter where they come from. 

America's diversity and its culture of being the world's marketplace is what makes it great.

You don't have a successful marketplace by putting up walls, limiting entry and smacking down anyone who comes forward with a new idea or product - which is what Trump's bigotry is all about.

- A vision for what American can be rooted in its own mythology.

- Disrupting the system, empowering those who feel unempowered with a caveat of responsibility, but with clear rewards as a benefit

- Trump (comes last) as a symptom.  He speaks, a response frames how his approach is actually part of why America is atrophying, and segue back to 1 and 2.

You won't stump Trump by playing his game; you will make America great again by focusing on Americans.

Descolada: Trump, the KKK, American Ills and Leadership

Donald J. Trump 

✔‎@realDonaldTrump

"@ilduce2016: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” – @realDonaldTrump#MakeAmericaGreatAgain"

6:13 AM - 28 Feb 2016

 
•  4,0404,040 Retweets
 
•  8,9758,975 likes

Trump and the KKK.  It makes for a very tempting target.  Finally, Trump's multiple foes (most of whom have been attacked by him) say, we've got him.  We can give him a taste of his own medicine and expose to the world what he really is.

Don't do it.

Donald Trump is better at the attack-and-deflect game than you are.  That, and the public doesn't trust most of you - the GOP, the Democrats, the media and many pundits - anyway.  To put him in your crossfire is to feed into his game, to bring the war to his ground.  You won't win.

Instead, take a look at what happened in Canada's recent federal election.  Divisivenesses became a wedge-tool on the side of the governing Conservatives.  The new government rejected divisiveness and kept the focus on something else; a vision of what the country, at its best, can be.

Justin Trudeau didn't strike back at Stephen Harper, positioning himself as the guy to beat the incumbent (though that was part of his team's messaging).  Instead, everything the Conservatives through at him became a contrast, a teachable moment about why that vision was necessary.

It ultimately doesn't matter who Trump associates with.  He is a symptom, not a disease.  To make him your enemy is to play to his strengths, and to your weaknesses.

That's not how you will beat him.

Donald Trump is the embodiment of what is wrong with the system, but the problem is the system itself.  Politicians win by picking fights and building coalitions - all politicians do this.  It doesn't matter whether it's one celebrity, or one interest group, or a nation like Saudi Arabia - ultimately, it's variations on a theme.  It's this strategic opportunism that people mistrust.

Trump claims to say things like they are, and that's where his appeal lies - he is not beholden to interest groups, the refrain grows.

By demonstrating how the system has let the American people down, has marginalized their voice and give rise to wedge-politics, strategic funding and strategic partnerships instead of true democracy, you have the power to show the American public that Trump is really no different than any other politician.

The challenge, if you choose this approach, you are creating a set of expectations no one believes you to be prepared or even willing to meet.  They need to believe that you are there for them, all of them.

If you cannot defeat Trump, the symptom of America's deep-rooted societal illness, then that says something about your place in the American ecosystem as well.

Leadership isn't about strategy and it isn't about winning.  It's about empowerment.  Trump cannot understand this.  

It'll take a great deal of bridge-building and trust-nurturing, but Americans will rally to the person who does understand leadership.

And that person will have faith in them.

My reply to JT

I cannot stress enough -- Canadians are sick of band-aid solutions. They voted for real change on October 19, 2015, and they’re counting on us to get the job done modernizing the economy. Four years from now, they want to see the foundation rebuilt. Not the same cracks patched over and over. That was the Conservative approach and it failed.

Craig, we would never have this opportunity to help revitalize our economy without the energy, time, and generosity of thousands of Canadians like you.

I’m so thankful for everything you’ve done to make it possible. And I hope I’ve made you proud so far.

Because my promise to you is that I will work hard every day as my way of saying thank you for your support -- past, present and future.

Thank you,

Justin Trudeau 

Prime Minister (I know you want me to call you Justin - sorry!), I agree, 100 per cent.  Structural change, a peaceable revolution, a new way for Canadians to engage with their government - and vice versa.  A truly Open Government requires a Responsible Society.  

And I know you want to help us maximize our potential for collective impact, building together that Canada we all long to see.  It's appreciated.

Here's a direct way you can help.

The WelcomeHomeTO project has really taken off - our little team has build bridges, started conversations and hopeful has people at all levels thinking of the applicability of constellation governance models where it comes to setting up new Canadians for success.  It's a beginning, but one that's growing faster than we could have anticipated.

We want to do this right, and with your help we can.

Katie always said, "end on a call to action" - so that's what I'm going to do.

Our team is entirely volunteer, many of them students working endless days on thesis in addition to endless days on WelcomeHomeTO.  They believe in what they're doing, but it always helps to hear from someone else that they respect that they are believed in.

If you could do that one thing for me - call up the team members, tell them you've heard about the project and you can't wait to see it come to fruition, I would be grateful.

Thank you in advance.

And yes - so far, you've done us proud.  

Now let's see what we can do together.