Of the many ills that Donald Trump has inflicted upon the world, his cancellation of the federal Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) policy is among the most grievous. DEI was an effort to offer admittance and opportunity to people who have been historically disadvantaged. The idea that someone other than a white Christian male might get a job or a promotion over them did not sit well with the MAGA, nee Tea Party, element of the Republican party.
MAGA is nothing if not a tribe, a social group made up of families or klans clans who share common ancestry, culture, language and traditions. MAGAs are white, English-speaking, Christians who like NFL football, NASCAR, guns, god, slavery and each other, mostly. They invented America and have the right to establish the rules of participation. They do not like blacks, gays, women not in the kitchen, non- white immigrants, Muslims, unelected judges, vaccines, higher education, science, international organizations and mainstream media.
The idea that there were laws that gave others equal footing, a chance to feel part of the American dream, to get jobs traditionally denied to them no matter their qualifications, to get a promotion that might give them a say over white folks, well that just wasn’t going to hunt.
DEI began with baby steps during the Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower presidencies where limited action was taken banning racial discrimination and towards desegregation. The biggest push towards equality came in the 1964 Civil Rights Act which became the basis and motivation for modern DEI.
But in the eyes of the MAGAs, their pappies and gran pappies, the matter was not settled. Equal Rights and DEI might be the law, but that didn’t mean their attitudes were about to change, nor were they going to easily accept these modern ideas that were being pushed down their throats from Washington. For them the Civil War was only a battle, a temporary setback in a much longer struggle.
They just needed one of their own to be elected in order to reverse decades of progress. They had a guy in Reagan, who gave his first post Republican convention speech in Philadelphia, but not the big Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. In August 1980, Reagan gave a ´states rights´ speech near Philadelphia, Mississippi, not far from where three civil rights workers were murdered by the Klan a few months earlier. The federal push for equality was not shared in the southern states and ¨states rights´ was code for let the lynchings continue.
The Reagan years were not fertile ground for minorities. Reagan criticized affirmative action, reduced funding for civil rights organizations, and worked to limit voting rights. But if Reagan tinkered around the edges, Trump came in with a sledgehammer, ending decades of progress towards equality for which the federal government had largely been responsible. First, he cancelled it within the federal government itself and then threatened other entities receiving federal funds. Universities were on the front line, liberal institutions indoctrinating learning and openness in young people, a direct attack on MAGA principles of ignorance and intolerance.
The MAGA boys also got a boost from their guys in the US Supreme Court whose recent ruling limits protection granted under the Voting Rights Act and will surely gut minority representation. The MAGA billionaires got what they paid for – Trump, the Supreme Court, and keeping them negroes on the plantation. Unlike most of us, their money goes farther these days.
The attacks on DEI, on immigrants, non-Christians, non-whites, democracy itself, are dangerous leanings that have taken hold globally.
Victor Orban, darling of demagogues the world over, the great right hope, was just recently defeated in Hungarian elections. Before he left office after 16 hardline years, Orban had brought the media under the control of his fat-cat friends, suppressed dissent, limited the presence of NGOs, morphed into a Christian Nationalist, enriched his buddies and allies with government contracts and built border fences to keep out ¨poisonous immigrants. ´´
To his credit, and unlike Trump and Brazil’s Bolsonaro, when finally defeated at the polls he forsook power without a fight. To paraphrase Shakespeare, ¨Nothing in his office became him like the leaving it. ¨ His departure may have been motivated by a newfound respect for democracy, or he could have had in mind the fates of Bolsonaro and Ceausescu.
But tribalism goes back well beyond people like Trump and Orban. It goes back to the origins of humans on earth. Modern humans, having evolved from a complex lineage over a long period of time, first appeared in Africa just over 300,000 years ago. As protection against the intense ultraviolet radiation in Africa, the first humans were black. That means that all of the people on earth today had black ancestors, even the lily-white Scots and the fanatically white Aryan Brotherhood. No wonder the Brotherhood prefers the Adam and Eve origin of humankind. They were white folk, at least in the disturbed minds of Christian nationalists.
It wasn’t until humans moved out of Africa into more northerly lands that skin colors began to lighten. Lighter skin was a response to weaker ultraviolet rays in northern reaches, the need to better absorb and synthesize Vitamin D.
Despite the racist rhetoric of white supremacist groups around the world, if we go back to the beginning of humankind, some 11,000 generations ago, we were all black. What do you say to that Misters Metzger, Mosley, Duke, and Trump? We all started from the same black base and then some of us became lighter but denser.
You don’t have to go back 300,000 years to prove that truth. Take a Scot in the middle of a dreary Scottish winter and put him or her in Malaga or Morocco for two weeks. Hide the sunscreen, and they will come back with a burn or a tan. Leave them in the sun a little longer and they will be so dark they will have to pass an entrance exam to get back into the country.
So, the difference between human beings is not genetic. In fact, we are almost 100% genetically identical. Race is not biological, however strange that may seem after living a life bombarded with overt and coded messaging about white supremacy.
