Vluchtelingenstroom 104

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy — from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses — that only recently have we awakened to see not only that ‘regular’ citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.

Frances Moore Lappé. Time for Progressives to Grow Up. 2008

De prominente Amerikaanse cultuurcriticus en ‘Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences,’ Wendell Berry, schreef in zijn essaybundel The Unsettling of America (1977): 

One of the peculiarities of the white race's presence in America is how little intention has been applied to it. As a people, wherever we have been, we have never really intended to be. The continent is said to have been discovered by an Italian who was on his way to India. The earliest explorers were looking for gold, which was, after an early streak of luck in Mexico, always somewhere farther on. Conquests and foundlings were incidental to this search — which did not, and could not, end until the continent was finally laid open in an orgy of gold seeking in the middle of the last century. Once the unknown of geography was mapped, the industrial marketplace became the new frontier, and we continued, with largely the same motives and with increasing haste and anxiety, to displace ourselves — no longer with unity of direction, like a migrant flock, but like the refugees from a broken anthill. In our time we have invaded foreign lands and the moon with the high-toned patriotism of the conquistadors, and with the same mixture of fantasy and avarice (hebzucht. svh).

In aansluiting op dit citaat stelde Berry: 

The Indians did, of course, experience movements of population, but in general their relation to place was based upon old usage and association, upon inherited memory, tradition, veneration (verering. svh). The land was their homeland. The first and greatest American revolution, which has never been superseded, was the coming of people who did not look upon the land as a homeland. But there were always those among the newcomers who saw that they had come to a good place and who saw its domestic possibilities. Very early, for instance, there were men who wished to establish agricultural settlements rather than quest (zoektocht. svh) for gold or exploit the Indian trade. Later, were know that every advance of the frontier left behind families and communities who intended to remain and prosper where they were. But we know also that these intentions have been almost systematically overthrown. 

Generation after generation, those who intended to remain and prosper where they were have been dispossessed and driven out, or subverted and exploited where they were, by those who were carrying out some version of the search for El Dorado. Time after time, in place after place, these conquerors have fragmented and demolished traditional communities, the beginnings of domestic cultures. They have always said that what they destroyed was outdated, provincial, and contemptible. And with alarming frequency they have been believed and trusted by their victims, especially when their victims were other white people. 

If there is any law that has been consistently operative in American history, it is that the members of any established people or group or community sooner or later become 'redskins' — that is, they become the designated victims of an utterly ruthless, officially sanctioned and subsidized exploitation. The colonists who drove off the Indians came to be intolerably exploited by their imperial governments. And that alien imperialism was thrown off only to be succeed by a domestic version of the same thing; the class of independent small farmers who fought the war of independence has been exploited by, and recruited into, the industrial society until by now it is almost extinct.

Het grote en wezenlijke probleem van deze discontinuïteit is de vervreemding van het individu van zijn directe omgeving en van zichzelf, waardoor hij niet in staat is om ergens diep geworteld te raken, het gevoel te hebben bij een omgeving en een gemeenschap te horen, to belong. 

Belongingness is the human emotional need to be an accepted member of a group. Whether it is family, friends, co-workers, or a sports team, humans tend to have an 'inherent' desire to belong and be an important part of something greater than themselves. This implies a relationship that is greater than simple acquaintance or familiarity. The need to belong is the need to give, and receive attention to, and from, others.

Belonging is a strong and inevitable feeling that exists in human nature. To belong or not to belong can occur due to choices of one's self, or the choices of others. Not everyone has the same life and interests, hence not everyone belongs to the same thing or person. Without belonging, one cannot identify themselves as clearly, thus having difficulties communicating with and relating to their surroundings.

Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary argue that belongingness is such a fundamental human motivation that we feel severe consequences of not belonging. If it wasn’t so fundamental, then lack of belonging wouldn’t have such dire consequences on us. This desire is so universal that the need to belong is found across all cultures and different types of people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belongingness 

De Amerikaanse auteur en wiskundige Richard K. Moore zette met betrekking tot het cruciaal begrip ‘belong’ het volgende uiteen:

Another thing about families is that people generally want to belong to one. Indeed it is a basic human need to be part of a family. Everyone's heart feels sympathy for the poor orphan child, living in some cold institutional 'home.' And what can be more heart-wrenching than a child (or parent for that matter) who loses their family in a tragic accident? It is natural, God-given if you will, for people to live as part of a family. We have an inherent need to 'belong', particularly when we are growing up. The breakdown of the family unit in our modern societies is one of our biggest causes of stress and anxiety.

