Politics in the Absence of Ethics and Morals By Kelson Maynard

 

Ethics comes from an external source: codes of conduct- workplace, organizations, institutions.

Morals are one’s own principles about what is right and wrong.  Our morals are derived from cultural influences, religion and spirituality, and subjective experiences.

The 21^st century western political order is dominated by epistemological destruction of any balance between European and European American explicit and implicit professed beliefs and practices.  They deliberately inflict suffering and evil on global populations to advance their neo-liberal interests.  The reason is political and it is detached from ethics and morals.

The practice of morality and ethics by Europeans and their descendants is suspended in war.  The detachment of morals and ethics from politics leads to systematic and calculated murder- Gaza war- and obscene decisions when rationality is divorced from morals and ethics- United States of America supreme court decisions: bump stock ban reversal; Roe v Wade reversal.

In a society, such as the United States of America, whose culture is infused with the paradigm of war against others who are not of Western European ancestry- i.e., non-human- violence and genocide against those who are not of Western European ancestry and of African ancestry can be a necessary outcome.  The illusion to the contrary comes from the repression of violence in western epistemological culture: legal and judicial, norms and values, education and socialization, economic opportunities, media influence, access to medical services.  These factors today are characterized  as too liberal and leftist and are under assault by forces described as far right.  The difficulty that many have in challenging the forces seeking to expand the epistemology of neo-liberalism which accentuates the violent impulse in western culture is because violence is an integral component of western epistemology.

The United States of America government is actively supporting the killing and destruction of housing, health, and epidemiological institutions in Palestine, through its supply of weapons, financial, and political support to the Israeli State.  The U.S.A government has also rejected the “World Court” decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli government officials who are orchestrating what many have characterized as genocide against the Palestinian people. Universities across the country have engaged police forces to stop students from protesting the killing and destruction in Palestine and calling for a cease fire.  Politics devoid of ethics and morality  is resulting in calculated and systematic murder, and intellectual confusion in academia and the rest of the persuasive apparatus in society.

The history of white supremacist violence against people of color and people of African ancestry in the United States of America is well known.  The European American perpetrators of these acts of violence often go unpunished within the social order and process of the United States of America.  Lynching, the extrajudicial murder of primarily African Americans accused various offenses or perceived transgression of social norms, has been a popular means of racial control and intimidation of African Americans by European Americans. It is difficult to quantify the number of African Americans lynched throughout the history of the United States of America, as many cases went unreported or inaccurately documented.  However, the Equal Justice Initiative has documented over 4.400 lynching of African Americans between 1877 and 1950.  The legacy of lynching continues to impact the African American community.  Yet, congress has been unable to pass a national antic-lynching bill.  In 2021 the Emmett Till anti-lynching act was reintroduced in congress.  The life of African descendant people in the United States of America encourages  presentiment and memory of white supremacist violence against them.   

It seems clear that Europe and European America is following a theodicean epistemological paradigm.  This approach suggests that evil and suffering are a result of the laws of nature.  They believe that universal order and stability are maintained through periodic disasters, diseases, killings, and wars.  Thus, climate change is a hoax; the current pandemic is a hoax; periodic mass killing is necessary for population balance.  These are natural occurrences ordered by the dispassionate laws of nature.  These ideas, of which Manifest Destiny is an example, are part of European and European American knowledge system.  It has had deadly consequences for people of color and the ex-colonial world. We must develop a new alternative epistemological system if we are to extricate ourselves from European and European American neo-colonial oppression.