There was a time when family social groups or clans were essential to survival. Early humans and their Neanderthal predecessors, later to be neighbors, lived in a harsh and lawless environment. Their only protection against what lay in wait was each other. In order to not starve or not be eaten by predators or killed by other clans, they had to band together. There weren’t sheriffs or judges or even ´have spear, will travel´ bounty hunters. Everything they needed they had to build, hunt, find, or do themselves. It was beyond the capacity of individuals.
Cooperation with others was necessary and these alliances where early humans shared tasks and where numbers provided protection, grew naturally into social bonds. People shared the same food; food developed in isolation from other groups. Burial practices, early art, and rituals that distinguished a group grew beyond the basics of mere survival into common practices.
Some 50,000 years ago, humans underwent a cultural revolution. Early language allowed for improved communication and saw the beginnings of teaching, of storytelling, of sharing wisdom, and the development of a common identity. Pair bonding within, and, to avoid inbreeding, outside of family groups, evolved into matrilineal and later patrilineal systems.
What was born of necessity moved beyond defense, beyond surviving, into early culture. The storytelling, singing, and dancing were cheap ways to pass the time, but our ancestors wanted more. Soon they began going to drive-ins for brontosaurus ribs and to early bowling alleys.
About 12,000 years ago, clans and lineages of early humans gave way to larger groups called tribes, which were alliances of the diverse clans whose leaders were either elders or the strongest warriors. The rituals, myths, and bowling shoes of the clans formed unique tribal identities.
Around 7,000 years ago, humans learned the intricacies of agriculture which allowed them to stay in one place. Many abandoned the nomadic hunting and gathering existence that had sustained them in the past. Tribes merged into chiefdoms featuring centralized authority which oversaw the production and distribution of food and other resources.
It’s at this time that stratum within social groups began to form. At the top were the nobility, below them the commoners, and on the bottom rung, the slaves, usually the spoils of war with neighboring chiefdoms.
A couple of thousand years later, say 3,000 BCE, saw the emergence of early states, Mesopotamia and Egypt. Another half a millennium went by and the Babylonians and Assyrians made their appearances. Then around 500 BCE, states became empires and civilizations, for example the Persians, Greeks, and Romans.
Of course, life and society existed outside the Middle East, Western Asia and Europe. Civilizations rose and fell in the Indus Valley, (modern day India and Pakistan), in China, and in what became the Americas, including the great Mesoamerican civilizations of the Olmec, Mayan, and Aztec cultures.
These centers of power saw the emergence of kings, and the further stratification of humans. Priests, warriors, artisans, and peasants now occupied various rungs on the social ladder with the bottom rung still reserved for slaves. Ominously, what had heretofore been rituals and ceremony, largely connected to nature, morphed into the earliest forms of organized religion.
Medieval states, dynastic kingdoms organized around feudal systems arose in Europe, Asia, and Africa around 1000 CE. What we would know as modern-nation states came to be in the mid 17 century CE, although countries like England and France had been well-established a couple of centuries before then.
The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile and the later defeat of the Muslims in Andalucia in 1492 consolidated a fragmented mixture of separate realms, culture, and languages into what we now know as Spain. In an arrangement that still exists, the Basque Country and Catalonia were allowed to remain semi-autonomous regions within Spain.
Modern day Germany and Italy underwent a similar process but were not the countries familiar to us until the mid 1800s.
At each progression of social order, society moved more and more into a collective, a shared way of living. Life was still brutal and short, but there was strength in numbers and a greater sense of community. It was the beginning of government and taxation. While some may not view that as progress, risk was mitigated, there was less peril from wild animals and thieves, less probability of starvation, and less fear of a bigger tribe wiping you out. Taxes, when not stolen by the rulers, went to build things for the common good – roads, and militaries for the protection of both people and commerce. Trade with far away lands became viable if slow.
The journey to modernity was fraught with conflict and war, poverty and disease, loss and despair. Few were unaffected. War and plague were indiscriminate killers. Childhood illness took millions before they had their chance to live. Public hygiene was unknown for centuries. Night meant a world largely unlit, a time for people of ill intent and mythological beasts.
Science, the great catalyst for human advancement, was haphazard, underfunded, and often in competition with religion for most of world history. But the 16th century changed the balance. The emergence of Copernicus, Galileo, and especially Newton, saw science become a discipline. It developed a methodology around observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and theory. The scientific battle with faith, the challenge to organized religion didn’t disappear. Religion was in an ongoing battle with secular authority through much of the wrongly named Dark, and later Middle Ages, a battle that continues until today.
It should be an unfair fight. Science has repeatable evidence on its side. It does not say you are better somehow for believing without seeing. To the contrary, observation is at the center of science. If it can’t be detected and its conclusions are not repeatable, it can´t be called science. Science is in constant conflict with pseudo science, fake information that does not stand up to the rigor of investigation and experiment, but which is useful to its advocates in muddying the water.