Let us consider this notion of 'belonging' in relation to our communities. In our modern societies, with few exceptions, we don't really have any sense of community. We drive our cars somewhere else to work, then we come home and spend most of our time in our houses, or we visit with our circle of friends, who may live miles away. We often don't even know our neighbors. We identify with sports teams or TV families more than we identify with our communities or neighbors. We are likely to feel 'involved' with remote wars and affairs in Washington (Ottawa, London...), and have little interest or concern with local affairs. We don't have a real sense of 'belonging' in our communities, other than as a place where our individual comforts happen to be located. We can move to another town, get another job and similar house, and hardly notice the change.

Now consider what sense of 'belonging' we would be likely to experience in a self-governing community. For one thing, we would would be much better acquainted with our neighbors and fellow residents generally, if we worked with one another to make community policy and set community agendas. And certainly we would feel more involved in what's going on in our community, since we would be participating directly in its affairs. Beyond that, we would think of our community as a welcoming place, where we are known and where our voice is listened to. We would feel a part of our community's successes in dealing with its problems. We would feel a sense of ownership — and of belonging. We would see it as ‘our community' rather than just as a place where our house is located.

Our feelings toward other community members would be a bit like our feelings toward family members. Just as two brothers might be frequently at each other's throats, there might be people in the community we don't like and don't get along with. But as with the brothers, we would would come to our fellow's aid if they were really in trouble. We would see one another as 'partners in running our community'. There would be a sense of comradery in the shared project of improving our local quality of life. Our community would be like a family-writ-large, a place where we find support, where our needs matter, where our fellows care about us, where there is a ‘place for us.’

As individuals and families we would have our own life paths, our unique ambitions and our autonomy, but we would understand that our own autonomy and well-being can be best served when we respect the autonomy and well-being of our fellows. We would realize that there is a trade-off between freedom and responsibility. By our participation in decision making we would be learning how to make such trade-offs so that we all benefit and all have a sense of real freedom -- rather than enjoying 'privileges granted by the state,’ privileges that can be taken away at any time, as we have been recently learning.

Let us return again to this matter of ‘belonging,' and the natural human need to belong in a family, to have the support of a family. And let us bring into consideration the origins of our species, the conditions under which we evolved into social beings. In indigenous hunter-gatherer societies, which is how all of our ancestors lived for 90% of our time as humans (some 100,000 years), people have a very strong sense of 'belonging' to their tribal group. They also have a strong sense of individuality and personal life path, but their identity with their group is very fundamental. In such societies the most terrible punishment one can experience is banishment. In these societies, banishment from the tribe is just as heart-breaking as losing ones family. Such societies are also egalitarian, with everyone participating equally in tribal decisions.

Don't all of us, in our hearts, dream of this kind of ‘belonging’? To live in a supportive society where we 'have a place' and 'have a say’? Isn't this why shows like 'Little House on the Prairie' have been so popular? Don't we all yearn for communities where we can be closer to nature, more connected to place, where we have more direct control over our lives, where we help new neighbors build barns, where children respect the wisdom of their elders, and the elders respect children's need to grow up and learn for themselves? Isn't there a memory deep in our hearts of 'belonging' in a society in this way? Of being part to a 'larger supportive family’?  Don't we often feel like 'lost souls' in our modern, isolating societies? Is this not a big part of the reason why there is so much anti-social behavior, anxiety, depression, and so many stress-related illnesses, psychological hang ups, dysfunctional families, and suicides?

My own belief, based partly on what my heart tells me, and partly on my investigations into anthropology and psychology, is that being part of a supportive community is a natural human need, on a par with the need to be part of a supportive family. This is not to say that people might not move to a different community, or spend time as world travellers, but as a basic infrastructure for society, our ‘natural condition' is to grow up in a supportive community ('it takes a village to raise a child'), and to participate as equals in our society's governance as adults.

