michael's blog > culture

Profound Respect and Admiration for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Posted on Thu, 08/15/2019 - 09:40

There are flag waving patriots who preach the corporate-state party line, sending our children to endless wars, and there are real patriots who stand up, challenge and reveal corruption in that corporate-state. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is heroic in his advocacy for children’s wellbeing and safety. We must all do the same. mm

August 15, 2019

Americans Can Handle an Open Discussion on Vaccines—RFK, Jr. Responds to Criticism from His Family

CHD NOTE: In early May 2019, Politico Magazine published an article written by three of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s relatives, criticizing his advocacy for safe vaccines. After numerous requests, Politico magazine has refused to publish his response.

By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

  

My uncle and my father argued that in a free and open society, the response to difficult questions should never be to shut down debate. What we need is science, not censorship.

Three of my Kennedy relatives recently published an article criticizing my advocacy for safe vaccines. Our contentious family dispute highlights the fierce national donnybrook over vaccinations that has divided communities and raised doubts about the Democratic Party’s commitment to some of its defining values: abhorrence of censorship, wariness toward excessive corporate power, support for free speech, religious freedom, and personal sovereignty over our bodies, and the rights of citizens (codified in the Nuremberg Code and other treaties to which we are signatories) to decline unwanted government-mandated medical interventions. The debate has also raised questions about the independence of our press and its role as a champion of free speech, and First Amendment rights and as a bulwark against overreaching by government and corporations.

Themes: 
vaccinations
freedom
culture

Manifest Destiny

Posted on Wed, 08/14/2019 - 21:11

Embedded deep in the human psyche is the perception of comparison, pecking order, a biological imperative. But then, the newly evolved neocortex, with its vast capacity to imagine, steps in and conjures whatever it needs to justify one’s position on the ladder: class, superiority, racism, bigotry, religious dogma, and prejudice for profit. We make up concepts that advance, leverage and maintain our pecking-order-status, at the expense of others, of course, which is how the game is played. Theistic religions and our prevailing political-social fabric, including gender inequity, is cast on this foundation. The more fundamental, therefore conservative, the more that deep, often tacit, white supremacy, and its implicit imagined-racism, percolates.

Themes: 
freedom
culture

Contempt for the Commons

Posted on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 11:49

Themes: 
freedom
culture
democracy

Promise First Do No Harm

Posted on Sun, 02/25/2018 - 22:10

We forget. Nonviolence begins in the arms of nurturing mothers and fathers.

We feel numbed-shock, sadness and rallying pockets of rage as another wave of violence ripples through our collective psyche. Personally, I celebrate our nation’s youth, like the boy in the Emperor’s New Clothes, exposing the hypocrisy of the gun-lobby and implicitly the greed of the military industrial complex, hiding behind flag-waving (pseudo) patriotism that worships killing.

Themes: 
nurturing
touch
parenting
violence
culture

Sexual Predators, God in the Sky and the Rape of Mother Nature

Posted on Mon, 12/18/2017 - 10:46

Imagine growing from conception and throughout childhood without being blamed or shamed, punished or rewarded. No corporal punishments, i.e., spanking. No bribes, do this and you will get that. No time outs. No condemning words or threatening looks. Not even comparison. That means winning or losing, grades and hierarchy are off limits too. Oh, you can see which stack of blocks reach taller before falling down, but it is the blocks that have all the attention, not the one stacking. In place of these you experienced open and honest empathy and respect for feelings and needs, your feelings and needs and equally respect and appreciation for the feelings and needs of others, including plants, animals, water and the earth, along with, of course, natural consequences. Fire is, indeed, hot. The way the early brain, body and developing psyche experiences this trust, empathy and respect is through touch, affection and pleasurable sensations, mother nature, not symbols and not with concepts, God in the sky. What would you be like if that was the environment you were planted in? How would the society and our world be different?

Themes: 
sexual violence
culture

Pages