Science is open to being wrong, in fact its validity is continuously tested. Conclusions drawn from available information may not hold up under future scrutiny. Corrections are made; textbooks are changed to align with the latest evidence. Old truths are not lamented; their parting invokes no emotion. Once the proof is in and theories modified, added to, or discarded, disproven theories are cast aside, their discoverers or advocates usually more than ready to accept their errors or deficiencies, but happy to have been an important part of the process of discovery.
Science is egalitarian while religion is closed, available only to believers. Science is steadily innovating and open to change when methodology disproves what was previously held. Religion is unwavering, mostly immune to evidence, demanding blind obedience to dogma.
Though society moved through various orders, clans to tribes to chiefdoms, states, civilizations, empires and nations, the tendency to cling to tribes and their cultures has never disappeared. Within the larger groups, tribes often took divergent paths, unwilling to submerge their unique identities, their habits and cultures to the whole.
The cult of religion was the leading reason for tribes to fight against integration. Religion was a deeply held belief, one that may have served the interests of the few at the top, an insistence that their god was the real god and that all others were idols. In order to belong to the tribe, you had to believe in its god. Religion went beyond belief to become a social perimeter, an isolation that allowed a culture to flourish, a moat that ensured survival.
One of history’s most integrated tribes is the Jews. For 3,500 hundred years, Jews have stood apart from the rest of society, even as they lived within that society. Jews believe in a moral covenant with God, one that requires they live ethically and preserve divine law. Their religion is not just a belief in God but something around which they order their lives. Their belief in religious law is observed in the food they eat, the rituals they follow, in some sects, the way they dress.
For centuries, Jews displayed a remarkable ability to be part of, but distinct within a larger society. This otherness was essential to their survival but made them a target for demagogues and autocrats who needed scapegoats to rile the populace so that they might assume or consolidate power.
Christianity, a movement focused on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, began as a sect within Judaism, following Jewish law and observances and rituals. What distinguished Christians from other Jews, what eventually provoked a separate religion, was their belief that Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah.
In what was to be the first of many schisms within Christianity, Paul of Tarsus, in opposition to the apostles James and Peter, opened Christianity to Gentiles by moving away from strict adherence to Jewish law and rituals. By the second century CE, Christianity stood apart from Judaism and because its own religion.
The popularity of Christianity was that it offered salvation to everyone, not just one ethnic group. Its focus on forgiveness and equality was foreign, but welcome to people who felt excluded or were downtrodden in their lives, who wanted to believe in something better, something less harsh and punitive.
The expansion of Christianity, especially after the Roman Emperor, Constantine, legalized it in 313 CE, and the historically underrated, Emperor Theodosius the First, made it the official religion of the Empire in 380 CE, accelerated greatly because of official Roman support and Roman infrastructure. The Roman network of roads gave unprecedented mobility to Christian evangelists and missionaries. From those Roman beginnings, Christianity, in its various forms, went on to become the dominant religion in Europe and, through European expansion and colonization, in the Americas and much of Africa.
Islam, the last of the three Abrahamic religions, began in 610 CE when the Prophet Muhammad received his first revelation from the angel Gabriel in Mecca. Muhammad went on to receive other revelations over the next 20 some years and this insight formed the Quran, Islam’s holy book.
Islam is a monotheistic religion with one God, Allah, with a pronounced purpose on social justice and moral clarity. Though its origins are in the 7th century BCE, Islam doesn’t see itself as a new faith, rather one that corrected the wayward tendencies of society and restored the teachings of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, who for Islam, was a prophet not a messiah.
While Christianity eased the entrance requirements by moving away from many of the formalities of Judaism, Islam sought a return to rituals. Of the three Abrahamic religions, Islam demands the most from its followers; numerous calls to prayer throughout the day, no food, drink, or sex from dawn to dust throughout the 30 days of Ramadam and the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca and an obligatory religious duty.
Islam also considers itself to be the last version of the Abrahamic religions. There can be no further revelations or amendments, a very definitive, cocksure and anti-science pronouncement. Islam declared itself an improvement over the two previous Abrahamic religions, and one which thanks to its all-knowing wisdom, cannot be improved upon.
Islam spread rapidly, largely through Arab conquest, into Syria, Mesopotamia (Iraq), Egypt and Persia (Iran). Islam today has over 2 billion adherents with Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa home to the majority of that 2 billion. It is the fastest growing religion in the world, now largely driven by birth rates that far exceed those of Judaism and Christianity.
Religion has played a pivotal role in the continuing division of society. It is not the only source of apartness. Political power, ideology, economics, and zeal for dominance, all have their roles in disunion, conflict, and war, but the most destructive basis of these is religion. Nothing has been as persistent, comprehensive, fanatical, and divisive. The belief in an omnipotent god drives, or scares, humans to do what they would otherwise consider unconscionable.
So, while much of society marched unrelentingly towards some form of contested harmony, religion held out. Given the violence, racism, and superstition that were held since the inception of humankind, being an enclave in a maelstrom seemed prudent.