'The Wizard of Oz' can be seen as an insightful metaphor for our human condition. We (Dorothy) are now in Oz (the modern world), with glittering lights, fantastic castles, Great Witches and Wizards, and we are lost, we don't belong. We have only Toto (family) as a connection to home (belonging), and to Toto we hang on for dear life. We thought we wanted to run away from home and find 'freedom', and we learn that what we really want is to return home, to our heart’s desire, to where Auntie Em still waits, to our native soil, our beloved Kansas, where we ‘belong.'

De conservatieve Amerikaanse New York Times-commentator David Brooks merkt in zijn boek On Paradise Drive (2005) op dat zijn landgenoten

don’t perceive where they live as a destination, merely as a dot on the flowing plane of multidirectional movement. The simple fact is that Americans move around more than any other people on earth. In any given year, 16 percent of Americans move, compared with about 4 percent of the Dutch and Germans, 8 percent of the Brits, and about 3 percent of the Thais. According to the Census Bureau’s Current Population survey, only a quarter of American teenagers expect to live in their hometowns as adults, which reflects a truly radical frame of mind. Today as always, Americans move so much and so feverishly that they change the landscape of reality more quickly than we can adjust our mental categories. 

In The Unsettling of America beschrijft Berry de continuïteit van de Amerikaanse roofbouw  aan de hand van het lot van ondermeer de Amerikaanse boeren, de binnenlandse slachtoffers van het expansionistische beleid van Washington en Wall Street:

As so often before, these are designated victims — people without official sanction, often without official friends, who are struggling to preserve their places, their values, and their lives as they know them and prefer to live them against the agencies of their own government, which are using their own tax money against them.

The only escape from this destiny of victimization has been to 'succeed' — that is, to 'make it' into the class of exploiters, and then to remain so specialized and so 'mobile' as to be unconscious of the effects of one's life or livelihood. This escape is, of course, illusory, for one man's producer is another's consumer, and even the richest and most mobile will soon find it hard to escape the noxious effluents and fumes of their various public services.

Let me emphasize that I am not talking about an evil that is merely contemporary or 'modern,' but one that is as old in America as the white man's presence here. It is an intention that was organized here almost from the start. 'The New World,' Bernard DeVoto (beroemde twintigste eeuwse Amerikaanse historicus, svh) wrote in The Course of Empire, 'was a constantly expanding market… Its value in gold was enormous but it had still greater value in that it expanded and integrated the industrial systems of Europe.'

And he continues: 'The first belt-knife given by a European to an Indian was a portent as great as the cloud that mushroomed over Hiroshima… Instantly the man of 6000 B.C. was bound fast to a way of life that had developed seven and a half millennia beyond his own. He began to live better and he began to die.’ […]

As war became deadlier in purpose and armament a surplus of women developed, so that marriage customs changed and polygamy became common. The increased usefulness of women in the preparation of pelts worked to the same end… Standards of wealth, prestige, and honor changed. The Indians acquired commercial values and developed business cults. They became more mobile.'

Die culturele genocide, 'the systematic destruction of traditions, values, language, and other elements which make a one group of people distinct from other groups,' voltrekt zich tegenwoordig wereldwijd, als gevolg van de voortgaande gewelddadige globalisering. DeVoto constateerde begin jaren vijftig van de vorige eeuw dat

The New World was a constantly expanding market; no limit to its development could be foreseen and indeed there was no limit. It's volume in gold was enormous but it had still greater value in that it expanded and integrated the industrial systems of Europe. It was thus a powerful force in the development of capitalism and nationalism. 

   

Ook Europa betaalde in de twintigste eeuw een zeer hoge prijs voor het kapitalistische narcisme van 'winner takes all.' Nog steeds gaat de Derde Wereld gebukt onder de westerse agressie en uitbuiting. Men dient evenwel niet te vergeten dat de eerste slachtoffers de oorspronkelijke bewoners van Amerika waren. Alles wat met hen gebeurde, overkwam naderhand andere volkeren, die met geweld onder blanke en christelijke heerschappij waren gebracht. Uiteindelijk werd onvermijdelijk eveneens de eigen blanke arbeidersklasse de dupe, een proces dat tot op de dag van vandaag ongestoord doorgaat. De Indianen waren als het ware de proefkonijnen van het moderne westerse kapitalisme, met als gevolg:

In the sum it was cataclysmic. A culture was forced to change much faster than change could be adjusted to. All corruptions of culture produce breakdowns of morale, of communal integrity, and of personality, and this force was as strong as any other in the white man's subjugation of the red man,’

aldus de historicus Bernard DeVoto. Wendell Berry voegt hieraan toe:

I have quoted these sentences from DeVoto because, the obvious differences aside, he is so clearly describing a revolution that did not stop with the subjugation of the Indians, but went on to impose substantially the same catastrophe upon the small farms and the farm communities, upon the shops of small local tradesman of all sorts, upon the workshops of independent craftsmen, and upon the households of citizens. It is a revolution that is still going on. The economy is still substantially that of the fur trade, still based on the same general kinds of commercial items: technology, weapons, ornaments, novelties, and drugs. The one great difference is that by now the revolution has deprived the mass of consumers of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water. Air remains the only necessity that the average user can still get for himself, and the revolution has imposed a heavy tax on that by way of pollution. Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat. The Indian became a redskin, not by loss in battle, but by accepting a dependence on traders that made necessities of industrial goods. This is not merely history. It is a parable. 

Aan het einde van die eeuwenlange cyclus, staat Europa -- waar de rooftochten waren begonnen -- op het punt ‘a redskin’ te worden, ‘not by loss in battle, but by accepting a dependence’ van Wall Street en het militair-industrieel complex. Het Avondland wordt door de VS als pion geofferd om in NAVO-verband de eerste klap op te vangen in het gepland gewapend conflict met Rusland en daarna met China. Het Brussel van Geert Mak, waar niet alleen het EU-hoofdkwartier gevestigd is maar ook dat van de NAVO, heeft zich afhankelijk gemaakt van de elitebelangen van Washington en Wall Street. Mak krijgt op die manier toch gelijk met zijn slogan ‘Geen Jorwert zonder Brussel,’ maar  anders dan hij verwachtte. Ziehier zowel de ironie van de geschiedenis als de logische wetmatigheid ervan, want ‘wie naar het zwaard grijpt, zal door het zwaard omkomen,’ zoals Mak’s bijbel de christen waarschuwt. Brussel is de metafoor voor de bureaucratie, de corrupte politici en het militair-industrieel complex. Alle drie werken samen aan de voorbereidingen van een dreigend armageddon. Geen van de drie is in staat de loop van de geschiedenis om te buigen. Alleen de bevolking kan dit, de massa die zich al die tijd op sleeptouw heeft laten nemen. Maar dan moet men eerst een beeld hebben van het wezenlijke probleem waarmee wij geconfronteerd worden. Wendell Berry formuleert de kwestie als volgt:    

We can understand a great deal of our history… by thinking of ourselves as divided into conquerors and victims… we are divided between exploitation and nurture… We are all to some extent the products of an exploitive society, and it would be foolish and self-defeating to pretend that we do not bear its stamp.

Let me outline as briefly as I can what seem to me the characteristics of these opposite kinds of mind. I conceive a strip miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal is health — his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order — a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization, the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, ‘hard facts’; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.

'Strip-mining. Mountaintop removal,' waarbij de hele berg wordt afgegraven en op de kolenlagen na, in ravijnen wordt gedumpt, waardoor het grondwater vergiftigd wordt in staten als Kentucky en Western Virginia.  Het verwoeste landschap is het enige dat overblijft, zoals ik vijf jaar geleden zag toen ik door dit gebied reed.

Het kapitalisme en zeker in zijn neoliberale vorm is het domein van de ‘uitbuiters,’ die in permanente staat van oorlog verkeren met mens en natuur. Alles is onderworpen aan de korte termijn belangen van enkele individuen. Het is de cultuur van de oneindige roofbouw in een eindige wereld, die tot de algehele vernietiging leidt, zoals nu blijkt uit onder andere de uitputting van vitale grondstoffen, de klimaatverandering, en de voortdurende oorlogen. In dit opzicht is de ‘exploiter clearly the prototype of the ‘masculine’ man — the wheeler-dealer whose ‘practical’ goals require the sacrifice of flesh, feeling, and principle.’ Daarbij geldt dat de