The movement of society into larger and larger groups had existential benefits, but often at the expense of the individual. As societal entities grew and stratified, too often the greatest benefits went to those best positioned to exploit others. For most individuals, life was difficult and brief. The social safety nets we know today wouldn’t exist for a few more centuries. The protection that tribes offered against lords, kings, and other despots was physically and psychologically fundamental. No one wanted to be alone as the power of the state took, or threatened to take, all they had.
But the world was changing, small steps at first, perhaps imperceptible within a human lifespan.
Hammurabi’s Code created by a king of the same name in Babylon in the 18th century BCE is one of the first and most complete legal codes in human history. It was an early declaration of legal fairness for all Babylonians, a move away from the previously held concept that power makes right.
The Greeks and Romans advanced the idea of natural law, that certain rights and moral principles are common and fundamental to humans and found in reason, not constituted by governments. The Roman era Stoics proposed an egalitarian outlook of natural law, one that applied equally to all humans regardless of wealth or social status. The Romans believed that natural law was both eternal and rational and it became the foundation for Roman law, the impact of which underpins modern legal systems.
The Magna Carta of 1215 CE between English King John and unhappy barons was an early political document that limited the power of rulers and proclaimed legal protection for individuals. Though it was originally a peace treaty between the king and the barons, it established that even monarchs had to follow the law, that their authority was not unconditional. Over time, the Magna Carta became more than just a peace treaty, it evolved into the basis for enhanced individual rights.
The Age of Science, beginning in the 16th century CE and evolving into the Enlightenment of the early 18th century CE, did not further codify individual rights but it greatly elevated the intellectual foundation that empowered modern human rights. The great figures of the age, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Francis Bacon, Descartes, and Newton brought about a revolution that would challenge the divine authority of popes and monarchs. Their work and discoveries kicked open the door that housed reason, universality, and human inquiry.
Their exploration with new ideas showed that individuals could use reason to reveal truth, that truth was not restricted to old books and their interpreters. These revelations affirmed that scientific laws applied everywhere, arousing the great notion of universal human rights. Imagine a world based on observation and reason, not bound to myth, ignorance and dogma.
The Scientific Age laid the groundwork for the European Enlightenment of the 18th century. The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that pursued science, reason, and individual liberty as the instructive convention for society. The principal players of the Enlightenment, Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, Kant, Montesquieu, Kant, Hobbes, and Diderot picked up where the scientists left off in further challenging the authority of the church and the monarchies.
The French Enlightenment, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot among others, was fiercely critical of the old monarchial and papal order. They believed in human reason, in progress, in equality, in education, and in free speech. The Enlightenment was a direct and successful challenge to power being consolidated in the few, those whose dominance relied on blind obedience and forced ignorance. The more people thought for themselves, the more they learned, the greater danger they were to the powers-that-were.
The Enlightenment was a critical period during which the philosophy of human rights became codified in law. Its main players shook the established order and paid a price for doing so. Voltaire was imprisoned, then exiled. To avoid arrest, Rousseau left hurriedly for Switzerland. Montesquieu’s great literary work, the Spirit of Laws, was proscribed by the ever-progressive Catholic Church.
Diderot was jailed for his writings. His grand opus, the Encyclopédie, with contributions from Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu, a proclamation for the main pillars of the Enlightenment, reason, science, and liberty, was censored by both church and state for being incendiary.
The Enlightenment aroused the American and French Revolutions. It began the meandering, but incessant march to where we are today, endowed with unalienable individual rights, no longer subject to the whims, frailties, and avarice of authoritarian rulers whose only qualifications were handed out at birth or from the vested interests of the League of Red-hatted Men in Rome.
The not previously mentioned Enlightenment heavyweight, the Marquis of Condorcet, argued and died for universal human progress. His commitment to the ideals of liberty for all humans of all races and genders, the abolition of slavery, and universal public education, was the boldest of all the personalities of the Enlightenment.
The 19th century saw the principles and courage of Condorcet and his Enlightenment cohort lead to political and social reform movements that tuned ideals into action. These movements realized the dreams of Condorcet; the expansion of human rights beyond property owners, rights that that would include women, workers, and slaves. It also saw the tepid, but unstoppable beginnings of labor protection, including fair wages, as well as universal education.
Condorcet’s contention that human rights were on a continuous, if serpentine path to ever-expanding knowledge, to liberty and to equality, continued with monumental milestones in the 20th century.
The United Nations was officially formed in 1945 with the UN Charter at its core. The Charter entrenched respect for human rights as its guiding principle. It was, and is, a worthy goal, but one which has been repeatedly and violently violated since.
The Nuremberg Trials of 1945 and 1946 was the first time the world prosecuted a group of people, the German Nazis, for crimes against humanity and war crimes. If you look back through the annals of time, you can find many instances of unspeakable cruelty, of horrible torture, of force starvation, of pure savagery, but you would be hard pressed to find depravity equal to that of the Nazis responsible for the death camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and others. The world shuddered and said this cannot stand.
Among other sentences, the court handed out the death penalty to 12 Nazi leaders introducing the idea that even war had boundaries and establishing a precedent for later tribunals that prosecuted perpetrators of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Cambodia.
Nuremberg also led to the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002, a noble attempt to protect the rights of the victims of institutional violence. However, countries like the United States, Israel, Russia, China, India, and Saudi Arabia refused to sign because they were either committing war crimes or held open the possibility to do so. Despite the philosophical, legal, and institutional progress made over the centuries in advancement and protection of human rights, these prerogatives sway on a thread when the winds of populism, demagoguery, and authoritarianism blow strong.
The 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights was a global assertion of basic rights and freedom for all. 1948, against the recent backdrop of the destruction and horror of World War II, also gave birth to the Convention on Genocide. Subsequent events proved both their worth and their limits.
Three years later, the Refugee Convention proposed to protect the rights of desperate people fleeing persecution, a noble idea but one without means of enforcement and which too often fails in practice.
Some 60 years on, when the mask came off the smiling face of Bashar al-Assad, and civil war erupted, millions of Syrians fled to Europe. Instead of open arms, they were met with reenforced borders, expedited denials of refugee claims, and back room deals that saw most Syrian refugees returned to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt.
1975, and the fall of Saigon, saw the first of several waves of Vietnamese refugees, 200,000 of whom were lost at sea, largely denied entry by their Asian neighbors, before an agreement could be reached to settle them in Europe, North America, and Australia.
When Ronald Reagan wasn’t busting unions, rolling back civil rights legislation, supporting apartheid in South Africa, or telling jokes, he was ordering the interception and return of Haitian refugees without the due process granted them under the Refugee Convention. French-speaking black people were not part of his voting cohort.
The current US administration, led by its draft dodger tough guy president, Donald Trump, has shut the door to poor people from Central and South America. These are refugees in the truest sense, escaping existential threats from poverty, starvation, drug cartels, and other armed groups that whisk their children away in the middle of the night. Unable to find justice, safety, or food in their own countries, they knock on the US door which opens just wide enough to be slammed in their faces.
Domestically, the largely Trump appointed US Supreme Court has weakened or effectively ended affirmative action, workplace discrimination laws, and the previously mentioned voting rights. Civil rights protection constructed over six decades was undone by one pandering president and compliant congress.
Human rights are hard won, usually after many battles and long periods of time. Conversely, they are easily gutted or dismissed when the louts take power.
Denying equal rights for all humans is a tragedy of grand proportion. By rendering civil society unequitable, we give cover to those groups of people who for racial, religious, or nationalistic ideals, divide society into ever smaller tribes, each pursuing its own interests, each determined to maintain an identity that is often at odds with society as a whole.
This charge to isolate, often accompanied by the drive for purity, deprives the larger society of the talent locked inside a group and more importantly deprives individuals from expressing themselves beyond the culture of the tribe.
When the preservation of tribal culture claims existential importance and demands lifelong allegiance from its members, it often suppresses the rights of those individuals and slows the natural evolution towards an equal society. Individual expression must not be sacrificed on the altar of group conformity, even if that group needs its own protection from time to time.
While tribes were necessary throughout human history for protection, for food, for comfort in a cold, often brutal world, their continued existence in an increasingly global world, is often an obstacle to progress, to equality, to individual opportunity. No one should be told what they can eat, what they can study, who they can marry, and where they can live. No one’s goals should be subject to the whims of cultural practice, of sacred rituals, of the fear of being cast out.
Assimilation is not the enemy; it is integration spelled differently. Integration was the goal of the civil rights movement in the US. How can society advance when human beings, all of us descended from Africa, all of us the same save for the work of the sun, divide ourselves along race, religion and nationality? These are artificial constructs that should no longer be necessary, which are in fact dangerous.
The intent of human rights laws is to protect individuals, not groups. Groups should only have standing under the law insofar as they represent a faction of society whose human rights are being denied. Their purpose should fade as soon as the individuals who make up that group have equal legal protection and equal chance at happiness.
It is not a good thing when people form a country based solely on religion and look to exclude those who are not part of that religion. It is definitely not a good thing when religious law is also the civil law of the land and people are forced to organize their lives around a belief in a god that no one can prove exists.
It is not a good idea to let excessive homogeneous nationalism with absolute belief in a never seen god, define who is part of a group and who is excluded. It is not a good idea for groups of people, often identified by color or religion, to choose to live exclusively in ghettos, enclaves, colonies, or reserves.
It should be the goal of the group or tribal leaders to show the next generation how to learn, not to focus on the old ways or insist on a traditional lifestyle. The idea of passing down beliefs and skills received and honed over time, ancestral wisdom, is nice to have, but it should not define the future of young people who want to move outside of fixed boundaries.