exploitive always involves the abuse or the perversion of nurture and ultimately its destruction. Thus, we saw how far the exploitive revolution had penetrated the official character when our recent secretary of agriculture (minister Earl Butz. svh) remarked that 'food is a weapon.' (een beleid dat eveneens door  de toenmalige minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, Henry Kissinger, werd toegepast. svh) This was given a fearful symmetry indeed when, in discussing the possible use of nuclear weapons, a secretary of defense spoke of 'palatable' (aanvaardbare. svh) levels of devastation. Consider the associations that have since ancient times clustered around the idea of food — associations of mutual care, generosity, neighborliness, festivity, communal joy, religious ceremony — and you will see that these two secretaries represent a cultural catastrophe. The concerns of farming and those of war, once thought to be diametrically opposed, have become identical. Here we have an example of men who have been made vicious, not presumably by nature or circumstance, but by their values. 

Food is not a weapon. To use it as such — to foster a mentality willing to use it as such — is to prepare, in the human character and community, the destruction of the sources of food. The first casualties of the exploitive revolution are character and community. When those fundamental integrities are devalued and broken, then perhaps it is inevitable that food will be looked upon as a weapon, just as it is inevitable that the earth will be looked upon as fuel and people as numbers or machines. But character and community — that is, culture in the broadest, richest sense — constitute, just as much as nature, the source of food. Neither nature nor people alone can produce human sustenance, but only the two together, culturally wedded…

To think of food as a weapon, or of a weapon as food, may give an illusory security and wealth to a few, but it strikes directly at the life of all. 

The concept of food-as-weapon is not surprisingly the doctrine of a Department of Agriculture that is being used as an instrument of foreign political and economic speculation. This militarizing of food is the greatest threat so far raised against the farmland and the farm communities of this country. If present attitudes continue, we may expect government policies that will encourage the destruction, by overuse, of farmland. This, of course, has already begun. To answer the official call for more production — evidently to be used to bait or bribe foreign countries — farmers are plowing their waterways and permanent pastures; lands that ought to remain in grass are being planted in row crops. Contour plowing, crop rotation, and other conservation measures (om gevreesde dustbowls te voorkomen. svh) seem to have gone out of favor or fashion in official circles and are practiced less and less on the farm. This exclusive emphasis on production will accelerate the mechanization and chemicalization of farming, increase the price of land, increase overhead and operating costs, and thereby further diminish the farm population. Thus the tendency, if not the intention, of Mr. Butz's confusion of farming and war is to complete the deliverance of American agriculture into the hand s of corporations.

The cost of this corporate totalitarianism in energy, land, and social disruption will be enormous. It will lead to the exhaustion of farmland and farm culture. Husbandry will become an extractive industry; because maintenance will give way to production, the fertility of the soil will become a limited, un-renewable resource like coal or oil.

Anno 2016, bijna vier decennia nadat Wendell Berry dit schreef, blijkt hoe profetisch zijn voorspellingen waren. ‘Food’ als ‘weapon,' geldt meer dan ooit, aangezien het 'overmatig gebruik' van landbouwgrond almaar toeneemt,  niet alleen in de VS, maar vandaag de dag wereldwijd. Zo maakte de FAO eind 2011 bekend:

Quarter of world's landmass 'highly degraded': UN

Published on 28 November 2011 - 7:12pm

The UN food agency warned Monday that a quarter of the world's landmass is 'highly degraded,' making it difficult to meet the food needs of a booming population.

'Humankind can no longer treat these vital resources as if they were infinite,' said Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) based in Rome.

'The time for business as usual is over,' Diouf told reporters, calling the FAO's assessment of the planet's resources, a first for the organization, a 'wake-up call.’

The survey found that 25 percent of the world's land is 'highly degraded' and 44 percent is 'moderately degraded,' while only 10 percent was classified as ‘improving.'

The categories in the report entitled 'The State of the World's Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture' (SOLAW) included classic soil and water degradation, as well as other aspects like biodiversity loss.