It should not be the goal to preserve a culture at the expense of people who would rather be part of a larger community, who don’t want to be pressured into preserving customs that oversee every aspect of their lives. Young people do not owe allegiance to the lives their parents want them to live. Parents do their children a disservice when they insist that their ways, their foes, their gods, their prejudices, their old battles must be taken up by the next generation.
Rituals and customs must not supersede a liberal education with a universal focus, must not prevent, rather should encourage, exploration of other parts of the world. Mixing with others is not contamination, rather an awareness that, beyond the superficiality of culture, we are all the same.
We fear what we don´t know. We stereotype others because of ignorance. We mock others because we don’t respect them. We don’t respect them because we don’t know them. If we can’t get beyond these barriers to integration, we will forever be less than we could be.
Beware of those who focus too much on culture, who use it a weapon to defend tribal influence, to maintain purity, and to deny the rights and possibilities that exist within all individuals, who talk darkly about assimilation when what they are being asked to consider is inclusion.
It is cultural genocide when a greater power, a conqueror, insists that you never speak your native language or that you can’t believe in your version of god because the one they brought with them is the one true god, or that their cultural symbols must replace yours, or that you can’t be trusted to raise your kids properly so they must be taken away and give a proper education.
It is not cultural genocide to offer alternatives, choices, the opportunity to be part of a larger, less homogenous world, the opportunity to study and visit that world. There are wisdom and joy to be found in diversity. No religion, no race, no culture has all of the answers. It should not be enough to learn only what can be passed down from those who themselves may have limited exposure to divergent ideas.
This is the MAGA mentality; nativism, racial purity, us versus them, building walls, denouncing internationalism. Mixed breeds of any mammal, including humans, are healthier than purebreds. Purity should not be a goal. It’s not only MAGA that builds walls. The groups who wave the cultural flag too high are also guilty.
It is propaganda and dishonesty to teach Israeli children that Palestinians are less worthy and that any violent action taken against them is justified. It is propaganda and lies for Islamic theocracies and their proxies to stereotype Jews and reward any violent action taken against them.
Islamic theocracies do untold harm to their own children, either by preventing girls from going to school or by insisting that the boys study the Quran and nothing else through their entire school years. Nothing can be more stifling to the development of the individual than to study only one book and be forced to live by its teachings the rest of your life. It´s cruelty of the highest order and it deprives the world of the unlocked potential of thousands of young people smothered by bearded and criminally misguided men.
It is a lie of the highest order to say that Arabs and Jews can’t live together, can’t live in peace. It was forever thus in Palestine prior to the 20th century. It happens all across Europe, North America, Australia and much of Asia. It is an artificial, dishonest and self-serving construct to insist otherwise.
It is a form of child abuse for fundamental religious communities, the Mennonites, the Amish, no matter how good their cheesecake, to live apart from society in communities that reject modernity in the pursuit of a better relationship with a god they’ve never met. The children of these communities deserve the same opportunities to know what the world as children most everywhere else.
Indigenous leaders do their children a disservice if their education doesn’t include a pathway to life beyond the reserves. This is not a suggestion for a return to residential schools or a new manner of paternalism. Nor is it a call to collect in one neighborhood of a big city, a favela, closer to a new world but still apart.
Rather, it is an appeal to give young people a choice, to ready them so that when they complete high school within their communities, schools that deserve much better funding, they can move away, like most young people, to continue their education as part of a larger and different community.
Society loses when so much talent and promise are locked up in isolated communities that fear and mistrust the bigger world. The individuals within these collectives lose their opportunity to be who they would like to be. Being pressured, no matter how subtly, to the belief that the tribe, the rituals, the culture is who they are, caps their possibilities, limits a personality beyond the group.
Many young indigenous people may step outside the community, mix with people from other backgrounds, may study at technical colleges or universities, and then decide that a future away from their birth community is not for them. At a minimum, they will return with a larger perspective, knowing there is more out there, and be able to add to the knowledge pool within the group. Importantly, they can assure others that the outside world is nothing of which to be afraid, anymore than it is for any person trying something new.
This is not to suggest that indigenous communities disappear, or lose their land or property rights, or be denied the capacity to escape difficult economic situations by exploiting oil and mineral reserves on their land. That approach has been tried and found wanting. But the tribe can’t be all there is and can’t be for everyone. The right of individuals to live their lives as they see fit, supersedes the hold that culture or tradition or race or religion has on them.
I watched a video not long ago about a group of indigenous youth who had moved to a big city to study. Some of them formed a group to help the next group of young people adjust to life in these new surroundings. The girl who spoke for the welcoming group was as bright, aware, and sympathetic as any parent might wish of their kids. She was clearly comfortable and happy in her new life.
People like her give hope to a new generation that mixes freely with others, one that is just as comfortable in a modern, expansive world as they were, and are, in the traditional, narrower world into which they were born.
If someone asked me what my culture is, I wouldn’t know what to say and I think that’s a good thing. I like to travel, to play, to read and watch sports. I like to go to a good mall, to restaurants featuring food from all over the world, to the bar, to the movies, to a concert, all if and when I want. Is that culture or is that the right to live your life as you see fit within the confines of democratic society?
I don’t want to be bound by the rituals, beliefs, limitations, and rules of those who insist these customs are necessary to preserve their culture. I don’t want to dress a certain way, only study a traditional field, be coerced into marrying someone of the same culture.
I don’t want to be told who my friends and enemies are, which god to worship, that I can’t eat meat on Fridays, that I have to pray 5 times a day and starve myself for a month each year, or have to set aside a day each week to rest, pray and join other members of the same group in celebration of myth. I like Tevye, but when it becomes a bully, fuck tradition.
Once culture gets beyond food and festivals, music and dance and yearly observances of traditional dress or historical events and codifies ritual and observances into laws and how to act and with whom, it far exceeds its role in an open-minded society.
The idea is not to forget about history and culture but learn them and keep them in check. The goal is not to discard the better elements of culture, rather to share them. Instead of building castles and moats, a community’s history and desirable traditions should exist within an inclusive society.
Cities are, or can be, an amalgam of all that is good from individual associations. This montage of people from around the world, along with the good elements of their culture, is what makes for compellingly disparate neighborhoods that make cities and countries attractive and interesting.
After all the time we have had to outgrow religion and overcome fabricated differences, we still have Christians versus Muslims, Christians versus Jews, Muslims versus Jews, Catholics versus Protestants, Sunnis versus Shiites, Orthodox Jews versus Reformists, Muslims versus Hindus, Hindus versus Buddhists, indigenous tribes versus colonial settlers.
Many of these conflicts are the result of following jealous gods, many have their roots in a more powerful group imposing its will on another. It’s a violent and ugly history, one best reconciled and allowed to collect dust. But that reconciliation shouldn’t include clinging to the beliefs, bloodlines, gods, and hatred that has stifled humanity since we first shuffled onto this mortal coil.
The world has much to offer and we all should be free to choose from that universal smorgasbord. The rights of the individual do not exclude the responsibility of each of us to contribute to the well-being of the public. This argument is to create an environment where people feel good about themselves, where they are not bound by the expectations of others or the demands of the community.
This is not about parroting the sham MAGA cry for freedom, the egocentric, bigoted codes used to avoid taxes, to hate minorities, to denounce judges, to claim patriotism, to vilify immigrants, to announce their perverted interpretation of Christianity where any type of discrimination and xenophobia can be justified by a book written by people living in an age of fables and scientific ignorance.
Living in a comfortable and supportive society does not exempt us from contributing to that society. We have to obey the rules of the road so as not to endanger others, get vaccinated and wear masks when faced with a deadly virus, pay taxes for the construction and maintenance of the public good and the avoidance of the accumulation of wealth and power into the hands of the few.
Individual rights come with a collective mandate, but those rights should not pay homage to gods, narrow-minded patriots, overreaching culture, and the compelled existence of tribes.
There need be no struggle between individual rights and collective responsibility, of Locke and Kant on one side and Hobbes, Rousseau, and Marx on the other. Human rights laws that recognize minority groups must not then be weaponized by those groups. Communities should not subvert the rights of its individuals nor insist that the group exists in isolation, free of outsiders and impurities in perpetuity.
The insistence on collective rights based on religion, race, and culture, whatever the intent, is a dangerous precept. Jews, who have shown remarkable global adaptability and survivability and who have been an outsized contributor to almost all walks of life, should not seek to live in a land where only Jews are welcome.
Islam should not define a country and the rights and habits of the people within that country. The rulers of Iran and Saudi Arabia and other Islamic theocracies are an insupportable impediment to the right that people have to their own lives.
Christian nationalists and their desire, as with the other Abrahamic fundamentalists, to merge religion and state, lay the foundation for racial extremism and assault pluralistic societies. Hiding under the guise of freedom and wrapped in the flag, Christian nationalism promotes one faith over all others, marginalizes minorities, and fragments society. It is cultural exclusion cloaked in the verbiage of patriotism. Like all forms of religious fanaticism, it must be resisted by law and threatened by knowledge.
Religious nationalism is universally ugly and intentionally tribal.
What if we all formed into groups and demanded special rights for the group? Each of us could likely lay claim to historical persecution. Should gays and lesbians have their own country lined with clothing stores and non-stop Cher/Madonna/Gaga/Lipa/Minogue/Jepsen concerts? What about African Americans? Should they live in black only states, free of white gerrymandering and Mormon missionaries? And should women, assigned an inferior role by most religions, reconstitute the warrior race and sue Jeff Bezos for copyright infringement?
All of these groups of people have suffered injustice, prejudice, persecution, and violence. Should they be protected a as group, live in their own neighborhoods or villages, unwilling or afraid to mix with the larger world, or should the rights that extend to all humans encourage them to live wherever and with whomever they want?
If human rights of individuals are being denied to identifiable groups, yes, band together to fight for those rights, but once they are obtained, decommission the cause just as quickly.