The report said land degradation was worst down the west coast of the Americas, across the Mediterranean region of southern Europe and north Africa, across the Sahel and the Horn of Africa and throughout Asia.

http://www.rnw.nl/international-justice/bulletin/quarter-worlds-landmass-highly-degraded-un  

Verzilting waardoor de grond onbruikbaar is geworden. 'Salt is degrading one-fifth of the world’s irrigated land and causing around US$27.3 billion per year in economic losses, according to a new assessment from the United Nations University (UNU). That’s because every day for the past 20 years, an average of 2,000 hectares of farmland has been impacted by salt accumulation in arid and semi-arid regions across 75 countries. Now these lands currently cover about 62 million hectares — equal to the size of France.' http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/one-fifth-of-global-farm-soil-degraded-by-salt 

Deze gang van zaken is het resultaat van de onverzadigbare drang naar meer. Meer van alles, de ideologie waarop het geglobaliseerde westerse kapitalisme is gebaseerd, de eeuwige groei. Berry:

Te first principle of the exploitive mind is to divide and conquer. And surely there has never been a people more ominously (onheilspellend. svh) and painfully divided than we are — both against each other and within ourselves. Once the revolution of  exploitation is under way, statesmanship and craftsmanship are gradually replaced by salesmanship. Its stock in trade in politics is to sell despotism and avarice as freedom and democracy. In business it sells sham (schijn. svh) and frustration as luxury and satisfaction. The  constantly expanding market  first opened in the New World by the fur traders is still expanding — no longer so much by expansions of territory or population, but by the calculated outdating, outmoding, and degradation of goods and by the hysterical self-dissatisfaction of consumers that is indigenous (aangeboren. svh) to an exploitive economy. 

This gluttonous (vraatzuchtige. svh) enterprise of ugliness, waste, and fraud thrives in the disastrous breach it has helped to make between our bodies and our souls. As a people, we have lost sight of the profound communion — even the union — of the inner with the outer life. Confucius said: ‘If a man have not order within him/He can not spread order about him.’ Surrounded as we are by evidence of the disorders of our souls and our world, we feel the strong truth in those words as well as the possibility of healing that is in them. We see the likelihood that our surroundings, from our clothes to our countryside, are the products of our inward life — our spirit, our vision — as much as they are products of nature and work. If this is true, then we cannot live as we do and be as we would like to be. There is nothing more absurd, to give an example that is only apparently trivial, than the millions who wish to live in luxury and idleness and yet be slender and good-looking. We have millions, too, whose livelihoods, amusements, and comforts are all destructive, who nevertheless wish to live in a healthy environment; they want to run their recreational engines in clean, fresh air. There is now, in fact, no ‘benefit’ that is not associated with disaster. That is because power can be disposed morally or harmlessly only by thoroughly unified characters and communities. 

De dag dat ik dit fragment van Wendell Berry overschrijf, zaterdag 21 mei 2016, lees ik op internet:

In de Volkskrant filosofeert Asscher vandaag ook al over de volgende verkiezingen. 'Je voelt in Nederland dat er weer behoefte is aan een soort samenlevingsrevival. Dat zal één van de onderliggende vragen worden bij de komende verkiezingen. Wil je samen vooruit, of toch ieder voor zich. Of ik daarin een rol speel, ga ik bekijken.’

http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/asscher-zet-deur-open-naar-lijsttrekkerschap-pvda~a4304746/

En niemand van de Volkskrant die de vice-premier van de sociaal democraten de voor de hand liggende journalistieke vraag durft te stellen:

Meneer Asscher, al jarenlang voert uw kabinet een keihard bezuinigingsbeleid, waarbij de kloof tussen arm en rijk almaar toeneemt. U verkocht deze neoliberale politiek onder de noemer: ‘van verzorgingsstaat naar participatiesamenleving.’ Met andere woorden: denkt u nu werkelijk bij uw volle verstand dat juist u, of all people, ‘een rol’ kan spelen bij ‘een soort samenlevingsrevival,’ of belazert u als PVDA-er het stemvee opnieuw?

Alleen in totalitaire systemen gaat een dergelijke propaganda door voor journalistiek. 

Let op het rood-witte socialisten-vuistje achter minister Asscher. Lodewijk Asscher liet een financiële chaos achter in Amsterdam, maar via zijn vriendjes in de mainstream-polderpers weet hij telkens weer reclame voor zichzelf te maken. Zie ook de rode stropdas rond de nek van deze telg uit een rijke diamantairs-familie, die tijdens de oorlog een collaborerende rol speelde. It runs in the family.

'Op socialisten, sluit de rijen,

Het rode vaandel volgen wij.

Het geldt den arbeid te bevrijden,

Verlossing uit de slavernij!'