Going back to the dangerous fool, Trump, it is him and his ilk who erode the human rights progress crafted over thousands of years, who create the mistrust that scares minorities away from the mainstream, who give justification to tribal demagogues determined to maintain their domains no matter the cost to the individuals within the group.
Trump is a US tragedy, one that hastens a great nation´s downfall, but more than that, he is a human tragedy. His disregard for unalienable rights, for the lives of others, his overt racism, his monumental lying, his total lack of empathy for all but the wealthy, make him unfit for office.
The crown sits easily upon his head because he relishes the authority but rejects the responsibility. He doesn’t carry the burden of hard decisions because he doesn’t care about their impact. Surrounded by sycophants, he never feels isolated. His every whim, thought, action, and response are justified by toadies who dare not cross him for fear of falling out of favor. There is not enough room on those ample butt cheeks to accommodate all the ass kissers puckered up around him.
Trump has seriously reversed the magic of diversity, the imperative of racial equality, and the aspiration for inclusion. For all the people of different color, different ethnicity, for the meek, the hesitant, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free and be equal, Donald Trump is not their guy. He is more the leader of a gang than the president of a great nation. He cares more about rich people, white supremacists, and hooligans than he does for the unfortunate folk he is duty- bound to protect.
After spending years interviewing Nazi war criminals, G.M. Gilbert, the prison psychologist during the Nuremberg trials, and portrayed in the 2025 film, Nuremberg, said, ´´I told you once I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it; a lack of empathy. ´´ Trump is no Nazi but his lack of empathy, enveloped in his narcissism, is there for all to hear every time he opens that mealy mouth. His actions have caused the death of thousands of innocent people. He has vilified immigrants, put asunder the union of American democracy, and stunted the hopes of equality and inclusion of those who have spent a lifetime on the sidelines.
Trump and Vance and the rest of those White House and Congressional run-of-the-mill peckerheads, drone on about American exceptionalism when they are among the least exceptional people in the history of the United States, so unexceptionable as to be mundane. If thievery, flattery, and deceit are what you bring to the public discourse, it would be better to remain local, so the graft, puffery, and pretense are contained.
One of the most difficult challenges any of us face is to move to a new setting. We give up the solace of the known and comfortable for the apprehension of the strange and awkward. That challenge is magnified significantly when you are part of a group that has traditionally been marginalized. The fear can be so overwhelming that it is easier to retreat to the nest. What is needed to make the transition successful is a destination that is not intimidating, where there are people ready to welcome you into a new world, ready to make you feel like you belong.
And this is where Trump has done so much damage to ethical society and the individuals looking to overcome their fear of the unfamiliar. Before they even apply, Trump has told them they are not wanted, they are undesirable. This form of apartheid, the division into us and them, has been the fight of the ages. When you think it won, a Trump appears, or Netanyahu, or Orban, or Putin, or Le Pen or Wilders or Modi, armed with enough power or influence to force people back to their birth communities.
I detest how Trump and his cronies have extended and amplified us versus others, how they have disenfranchised the voiceless, how they concocted a mean-spirited, vengeful narrative around the defenceless, and how they have licenced the loudest, most ignorant, and hateful among us.
Trump has not only given rise to the Yahoos, his large cohort of small-minded followers, but has provided impetus to those who doubt they will ever have a seat at the table of fairness. He has vindicated those whose agenda it is to never integrate, to insist on isolation, to be defined by bloodline, to accelerate the distance between themselves and the rest of the world so that never the twain shall meet.
The struggle between how much the individual owes to society or to a relationship, at the cost of that individual losing the sense of his or her own worth, has been a theme of the works of many thoughtful female writers. Novelists like Margaret Laurence, Alice Monro, Carol Shields, Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, and Virginia Woolf, lament how the voices of women are lost or muted because of the subservient role they have in a partnership or society, the erasure of self. They describe the struggle to assert individuality in a society that often guts personality.
Though these authors appropriately, necessarily, speak for women, the loss of individual personality to the yoke of the group, while a particular burden, is not confined to them. Religion, race, gender, disability, self-consciousness, and group pressure too often defeat the promise that lies within us all. We all have the responsibility to work at, and improve, a relationship with another person or with society, but losing that sense of who we are, of who we want to be, can’t be the price to pay. It is a delicate but decisive balance that guides our way to happiness or melancholy.
The cancerous Trump, his ass-kissing acolytes, and national and local rulers of the same bent, past and present, for all their smallness, all their pettiness, all their hatred, are but dusty notions in comparison to the greatest segregationist, God, in all of his or her invented forms. This intolerant, frigid figment, is the authoritative tribe maker and we all suffer because of it.
The astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, wrote that ´´God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance. ´´ The sooner we graduate from myth to learning, from acceptance to exploration, the sooner the worst of tribalism will recede into history. It is the distinction and imagination of the individual with responsibility, but not subservience, to the whole that the battle for human rights has been, and continues to be, fought.
Paul Heno – June 2026
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